FREE Class for All Agents!

Hi friends! If any of you are in the Tacoma area, you are invited to Ignite, Keller Williams University's signature training course for all real estate agents. It has a single objective—to propel agents into immediate productivity with an emphasis on action—learning for earning's sake while working in your business during class. We'll cover: how to ignite your business; how to win over buyers and sellers; pricing to sell; how to negotiate most effectively; how to close the deal; and much more.

This course is FREE and open to agents from all brokerages and experience levels. It runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from September 6th through September 29th at our Puyallup Market Center (1029 E Main, Ste 201). You may register for all, or just some, of the class days. To check out the schedule/class calendar click here.

While all agents are welcome, please note that an RSVP is requested. Contact Kate Roussell-Favaloro at k.roussellfav@kw.com for more information or to sign-up today! Please note in your message which class days for which you wish to register.

Safety 101

This is definitely not a fun topic to think, write or talk about. But it is an important one to address. Because the truth is that every job comes with its share of risk—just going about our daily lives comes with a certain share of it—but there are things we can do to mitigate the specific risks you might face as a real estate agent. So, I’m going to share a few of my best tips for staying safe at work. Have your team’s loan officer (or someone else you trust) reach out to buyers prior to your first meeting. In this conversation, my loan officer asks for their address, employer and contact information so we can verify they are legit. I require this before I ever show a home to a stranger. 

Make sure someone in your office knows where you are. Also tell them with whom you are meeting and when to expect you back or when to expect hear from you, anytime you go out for open houses or private showings.

Meet new clients for the first time at your office. When meeting with a client who has hired me to help them purchase a home, our first meeting is always at my office. Always. The whole time I am gauging whether they are someone I feel comfortable serving. If not, I sometimes refer them to another agent in my office who I think might be a better match. That’s mostly based on feeling like our personalities, or their expectations and my approach aren’t a good fit. If I felt like there was something off or unsafe about them, I would not send them to one of my colleagues without full disclosure of my concerns.

Verify the information you can verify. When dealing with a new listing/seller client, I always check that the address they’ve given me is a legitimate address and that their name matches who the county has on file as the owner of record for that property. If it doesn’t, I use a prequalifying script to call them and ask a few more questions BEFORE I go out and meet them at their home.

When conducting an open house or a private showing, arrive early and familiarize yourself with your surroundings. Learn where the exits are and the quickest way to reach them from each area of the house. Avoid entering spaces where you can become easily trapped—closets, laundry rooms, basements, attics, small bathrooms, etc. Stand outside in the hallway and let the client walk in on their own and check out the space.

Always have your cell phone with you. There are also personal security apps you can buy for your phone that would help law enforcement locate you in an emergency.

Trust your gut. If you’re uncomfortable don’t second guess yourself. Remove yourself from the situation. Your safety is more important than possibly hurting a client’s feelings.

A few other things you can consider:

• Bring a buddy with you. Maybe you make it a rule that you always have your assistant, partner or a colleague with you when you show homes to a client for the first time or host open houses.

• Be careful about the information you share on social media or your website. Posing for pictures in front of your house, your car, or wearing expensive jewelry is probably not a good idea.

• Take a self-defense class. You may never need to use what you learn, but just having those skills in your pocket can bring you some peace of mind. This is a good tip for everyone, not just real estate agents.

I hope these tips are helpful to you! I don’t want you to be fearful—I feel really safe as I go about my day because I follow some pretty basic safety rules. But it’s important to look at the ways where there might be some vulnerabilities safety-wise and come up with a plan to address those.

As always, feel free to send me questions by email or leave your thoughts in the Comments section below. Thanks!

The Truth About Working for Yourself

What makes someone likely to succeed as a real estate agent ? It’s a great question and an understandable one. Who wants to invest time and energy and money in becoming an agent if it’s going to be a bad fit for them?

It’s also almost an impossible question to answer. Within real estate you’ll meet people from all walks of life, from diverse professional and educational backgrounds.

At Keller Williams we have a personality assessment that people can take, which points them in the direction of careers within the company that are probably a good fit for their personalities. That’s really the closest we come to “predicting” here.

But…

There are some tips I’d share with anyone considering becoming a real estate agent at a brokerage where they’ll have lots of autonomy. They probably apply to anyone considering self-employment of any kind though, so please read on even if a real estate career isn’t in your future.

Startup Stock Photos

Stay humble. I have seen people make the mistake of believing that there is nothing they can learn from anyone else. This is totally untrue. I’ve been doing this since 2003 and I still look for opportunities to learn and I accept coaching from people who know more than I do.

Behave as if you’re at work even if your office is in your home. Get dressed. Maintain a regular schedule. Avoid sending work emails while you’re in the middle of doing yoga in your living room. Sometimes you do have to answer an email at 11:59PM on a Thursday night, but to the extent you can, establish your working hours and stick to them. Plan days off and stick to those too.

Enjoy the freedom and flexibility, but not at the expense of the work. If you don’t wake up every day with the realization that but for your own efforts, you are unemployed, you won’t succeed. The freedom that comes from being able to set your own goals and design your own job is incredibly rewarding. But the people who are successful balance that with accountability. They set clear tasks and goals for every day and are disciplined enough to meet them even though no one else is watching. You can probably train yourself to do this if it doesn’t come naturally, but I find that a certain level of self-motivation and discipline is necessary.

Be yourself. This is such a cliché, but in any business where you are a big part of the equation when a client is deciding whether to work with you, it is so important. You should know who you are as a real estate agent—what is your philosophy about your work? Why would someone choose to work with you over the agent down the street? What sets you apart?

You must know these things and be able to communicate them to prospective clients in a genuine way.

Have clearly defined goals and a definition of success. If you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you’ve arrived. Go through a formal goal-setting process regularly. How often really depends on your business. It can be something you do yearly, quarterly or monthly. But decide where you want your business to be at the end of that period. In my case, I set goals for how many transactions I want to close annually in my real estate business. And then I have separate goals for the other roles I have at Keller Williams. Figure out your metrics for determining when you’ve met your goals and then reward yourself for doing so.

Be a good boss to yourself. Pay yourself a salary, even if it’s a small one when your business is just getting started. Have a plan for how you determine when it’s appropriate to give yourself a raise. Invest in retirement; have a plan for taking a vacation or for when you’re too sick to work; work the supplies you need into your monthly budget. In short, treat yourself the way you’d expect a good boss to treat you if you were their employee. Otherwise you’ll resent yourself and burnout.

All you other self-employed people out there, please feel free to share any of the tips that work for you in the Comments section below.

Thanks, all! I’ll see you back here again soon.

Career Possibilities

One of the things I love to share with aspiring agents when they come in for office tours (contact me here if you're interested in signing-up for one!), is the variety of ways you can structure a career in real estate. People often think of being a real estate agent as only representing clients in the purchase or sale of a property. That's how I started my career, and may be how you start yours too. But it doesn't have to be the only way you put your skills to work.

I'm a big fan of variety and of diversifying sources of income, including building in some passive income where I can. I thought I'd share with you today some of the ways you can do that as a real estate agent. Keep in mind that my experience has been with Keller Williams exclusively, so the opportunities I discuss below are the ones available with this brokerage. I don't know for sure what other brokerages offer. Okay, caveat out of the way, so here we go.

Option 1: Representing Buyers and Sellers. This is pretty straightforward. As a real estate agent, clients will hire you to represent them in the purchase or sale of a property.

Option 2: "Flipping" Properties. This is where you buy a property, invest in renovating it, and then sell it for a profit (hopefully!). There are several shows on HGTV profiling people who do this. As a licensed real estate agent you can represent yourself as buyer and seller and you'll have access to new properties as they come on the market. Keller Williams has a book to help agents learn how to do this successfully. It's called, appropriately enough, "Flip."

Option 3: Investment Properties. This is where you purchase a property and then rent it out to a third party. Again, Keller Williams has educational materials to help agents do this successfully, maximize their earning potential, and avoid some of the mistakes people commonly make when starting out as landlords. It's called, "Hold."

Option 4: Referrals. I know agents whose entire business is built on Keller Williams' Referral Program. Keller Williams has agents licensed to sell homes anywhere in the world. If someone approaches you wanting to purchase or sell a home outside of the area in which you work, you can refer them to a Keller Williams agent in that region. If that client hires that Keller Williams agent and they purchase or sell a property, you could receive 25% of the commission on that sale. Just for referring that client. Pretty great, right? I've done it several times and it's a win-win-win experience. I know I'm referring someone to an agent who is going to provide them with excellent service; a great KW agent gets to serve someone that may not have otherwise found them; and I get a nice financial thank-you.

Option 5: Profit Sharing. Okay, this one is a unique option within the world of real estate. When you close a transaction, you pay a percentage of your commission to Keller Williams, until you've paid the company dollar CAP in commission in a calendar year. After that commitment is met, then you keep 100% of the commissions you make. Here's where the profit-sharing comes in. The person who "referred" you to Keller Williams gets a thank you for sending you to KW. So, if you go into business with Keller Williams and then you recommend it to a friend or acquaintance and they join as an agent too anywhere in the world), you could get a portion of the commission. You're fully vested after 3 years and the benefit can outlive you and be passed along to your heirs.

Option 6: Salaried Positions. For whatever reason, maybe you want a more predictable 9-5, salaried job. Keller Williams hires licensed real estate agents to provide administrative and transaction support to our Realtors. So, you could use your knowledge and skills in this way as opposed to representing buyers and sellers.  Or maybe you're a great leader and want to take on additional responsibilities on top of your work as an agent. KW has formal curriculum for people who want to pursue a leadership role, and there is additional income associated with those opportunities.

Was any of this news to you? Did one or more of these options make you think about a real estate career in a different way? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below or contact me here if you want to talk more about real estate or Keller Williams.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you here again soon!

Fantastic Keller Williams Video to Share!

Hi all! Just a quick post from me today to share a video that came across my Facebook account last week and that I thought you all might appreciate seeing too. You know I love working for Keller Williams, and if I had to condense all of the great things about it down into a short and sweet 2-minute video, this would be it. As I find others that I think are worth sharing, I'll post those here too. Check it out here when you have a couple of minutes and then let me know what you think below. I'm also happy to answer any questions that the video brings up for you, so feel free to leave those in the Comments section too!