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- [00:00]
Brian Buffini
Give me a minute and I'll show you how to buy a house without having a lot of cash and not on some nothing down scheme that gets folks on a fast track to foreclosure either. We know rents are high, prices are high, interest rates are high, and somehow the dream of owning a home feels further away than ever before. But here's the part that no one talks about. Most people buying homes right now, they're not rich, they're just strategic. They stop chasing the perfect house and buy the smart house first. They use first time buyer programs, negotiate seller credits, and look for creative ways to lower costs. Some even buy homes where they can rent out a room or create extra income from the property itself. The biggest mistake I see people making? Waiting for a downturn in the market to swoop in and get a bargain. Buying a home when you're short on cash isn't about having more money than everyone else. It's about knowing how to play the
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game smarter than everyone else.
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For a lot of people, buying a home these days feels less like the American dream and more like a math problem. Prices are high, interest rates have crept up, and down payments have become harder to come by. Somehow, even people with decent incomes still feel like they'll never own a home. So the question becomes, can you still buy a home if you're short on cash? And the answer is yes, but not by doing what everybody else is doing. The truth is, while a third of transactions are all cash purchases, most successful home buyers today are not walking in with massive down payments and perfect financial situations. They're winning because they're strategic. They understand how to maximize what they have, use the right programs, negotiate creatively, and buy smart instead of buying emotionally. In today's blueprint, I'll show you how. Home ownership isn't reserved for people who have it all figured out. Rather, it's often built by people who simply learn how to make smart moves before they feel fully ready. So here's my blueprint for buying a house without having a lot of cash. The first thing to do is control the numbers before you shop. Most people start looking at houses. I love looking at homes on Zillow for sure, who doesn't? Smart buyers start by looking at their finances. If cash is tight, your first goal is to create the buying power. Now let me give you an example. And this is an indictment on both the real estate industry and the home purchaser. 28% of all offers submitted last year, the buyer was not pre qualified along with the offer. Now that to me is Malpractice. It's malpractice on behalf of the realtor. The reason why realtors don't do it is that they're afraid of that the person doesn't qualify and they'd rather have hope. The dynamic for the buyer is you have to find out what you qualify for, what you're comfortable paying, and then you actually want to go beyond pre qualification. You want to just not get pre qualified. You want to get pre approved, which means you submit your documents, you submit your W2s, you submit your 1099s, you submit your to a credit score evaluation and you keep having to update it the whole time you're looking for the property before you actually purchase it. Now is that a lot more work? It is. But let me say this, if you submit an offer and you're pre approved and this person is just pre qualified, this is as good as cash. This is 90%, 95%. This is going to close. This is maybe it closes. So we want to start by getting pre qualified and then move it all the way to pre approved. So typical mistakes buyers make. Well, I got credit card debt, I have student loans and the all time clanger and I'm 40 years in the business. Is that first time buyers buy a car and then start looking for a house?
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Why?
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It's the first major purchase. They need a car and now that they've handled the payment, they go, okay, maybe we're ready to start looking for a house. They also think, oh, it'll help me establish better credit. Those are all great slogans by the car salespeople. You buy a new car before buying your house in the same year. Unless you've got a ton of money or great qualifications, you have just made it very hard for yourself to buy a house. If I had an agent I didn't like, I'd hand them a lead that says they just bought a car, now go buy a house. What do you want to do as a first time buyer? You want to pay down debt? You want to improve your credit score? There's all kinds of ways to increase your credit score. There's agencies that can do it for you. There's all kinds of tips on YouTube on small things you can do to change your credit score right now. Reducing unnecessary spending. We all have unnecessary spending. Those luxuries. When you go to buy a home, the luxuries are out the window. The sacrifice, I promise you the juice is worth the squeeze. Buying a home gives you a piece of the rock. It changes your mind, changes Your life forever. So you start building that little reserve account. You start building it, you start saving. And even though you think, oh my gosh, it's way, way away from owning a home, I need so much money to own a home. That might not be the case. Here's what I'm going to share with you. Your first home is a scary anaconda's meal. The very first time I bought a home, I thought my arms and legs would fall off. And so is the case. Ask anybody who's ever bought their first home. It's always scary. And it's an anaconda's meal. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever seen those National Geographic shows and you see an anaconda eats a baby sheep or something and it goes, it'll take five months to digest. And you see this snake with a big lump in its belly. Well, I believe that's what buying your first home is all about. And I think you should fight, bite, scratch and claw to get into the home and then fight, bite, scratch and claw to get down the debt and increase the equity. And so if you do the anaconda's meal, it will be scary, you will be nervous, but you will digest that over time. And now you're on the equity side. The average homeowner has 44 times the net worth of the average renter. And the difference in their payments is very small. Here's the next part of the blueprint. Buy smart, not perfect. Too many people delay home ownership waiting for their dream house. They've watched all the shows and the magnificent homes and gardens shows and whatever else, and they have this fanciful view. Your first home might be smaller than you imagine. It might be older than you imagine. It might need a lot more repairs than you imagine. Wilson and Kelling did a brilliant thesis years ago called the broken window theory. And that in today's market is very, very powerful for a first time buyer. You know, most people can't see what a home can be, so that's why they'll buy a brand new home or brand new construction. You get the bargain if you're willing to do the work. You make money in real estate if you solve somebody else's problem. The very first home I bought was a massive fixer upper. And I rolled up my sleeves and I did the sweat equity and I did a lot of early mornings and late nights in order to go make that house what it became. So maybe you'll end up buying in a different area. You know, I want to live in La Jolla looking at the ocean. Okay, great. You may get there one day, but that might not be where you start it. Just view it as a stepping stone. The goal of the first purchase is often to leverage yourself, your money and create equity, not perfection. And this is where the strategy matters. Now again, a place to start. Condos and townhomes. Any way you can get in the door, I'm good with. But be very careful on how much the homeowner association fees are because high HOA fees are a significant barrier to resale. So be careful with that. Obviously look at fixer uppers and it's fun. It's a grind, but it's fun. And by the way, it takes it from being a house to your home. When you put that love into the home, explore multi generational living. That's something to consider. In fact, it's 14% of all sales. Many people are combining their money with a family member to buy a home that serves everybody. And grandbabies and grandmas and grandpas all are living in the same home. If you if it's the right property, it can really work. And it can work for a time to do this, raise up the equity. If you decide you want to move on after a while the kids are getting older. Okay, older folks, you do the refi. Cash me out and now I'm able to buy the bigger property. People do some house hacking. They have renting a room here in Southern California. ADUs are seem to be the only thing that's permissible to get a permit on. And so ADUs have become a wildfire everywhere in Southern California. Great way for additional revenue to make that payment. Your first home doesn't need to impress people, it needs to position you. The perfect home can come later. The smart move comes first. The last part I'll share in this blueprint is to use every resource available to you. Most buyers think they need 20% down and a perfect credit score and perfect finances. And that's just simply not the case. There's all kinds of programs and negotiations that that can dramatically reduce upfront cash needs. Here's an example. A lease option. It's a lease with the option to buy the home. Big opportunity. Many people don't know that big companies like Blackstone and all these companies who purchased mega, mega amounts of single family residents, in fact 24% of all sales in the last two years were big corporations. Recent administration just passed a bill to say they can't buy anymore now. They didn't allow them to sell them all because it would have dumped the prices in the market. But what are these big corporations willing to do? Rent you a property on a lease and accredit a portion of the monthly payment towards a down payment. It's a lease with an option to buy. So you might pay slightly higher rental rates than market. And then a portion of that rent goes towards credit of your down payment. How? I bought my very first home on a little street called Paguara Court here in San Diego, which was. I asked the seller to take a second trustee. I came up with $20,000. I asked the seller to give me a note for $20,000. So I got a loan which was the first trustee to the bank and then the second trustee was to the seller. Then I worked early in nights and I saved $12,000. I had the second trustee was five year term. I came back in a year, I said, I've saved $12,000. Would you take 12,000 and relieve me of the debt?
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And they took the cash.
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So then later on, and this is another show another time, I got in the second trustee business and made a fortune doing that. There are first time buyer programs available. There's low down payment loans. You can buy a home with 3% down. Again, my good friend Dave Ramsey have a conniption. We're best buddies. Why would I allow people to do that? Brian, if I buy a house with very low down payment, you fight, bite, scratch and claw to go and pay down that mortgage as fast as you can. If you can pay down the mortgage balance in the first three years, you can massively shave off the amount of interest you'll pay over the life of the loan. So you create more equity, seller paid costs, interest rate, buy downs, grants, all kinds of local incentives. Again, even I've had some people now. You know, Habitat for Humanity is actually doing resale homes now. Fantastic stuff. Here's what I'm encouraging you to do. Fight, bite, scratch and claw. Get yourself into home ownership. It's the number one asset in the world because it's something that everybody needs. Food, shelter, clothing. It's something you understand and it increases in price and value over time and you can reduce the debt. Everybody understands housing and everybody can do well. So even if you're a cash strapped buyer, you have to know there's options. The buyers who win are the ones who learn the game before they play it. Lack of cash doesn't mean lack of opportunity. Sometimes it's just a lack of strategy.
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You know, when I was a kid, one of my favorite things that ever happened in business is when Datsun became Nissan and they had a great dynamic where they, they showed this Nissan truck pushing a Datsun sign over a cliff and it said we're the biggest name droppers in the car business. And I think I might have been in high school when that happened. Well, here's what we've been doing. We have been listening to you, we've been getting your feedback, asking what you want. We've had a 10 year run in our podcast which started out for seven years as the Brian Buffini show, became the It's a Good Life show and then came back to the Brian Buffini show. And now we've segmented what was a podcast into a YouTube show. So now you can watch along and we've segmented into the Brian's blueprint in just a minute and coach him up. And we developed a module called Ask Mr. B. And this was essentially Mr. B is what I've always been referred to, especially by a lot of younger folks, just, you know, a wide range of topics on different experiences I've had over my life and insights on certain things. Well, today you're going to find out that just like Nissan dropped Datsun, we're going to be dropping Ask Mr. B. And the reason being is many folders. But today's segment is now called Ask Brian. What's the difference you say? Well, in the months to come you're going to see that we have taken 30 years of every ounce of content I've ever built in my life and created our own proprietary AI search called Aspirin. And just to give you context on that, we're here in the middle of the year, just since, since December of last year through June of this year, I built 53 separate and unique programs or presentations. So now multiply that by 30 years. We have entire rooms full of content. We have a six servers of just video content. We have 700 podcasts, 350 webcasts, 300 conference calls, a lot of talking, a lot of training, a lot of teaching over those years. And so this new innovation is going to be adopted with our brand new CRM partner called Boltrail into our new product offering at Buffini company. So you'll be seeing more and more of this Ask Brian. And then we're just going to introduce the Ask Brian now to also part of our show, only it's Ask Brian Live instead of asking me in AI. So that's the reason why this segment is now called Ask Brian. And to my left is not Anna Buffini. Now I haven't Dropped my daughter over a cliff. So, you know, because I name dropped that. No, but we are very excited. We have brought on staffed of a feening company in the last few weeks, some of the top talent in the history of the real estate and marketing space. And one of those is Mr. Ethan Butte. And Ethan is a multi Wall Street Journal best selling author. He's had his own podcast, it's called Team OS, which I've been a guest on. He's done over 500 episodes of that and he has come on board at Buffin company as our chief ambassador and, and so he's gonna help me with content strategy. He's gonna be a regular guest on this program and then also have his own program under our It's a Good Life network banner. So. That was all a mouthful. Ethan, welcome to Buffini Land and welcome to our show.
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Ethan Butte
Thank you so much. It's been a great dive into Buffini Land over the past week and a half and it's fun to be on camera with you now.
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Brian Buffini
Yeah. So tell the folks a little bit about yourself, where you come from.
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Ethan Butte
Sure. As you generously offered. You know, I've written a couple of books on the themes of building human relationships in digital environments. I've hosted about podcast episodes, started my career running marketing inside local television stations. Some folks, especially in your community because of the kind of a lot of crossover there, might recognize me from my work with Bombbomb, where I was for a dozen years as well. Again, teaching people how to rehumanize their touch points and communication, some of which makes it into like video pop buys and these types of, you know, the language in building true human relationships in an increasingly tech driven, an AI driven business, which I'm sure will be a segment, I mean not a formal segment, but something we talk about a bit here during Ask Brian.
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Brian Buffini
Right. Well, now we get to do it for real, so we're going to kind of launch it. We're delighted to have you. I'm excited to kind of. We are constantly listening and asking for advice. This show is going to continue to morph and form and we've got a, you know, we got 80,000 people who listen or watch this thing every month and we're very excited by that. We, we want to serve them, continue to provide what they want. And so we're going to dive down into some topics today. So now instead of, like I say, the Ask Brian AI version, you are the living embodiment of bringing the virtual into the real. So we'll dive right in.
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Ethan Butte
Yeah. And Just a quick add to what you started with. It's incredible. The body of training and education, the number of people you've impacted and improved, the lives and livelihoods of over decades of time. And now people can query it any time of the day or night and ask whatever they want. I've got some questions for you though, based on your blueprint. I'm like transition back into the main topic of this episode, which is the challenges facing home buyers and of course the agents who are trying to help them buy homes. And so I'd love to start with high level. Obviously a lot of people feel priced out of the market and you offered some of these already, but I'd love for you to double back into the ones that you'd like to highlight again maybe. Or add on to what are a couple of strategic moves a first time home buyer can make. And or how could an agent or even an LO help them make a better strategic decision to get them able to do something that they may think that they're not able to do right now?
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Brian Buffini
Right. Well, the good news is a, a lot of people are priced out. However, what we're starting to see for the first time in about 11 years is that sellers are starting to reassess the value of their homes and so they're no longer going. I'm basing my home value off the highest number it ever was. We may see for the first time in 11 years a slight price reduction this year, maybe 1%. Now you and I laugh all the time because all the doom scrollers on YouTube and on Instagram and whatever else, all the crash is coming. The crash is coming. The crash and the crashes. Oh yeah, it's 1.2% coming down. Like first of all, there's more homes on the market so buyers have more choice and prices have steadied and in some cases softened depending on whether if you're in a market like parts of Florida, which was super hot in regards to its pricing, that's now come back down. Places like Phoenix, Arizona again, hot physically, but hot price Vegas. Those are all soft markets. Prices have come down. So for a buyer there's more choice and prices have gotten more realistic and they're not running away anywhere anytime soon. So the landscape's improving for a buyer. What we're also seeing is job growth and wage growth is steadily increasing. So I believe within five years the average wage will go back into where it was in 2019 for qualifying for a home. So it takes a long time to absorb it. But I talked about a Couple of things like that many realtors might not be familiar with. And I came into the market when rates like my office threw a party, when the rates hit 10%, had fallen to 10%, I've fallen to 10. When I first got into real estate, interest rates are 13%. And so to get to 10 was a party. So I worked in environments that was. You had to be more creative to survive. So I learned how to do things called subject to, which would be, you know, actually getting a lender to accept an offer for you to basically assume the loan. By the way, many people don't realize that many of the loans in existence today are assumable and most sellers don't know it. Most banks don't want to advertise it because they locked in a 3.5% fixed rate loan.
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Ethan Butte
Right.
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Brian Buffini
They don't want to advertise this loan could be assumed because they want to cash out on that loan and resell it at six and a half right now. But every seller who's thinking about selling their property needs to go and see if their loan is assumable. And if it is, it should be. The first thing that's marketed as a buyer, you need to be looking for an assumable loan. The second thing which is become, is going to become a bigger deal is a lease option. So a lot of corporations bought homes. 24% of the last two years of all single family residences were purchased. Never in my mind did I think publicly traded companies would buy houses, apartment buildings, hotels, commercial. That made sense.
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Ethan Butte
It's a good investment.
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Brian Buffini
It is. But to manage thousands of small individual homes, never thought they'd do that, but they did. And it's, it's also kind of steered the market a certain way, pricing wise. And they get tax advantages that the average homeowner doesn't. So right now in Congress of the White House, they're trying to pass legislation to curb their ability to hold real estate. Those big companies that own real estate, they want renters so they can show stable income and they're willing to entertain lease option offers. And by the way, so would any other civilian who might have a lot of equity. And so basically, let's say a house would normally rent for say 5,000, which is whatever that number is, you might be paying 6,000 in rent, so you pay a premium, but you might get 3,000 of every month. Credit to you is down payment. So at the end of 12 months, you have $36,000 towards a down payment on a house. So you're paying rent while Accumulating a down payment, they get a premium on the rent. They're getting top dollar for the house. But you now have accumulated a down payment. Those are available, and those are national association of Realtor forms. Statewide forms exist. Lease options. So I'd encourage every Realtor listening to this. Get familiar with lease options and any buyers from listening to this. Ask your agent, do they know about lease options? And then the last one I talked about is, is secondary financing, which is, I would go, and I, once I learned how to do this, I turned it into an art form. So I come along. Let's say you have your house, you live in Colorado Springs. And let's say I'll just pick a number. It's. Let's say it's 500,000. And let's say, because you're a very wise man, you have a very low loan. So now say you have 400,000 in equity. Well, I come to you and I say, listen, I've saved up 50 grand. Would you take another $50,000 back as a note? Oh, by the way, the going rate is 6%. I'm going to pay you 8. So now you're, Hang on a second here. I have a loan secured by my own house at 8% interest, which is a better rate of return than I'm going to get anywhere. Better than what I'm going to get by in treasury bonds, better than my bank. And I get my house sold. Now, I come in, I come to the bank and I go, I'm putting 100,000 down on a $500,000 house, and the bank will actually credit it as 20% down. So now the reason they do that is your loan is a secondary loan to the banks. So if I don't make the payments on the house, the bank comes in first, you come in second. That's why you want to make sure the person got good credit. They're on a way. And again, it's just those transitionary things. But what I was able to do is I'd come along and save money, save money, save money. I come to you a year and I go, I've saved 35 grand. If I wrote you a check for 35 grand today, would you walk away? And 90% of people say yes. I eventually became so proficient at that, I started buying trustees on people's properties. So I would go through the tax records, I'd go through the title property rolls and find out all the second trustees that existed, call the person up and say, I'm going to buy out your note.
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Steve Geiger
Mm.
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Brian Buffini
And I built myself a pretty nice business off owning second trustee. So that's another day's conversation I turned into an investment strategy. But I'd say assuming a fixed rate loan that you don't, you didn't realize was actually assumable is the way a buyer should be looking and the way a realtor should be asking. Lease options and then second trust deeds. Those are three things that are not talked about in the marketplace that might change the whole world for someone to be able to buy a home.
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Ethan Butte
Yeah. Where were you point an agent that isn't familiar with these opportunities because obviously if they can open up some of these doors with and for their clients, they're going to obviously work more transactions where they might feel blocked right now. Like, besides ask Brian.
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Brian Buffini
That's what I'm gonna say, buddy. That's the only place. Because here's the thing.
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I don't know anyone else who's ever taught on us.
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Ethan Butte
Yeah.
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Brian Buffini
Now again, you can probably find anything you want on YouTube or you can, you can chat GBT yourself. But actually that's part of the stuff that I, I don't teach in public and have maybe for 20 years, but I'm actually going to have that as part of Ask Brian. But I just say dig it out. I had to learn it. Okay. So I'm going to be the cheat code to do that for other people. But you know, you get to ask, you get to research. There's books on the subject. You know, lease options were. Lease options in the 80s and early 90s were about one out of every three sales. It's just, you know, I was young. One of the.
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Ethan Butte
What was, what was it about the market at that time that made them so common? And do we have some of those characteristics?
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Brian Buffini
Well, 13% interest rates.
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Steve Geiger
Okay.
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Brian Buffini
By the way, not only was it 13% interest rates, but lending standards were extraordinarily tough. And so we've gone through a whole hierarchy of tight lending, loose lending, tight lending, loose lending, booms, bus, booms, bus. And so it really was. You had to get creative. I will say this, like, creativity comes in the environment of problem solving. And it exposed itself. We've had it real easy for a long time. The business was easy. The house sold in five days. It sold for more than we listed it for. There was no competition, there was no inspections, there was no repairs. It's kind of like no real estate. Like, that's not how real estate's been built for 40 years. And I started when I was a kid, so I was I was not quite 19 when I got my real estate license. I'm 59 next week.
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Steve Geiger
So
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Brian Buffini
I had to learn this that way and then bring it through. We've had a, we've had 14 years of a housing shortage and 11 years of pricing run up. Well, guess what, now we've got this flat market so it's time to sharpen up our skills. I will just say this for me, I. My favorite thing in my whole working life was putting the keys in the hands of someone who never thought they don't know how. Pedro arena, the Mexican immigrant, worked with his hands, bricklayer, got his papers, never thought in his life he was going to own a home. And I helped him and Marina buy a property and the day I brought those keys it was like they received a child when they brought, they had a festa for the opening of their house. I was like the mayor of a city. And that particular transaction was in 1990. And I can feel it today. It's the greatest thing in the world. So for an agent it's the greatest thing in the world to go that extra mile and help somebody. Average first time buyer today is 40. That's not good for a society. 25% of all buyers are single ladies, 10% are guys. And guys feel like they have no hope. So what are they doing? Online gambling and Bitcoin because they think I've got to hit like a home run to go get a house. And I'd say no. Work hard, maybe a side hustle, cut the expenses, grind it out, get yourself a few bucks. Get yourself a few bucks and get yourself an aggressive realtor who's going to be willing to do the extra mile. Some realtors going to say I need a lease option. I'm not even talking to you. I'm not returning your call. There's plenty of those. I built a fortune by being the guy. I'm going to go whatever it takes to get you into home, I'm going to do those three options. If I'm listening to this Colin, I know nothing about that as a real estate professional. Go get in the game, learn about it.
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Ethan Butte
Well, it's a joy to be able to ask Brian myself. I look forward to doing more of it going forward. It's an honor to join you and the rest of the team as a new servant leader. Thanks for the opportunity.
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Brian Buffini
We're so excited to have you and we'll be doing a lot more of this foreign. Welcome to Coach Em Up Live. We're at the Kanapali Resort right here In Maui, I'm joined by my long term client, great guy Steve from New York. Steve, tell everybody who you are, where you're from.
- [28:37]
Steve Geiger
I'm Steve Geiger, I'm from Scarsdale, New York.
- [28:39]
Brian Buffini
How long you been with us? How long you been in the coaching program?
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Steve Geiger
Since 2010.
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Brian Buffini
2010. How long you been in real estate?
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Steve Geiger
26 years.
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Brian Buffini
Wow, great stuff. Well, you got a chance, man. Here it is. How can I help you today?
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Steve Geiger
Okay, so just have a question. I've been building out my team and have been people coming and going for several years and now I have a solid group of people, assistant marketing person, whatever. But really what I'm looking for is to get out of production and be more of a servant leader and be the rainmaker for my team. And while I'm handing off referrals, I don't want to offend my clients.
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Brian Buffini
Yeah, I got you, got you. Now how big is the team?
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Steve Geiger
Now it's myself, I have a partner who's on referral and two other full time agents.
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Brian Buffini
Fabulous.
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Steve Geiger
Fabulous.
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Brian Buffini
Great. We've had the biggest growth in Buffini Co. Last three years, has been on the leadership side and we've been building out all kinds of resources and tools and a lot of cool stuff to help you, including I don't know if you saw this announcement last week where Buffini Co. And Inside Real Estate are partnering up. So Bow Trail CRM. So what they're building is what's called Buffini Mode. So we're taking the best of our contact system with referral maker and putting it on top of their CRM with AI. Where we've been weak in the past is for teams. We just don't haven't had the horsepower to support that. So here's why this is critical. You got to train them. I'm sure you've been exposing them to 100 days and absolutely like that. But now with the CRM you're going to be able to track them, what their activities are, what they're doing, because you're able to put in how many referrals you want to get. You sit down with each team member, what are your goals, what do you want to achieve? And here's all the calls, adults and popeyes you need to do to achieve it. The next thing is here's my referrals and how are you supporting them and getting that weekly update. Every Friday you're going to have a meeting with them and they're going to give you an update. So one of the things we've really done A good job of. And you're going to get more and more information on this. Who's your coach at mc?
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Steve Geiger
Julie Piccolo.
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Brian Buffini
One of the greats. Okay, One of the greats. And that is how to hand off the lead. How to hand off the lead. And right now, the way it's in your mind and the way you ask the question and tell me when I'm right on this, when you hand off a lead to somebody, it's like, here it is. I'm the all star baseball player now. Here's the minor leaguer who's going to handle it for you. And it's hard to not believe that. Right?
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Steve Geiger
Right.
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Brian Buffini
You've been at this for 25 plus years. You're great at what you do. You built a great business. The opposite is this. First of all, imagine you're a legal firm, right? And you have people who are specialists. This person does immigration attorney, this person does litigation. This person does contracts. So your team, you're going to be able to talk to your customers, say, I've expanded my business and I have specialists. Now, how good of a coach do you think is Julie Pergola? Phenomenal.
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Steve Geiger
I love her.
- [31:38]
Brian Buffini
So what if I told you when I expanded my team that if I had just done it myself, I'd have been able to coach 75 or 80 people? That's it. I will write, lessen the impact. Brian's great, great on stage, able to do all this stuff. Julie Pergol is a better coach than I am.
- [31:58]
Steve Geiger
He's wonderful.
- [31:59]
Brian Buffini
I have an army of them. I just recently did a Buffini coaching live in Vegas and I had to sit on the stage with three of my senior coaches. I've been on stage with Neil Armstrongs and movie stars and athletes. The only time I was ever intimidated to speak was sitting next to those three coaches.
- [32:15]
Steve Geiger
I was there with them.
- [32:15]
Brian Buffini
You remember how brilliant they were, right? Did you ever see me say less?
- [32:19]
Steve Geiger
No. Right.
- [32:21]
Brian Buffini
That's what your team is going to be when the customer refers you. It's going to be, hey, I've got specialists.
- [32:28]
Now.
- [32:29]
These people are trained, they're enthusiastic, they're fighting. I'm still around, but now I have a buyer specialist who's going to be able to drive you around to show you every property you want to see and do an extraordinary job. It's when I built my team in 1992. I'll never forget the day I had one of my best clients call Hard landlines. And I answered the phone and they said, can you put me through to Karen I was like, huh? This is Brian here. Yeah, I know, but I'm working on a deal with Karen. She's great. And I literally hit the pause button and I'm like, okay. And I hand it off and it was a great feeling and a strange feeling at the same time. You catching me?
- [33:05]
Steve Geiger
Yeah, I get that feeling.
- [33:06]
Brian Buffini
You're right there. You're right there. So it's going to take us a couple of years. We're going to keep building it up. You're. It takes a while to transition, to get a team to the point because not everybody who's on the team right now is going to be a Julie pergola. Okay. I had to have a lot of couches to find the coaches I have today. And so it doesn't mean you're going to spin through a ton, but it means bit by bit. So what's happened is this. You're going to refer your B and C referrals off to start with your A pluses, you're still going to handle.
- [33:34]
Steve Geiger
Right.
- [33:34]
Brian Buffini
They've got to earn the right to get your A pluses. And when they do, you need to think of it. I'm going to have a team of Julie pergolas. I'm going to be able to refer with confidence. I'm going to be able to put my name to those people and they're going to do an extraordinary job for me.
- [33:48]
Steve Geiger
Makes sense.
- [33:49]
Brian Buffini
So you are right at the cusp of what so many times you have one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat. I'm used to being a sales agent. I'm great at what I'm doing now. I have to be a leader that recruits and helps cultivate great people. And that's what you got going on.
- [34:04]
Steve Geiger
Yeah, that's where I am.
- [34:05]
Brian Buffini
Julie will help you. We have systems to support you and the new tech is going to blow you away.
- [34:10]
Steve Geiger
Thanks a lot, Brian.
- [34:10]
Brian Buffini
Appreciate it. Let's go, bud.
- [34:13]
Thanks for watching today's episode. I hope you learned something and maybe feel a little more encouraged that you can buy a home or share this with somebody who's trying to buy their first home. Remember to like and subscribe. Subscribe the show. This way you won't ever miss an episode and it's a great way to spread the message to more people. We'll see you next time.