← Stay Paid Podcast
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- [00:00]
Jennifer Morin
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Josh Dyke
Welcome to Stay Paid, your number one sales and marketing podcast on a mission to help you close more deals, keep more clients and build the life of freedom you're working towards. But that can only happen if you are willing to take action today. My name is Josh Dyke, Chief marketing officer at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acre, president of Reminder Media and from the Acree Brothers Realty team, founder and team lead, Steven Acree. And our guest today is is Jennifer Morin. Jennifer is the founder of the Rookie re Agent blog and the author of beyond the Sale. Unlocking your full potential as a new real estate agent. With over 25 years experience in the real estate industry, she currently serves as the director of operations and career development at one of the Nation's top performing ReMax brokerages. Jennifer, welcome to Stay Paid. Thank you for being here.
- [00:48]
Jennifer Morin
Hey guys, thanks for having me.
- [00:51]
Luke Acre
Jennifer, we're excited to have you on the show. You got introduced to us through a previous podcast guest. So Garrett Maroon. So everybody go shout out to Garrett.
- [00:58]
Josh Dyke
Two time or three.
- [00:59]
Luke Acre
Yeah, he's come on, he's going to come on again because he just wrote a book.
- [01:02]
Josh Dyke
Yeah.
- [01:03]
Luke Acre
So sneak peek there. So he's going to come on again here soon. But Garrett is an amazing, top producing real estate agent there in Virginia and connected us to you, Jennifer, and I'm excited to get to meet you and I've already, you know, talked to you a little bit, so it's, I'm excited to hear kind of your thoughts. I want to dive right in on this whole concept of, you know, rookie agents. Right. There's a lot of new agents that have joined the industry. This is a way harder time to join the industry if they've joined in the last three years. What are you telling new agents today? What are some of the top tips you're giving them to try to succeed in a market like this?
- [01:39]
Jennifer Morin
Number one is going to be to lean into your brokerage. You know, you go to real estate school, you take real estate classes, you pass the exam. But what does real estate school actually teach you? It doesn't teach you how to survive.
- [01:52]
Luke Acre
And drive what's square footage and some math and some acreage stuff, bounds and.
- [01:57]
Jennifer Morin
All the stuff you're never going to use again. Right. So lean into your brokerage. You know, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And that is actually the reason why I wrote the book is because you don't know what you don't know. And you need to lean into your brokerage to learn all you can on how to be successful in this industry. Not attending trainings, not reaching out to their brokers for help. Again, new agents don't know what they don't know. If you don't have a mentor, if you don't have a coach, if you don't have an accountability partner, they're not going to be as successful as our experienced agents. Right.
- [02:30]
Luke Acre
Should a brokerage accept those? I mean I guess it's a business model problem. Right. Because brokerages a lot of times make money off of the dues and you know, all those things that come along with a real estate agent hanging their license there. Do you find it is that the brokerage should be have a harder line on who they allow in?
- [02:49]
Jennifer Morin
Yes. 10,000%. Yes. I think it's great that every brokerage has a different model for us. We don't hire part time new agents. Ours have to be full time agents as a new agent because we offer mentorship, we offer training, we offer coaching, that kind of stuff. So if you have a full time job and you cannot fully engage, you're not an agent for us. But I'm not discrediting other brokerage firms. I think it's great that you're going to give new agents an opportunity to start off part time but you have to have some accountability with them.
- [03:25]
Luke Acre
Great. Yeah. I almost feel like every agent should be required to join a team or at least be under some mentorship. It's almost like a fellowship like a doctor goes through. It's like you should have to be under some fellowship of being under a top producing agent. So they're not attending trainings. We see this because we do office presentations all across the country to do, you know, reminder media to sell our products. And it's crazy how few people show up to the office meeting. It's just crazy. But here's the question right to you Jennifer. Right. Kind of back at you is like extreme ownership would be. Well, maybe you don't have a meeting worth attending. Like what is the. You know what I mean? Like what do you feel like from a brokerage standpoint they could do better because you, you obviously have done extremely good in helping drive the operations of this ReMax brokerage and doing training with. What are some things that you feel works with running these office meetings and attracting agents in.
- [04:22]
Jennifer Morin
Well, we do have that same problem and I'm hearing it nationally. We just had a big conference, a broker owner conference and we're hearing the pain from the other brokers as well.
- [04:31]
Luke Acre
Okay.
- [04:32]
Jennifer Morin
We don't know what Happens. I know. Covid started it. Let's start there. Covid started it right when we all went electronic, we all went on zoom. We're not in person anymore. I think a lot of it has to do topically. Right. Like what are the topics that you're training about? You know, I heard a previous guest of yours talk about, you know, it has to be informative, helpful, you know, if. If they're not engaged with the topic you're presenting, they're not going to attend. And we do have that happen. We had a great class yesterday on hoarding, Hoarding situations, and we had tons of people attend. So it's topically, it's guest speakers. We get great attendance when we have a big quarterly meeting with. We bring in national name brands. We've had, you know, other real estate coaches come in. I'm not going to mention them, so I don't want to pick any. But, you know, we love everybody, but, you know, when we bring in bigger names, it gets attended.
- [05:26]
Luke Acre
Yeah, people actually come.
- [05:27]
Jennifer Morin
Yeah, we had a class on leadership a couple of weeks ago and that didn't go so well. So it's, it's very.
- [05:32]
Luke Acre
People want it. People have. Dealing with problems of hoarding, but just leadership, we're going to leave that at the door. Yeah, that's so funny. So, okay, so like it makes so much sense. I mean, I see the same pain point. It's like, hey, if you're a new agent, like, and this is even veteran agents, if you're a veteran agent, listening to this right now, same thing applies to you. It's like, how are you investing in your self development? And rule number one of success is you got to show up, right? Show up, do what you don't want to do. You know, you need to do with the greatest attitude for long periods of time. Like that is the definition of success. And majority of people, they just don't show up because they feel like the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
- [06:08]
Jennifer Morin
Because.
- [06:09]
Luke Acre
But it's like everything in life, you don't go to the gym one time and build a great muscles. Right. You have to go consistently. And that's the problem with self development. Exactly. Sorry, Josh. But it takes that discipline and that self development, I guess. Here's what I would ask you, Jennifer. It's like you wrote this whole book beyond the Sale. Can you tell us why you wrote this book? Out of all the things you've seen agents struggle with, why did you go there with the book that you wanted to write?
- [06:37]
Jennifer Morin
So it's funny it's nine years worth of knowledge in residential. So I have a blog that I started back in 2016, and that was based off of I was getting my license. I didn't tell anybody I was getting my license, so I did it in secret. And I'm a big researcher and I'm trying to find all these resources of how to get your license, what you know, and everything beyond. And I couldn't find one resource. So I started this blog. I joined several Facebook groups, and there were tons of questions. And it sounds like real estate school isn't teaching you the answers to these questions. So I wrote my book based off of all the questions I'm seeing online, off of the hundreds of interviews that I've done at our brokerage. I'm responsible for the interviewing and recruiting as well and as part of the team. And the questions that I'm asked, you know, I've been asked, when do I get my first paycheck? Like, well, you have to sell something.
- [07:36]
Luke Acre
Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship.
- [07:39]
Jennifer Morin
You don't learn that in real estate school. But the light bulb moment. Luke, my son's high school has a senior career fair that they host every year. Last year was actually the first year, but they did do it this year again. And I got to attend representing our company. I took a younger agent with me, which was fantastic because I knew he would be able to chat with the, you know, the 17, 18 year olds and talk about a career in real estate. And it was great. The kids are great. They had to come speak to two or three different companies. We had tons of kids come up to us and ask questions. But their perception of a career in real estate is crazy. Several of them. I had one girl, okay, make a million dollars, right? I'm like, no, let's stop watching TikTok. Let's stop watching Million Dollar Listing. They're just perception. They have no clue what it's like to actually be in real estate. And that was really my light bulb moment. I came home that night and I was like, I got to do something. Like, something has to be done here, especially for the next generation. And all of the questions that I've heard, I've been asked and seen down to interviewing brokerages. Well, you're interviewing them, they're going to hire you. They hire everybody. And I'm like, no, that's not true. So there's so many misnomers out there and stuff you don't learn in real estate school. And that's why I wrote the book. My book covers everything that real estate school doesn't cover. I don't go into exactly like how to generate leads. I give ideas and stuff. But that's like book number two. Like book number one is let's get you started. Let's teach you what you need to know before you even consider a career in real estate.
- [09:20]
Luke Acre
Do you feel like when you look at the book, right. And how you've broken it up, do you feel like the biggest struggle for agents is in their management of their calendar and their management of their day to day? Because I see, like I've been at the Legion game for a long time, right? That's really where my passion and heart is, is in the marketing side. But the more and more I coach agents and I find this Steve with the team is that I just go, wow, man. I can't even talk to you about Legion. I can't even talk about Legion and stuff with these agents until I get them to actually commit to their calendar. And that is where they, they almost live or die, I, I believe. But what's your thoughts on that?
- [10:00]
Jennifer Morin
That's true. It's their daily habits. Again, back to, they're not treating this as a career. They're not. I've got one agent who is a mentor. He comes in every day. He treats this job like a career. He is in the office, he is making his calls, he, he goes out on appointments, he comes back, he treats it like a job. He does not want to work from home because he knows what happens when he works from home. You know, you go do laundry, you go walk the dog. You're not focused on what your calendar says. You know, what's the saying? You know, we talk about success. Show me your calendar. Yep. I can show you how successful you're going to be if stuff isn't time blocked in your calendar. Down to blocking out, going to exercise. Right. If you're not time blocking your day, you have no idea where you spent your time. You can't measure how successful you can be.
- [10:51]
Luke Acre
Is there a guideline or framework you could give or that you give new agents or even veteran agents on how they should structure their day?
- [11:02]
Jennifer Morin
I think that it's funny, I do talk about that in my book, but it is an individual kind of day planning, Right. Because everybody's at different stages of their lives. Like I talk to Garrett about this. He's got little, little ones and he's up at, you know, 2 o', clock, 3 o' clock in the morning and all night I get up early to go work out and Then I get home to get my kids off to school. So everybody has a different trajectory for their day, but it's putting the important stuff in your day for your time blocking. Are you making the calls? Are you writing notes? Are you lead generating? Just like you said, lead gen. Lead gen. Are you lead gen every day?
- [11:36]
Luke Acre
I've always recommended at least two hours a day. On your calendar of actual outreach, if you're a new agent or if you're an agent that's trying to gain market share or generate more income, you're at four hours a day that you should be actually out there doing proactive, what I call outreach. Success in real estate can really come down to conversations. It's like if you can have 20 conversations a day with people about real estate would be even better. But just, heck, 20 conversations, you'll be a top producer because by sheer interaction with people, you will find the deals. But I think most people, they're honest with themselves right now and they listen to this and they ask themselves, well, how many converses did you have like yesterday? You're not even close. You maybe have three maybe if you're, you're, you're decent at your day. And that's where most people die. And that's why I tell people, hey, look, the phones. Nobody likes making calls, but the phones make you have the conversations. And that's the reality.
- [12:30]
Jennifer Morin
Right? Because real estate isn't, you know, we talk about, when I talked about all the students, real estate, you know, selling the house is the byproduct. You're in the lead gen business, you're in the relationship building business. And if you're not doing that, you're not going to sell houses.
- [12:43]
Luke Acre
Agree? Yeah, 100% agree. Do you find so calendars one. What are the other aspects of beyond the sale that you really honed in on to go, hey, as a real estate agent, this is what they're not teaching you in real estate school and that you need to focus on at.
- [12:58]
Jennifer Morin
A high level mindset. They don't teach you anything about having a positive mindset, handling negativity and burnout, knowing your capacity, knowing how much you can handle, what you should, you know, delegate out to someone else. Mindset's huge. If my, one of my agents here, it's a quote in my book. I love that he says this. He says this is one of the only businesses where you wake up every day unemployed. You have to go out and get it right.
- [13:26]
Josh Dyke
Wow.
- [13:27]
Luke Acre
Yeah.
- [13:27]
Jennifer Morin
You are unemployed every day. And if you don't go out and get it you have to have that mindset of, I need to do this to be successful. I love that quote that just. Thank you, Austin McGuire. I will quote him every day.
- [13:40]
Luke Acre
We're gonna have to get Austin on the show too. Yeah. It's so true.
- [13:43]
Jennifer Morin
Austin's amazing, but he has that great mental attitude. Mental attitude is so much in life, in, in just everything that you do, having that positive attitude. It's not just, you know, the shift of I just sell houses to I'm running a business. Right.
- [14:02]
Luke Acre
Well, you said you got to know your capacity, Right. And that's such an interesting statement because it's like, how does one know their capacity? Like, how does one dictate? Because there's also a saying out there by David Goggins, right. He's probably the extreme case, but it's like when you're done and he quotes the, he says, this is the Navy SEALs. I don't know if it's really Navy SEALs or not, but when you're done and your mind's telling you you're done, you're really only 40% done. So right there it's like, hey, you have way more capacity than you think. So if you trust your, your brain on telling you you're going to quit too soon, it's almost like when you wake up and you have to go to the gym at 4am you are the greatest salesman known to man because you can convince yourself it all the million reasons of why you should stay in that bed under the warm covers. So how do you help people determine what their capacity is?
- [14:53]
Jennifer Morin
So this comes from. I wrote a blog post about this because I. It was funny in like a month, I had several agents come to me just freaking out, like, I can't handle this. I can't do this. I can't do that. I'm going to quit. No, you're not going to quit. We're going to talk about what your capacity is here. Where are we hitting this level of freaking out? You know, we've got the moms that are running their households and trying to run their businesses. So we talk about how we can delegate out stuff, how you can focus on your strengths and let somebody else handle your weaknesses. And that's what we talk about when we talk about capacity. They feel like they're trying to do everything they know they can't do everything they know they're not good at doing everything. So they're wasting time trying to figure out things that they could just delegate out to someone else.
- [15:38]
Luke Acre
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. I think it was Tom Ferry that said this. I've given this on the podcast before, but I think it's super valuable. And I did this exercise with Tim, he's our top producer on Acre Brothers. It's this, this idea of essentially green light, yellow light, red light, and you go through and there's a couple ways you can do it. One way is through revenue generating activities. So it's like you write into the green light category all the highest revenue generating activities that you can do. In the yellow light category, you write the ones that are, you know, maybe one remove from revenue generating but still influence the revenue generating. And then the red light is these are tasks, everything ultimately helps drive revenue, but it's more administrative tasks, stuff like that. The red light, you basically have built the job description for the administrator you need to hire or whoever you need to hire. You've built the task out that you need to then delegate out. So it's just a quick way to go through and you can do that also through the concept. I like this lens even better than the revenue generating, which is what do you love to do and what are the things that only you can do? And then you go through and you put down in the green light. Here's what I love to do, here's what only I can do. Yellow light is I semi like doing these and you know, I don't really have to do them, but you know, I enjoy them. And then red light is I hate doing these activities and I'm terrible at them and other people can do them. And then you've built kind of a job description for people. So I want you to think a little bit now, Jennifer, about like, okay, the industry as it is right now. And you go, okay, there's AI, there's shifting in the economics, there's shifting in the compliance with commissions and regulations and everything that's happening in the industry. When you look at the future of real estate and when you look at how an agent can succeed, what are some of the things that you would be telling agents to focus on right now to get them actually producing in this market and to keep them kind of steady in their eye on the prize?
- [17:33]
Jennifer Morin
I definitely agree with getting in on AI and learning how to utilize AI to better your business, to take some of those tasks that are in the red category off of your list. Keep having conversations, keep getting out there and meeting with people. That's the baseline of your business. I've, you know, I, I get several agents that are saying it's so Hard right now. Things have changed. Well, what are you doing? What are you out there doing to generate business? And why is it that, you know, I've got 10 Rockstar agents right now who are still crushing it. They're not complaining that the, that times are hard. You know, one of the real estate coaches just mentioned in a post he did yesterday, congratulations. If you're still in real estate, congratulations. You've just made it through the hardest market in 30 years. Right. What are you doing? But I have to keep going back to that. What are you doing to lead gen? What are you doing to bring in business? If you're not filling your calendar with phone calls and reaching out to people or events and providing information to people, what are you doing? This industry is not as hard as some people are making it turn out, you know, seem.
- [18:44]
Luke Acre
Yeah, we were just literally having that combo today. Stephen this morning on our 7:30 call is essentially saying, you know, these agents, you just wish they would apply themselves a little bit more. And I made the statement it's because everybody wants to have the, the life that is comfortable and makes a lot of money, but ultimately they don't really want to. They would be satisfied with 70k, they would be satisfied with 60k and just, just enough to get by. And it's kind of that lie they tell themselves that they want something but they really don't want it. And it's crazy.
- [19:25]
Steven Acree
It's like that where Luke, 70k is harder really than 150 or 200k in this business because if you're part of the top 20%, the branding that's associated with that, the experience that is associated with that just makes it so much easier. You get the repeat and referral business at that point.
- [19:43]
Jennifer Morin
Right?
- [19:44]
Josh Dyke
Yeah.
- [19:44]
Luke Acre
The first five years is hell. The first five years to build that is hell. But the after you've built it. Yeah. Then you have the, the return, like the flow of referrals.
- [19:54]
Josh Dyke
Right.
- [19:55]
Steven Acree
Yeah. So when you come in and you're focused on. They'd be happy with 70k. The problem is, is they're doing the minimum amount of work to get to 70k and at that point you're just going to be pushed out of the business, which is why there's a, you know, 87% fallout rate.
- [20:10]
Luke Acre
Yeah, agree. So Jennifer, like, obviously you wrote the book because you saw the problem. What do you hope the main takeaway from people from the book is that.
- [20:22]
Jennifer Morin
They really learn about real estate. The stuff they aren't going to learn in real estate school. You know, the the idea behind this being a part time gig or a hobby I think has gone to the wayside. It's too hard. It's not hard, but it's harder now than it was say back during COVID right? We had several agents join during COVID They did five transactions in six months. It was amazing. Deals were falling at their laps. Right. It wasn't hard. What I hope people learn from the book is how to truly engage in a real estate career. How do you be successful and how to turn this into something where you're serving and helping others. They're making one of the biggest the transactions in their lifetime. How you can do it successfully and enjoyably.
- [21:14]
Luke Acre
Love it.
- [21:15]
Josh Dyke
Love it. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. Before we close out, let people know how they can follow you and how they can get your book.
- [21:23]
Jennifer Morin
Great. So book is on Amazon. It's called beyond the unlocking your full potential as a new real estate agent. Great for anybody just interested in a career in real estate and even newer agents and some experienced agents. I've gotten great feedback from them going hey, I needed that reminder. That was a little kick in the butt. I am on Instagram and Facebook. Rookie re agent. You can follow me on those as well. I can always be reached through there or through my email. Jennifer M.net I'm happy to help. I am here just to help. That is I believe what I've been given the gift of is just helping people and serving people. This book talks nothing about ReMax. The book talks solely about a career in real estate. I believe that there's a brokerage out there for everyone and a company for everyone.
- [22:11]
Luke Acre
One awesome.
- [22:13]
Josh Dyke
Probably one of the number one questions we get asked other than what should I post on social media is I'm a new agent. What do I do?
- [22:21]
Luke Acre
What do I do?
- [22:21]
Josh Dyke
So all of you that are sending those questions in that listen to stay paid, make sure to go over to Amazon, pick up Jennifer's book Beyond the Sale. She's got it on the screen right now and follow her on social as well. Thank you Jennifer and thank you all so much for listening. You can dive deeper into this episode. Get the show notes as well as all of the links that we mentioned here over@staypay podcast.com and if you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor, head on over to YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel YouTube.com remindermedia and give this video a thumbs up. And if you really want to help out the show, share this episode with somebody that you know if you want to get hold of me or Luke? You can email us@podcastremindermedia.com or find us on Instagram. We are at Stay Paid Podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Josh Steik.
- [23:03]
Luke Acre
Guys, I'm Luke Akrey. Thank you so much for coming on, Jennifer. Here is my action item for all of you. What are you doing? What are you doing? Meaning if you're not getting the success you want, which so many of you listening to this, you know you're not. And you're listening to this because you're hoping for a nugget that will get you moving, that will get you in and be able to create deals for your business. But the reality of this business is it's not rocket science. But it's hard to do. It's not rocket science. It's not complex. But you have to take action. Doing the Legion, you have to put on your calendar. If you rewind, back in this episode, we said, look, a minimum of two hours a day, you should be prospecting. That's minimum. And honestly, if you're trying to grow and if you're trying to gain market share, you should be prospecting four hours a day because you have time. Stop lying to yourself that you don't have time. You have time. You just need a little bit more discipline. So I would challenge you. Your action item for this episode is, look, they don't teach you this in real estate school, but we're teaching it to you now on the Stay Paid podcast school. You've got to add Legion to your calendar. For two hours a day, it's easiest to just pick up the phone and call your sphere of influence. Then you can pick up the phone and call your neighbors of the neighborhood you live in. Just start there. Remember, the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in every business is top producers. Take action. Take action on that today.
- [24:31]
Jennifer Morin
Sam.