In this episode of the Top Floor Podcast hosted by Jeff Cass, Mike Sposato, the owner of Carolina Realty Advisors, talks about his career and his journey over the last 16 years since becoming a partner in this business in 2006. His career started with great success in sales roles outside of the real estate industry. After deciding to move into real estate, he found that his sales experience didn't translate into success selling residential real estate. Mike not only learned to become successful selling real estate but also became the owner/partner of Carolina Realty within 5 years!!
Hear more about Mike's journey adapting to a new industry and his insights into the changes happening today in the real estate industry...
Early career success as a professional salesperson 4:10
Adapting to sales in a new industry (real estate) and creating a winning sales process 7:35
Major changes to the Real Estate Industry are here! 11:50
Opportunity for Mike's firm amid a changing industry 22:40
Mike reflects on what he's learned about himself during his career 51:48
Advice for new business owners 53:10
Connect with Mike Sposato on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikesposato/
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From
The Top Floor Team
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Hello and welcome to the top floor. The podcast where Charlotte area CEOs get to tell their leadership journey. My name is Jeff Cass. I'm an executive coach and the leader of a peer advisory group for CEOs and business leaders here in Charlotte and I'll be your host today. Glad to have Mike Spazato, the owner of Carolina really advisors with us today. Mike, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah so you and I have talked a little bit. There's a lot going on in the industry. We'll talk a lot about that as we continue the discussion but I thought why don't we just start with kind of how you got into the business and how you became owner of Carolina really advisors. Well so when I first moved to Charlotte back in 1996 I actually worked for a fairly large fortune 100 company. It was privately held. Excuse me and I've had an outside sales position with them and and I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot of you know really mainstream company if I said your name everybody would know it but I'm not going to for for today anyway and so while I was learning and you know I was being a county executive for this company I started to make quite a bit of money and as a byproduct of that I started to buy my own real estate portfolio and I really enjoyed owning the real estate being a landlord dealing with all that kind of thing and so I decided to go get my real estate license. It was really it wasn't I didn't plan on becoming a realtor. I just was interested in it. I wanted to have my license, took the class, passed it and then over time I started to get really burned out working in corporate America and it just kind of got to a point where I thought to myself I'd rather make money for myself versus making money for a big corporation so that was the jump off point when I got into real estate and it's been almost 25 years ago now. Okay okay and you're not from Charlotte originally you were telling me right you're from you know further north just like me. Yep yeah I'm originally from South Jersey born and raised loved it had a great childhood there and then unfortunately when I was getting to high school my parents had to relocate for their jobs we ended up in upstate New York and then after that I went to college in West Virginia so been around a little bit lived in Dallas Texas before moving to Charlotte so it's been a good journey. So why Charlotte why not Texas? That's a great question so I feel like more like of a kind of like an East Coast kind of guy. I love Dallas it was so much fun especially you know being a recent college graduate and living in Big D it's a huge city lost to do but you know eventually I started to just feel like I needed to get back home you know be surrounded with friends family etc like that so after a short period there after just enjoying it learning a lot as a young guy I was like you know what I want to get back East and so I started looking at a variety of cities Atlanta Baltimore you know even considered going back to New York even West Virginia but Charlotte when I was looking at it back in the mid 90s was just like I thought it was a ground floor opportunity to come in and especially after working really hard in a big competitive city like Dallas moving into Charlotte was um it was it was a breath of fresh air was pretty easy it was it was a nice kind of move for me. Yeah growing city centrally located on the East Coast I mean 70 seven or eight hours gets you pretty much you know to many parts of Florida and probably many parts of Jersey as well if you had to go home right? Yep absolutely yeah okay yeah okay it's been great I love Charlotte. Yeah so you've seen a lot of growth a lot of change here in Charlotte enjoyed that in the real estate industry so you became a realer then how did you come to own Carolina Realty Advisors then? Well when I first got in the business this is a good story I think but when I was in corporate America I literally when I first started I became rookie of the year nationwide for this company I worked for as a account executive and then two years in a row I won their account executive of the year award out of like 350 peers so you know I learned a lot about sales marketing advertising you know accounting everything like that so they promoted me into a management role and you know like I said earlier I got kind of burned out on making money for other people and I actually got burned out on the management role that they put me into so I segued into real estate but what was interesting for me was as a top salesperson you know where I had the trophies and you know all the fancy dinners with the ownership and everything else when I got in a real estate I thought that that sales ability would extrapolate into the residential real estate world and it didn't at all and I felt flat on my face and it was it was a big humbling experience and the broken charge that we have he had suggested that I start to maybe go down the Sandler selling systems and become part of their president's club and I reluctantly did it and once I did that it took about two months for me to kind of turn things around and then from July to the end of the calendar year my first year I had 19 closings and this is before you know Zillow realtor.com and a lot of the tech things and lead generation so I just took that and I just kept leapfrogging ahead and eventually I got to a point where I was doing 55 to 60 closings a year without an assistant you know websites were just starting to come out so it wasn't you know back in 2004 and 2005 it wasn't what we have today in 2024 so with my growth in sales I went to our me and the guy down the company I was like you know I've got to go one or two different ways one I have to leave and start my own company or two we could become partners and we decided to become partners and we started Carolina Realty Advisors back in January 2006. Okay so okay okay so when you were in corporate America you were in sales before we get further into the real estate maybe talk a little bit about what you were selling what was that business? So it was um it was called fleet services so it was a division of enterprise rent a car I never worked in a rental branch but it was their own outside sales team that they have one in you know most major cities and what we would do is call on business owners who had anywhere from maybe 10 vehicles or 10 sales people or 10 people and vehicles of some sort all the way up to 150 and so it was a relatively new office in Charlotte so it was really a ground floor opportunity then I would go out and I was it was a financial product really it sounds more like vehicle related but it was a lot to do with you know off book leasing and some other things that really improve their financials and it was a really great experience because most of my clients are small business owners and most of my friends at that point you know own small to mid-sized businesses and I'm still friends with quite a few of them today I see I see okay all right yeah so you had mentioned Sandler Sandler Sales I'm somewhat familiar with that I mean would you say that that was a big catalyst for you as you got into real estate and helped you sell more? Absolutely and you know that I've taken Sandler and then my background my degrees in education so I'm supposed to be a school teacher and I also have a master certification in neural linguistic programming so I kind of swirled all those things together and put together a proprietary sales training program and our sales training program is really one that's completely different than everybody in the industry it is as an example the average conversion rate in our industry is 11 percent so that means you know you talk to a hundred people obviously you're going to convert 11 the system I put together I've gotten it where I've been able to help some of my agents get it where they're doing a 95 conversion rate and my conversion rate is actually 98 percent it's just by using a simple approach it's not salesy it's more psychological based and needs analysis and just getting to know people better and you know trying to build a trusting working relationship versus being a you know a real pushy salesy aggressive guy okay okay so that's what you've been developing since 2006 when you became part owner I take it is that you're kind of marrying together professional sales the knowledge that you got you know as a school teacher or at least a degree in school teaching it doesn't sound like you ever got it actually got into school teaching is that right that's correct I did my student teaching I got my degree I loved it but unfortunately school teachers don't make that much money and I you know I wanted better things in life then and that's what I did I made this they made the jump into sales yeah okay I got it right okay so then then you've been perfecting this then for all what 18 years then would you and tell us maybe how that initially that idea came together and maybe how you developed it if you would okay well let me say it came together really out of necessity you know taking that past experience I had when I was doing the fleet services thing and when it didn't work dealing with mainstream regular people you know I was like okay something's wrong here and so when I went to Sandler you know I was able to start to put together certain techniques and if you know much about Sandler they've got a massive amount of information and I was able to pluck out maybe six or seven different pieces and plug them in to the way we approach our prospects and in our leads and things like that and so it took a little bit of time to perfect it and we threw it and get it down but you know now I've got training manuals and we have videos on our company G Drive and you know put together like a little flash drive with other audio and it's it's an all-encompassing sales training that I do and we do a lot of role playing in the office and everything else but it's a it's not the easiest system to learn um quite frankly the people who do the 11 percent you know they're more like it's old school present closed present closed present closed like you know hey if I can get you out to that house tomorrow you know we work with me or if I get you that house tomorrow and you like it will you buy it which you know that that's gets you out of the percent conversion because sometimes people call me up and like do you want to get me out to the house I'm like I don't even know I don't know I'm not sure there's a fit to even go there yet tell me more about yourself and it's not that difficult but you know people who get into the real estate field I think a lot of them think this is going to be a really easy job and it's definitely not they think it's going to be easy to sell real estate and a lot of times when I ask people I'm like what do you think you know an initial interview what do you think it is that we sell and I hear everything from well we sell dreams to you know we sell houses and a lot of things that nature and I'm like what what I believe we sell are real estate brokerage services because the consumer you know they see the house or they want or they have a house they want to sell but what are they going to do to go from step one to step ten they don't know the dance moves and they can cost you a lot of money now now we have a thing called due diligence in North Carolina which is paid really to time a contract and it's not refundable so people have to really trust and like the broker they're working with and so the old school high pressure sales techniques are just out the window and that's what's the change with Narv they don't want us to you know they have made it now where if we're going to work with a buyer we actually have to have them sign an agreement up front so they know up front how we work who pays us what we do what the expectations are for me that's great because that's the way we've done it since day one but a lot of the competition especially with the bigger firms that you know when a new agent gets in the business they think if I go work for you know one of the many larger firms you know the exp is the Caldwell Banker the color Williams etc. and so forth they falsely think that oh I'm with this big company they're going to help me and what I've been finding out is they don't supply they don't do any sales training at all they're teaching them about things they need to know on the basics of real estate to keep them out of trouble but they're not teaching them a whole lot of sales techniques or how to really build a business and so you know those kind of folks and I try to explain to them this is how we've done it all along they either get it and the light comes on and it's a great fit or they just oh I got it I know what I'm doing so it's going to be really interesting to see what happens because the changes just went in like literally in the last week so now going forward you know if you pick up a buyer lead you've got to sit down with them up front and have an agreement to work together in on the selling side you know that's a different story all together so not sure if you're familiar or if your guests are familiar with what's going on but NAR National Association of Realtors is now said you know obviously the seller has a choice as to how much they pay in commissions who they pay the commissions to etc but the truth is they've always had that as an example if you ever wanted me to work with you just maybe sell one of your properties you could have said Mike I'm only going to pay 3% to you that's it the buyer has to you know get their own fee from their buyer for the buyer agent excuse me that's always been there you could have said as a seller I'll pay a flat or here's the hard dollar amount I'm paying period and you can split it or not so now it's just being put more in the mainstream media so now sellers are more aware this is what your rights are you're not stuck at having to pay 6% or a certain percentage you know you work it out with your listing agent and then you know that's that so if the seller decides they're not going to pay a fee and you have a buyer agent it doesn't know how to talk about value that they bring to the table the great things are to be able to do to represent their buyer then they're not going to get paid and I'm interested to see what happens in the coming weeks and months when people who don't have the ability or the knowledge or the know how to create value with a you know the potential client what's going to happen to them okay so here we got a lot there I want to I want to maybe unpack a few of these things but since you're talking about the changes in the industry let's start there so many of you know people out here probably sell a house I don't know once every 10 years maybe something like that you know and you know we probably aren't as versed in the you know how commissions are done but I'll explain maybe how I simply how I understand it maybe that's an easy way for you to kind of start talking about how that's going to change because as I understood it typically it would negotiate a rate typically if I was selling you know with the person that was going to list the house and we would negotiate some rate that I knew was going to be split between the buyer's agent and my agent typically that's how it was done and that rate might have been five percent six percent somewhere in that range right that was pretty common I believe right isn't that how the industry pretty much has worked for many years yeah that's exactly right yeah okay and so yeah and then there was a big class class action lawsuit where an attorney went after the big boys again the Coldwell Bankers the color Williams the XP and they're paying a lot of money out for damages because you know certain sellers were saying they were pulled it has to be six percent and it was you know considered price fixing so yeah but you're right that's how it always really has been okay okay so now and I I guess I've had a buyer's agent as well which is a little different scenario because they're it's um you know we were looking in multiple states so those folks you know we're unsure if they were going to be helpful to us or not you know I think in some cases so there's got to be a big change coming for them I would think you know maybe that's the biggest change coming but but instead of me speculating what do you see as some of the bigger changes that potentially could happen for the buyer agent side it could be it could be anything could be any part of it well yeah early on like the last several listings that I picked up just leading up over the last 30 days let's say the conversations I've had with my sellers you know is that look you have the right to pick whatever the rate's going to be if we agreed to it but if we don't offer compensation to a buyer agent it could be a scenario where you don't get a lot of showings simply because some of the agents if they know there's no compensation they may not show your house and that's real you know it's not supposed to be that way because hopefully the buyer agent is learning how to you know present value and help their client through the whole process and the client's willing to pay them a fee in the event that the listing agent doesn't that's the whole crux of it right now is that people who maybe grew up under like I heard this is an example the other day a friend of mine said oh there's a girl in my office who's terrified to ask for a commitment up front because she's like well I've always you know taken him out four or five different times gotten to know him better before I've asked him to sign anything that's I just feel that's the right way to do it and you know business-wise I don't think that's the best way to do it we've never done it that way we've always had the up front you know agreement that you know let's sit down and talk and see if there's a fit you know if there's not a fit that's okay you don't have to work with me but on the other hand if you're interested we've got to go over the buyer agency agreement you know explain everything to you get that signed and knocked out and then we'll put together a step-by-step game plan to help you be successful you don't buy in the property you want to buy um I'm hoping that some of the people come around to that but you never know what's going to happen so I don't know if that answered your question enough but there's a lot of turmoil in certain sectors of the real estate world right now for sure yeah I mean I would think from the listing agent side typically if you're going to you know put together the marketing and do a lot of work up front the value is more visible maybe and and the rate is negotiated up front so whether you negotiate now a three percent rate or two and a half percent rate and the buyer has to negotiate their rate the bigger change feels like it's on the buyer's agent because now the the person that's buying has to pay that and that's different than probably most transactions anybody have anybody at least in my scenario has ever done is that is that a fair assessment that's exactly right that's a great assessment but if you think about it you know if the seller would would net out six percent of what they you know really wanted and they listed their house instead of a hundred percent of what they could get they listed it 94 percent and a you know a buyer were to come to them directly then they could avoid all of it the big issue goes back to what we sell our real estate brokerage services when I first started in the business the buyer agreement was two pages and that included the sign off page and it said five basic things which would be we would be your real estate firm you would be the buyer we're going to work together in a certain geographic area let's just say the greater Charlotte area for a certain period of time whatever that is and in this case the seller typically pays the fee but if they don't you're still responsible for it it was always that way now the buyer agreement is seven pages long and it's got all kinds of crazy twists and turns in it that have come up because you know the North Carolina market especially Charlotte you know when when we went to a big boom back in '06 '07 we had investors coming in from Florida, California, Texas, New York, etc that did a lot of different things that kind of messed up our market a little bit and so the real estate commission has been adding you know language and doing things to really explain everything up front here's the rules of the game etc. I've hired agents from other firms and we actually spend part of our you know training going over the buyer agency agreement so that they can explain it to you know any potential business you know that they could bring on and they didn't know what it was that was a scary part I was like how do you not know what a buyer agency agreement is and I'm not talking about people have been in the business for 90 days I'm talking about people that came here from other firms that were in the business for four or five six years and what they would always do is when they we got an opportunity to show a house they would do that hey if I can get out there tomorrow will you work with me that kind of thing they'd rush somebody out to the house and this was when the seller's market was really you know prevalent and houses were going like that and so you know people get out to the house and they'd want to make an offer and so the agent would send over a big docu-sign with hundreds of pages of this and that and the other thing but in there they'd slide an exclusive buyer agency agreement so they never had to have the talk and then if you want to buy this house I can't put the paperwork out unless you sign this so they sign click click click click click they don't get the house and then unbeknownst to them they've got a commitment to somebody that they only met at a house for 30 minutes and they don't really know much about them and now they're stuck and that's another reason that lawsuit came out I say I say okay yeah well that's interesting I guess you know people like me you know we didn't know enough about it and probably didn't educate ourselves but it sounds like from your point of view you've certainly spent a lot of time preparing your agents for something like this is what it sounds like and you were successful I mean I wrote down 11% conversion on average is what it was is that right well that's true yeah 95 percent for your agents so it feels like your position to help them become a good buyer's agent or a seller's agent is that is that right is that kind of the way you're looking at this and it's always been that's how we've always done it wasn't gnar didn't make us do this when I first got in and started learning more from the Sandler techniques and everything and kind of cobbled together our program and perfected it over the years it was always about no free consulting you know we're not going to run out and perform services unless we're working together so you know in some people have a hard time saying that in the right way and you know I think realtors have trained the public to treat us like you know free public servants like we're going to just pop up and run out and show you a house without knowing who you are or having to pre-approval letter or having any kind of discussion about what you really want need etc so we've always done it this way and it just so happens by luck or who knows we now gnar's turned it directly right into our lane it's like wow you know so now if any realtors are out there listening to this and they're struggling or they're worried or they the approach they have is not working or they don't know what to say or do they need to definitely give me a call or reach out to me because when we bring on a new realtor like the first three weeks it's all onboarding it's sales training interweave with going over the agreements brokerage training you know everything all our software that whole thing but we spend a lot of time going over what I would call lead conversion or and it doesn't mean it has to be a lead it could be somebody who's a an old friend you know because sometimes talking to a friend about business is awkward but there's a way to do it that's just disarmingly honest and I think people appreciate it versus playing up you know who's doing what and hiding this and that and the other thing so you know that's what we do we've always done it we bring you on we onboard we you know really take a deep dive and then once you're onboard we you know we do role playing you know weekly we come into the room we practice we you know we we go over things and deep brief calls and kind of help people understand where they're going right and where they're going wrong in our system because we put together a foolproof system it's is really from a business owner's perspective it's like wow this is this is easy yeah so yeah well I mean the disparity on the the facts are pretty astounding I mean between 11% and even call it 20% to 95 I mean so you spend a lot of time helping folks you know not only understand the industry but then learn to sell and be successful selling so would you say that your system is better suited for new people that are just coming into real estate sales or would you say that it's also just as good for folks that have been in real estate for a long time that's a great question I think if you have a sales background then you understand sales in general that you're gonna have to make calls you're gonna have to put yourself out there there's gonna be rejection and that's okay it's part of the process you're gonna have to present information you're gonna have to ask for the business you're gonna have to be okay talking about money if you're like that it doesn't matter when you come in you could be brand new you could be 15 20 years in the business but the big caveat here is a lot of people get into real estate it could be maybe a housewife who you know gave up her career to raise her family and now some of her friends in real estate and you know before she became a housewife maybe she was I don't know office manager or HR or something and they don't understand there's a process to sales and it's uncomfortable and it takes time to get used to it and you got to be okay you know you got to be willing to fail and that kind of thing you know new people when they come in I have a program that I train them and I provide them leads but the first couple of months that they're here what I have them do is scrub the leads we have them I mean I have thousands and thousands of leads in our database there's no way we can get to all of them so I assign them a certain block of leads to go through and their their job is to say this one's already bought or this one's no good you know the information is wrong or talk to this guy he's two or three years out but here's a short list of our best prospects now and they give them to me or they try to at least do a live hand off to me that's their job and they're compensated on that and then they graduate from that because once they give me a few deals they're involved as soon as I bring the client into the office they're involved they get to observe everything they they're actively you know going on property tours or involved with the listing and they're kind of chopping wood and carrying water kind of thing until they got the confidence to start to do it on their own some people they can do it in 60 or 90 days and some people might need you know six months to do it but when you're brand new and you get into business it's an approach to help get your legs under you and we pay a little bit of money compensate you for your work and everything like that but it's not just throwing you straight to the wolves because I've done that too and that's a huge mistake because if people don't have that sales background and they're good people but they just don't understand sales or they have call reluctance or you know number of things that could go wrong they end up getting out pretty quick in fact in our industry they say statistically nationwide when in your first year being a realtor 80 percent of the people fail in first year wow of the remaining 20 percent that go into the second year 90 percent of those people fail make it into your third years incredibly difficult and so pushing people too hard too fast is this going to lead to them you know burning out and you know it's so I've learned through the years when you get a new person this is what you're going to do to start and and they like it because they're going to it doesn't throw them right out there and they get a chance to learn and you know go through all our training programs and you know mirror me observe me they can you know observe me make and calls etc so that's one the other person that is could be successful somebody who might have just misfired meaning got my license I've sales background I went to work at ABC Realty the culture's not right something's not right I want to make a move and they come in and then I can help them but I've had that help had that happened several times in my career and they've taken off incredibly well because they might go from you know say 10 to 12 closings per year for their first couple of years and they come in here and they're doing 35 40 closings after you know year being here so okay yeah okay yeah so so as you look back on your maybe the time that you've owned Carolina really you know maybe talk a little bit about how many agents you've had and how that's evolved because I feel like this would be a very compelling reason for agents to come to you assuming that they're capable of doing what you're just talking about right there. So you know when years ago I used to have a fairly large team and I ran it really like a corporate sales organization because quite frankly you know when you get into this business the unspoken truth is all we are for independent contractors with no base salary no benefits and we're really outside salespeople that's that's what we are and some people want to think that they're different than that but yeah and you can be can be a hobby or you could do you know you could dabble in it but if you want to make a real career out of it that's what it is and so finding those kinds of people is extremely difficult I don't want to be the guy that has 50 60 70 agents and a lot of headaches the people that are dabbling and you know because there's we have to carry E&O insurance and there's a lot of people when people get upset or they feel like the deal didn't go right the first thing they do in today's world is they go make a complaint to the real estate commission you know and then that this leads to a lot of time spent on doing things that I just don't want to get into so when I had a fully functioning sales team with a bunch of people that I had put together over time most of them actually knew me personally before they got into real estate or maybe they were in real estate somewhere else and heard what I was doing and came to work in our firm and we were killing it you know and quite frankly we did we did great but one by one for many different reasons sometimes you know family matters would happen maybe another baby came and they had to go part-time or you know they wanted to move a little bit further away and they didn't want to have to drive to the office so from those kinds of things I whittled it down to like a skeleton crew at the moment but now that this whole thing when NARS coming out it's the perfect opportunity to really bring it back together some of the agents that did go away for the commute was far or I want to try this they're now talking to me about wanting to come back and in fact a lot of them even if they don't want to come back will call me and say hey Mike I just want to say thanks you taught me how to do this business right the first time the agents in our office right now are panic-stricken and I'm just sitting here like licking my chops because we you know it's it's actually better for the high-performing realtors for the ones that aren't performing all that well just to fizzle out to be honest because a lot of them get in the way they do things in the middle of a transaction that they shouldn't be doing and so the long and short of it is is to answer your question now's the time I wouldn't be building it back up for sure okay do you see one of the fallouts from this situation and the changes that that there will be more realtors that cannot make it than in the industry is that what you're saying yeah I feel like that's going to be the case we've at the moment we have I think like 18 000 licensed realtors in the greater charlotte area and when I say greater charlotte it you know could be Concord Fort Mill you know Monroe etc like that of which probably 4000 are really practicing every day and with 4000 that they're practicing and there's probably 400 of us that do the lion share the deals wow that's a small amount I mean of the total and and so you know interest rates have been high here in the last year or so and markets shifted because you know up until probably March it was a seller's market and now each month it's gone by May May was the first time we started to see price reductions we hadn't seen price reductions in over a decade and we had June and we're starting to see more inventory starting to pile up and more price reductions and then same thing in July here we are in August with higher rates you know people are really it's an election year they're like what am I going to do so if you don't have the savings in place or you don't have the wherewithal to continue to bring on new business I mean I've got a repeatable revenue model you know leads come in we've got software we've got some really interesting software programs one of them I'm sure most of the people watching your podcast are going to be doing AI to some degree so when when I have a let's say a buyer lead comes into our system when they land in our our CRM which we call its follow-up also when we use as soon as they land they're getting an AI tech spot that's talking to them and almost nobody knows it's an AI they they they start texting back and forth at this person then they're also getting a the start of a video series that I put together that you know welcomes them to the website and explain some of the tools that we have and how to use it and it walks them all the way through the buying process it's I think there's 17 or 18 videos I put together with it that starts with you know you know picking the right realtor for you buyer consultation appointment you know what's that like and you know what should you expect hitting pre-approved etc etc etc so they've got that coming to them as well as they're getting leads and I mean not leads listings that they're interested in being sent so there's all this software that we put together over the years it's really it's it's forward-facing to the consumer but it's not pushy it's kind of giving them what they want you know so that it's easier to get them on the phone and have a conversation about what do you really want to do what do your needs how can we help you okay okay it's part of the experience then you know for the buyer and then part of maybe the process that you're using overall to generate leads and also you know ultimately reach that 95 percent close rate yeah yeah it all like goes hand in hand and just it's oh it's like a big systematic approach you know and that just goes back to even learn it from Sandler system is like you know you can build a foolproof system you know you test it out and you've got your steps in your process and you really have to step one get that done make sure you did it right go to the next go to the next and it just when you get to the end of it with a prospect it just makes a lot of sense you know it's are we going to work together and not and again knows okay and surprisingly you know 95 98 percent of these folks are like yeah where do I sign you know I like your you know I like your approach it's completely different you know so it's just a different way of doing it it's interesting that uh what just a little bit over two percent of the realers are doing most of the deals now is kind of what you said of 18,000 realers but 400 are doing most of the deals so those 400 how would you characterize them you're are these folks that have over the years just learned how to be successful I mean what what would you say is there maybe I know it's a general question but what would you say is maybe you know a common theme for them why they're successful um there's a lot of different reasons you know it could be maybe they were born and raised here got in the business early have built the business up over a long period of time with you know sphere of influence and social connections etc that's that's pretty common in Charlotte but I'm not from here so I didn't have that that was not an option for me whatsoever um there are certain people out there that you know focus on niche components of the business like maybe being a listing agent in one particular city or one particular area within a city and that's all they do when they've gotten really really good at that you know um I think that's a large part of how a lot of those folks got to be successful and of course there's great sales people and great business people and people have a different twist on it um everybody's got their own way and I'm not saying our way is the only way by any stretch I'm just thankful that NARS made that change because now it's like this is all we've ever done it's the only way in how to do it and so you know if you come here I can see I can teach this to you you know and help you but you know the other folks that are successful you know kudos to them you know there's a lot of really good realtors out there there really are unfortunately there's much more you know like when you hire a new person as an example you know when you go and get your real estate license the real estate schools their job is to help you pass a test they're not there to teach you sales marketing accounting business planning how to run a business they just want to make sure that you know right from wrong you know you know about disclosing information you're not going to mislead or do anything fraudulent to the public and then you have a license here we go I got a license okay now what if you've never been really in sales or in the business aspect of things and you might come from you knows what background you know it's going to be really difficult again I'm not saying they can't make it it's just a lot harder and especially in this market to even get into the market yeah okay understand so I'm going to go back a little bit to some of the changes that could be happening and first let me just ask you a question how often are you a buyer's agent versus a listing agent well that's a great question I would say it traditionally up until this year it was 65% buyer 35 listings but at this point is starting to even out I've got a you know since been doing it for a long time I'm lucky I have a lot of past clients that come to me want me to sell the home that I helped them buy originally and friends and people in my sphere of influence that have heard about me or want to work with me so it's kind of like leveling out a little bit okay because I feel like I mean as I understand the changes that are coming it feels like it's a bigger change for the folks that are representing buyers that's what it feels like to me and and here's a question for you because as I kind of think about the transaction if I'm a seller and I'm paying you know whatever it is the five or six percent that gets split you know with the buyer's agent in the past there's cash there so to speak from the deal that pays that's easier to kind of make that happen so to speak if I'm the if I'm the buyer you know and and I have to come up with whatever it is you know two or three percent you know can I roll into the price of the house can that roll into my mortgage I mean it could complicate things with the transaction I guess is what I'm getting at is that is that true I mean is that something that you see could potentially be a little bit fuzzier going forward if if you don't know how to handle it right on the front end and so you know part of our whole entire system is upfront conversations about what could happen let's talk about it upfront for happens there's several different ways of our aging could make the difference up I don't know if you heard that go by or not but anyway yeah fire close by yeah you know there's I mean one way obviously they could just pay the difference if you say you know the fee iron is three percent and the sellers only offer two you know some people are okay just writing a check if they're financially in that position but there are people out there that might be a first-time buyer that don't have much money and so what do you do then there's a couple of different ways you can go with it you know adding and closing costs that the seller would pay and moving it from one column to the other as long as it's been discussed up front with the buyer and there's a plan at play so that there's ways to overcome it when you're creative as long as it's disclosed you know and it's honestly it's been but this has been going on for a while you know when there was a seller's market a lot of sellers were really only willing to pay five percent okay like the market's so hot I can just throw it on the market and sell it like that which wasn't necessarily 100 true but because of that they didn't want to pay a full six percent and you know my client so would say hey look they're only offering two and a half there's a difference here of a half percent on this price point it equals this amount of money you know we need to talk about it how would you like to handle it before we look at this house or before we even you know do much on this house you know are you okay with that sure you know let's do it and that it's as easy as just having it an adult conversation about money familiar okay so yeah so your your I guess sounds like your style is more straightforward you know put all the cards on the table let's talk about the pros and the cons and you're talking about this both with your agents as they kind of try and get that same position with the people whether they're buyers or sellers is that is that a fair assessment that's exactly right um and a lot of them have a hard time with it to be honest with you they're like oh you know if you only showed somebody two or three houses I get it you know maybe if they're all you get a discount on the commission that's one thing but if you're spending six or eight different property tours and you know the the meter's running on your amount of time that you put into it you know you you got to stand up for you know what is yours if you if you've agreed to this number up front they agreed to it when time comes you got to tell them look this is what's going on the good agents that have the confidence it's it's not a problem yeah yeah the ones that lack confidence or just you know who knows they just they they kind of their squeamish and they're willing to just eat it and you know that that's what they want to do that's okay for them okay okay so let's talk more about kind of your progression then um it sounds like you know you progressed as a salesperson you then you had to learn really to become a business owner then as well um were there people a mentor or your partner that had significant influence on you to help you kind of continue to progress in your own career oh yeah um so my the broker in charge he's still a broker in charge of our firm his name's Rob Casam when I when I had my corporate job I'd met Rob and it was going to have him as my broker on future deals but when I shifted and got into real estate I just went to work with Rob underneath of his umbrella that realty world and you know we're still friends today we talk every day he's extremely bright he's got his MBA he's got he's also a commercial broker and he has what's called a CCIM which is a really high level it's the highest designation there is the whole entire real estate world period so when it comes to procedure forms things like that we can solve back and forth we get involved in a lot of bigger deals a lot of different types of deals I do a lot of commercial real estate as well so not just in residential but Rob's a great resource for the industry right from wrong what to do how you do it the right way and then of course I've got you know several friends of mine for my old days and corporate sales that are small business owners in the area that I've stayed in touch with through the years they know they're always giving me good advice we you know we'll go out have lunch or dinner or whatever and I picked their brain and they're I'm lucky they're willing to help me kind of like I'm their little brother or something so to speak you know so they're minded on tours and it's it's been great you know there's no way I can do this on my own yeah okay good so now kind of pulling this together you know with what you see as an opportunity what would be your aspirations over the next five years for the business where would you want it to be in comparison to where it is today well um where I think it's going to be is again I don't want to have 50 agents that you know are adding a lot of value and that it's more of a babysitting exercise where I'd like to be would be building out more of a robust commercial brokerage arm and being able to start to bring people in to my company that can eventually run it I don't want to do this forever and so you know teaching people the foundations the right way to do this coaching them you know letting them have the opportunities to do well and sometimes fail and learn from that as well so you know I don't have a specific number in mind for how many agents I'd like to have I have more of like a vision of how would look Carolina realty advisors you know the commercial arm the residential arm some of the things I'd want to do with different offices different locations things of that nature but it's just incredibly difficult to find people our industry that are really motivated like that because most people get into this initially thinking it's going to be easy I can set my own hours that kind of stuff we've all heard people say that that's deferred this thing from the truth because if you really want to be successful and everybody's definition of that obviously it's going to be different you know you you got to put the time in and you're going to have to work and you know it's a lot of sleepless nights and some big deals at micro sideways at the last second and how to get them to the closing table and a lot of stress but it's worth it in the end yeah okay yeah so you may not have a number of uh realders in mind but you want to have more professional realders that are you know full-time you know that both do residential potentially and commercial or maybe you have individuals that do just you know one or the other specialize in one or the other so that's all yeah I'd rather have to specialize in one or the other and if people want to come in starting out part-time I'm happy to do that as long as we have a talk and there's a clear progression because usually the part-time thing is born out of I don't have the money to go from this directly in the real estate like so when they start that they start in that apprentice program you know they can certainly have a part-time job but you know they could probably have a full-time job even though I wouldn't recommend it but there's a clear segue into getting into the industry at least to start out if they wanted to go part-time okay okay so we're going to be a little cautious on time we've probably got about another five or six minutes um tell us what you like most about your job right now um well I've always like the way that we approach like I've been talking many times about is when we have a consultation appointment um so in order to have a consultation appointment usually somebody out there our trucks go up down the street everywhere somebody out there somehow or another raise their hand it could be a lead that comes through of either a company website um or you know maybe they call in off one of our listings or what have you when that lead comes through it's the initial conversation getting to know that person as best as you can in a short period of time you know most most calls or ten minutes or so but learning enough about them and gaining enough trust to invite them to come in and sit down for a consultation appointment um in my mind our sale is made in that consultation appointment because when someone says Mike I like your approach I trust you I want to work with you whatever and they're willing to sign an agreement it's in one way it's an employment agreement but another way it's a sale and another way for me that it feels good because that's that's when someone says I like you I trust you and I want you to help me on my biggest financial decision I'm making to me that's that's what feels the best about the whole thing and and why I keep doing it you know and I love that we're on the same thing with the listing someone wants me to help them sell their home and we go through a listing appointment and we get to the end and they're like yeah you're a great fit let's go ahead and get started so I love that part about it I like working people helping them you know and I like that when they what you earn their trust okay okay yeah whether it's ten minutes in the first phone call or it's at the end of you know going through how you're going to sell and work at the father home is that it it's a it's that it's the trust that they you feel from them that you enjoy the most right because honestly people I mean you know unless you do this all the time the real state commission keeps throwing out different changes to the contracts every year I mean the purchase contract now 17 pages well when I first started doing this it was five you know and so learning all the different bins and outs and what you can do and you know with everybody want to sue here and there any other thing you know you got to have a broker really knows how to run a business you know not just somebody who's really nice and they couldn't you know they're your buddy's kid or something like that because that that's when you get the trouble and so you know I really enjoy helping people and I love the big wins when I get like a negotiated great deal you know that always makes me feel great or you know help somebody do something they couldn't have done and really change their life okay so maybe similar type of question but tell us what you've learned about yourself you know over the time probably since you let's say from the first part of your career what have you learned about yourself well um gosh you know um when I first started out you know I was really like fire and brimstone in one direction and I realized that it worked for me but if you're going to own a business it doesn't work that way for everybody so you've got to open up loosen up try to help people where they're at which is why I started the apprenticeship program you know or finding somebody who's been doing it one way for four or five years and now it doesn't work anymore and how do we help them you know get rid of all the head trash and you know doing it in a way where you keep them wanting to come back for additional training and really wanting to you know create the environment for them to want to be here versus this is my way the highway as a young guy you know okay so yeah so you've learned you know maybe how to adapt to the new rules and the demands of those new rules right to be successful in them is that what you're saying perfect that's exactly a better way saying it than I did quick summary all right yeah so last last question for you so think of um you know a new person that might be a great you know a realtor today that might be in a position that you were in many years ago or somebody that's starting a new business what would you say to them what kind of advice would you give to them well in the real state world and maybe even in the business world before you decide to own or become manager or anything else I think you really need to get into the sales aspect and be out front and deal with the potential customers in your industry and kind of learn what they want what they don't want um learn how to deal with rejection learn how to learn how to actually do the the job you know um for a while you know in real state you know if you were to get your license today the real state commission you have to have three years of being an agent first before you can become broker in charge so you know they're making you get out there and do it and make sure you like it and you learn before you can just open up your own shop and I would say the same thing and any other business is like don't just you know all of a sudden I woke up tomorrow and I'm just like oh I had this genius attack I'm gonna start selling widgets well before you go too far into it learn it and then find people that can help you um you know build your company but like I've got two great staff that work for me I've a man to clan she's been with I'm I'm at Amanda when it was at a company function she was in her senior year college gave her internship and uh she's stuck with me for the last eight years she's been great she really runs the technology and all her transaction management and having good people behind you to help elevate you is critical yeah you can't do it all on your own okay good advice yeah don't just jump in if you haven't done it you know learn how to do some of the tasks that are there before you jump too far into to running a business okay yep all right well good well Mike we could talk a lot longer I'm sure but we're kind of out of time here so I appreciate you being on the show I think it's very interesting especially given kind of the changes going on in the real estate industry I think maybe a lot of people might have their eye on this and I think you know the model that you've created is interesting and and the stats are still amazing to me I tell you a 11 percent conversion on average versus 95 it's very compelling what you put together so congratulations on that thank you
