Real Estate Game Changers Show
Hi! My name is Mike, and I am your host based in Jacksonville, Florida. Each Monday at 3:30 PM Eastern, we'll dive deep with guests all over the country who are changing the game in real estate.
Real Estate Game Changers Show
Unlikely Paths to Real Estate Wealth
Chris Craddock reveals how he went from Young Life to real estate success, sharing game-changing strategies to close more deals, turn dead leads into cash, and build a powerhouse team. Get insights on hiring top talent, mastering marketing, and thriving through challenges in this must-listen episode!
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All right, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Game Changers show. I'm your host, Mike McKay, based in Jacksonville, Florida. And each and every week we do this show with people who are changing the game of real estate All over the country. For anyone in the jacksonville area, next week We are actually going to be hosting a free live zoom training for people who are either interested in working with us Or just interested in getting way better at sales our topic for next week is how to prevent objections and close deals. So, we are looking for salespeople for our team, but anyone is welcome to join that call and improve your sales skills. So, this week on the show, we have Chris Craddock. Chris, welcome to the show.
Chris:Yeah, thanks man. Glad to be here.
Mike:Yeah. So, for the people who don't know you, could you tell us a little bit about how you got into the real estate business and how that's led you to where you are today?
Chris:Yeah. So, I mean, man, I don't have enough time to talk about what led me here, but yeah, early two thousands, I was on staff with an organization called young life, loved it changed my life. It was great. I made 25, 000 a year. And when my wife got pregnant. You can't live in the DC area on 25, 000 a year. And so I went to the library because before Google was kind of the fount of all information and knowledge and checked out every book on real estate investing. And honestly, I look back at how little I knew and I was like, dang, like I knew nothing, but you know, I just went out and did it and started knocking on doors of people with foreclosures. And in four months, I made 12 times what I made in a year with Young Life and was able to continue to administer stuff for a while. And then as I had more kids, I've got six of them now. It took me a while to figure out what caused it, but now we can kind of make sure that doesn't happen anymore. But money started running out, especially in ministry. And, you know, anybody that has kids is like, put your money in a bathtub and pull the plug, right. It's gone. And so I was doing everything like all these side jobs. Like I tried to sell my blood to NIH for 300 to buy Christmas presents for my family, like had no money. And and then I was like, why don't I flip houses again? So I got back into But then all the people with auction dates that I was going to before those were short sales. And I realized the banks were going to pay a commission and they wouldn't negotiate on the price. The commission was like non negotiable. They either pay it or they don't. And so I got a real estate license and then I saw that I always had led large teams with in ministry and I saw like the Gary Keller millionaire real estate agent book and it made sense to me and I was like, Oh, I can build that. And so I started building a real estate agent team and then like with this whole focus around the agent investor idea, because that's how I got into real estate and listings make an agent business massive and incredibly profitable. And then after that we built all the other like side businesses like, you know, title and mortgage and insurance and construction and coaching and like just all of the other things that go go around that business. And so, yeah, so that's what we got today. You know, my, my agent business will sell between five and 600. Deals a year. I own a ton of rental properties. You know, we'll do a lot of creative deals as well. Every year, you know, flips, wholesales, innovation, you know, all, all the other stuff there. And so, yeah, we really work hard to, you know, mesh that agent investor world. And yeah, that's, that's where we are.
Mike:Yeah. Yeah, so. Are a lot of your leads coming in on the agent side and then you're converting them to, you know, well, maybe a listing, but maybe a wholesale deal, maybe a novation, or are they coming in from the investor side? And then you're kind of turning them into investor marketing and turning them into listings, or is it both?
Chris:Yeah, no, it's, it's all like, we only offer like the cash off release. Now we do have a partnership with Zillow. So Zillow sends us buyer leads. As well to our agent team, but we only just offer the cash offer lead to people and then they come in. And so if you build a massive organization, so I've got over 50 agents that work for us. And if you have a big organization, you'll realize that the two most expensive things in any organization are. Are if you take out the brick and mortar piece you know, cause that's expensive too, but is marketing and salaries. Those are like the one and two on almost every organization. Well, the cool thing is if you have an agent business that can list deals when people want a lot of money for it, more money than, you know, a. You know, a flipper or a wholesaler or somebody who's going to buy in and hold You know, then you basically have two massive businesses that are sharing the expense of marketing and there you for your marketing expenses are 50 And you're going to have to have some salaried people in both businesses But you do get economies of scale with those businesses. And so you're looking at like 75 cents on the dollar for your staff versus, you know, a hundred dollars if you have two separate businesses. So they really are. They mesh really well together.
Mike:Yeah, so you guys are basically marketing for all the cash offers, and then you kind of converted if it doesn't make sense for that.
Chris:You just go down the decision tree. You know, I always say, yeah, you know, keep the best, sell the rest. And how do you sell them, right? So you, you keep the best ones as rentals, and then you either sell them through a flip, through a wholesale, through an innovation, through a listing on the market, right? All of them are, are out there. And like, so, you know, in your, in your area, what is the average home sell for in Jacksonville?
Mike:About 350,
Chris:350. So here's the crazy thing. How many leads a month do you guys bring in in Jacksonville?
Mike:Probably 450, 100, 120 a week, you know,
Chris:Okay, so 450 and then how many properties a month do you typically sell?
Mike:You mean like, like, do we buy? Cause we don't do the realtor side.
Chris:Dubai, i'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Mike:Yeah. Probably like, you know, anywhere five to seven at this point.
Chris:So five to seven that means you bring in 450 leads, you know If you think about it of them Maybe a hundred of those are actually like are going to sell on the market like separately And if a hundred of those sell then and if it's like let's just call it three hundred thousand You and you should always take between a three and a three and a half percent listing commission on that. You're looking at like an average of let's just call it a ten thousand dollar listing commission. So your top line revenue on money that you've already paid for that's walking out the door Right now is like a hundred deals at 10, 000 a deal. It's like almost, you know what, is that a million dollars? Yeah. Is it like
Mike:Exactly. Yeah.
Chris:mean, it's I mean, it's just, it's crazy. It's just every single month, that's what's walking out the door. So now granted that would be top line revenue. You'd still have other fees and splits with agents and everything else that you got to pay, but you know, there's, it doesn't take many deals at 10, 000 a pop to really pay All of your overhead off so that you can get into from good profitability to massive profitability.
Mike:I'm curious how you have it structured. Like, do you, do all your agents have the ability to do all the strategies? Or do you have like certain agents who are like that's like an investment property. Like there's a lot of like distress there. I'm sending that agent and they're going to really, they're the good person at getting cash deals low. Or is it just kind of more like everyone does everything.
Chris:Yeah, no, no, we, we specialize. So, we have some agents that so basically it comes in through our inside sales team, our inside sales team does our first vetting, and then they decide who goes on the appointment. Right. So that's the whole thing. And then we also have some investor partners in our local market. That are looking to monetize their leads so they go through it and if they realize maybe there's not massive pain Maybe there's not massive motivation, you know all the things you look for when you're going to get a deal on a property then they They don't say hey, do you want to talk to a realtor? because if you say that everybody's brother's uncle like, you know does termite remediation and then like Also has a real estate license, right? They just send they send us out and they call us a you know, evaluation expert, right? And so you, you go there and then we have our agents. Are trained on the scripting process. There's a very very very succinct scripting process that can turn people from saying I want a cash offer to i'm willing to list it on the market so You got to understand and this is where a lot of investors They don't get it because a lot of investors They think they're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. I'm just, they want to sell. So I'll just give it to an agent, but then nothing comes of it. Well, the problem is when these people have raised their hand to a cash offer that the cash offer is I want certainty and I want convenience. Right. And you think about it. Okay. They're willing to take a discount, maybe not a massive discount because that's why the agent is there, but they're willing to take a discount. That's why they raise their hand to it. It's like the person that trades in their car, right? Like, you know, you're going to make less money if you trade in your car at a dealership, then you will, if you sell it on Craigslist, but you want certainty and convenience, which is why you trade it into the dealership. If you sell it on Craigslist, people come through. But if you went to the, you know, the, the problem when, when a wholesaler or a an investor. Responds to somebody with a cash offer and then says, Hey, do you want to talk to an agent? What they say is, Hey, I can, it's like, okay, I'm going to trade in my car. And they say and the dealer says, okay, cool. I'll get you more money. But instead of giving you cash right now, what I'm going to do is put it up on auto trader and I'm going to put it on cars. com and I'll get you more money for it. And you're like, I want to trade in my car. I don't want you to like put it on cars. com for me, you know? So that's where, that's why most investors just think that it'll work with agents and then do it. And then they give up because they make no money because they don't understand how that, that cycle actually works.
Mike:So you've got your inside sales agents taking the calls and they're kind of deciding, okay, is this an investor deal? And then they send certain of your agents out who are kind of investor cash focused, right? The guy who's going to get it for the low price, or they have, if they think it might, maybe there's not that ton of pain. There's kind of a different person from your team who goes out, different agent.
Chris:There's a couple of different agent groups in that are trained for different pockets of what we do, right? So if they don't think. It's a, an agent deal or if they think it's a deal, they'll send it to one, one group, right? If they think that it's probably a listing, they'll send it to another group that are very good on their scripting. And if they think, you know, you know, and if it calls, like if they don't have any pain, if they're just, You know, looking for an agent to show up, then we've got a bigger pool that we can send it to, you know, if there's like, if they're okay, if there's just like, ah, I just want to talk to a real estate agent, like then, you know, then that's, that's a different group. Right. And so that's where we just kind of go through that decision tree when we're doing our prequel call. You know, when we get in touch with them.
Mike:And then, like, you have 50 agents, so it, like, sounds like there's obviously a bunch in each group. Like, how do you, I'm curious how you do your lead distribution within those once it hits that group.
Chris:Yeah. Um, one by location to, uh, we always take our, our best agents get the, get the most, we fill them up first. And, you know, our, our, you know, the bottom line is life is not well, it is fair, right. It's, it's, it's, it's completely fair. Right. Yeah. The people that do the best should get the most opportunity, right? That's fair, right? And so, so we give, we give our top people the most opportunity. And then when people earn their way in and we look at their conversion numbers and we, yeah, we look at all of that and when they earn their way in. They move themselves up and anybody that has a high conversion rate. We're all we'll make sure that they're getting, they're getting deals and like, well, we turn up every dial we can in marketing to make sure that nobody is, is like that, that all of our, all of our people are at that edge of like, not quite overly busy where they're dropping balls, but also not having like way extra free time on their hand because we want them the best converters, like Hitman going in, close the deal, move on to the next deal.
Mike:Yeah, is the are the inside sales agents, like, setting the appointment or they're just doing a pass off to the, to the, for the other agent to, to call that
Chris:No, we set the appointment. I mean, you know how hard it is to get people on the phone and we set the appointment, go from there. But then part of our process is we have the before they go meet with them, they call back not to confirm. Cause if you call to confirm, people are going to cancel. But we call back and just say, Hey, you know, I've been doing a lot of, a lot of research on your property, right? Make them feel bad. If they try to cancel. We've been doing a lot of research on your property. And, and I have just a couple of questions for you. And we go through a lot of similar questions that they've already been asked. And what we found is, you know, oftentimes the answers will change. And if they've changed, Okay. Then you're able to go through and figure out like why have those answers changed? What do they really want? What don't they want? And what we always say is that if the person going on the appointment can't send me a text saying exactly how much money they want for that property before they get there What their pain and motivation is and then also what their game plan is like how what is their strategy? Once they're in the door to to move this to a signed agreement that you are actually going in just preparing to lose. So like, you know, probably she can't see it right there because you're not prepared to win.
Mike:I like that. Okay. So you want to have, yeah, they're paying ahead of time what they're looking for. And then kind of what that salesperson's game plan is. Do you track that anywhere? Like, do they have to enter that information somewhere ahead of time?
Chris:Like we, you know, when we're doing our our training and our you know, our one on ones with, with you know, we'll listen to calls and we'll go through it and we're like, okay, what is, what was the plan? What, what is the deal here? You know, all of that stuff. So we'll go through, but we don't have, we don't have them actually submit it. We probably should, but we don't have them submit it.
Mike:Yeah, okay, and we were talking to like a lot offline. I think you talked about it a bit with some other investors in town to kind of send you leads, but we were talking about monetizing dead leads and I'm just curious, like, I mean, I think it was before we went officially online, but I was like, yeah, I've got thousands of those in my system. Right. So how is, what's your strategy to monetize dead leads?
Chris:Well, bro, it's just, it's just what we talked about with, with you, Lisa, a few minutes ago, like, I mean, if you have a hundred people that are going to sell in your, in your market, like in your market that you're working in every month, like, you know, in the average commission is, is 10, 000 a pop. Let's say, let's say of the hundred, you know, let's say you're only getting 10 percent of the hundred that you're talking to, that's still 100, 000 a month in top line revenue that you're letting walk out the door that you've already paid for, right? And so, you know, even if you partner with a local agent that is really good and actually is like knows this process and a lot of them don't, they need to be taught this process, everything else. But if you partner with somebody that knows this process, then, you know, let, let's say you're keeping 35 percent of, of every deal that they close, right? You're just, you're setting the appointment for that agent. Cause you have their calendly and you're just putting it on their calendar. And you're, they're closing at a 10 percent rate and you set a hundred appointments for them a month and they close 10 percent of them. You are still making 35, 000 a month, right? An extra 400, 000 is pretty life changing for a lot of businesses because it like 400 grand will, will cover. You know, most of people's marketing expenses in a year. Right. And then all of a sudden your marketing is completely paid for your profitability goes way up.
Mike:What's your I'm curious what your strategy is for you said there's kind of some very specific scripting and talk tracks that agent has to get them from. Okay. I wanted this convenient cash offer, but it obviously isn't going to work cash to get them to a listing. I'm curious what that conversation sounds like.
Chris:Yeah. I mean, here, here's what it is. Right. Because just like. you know, the best in the world already know what's going on. You're playing checkers and you're not playing chess. Right. So like when you're, when you're there, you know, that. You're talking to them and they say they want the cash offer. But as you're sitting there, you're pre qualifying them out of the cash offer, because that's like, okay, they don't have to sell fast. They're just like, you know, I will sell. I'm going to sell, but I, you know, I'm. I'm just going to buy a bigger house. So I've got, and I don't even have that house identified yet. So I just, you know, I saw your ad and I'm ready to go. So there's no pain. There's no motivation. There's no time time sensitive nature to it. So all of a sudden I'm hearing this and I'm asking questions and I realized there's no pain there. So then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, they're their only pain is that they're not in their dream house yet. And so they're probably not going to take A 25 percent discount on what they would get on the open market at this point. So we're, so we're going to move and we're going to pivot to the listing. And so this is my, this is my exact talk track. I just say, so listen you know, I, I see where you're, you're coming from and I know you'd like about three 50 for your property. And I'm looking at this and, you know, The cash offer that we typically offer is for somebody that needs to close in seven days or less. And that usually is somebody that has like a foreclosure date or has a reason why they need to move really fast. And so you don't really need that. And so the offer that I, I would give you for the cash offer would be way lower than I think that you're looking for, or frankly, as I'm listening that I think you should take. The second thing, because I'm a licensed real estate agent with DXP Realty, I could. I could list the property for you, but listen, in the state of Virginia you know, people go to, to school longer to learn how to cut hair than they do their biggest assets. I just, I don't have a high regard for what most real estate agents do. We have this other process, we call it our hybrid program and your house, I think would be perfect. Perfect for this. And what it is is we've got over 9, 000, actually 9, 132 investors in our database that we look at and we match properties just like yours. And a lot of these investors, instead of people like me with a cash offer that are looking to buy it, flip it and make a Make a modest profit on it. These people are going to buy it and then hold it for 30 years and make their money over 30 years. So they oftentimes will buy as is in a very simple, easy way. And they, you know, sometimes a lot of times they'll buy cash. A lot of times they just make it a lot simpler. So it's this cross between that cash offer. And in a listing where you're going to make more money than the cash offer, but you're going to do it in a way that's a little more convenient for you. So I think that'd be the great, the right fit for you. Does that work for you?
Mike:Yeah, like, how does that like? How does that work? Like the way like, how does that exactly work? Okay.
Chris:Yeah. So what we would do is we would market we would get your property and we would market to all of our investors. And then we would also market out to the general public. And because I know you don't want people coming through your house at all hours of the time, we, we do something, we call it a strategic investor open. And we just on Saturday you know, on the Saturday from one to three and Sunday from one to three, we will only allow people to come into your, your property from those three hours. And we'll have somebody from our team there to make sure that everything is, you know, above board, everything going well. And we'll invite everybody that's interested during that time to come and take a look at your property.
Mike:Gotcha. So is that Is that like, so when you go that route, like, is that are they always going to, or is it kind of like almost innovation route? Like, are you going to take care of like the repairs? If those come in, if you do get someone who's like, you know, it's like a decent house, but there's, I don't know if you guys do a lot of FHA or anything like that.
Chris:Yeah. So we have we have a program called, you know, it's renovate now pay later where you know, we charge them 1 percent of the sales price to take care of all the repairs. So, yeah, and we just get paid at closing and they have to have equity in the property for us to be willing to do it. We won't do it if it's a short sale, but, you know, just think about that. You do 10 properties like that at three 50, you know, you just made an extra 35 grand just to float them. Like what? Like. You know, a couple thousand bucks you know, until closing as long as, as long as this price, right. And, and done well. So,
Mike:Yeah. And then do you, does that, do you run into trouble, like trouble though? Because if you're only like having the property shown twice a week, obviously it might limit like some less buyers being able to come,
Chris:yeah. So what I've found is most of the time on these properties, they're willing to sell at a slight discount, right? And so right now, and there's a, there's a lack of inventory. And so if people are selling at, you know, 95 cents on the dollar. And then paying a commission, right? So they're making like say 90, 90 cents on the dollar, whatever it is, you know, 89 cents on the dollar, right? There's not really enough room for innovation. There's not really enough room for a for a wholesale. But, you know, like somebody else is going to look at it like a doctor or a dentist is going to be like, Oh my gosh. And you're just going to have a massive amount of people that are in on that coming through. You're going to get multiple offers. People are going to, you know, be willing to sell cash offer like all of the other pieces there. So
Mike:Because, yeah, because you're offering, you know, to a, to a, to a person who's looking on the open market, you're offering a pretty aggressive price to an investor. They're not interested, but
Chris:yeah.
Mike:investor, yeah,
Chris:Yeah. So I like to call it like the civilian investor is loving this property, right? We just, we just see it. Like, I mean, we get all these investors that are like, you know, C suite executives of like, you know, government contracting companies. You know, and they're like, Oh man, I, you know, I, I'm getting a discount on this. Cause like, if you think about this is like, and this is what most of us in the investor space think about, we're like, okay, it's not a deal unless it's, you know, more than, you know, 70 cents on the dollar, you know, off. Right. But like, when you think about the average, like, you know, chiropractor. They're looking at it and they're buying properties that are cashflow negative and holding them right. And all of a sudden they look on the MLS and they're like, Oh, this is awesome. It is the MLS is the best buyers list you'll ever create. If you're a wholesaler, it's, it's way better than any buyers list. You can create investor lift. I like what Robert Winsley created is great, but I promise you even investor lift, which is a great product. How does not hold a candle to the 6 million eyeballs that come from the MLS and from Zillow and Redfin and Realtor. com.
Mike:Yeah, no, that's so true. Like a lot of times for like one of our strategies has been, and this is not an original strategy is we'll just sometimes buy it and just put it on the MLS as is. Cause I just know that there is an investor out there who I don't know who's going to pay 20 grand more than anyone in my private list. Cause. so much. Like you said, they're just like a doctor or a lawyer and they're like, Oh, I can get a rental property and I can make, you know, some money every month. Yeah. I'll buy it. Like, I don't need to buy it at 70 cents on the dollar. They're like, they think 90 cents is a sweet deal or 95 cents. So I liked that strategy. Yeah. So is that the way that do you guys ever do like the, well, you probably do cause you have so many agents, but do you ever go like the, is it ever totally just the traditional listing route or do you kind of always go with this bitch? Yeah.
Chris:Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. It's always a listing. So the hybrid pitch is, is our traditional listing. The reason why we go with that is most people. Most agents or most people have an agent friend, right? And so what we're doing is, the reason why we say the first part is because we don't want other people, them to shop us with other investors, because we're like, this is what a traditional cash offer looks like. And This is why it doesn't work. And so that they're, they're now disqualifying the other investors they were thinking about meeting with. This is the deal with a regular real estate agent and a regular listing. And this is why that is not the best for you. We're disqualifying their brother's uncle, right? Who's a real estate agent. And then we say, this is what we do here for our thing. And so did you ever did you ever do P90X back in the day?
Mike:No, I saw the commercials, but I never did it. Yeah.
Chris:I loved P90X cause you could just press play and color by numbers, just do what it said. And so I just go to my basement every morning and just hit play and just do it. And, but here's the crazy thing. Tony Horton said it washed out. It like almost, you know, it was almost a failed product. And then this marketing genius came up with the idea of. Something that sounded original and different and he called it muscle confusion, right? And anybody that goes to the gym knows that if you work out Back and bicep one day and then you you work out chest and tricep and then you change your your workouts You're gonna get stronger, right? but they labeled it muscle confusion and that all of a sudden like all of america was thinking Holy crap, I could eat, you know, two pizzas and like a full stack of ice cream sandwiches every night, but because of muscle confusion, I'm going to have a six pack, you know, it's just, it's just crazy, but you know, there was a book on marketing called positioning, right. And you're just kind of positioning. Yourself as different than the rest of the pack so that it really does feel like a blue ocean. And you're you're open there Right, but the second you're talking like list it like a regular realtor. You're I mean your red ocean There's I mean throw a stick and you hit four realtors, right?
Mike:Sure. You start getting shopped too. I mean,
Chris:Oh, absolutely. And that's part of the reason why we get the commissions that we get, which is usually way above you know, like our, our market commission is like usually one and a half percent or less in our market. And we're usually about, we're getting above 3%, you know, on most of our commissions.
Mike:Yeah. Super interesting. Yeah. I'm also curious that you've got about 50 agents working for you. So you must've gotten pretty good at this point about hiring salespeople.
Chris:Guess this is this is the whole thing, right? Like Understanding how to differentiate yourself. Like I just talked about the commissions, but here's also the the difference, right? We provide a value to people we solve problems We're able to get things done in ways that other people aren't able to do You And the only way to do that is you bring in high tier, high quality people, right? Because when you do that, people will pay more for quality. Like just always, right? Why does somebody pay more for a Rolls Royce than they do for a Honda Accord, right? You pay more for quality. But you know, as a business owner, you've got like a thousand different things and I've got a business coach. I think everybody should spend 10 percent of their income on coaching and personal development. And one of the things that I struggled with, I read the book I read the book, I'm losing my mind. The one thing, right. And as a as a business owner, I remember talking to my business coach and I said, how do I focus on the one thing? I've got like 50 things that are going on. Like, like I've got to work on my P and L I've got to work on marketing. I've got to work on, like, I've got, I've got to work with my direct reports on all these different, even though I'm not doing it, my direct reports are, and I got to work with them on it. And. One of the things my business coach said was, okay, if you boiled all the things that you're talking about down, what do you boil down to? And actually Dan Sullivan wrote a book about what we decided it was. It's who not how, right? It's finding high level talent that can do all of those things. And so, at this point, like that's my number one thing is finding talent and investing in, in the talent around me. I actually keep this. Right here on my desk. It's a newton's cradle and my whole idea is, you know, how do I add energy right? Like this ball, you know newton's cradle here it stops, but then every day i've got to add energy back to my to the people in my world Right. And so I need to find talent and then add energy to, to that talent. And that's, that is my job. That is my role.
Mike:Yeah. How are you going about hiring really good sales talent?
Chris:Flew fighter jets and then at night we sat around a fire at the Airbnb we were staying at and everybody just shared where their pain point was. And for me. I'm an optimist. I'm an extrovert. I listen to people and I see I'm a visionary, so I see the best in people. And then a lot of people just really aren't willing to live up to the, to the, the size of who they could be. And so I was like, I hate it. I hate it. I, I pick, like, I hire poorly and everybody just gave me such a hard time. They're like, hire a recruiter, hire a recruiter. Why don't you, if this is a pain point in your life and you don't think you're good at it, hire somebody that is. And so we did. And then I was like, this is one of the greatest hires I've ever made.
Mike:So I'm actually really curious on this topic because I have hired a recruiter before and I didn't make the right hiring decision with that hire. What specifically were you looking for that? Or did you find in a recruiter that made that recruiter so successful to be able to do what you need them to do?
Chris:Yeah, we went through like, you know, we interviewed a bunch of people and you don't, Jim Collins also says, don't, don't discount the, the role of luck. And there were two people that we we got really close with and the person that we ended up hiring was She was a recruiter in the tech sales industry. And so it was a different, it was a different world, but it was still sales and yeah, that was I don't. I wish I could give you more. It was just like, when we talked to her, she checked a lot of the boxes. She did a really good job as far as explaining her process. And also just culturally, she aligned really well with who we were. And so we're like, this is great, but we also, you know, we kept an eye on it. And for a little bit, we were like, okay, if she doesn't. Hit metrics, we're going to pull the plug real quick. And she did metrics. And then, you know, as I got to know her, you know, now she, I would consider a friend you know, you know, we realized she was just, you know, she's, she was excellent. And so that was that, that whole thing is like trying to find somebody that was excellent, but I also. I brought in my COO, my integrator in on that so that I wasn't the only one making the call on that because, yeah, I don't know that I'm a great person to make the call on that.
Mike:What were the metrics that you were holding her to in the first couple months that you had her hired?
Chris:I believe we wanted we were looking to grow our agent team quickly. So we wanted two new agents per month.
Mike:Were you were you having any KPIs for, like, how well those agents were doing, or was it just kind of, like, hire two agents? I mean, was there any way that you were tracking that she was hiring, I guess, good agents versus just agents?
Chris:Yeah, I, we wanted to, we wanted to get more agents, right. And we also wanted better quality agents. So that was, that was the main, like both. And I guess we were really struggling with you know, just cause I was so busy doing other things. It was kind of like this, this add on thing, even though it should have been my number one thing. And so if I really believed that bringing high level talent into my world was. Was it like the number one thing then I should probably have somebody that's full time focuses on that.
Mike:Was there any, like, KPIs you were looking at to know that the agents she hired work good?
Chris:Yeah, so we uh, you know, we we wanted them to have a couple transactions under the belt in the first 60 days and you know, that was a That was a learning process. I wish I could say it just all went well, but you know, there was There was a lot, a lot of churn and people that were not doing, doing well. And so that was kind of the deal we needed to, we needed to be better on that front than we really were, but we've got, and then part of that was. I brought in a a sales director and then I brought in somebody to manage our new agents as well. Like that you know, in charge of mentorship programs. So, now we have people and they just built out the mentorship and the sales process right into who, not how. So they built that out and if people don't they have to get certified by script practice by, you know, doing the right thing for us to be able to allow them to get any benefits and any resources from the team.
Mike:Gotcha. So there's like someone who's in charge of just basically getting the new agents up to speed. And then there's an overall kind of sales director for after that.
Chris:Right.
Mike:Okay. Gotcha. And then what, what's the recruiter doing? What's, what's she doing to find people? If you
Chris:Um, yeah. What is she doing to find people? She's, I mean, LinkedIn, Indeed, WiseHire, you know. all of those different, different pieces. And the, and the main thing too, we're. We're fighting like crazy to update our ads to get our ads better. We've found that like some ads will just. bring massive amounts of people in other ads. You know, you get crickets. So, you know, part of it is just being good at you know, at, at writing ads that, you know, attract.
Mike:Yeah, is she doing like outbound and like outbound recruiting methods or is it more just kind of she's like trying to get tons of applicants and filter for the best ones from there?
Chris:Little bit of both. So we, we also, for the agent side of the business, we have something that tells you what what agents have done in our market. And so what we did is this has been a hard year for a lot of people in real estate in the last, well, the last couple of years have. And so what we did was we just put a metric in that was anybody that's production has gone down by 40 percent or more that we're we will send them emails and, and, you know, spend some time calling through those folks as well. Because we know that they're hurting.
Mike:Interesting. So was it, was there a metric that you were looking at that was like, were they, did they have to do a certain amount of business before? So you were kind of able to see that they were good, but maybe they needed more resources or was there a, was there any kind of minimum that you were expecting them to prior to dropping the 40%?
Chris:Uh, not really, not really. You know, we just, we're just looking, we're looking, I mean, just like, uh, the cash offer, you know, looking for pain and then, you know, and if there's pain, sometimes it's because, you know, they're not good. And sometimes it's because, you know, they didn't know how to pivot with the market or maybe it's whatever. And so, but we're, we're getting people that are, When that kind of pain hits them and hits their business that you know, we're able to you know to move on that
Mike:that's like a stat on your local MLS. You can see kind of
Chris:No
Mike:deals or what?
Chris:I don't know the name of it, but it's like a broker metrics or something like that We it's it's a process. It's like a program that we pay for monthly and I can't remember the name of it. I can I can find out the name, but if you google it there's like There's a ton of different things that will give you the matrix of, of agents.
Mike:Gotcha. Okay. And then, like, you know, besides, obviously, you've got the, you know, recruiter, right? Who's helping you hire the people like, what does the process look like? And in terms of, like, the interview to, like, actually make that choice to know, okay, this is a person who's had to have a good chance at being successful here. Like, let's pull the trigger and, and hire him.
Chris:And you're talking about for an agent or for a recruiter
Mike:For an agent. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris:for an agent? Well, I mean, honestly, you know, are they competitive? We did, you know, if you've ever gone through US traction, I know most people that have been in this business world have. You know, with EOS traction, you know, part of the VTO is, is you make it like that perfect salesperson, you know, piece and we, we started looking at it and, you know, they're, they're massively competitive, they've had success in their life we see a lot of like college athletes are really great because they, they're, they're. They understand the fact that, you know, you have to put in the work to, you know, show up at the game when, you know, and it's, it's like the work you put in when nobody's watching is what gives you the success when people are watching, you know, that kind of idea with college athletes. But again, there's a lot of athletes, a lot of people that are not athletes that, that when so competitive athletic, like, you know, been athletes. People like what we found is a lot of times, if you are not a primary breadwinner that there's not that same drive. Not always, there's definitely the exception to the rule, but what we found is most of the time, if you're not the primary breadwinner, That you're not usually going to have that like fire in the belly. And you know, there, there's that like almost fear that drives people. It's not fear is not the right word, but this thing that drives people on but yeah, those are some of the main things like having a big goal, but a reasonable goal, a realistic goal. So those are the things that we look for that we've seen when they have those things, they tend to win.
Mike:Gotcha. And then are you, do you guys have any assessments that you do along the way? Or is it
Chris:Yeah. I mean, we love the disc profile and then StrengthsFinder. But
Mike:Okay, what is that, what is that,
Chris:it's just, it's just like personality assessment profile, very much like, like disc, but you know, I'm, I'm a huge disc fan, but Chris, our our lead recruiter, she loves, you know, strings finder
Mike:Okay. Gotcha. And then you were saying kind of earlier more about like monetizing the dead leads. So it seems like you've built relationships in the market with a bunch of other bunch of investors and do they, they send you over leads? Like how do you, have you structured that? Cause that sounds like a way to quickly multiply like the amount of business you can do because you're. Getting leads from however many people who are generating hundreds a month.
Chris:leads that are just dying, right. They're, they're dead. You know, I mean, you, you said you've got thousands in your database, right? Like, so you got literally, you have millions of dollars that are, are, are transacting every month. You know, right now. And so, as I, as we look at it, the main thing here is. How do these leads turn into something? You, we talk to people and we just say, what are you doing with this? And everybody always says, Oh, I, you know, I tried this, I tried that and it doesn't work, or they'll say, Oh my gosh, I don't know why I didn't think about it. That's a great idea. And then, you know, they go through it and it's. It doesn't, it doesn't turn out to be a great idea, but you know, the reality is once you know the process and you understand the psyche of the people that have raised their hand for a cash offer and that you can't just say, Oh, you want to You want to sell. So here, talk to this realtor that that won't work. Then you can start to actually build something. And then once you build something, you can you know, you offer 35%. Now, every investor that gets referral fees from agents needs to have a real estate license. And if you look nationwide. You know, if you wholesale, if you're in the investor world like all the states are starting to require some sort of licensure if you wholesale. So like licensing is coming for almost all investors anyway, so you might as well get ahead of it. And And it allows you to get referral fees every time you sell a deal.
Mike:Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cool. What are the, like, pitfalls that you see some of these people make? Because you said people have tried it on their own, right? And I've tried it before, too. I've sent leads to numerous agents and I've had it work sometimes. And then I've had some that I've just sent a ton, I mean, hundreds of leads over and nothing, nothing has come of it. What were some of the pitfalls that you see people making besides the pitch? Obviously they don't understand the pitch.
Chris:Yeah, the pitch, you know, they, you know, that's the number one. I mean, over and over and over again, that's, that's the biggest issue. And then after that yeah, it's, it's choosing the wrong agent that you're sending it to an agent that doesn't understand investors. You know, if, if you're not sending to an agent that's like really good or has a team where they know how to. and can send you an update on each lead. Most agents are just so not organized that your precious leads are going to, you know, be, you're stuck in a pile of paper somewhere and not follow it up with, right? So you need somebody that. Is either so freaking hungry for deals and like willing to do whatever it takes and will never like, they're either going to like get blocked from these phone numbers or they're going to get a deal or you need to get with a team that like understands investors, but also understands how to get how to have a followup process works because even big teams. You know, they like they don't really follow up well like that. I mean and you and you know that in our business It's right like, you know in the investor business follow up There's fortunes in the follow up and most people just don't do it even big big investors
Mike:Yeah, for sure. And then you're always setting the appointment for that agent from your inside sales team. So I guess that removes one step. from the process. I think that's a mistake that I've made before. I would just pass the lead off to an agent, not set the appointment. Then I'm relying on them to book the appointment. That's a mistake for sure.
Chris:right,
Mike:Oh, well, we're getting close to the end here. And there's always two questions that I like to ask at the end of the show. The first one is what is the craziest or most uncomfortable situation that you have ever experienced in a real estate deal.
Chris:Oh, man I have two of them. But let's see Do you want the one where I was most scared or the one that was Like like just the most like wow, I can't even believe this happened
Mike:I'll let you pick whatever you think everyone would like to hear.
Chris:All right. I'll do i'll do this one. So, one of the first deals I was gonna buy it he was going up for foreclosure. We solved his problem. Everything was going really really well and the guy was just he was a little weird So I go over to his house when you know, the agent on my team was like setting up the deal You And go over there and the power's out, it's freezing cold. And like, so we're wearing jackets cause like, like everything's out. And he's got a foreclosure date coming up and everything else. And so, halfway through the appointment, I'm like, like I drink a lot of water and I'm like, Hey, I need to use the bathroom. Where's put me in the bathroom. So I started walking down where he pointed me and he's like, Oh, by the way, the power's out, you know, just. Leave it in the toilet. It doesn't matter. And I was like, that's weird. And I'd said to Teddy, the agent on my team like whatever he says, I was like, you'll probably hear some weird things. Cause he was newer to it at the time. I was like, whatever he says, you know, just smile and nod. Don't make any reactions. Cause a lot of times weird things are said. And then, so I got back and and Teddy's like, oh, so. Should you just leave it in the toilet? Like you don't flush. And the guy's like, no, I got a bucket in the basement. I've been using for months. And Teddy's like, Oh, yeah, I'm like, Oh, I think you've been there before. Just smile and not just smile. But then here's the crazy thing. I'm there interviewing somebody like the next day. And I had a Fitbit watch and my watch was just going crazy, but like I was, it was like weirdly glitchy, which is why I moved to the Apple watch, you know, at like within a couple months from there, but it was going crazy. And I was like, what is going on? And then I looked and my watch said I had 34 missed calls. And I was like, So I pulled over my, I pulled my phone out and I looked and it said 34 missed calls and it was like my wife, my brother, and then that agent and like, and so then I was like, I said to the person, I'm like, Hey, do you mind if I like step aside for a second? I need to find out why everybody's calling me so much. And so I go out and it turns out my wife was listening to the radio and they said there was a home explosion. And then it said the home explosion was in the County where we bought a house and then named the street name that we bought the house on. And what we found out was the guy. Just decided he didn't want to move anymore. And so he literally, he shot his dog, shot himself and he used to be a plumber. So he like went out and Jerry rigged the plumbing. So the gas came into his house. It blew up his house and like created like 17 different. You know, like basically totaled another house and 17 other houses and 19 cars were basically destroyed from what he did. Nobody else was hurt. Thank the Lord. But just absolutely blew it. Like he blew it up. And the only thing that survived was there was bamboo in the backyard that survived. So it's kind of crazy, but yeah. So that is, there's my craziest story. And
Mike:That's up. there. Cool. Well, the second question I always like to ask is for the newer people listening to the show is if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you were looking for your first real estate deal, knowing what, you know, now, what would you tell yourself?
Chris:that You know, everything comes from activity and skill, right? So, so talk to as many people as you can and work on getting better. And don't be scarcity minded. I just thought that I would never find, you know, the next deal that was like the, you know, like the last one. I just, I didn't think that there were a lot of deals out there. And now I know, I mean, there's deals everywhere. You just gotta know where to look.
Mike:Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. Chris, if people want to reach out to you after the show if they have any questions or they want to connect with you, how can they go about reaching out to you?
Chris:Yeah, so at crowd rock is my instagram handle. Feel free to send me. I know I said she's the old high school nickname I probably should change it something else but is what it is and You know, so yeah, I I still reply to my own d to all the dms on there That's one of the places where you can actually get me personally everywhere else, like, you know, staff or other people are replying. And then in, if you're interested, I know the average podcast listener listens to seven podcasts. So, I've also got a podcast called uncommon real estate. We'd love to, you know, yeah, it's, it's more about the agent investor side. So if that's something that intrigues you, you know, that's what we talked about, you know? So yeah, those are the, there's a way to find me.
Mike:Cool. Well, awesome. Thanks for being on the show.
Chris:Yeah. This is awesome. Thanks for hanging with me. It's great.