In this conversation, my friend and colleague Jake Black joins me from my office, EXIT Realty Advantage here in Fredericton. By the end of our conversation, you'll have a few new strategies to build a thriving client base and stand out in the competitive world of real estate.
We talk through some daily challenges encountered by realtors, highlighting the importance of managing expectations and building strong relationships with clients. We've got some good notes for new agents and give practical advice on navigating setbacks and securing pivotal early sales while tapping into your personal network.
I'm your host, Micaiah Gosman and The MGR Podcast is where I talk with Real people, about real money and real estate. To connect with me you can visit my Website or follow me on Instagram or Facebook
In this conversation, my friend and colleague Jake Black joins me from my office, EXIT Realty Advantage here in Fredericton. By the end of our conversation, you'll have a few new strategies to build a thriving client base and stand out in the competitive world of real estate.
We talk through some daily challenges encountered by realtors, highlighting the importance of managing expectations and building strong relationships with clients. We've got some good notes for new agents and give practical advice on navigating setbacks and securing pivotal early sales while tapping into your personal network.
I'm your host, Micaiah Gosman and The MGR Podcast is where I talk with Real people, about real money and real estate. To connect with me you can visit my Website or follow me on Instagram or Facebook
Micaiah:
Hey, welcome back to the MGR podcast, where we talk with real people about real money and real estate. Today we've got an exciting episode planned for you. We've got a special guest on, jake Black. He's also a realtor here in Fredericton, with me working at Exit, and we're going to chat about a little bit of everything. We're going to talk about business. We're going to chat about tips for new realtors. We're going to chat about the current market, what we're kind of seeing. We're going to talk about success, how he defines it. We're going to talk about his routine and just how he's kind of got to where he is and built his business to where he is. So we're going to dive right in and here we go.
Micaiah:
So, jake man, how are you doing today? Doing well, good, good, well, good to have you. So, jake, you and I work together pretty much all day, every day, so we know each other pretty well. But for everybody listening, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us, kind of where you came from, where you kind of grew up and what you used to do before doing what you're currently doing.
Jake:
Well, I'm from Hampton, new Brunswick, which is just. I spent the majority of my youth in Hampton, which is just about half an hour from where you grew up in Sussex. Great, my youth in Hampton, which is just about half an hour from where you grew up in Sussex.
Jake:
And then I spent the other half of growing up, through high school years in Marymarchie, which is a little bit further out here up north in New Brunswick, I went straight to car sales right out of school, sold cars in Moncton for Raleigh Motors, which is a large auto group there about five dealerships they had, or six at the time Did that for the better part of two and a half years, kind of moved up through the ranks a little bit there. I ended up with a good position there. And then when COVID hit, the market for real estate spiked and I made the transition down to Fredericton because it was the best place at that time to be selling houses. I'm a realtor with Exit Realty here in Fredericton. So I do basic real estate sales, I do residential and commercial. I love that. I've been doing it since November of 2020.
Jake:
So I'm almost about to hit my three-year mark. Yeah, three years which is I mean the three years are the first, hardest years. That's what they say. They say after three years it gets easier. So we'll see if that's true. We'll see it's tough. And then two I work with a property management company to manage new apartment buildings. So I deal with tenants and leasing and filling those places, keeping them maintained, things like that. It is a very stressful job. It's a stressful career. It's a stressful industry. There's all kind of moving parts and everyone has their hand in the same basket dealing with lenders.
Jake:
They're getting paid based on commission realtors getting paid based on commission, same as the selling agents or the buying agent. And then, obviously, too, you need to keep your clients best interest in mind. I think that anything can only be as stressful as you let it be right. So we we know we know this in sales training that all conflict in any transaction or any relationship professional, romantic friendships, whatever all conflict comes from a difference in expectations. In the same scenario, right, if you expect one thing, one outcome, and I expect a different outcome and it's not communicated, and then this outcome comes and one of us is unhappy.
Jake:
So I think that a big part of your journaling that you should do every day and a big part of your expectations that you need to set with yourself is that this isn't going to be easy, it's a stressful environment, it's going to be hard. So then, during the times that you do feel the stress and you feel the weight of all this pressure coming on you, you just have to think to yourself rather than, oh my god, this is so stressful. You just think to yourself I knew this was coming, this is good. You know, I expected this, you know the strain is necessary to improve and also, too, the stress becomes a lot less detrimental, like, I'm sure, as you can remember being year one and I remember being year one, you know a home inspection going south was like the end of the world. Yeah, now a home inspection goes south, we know. Okay, you know, either we're either we're gonna get it together or we're not, and we're gonna find them a different house.
Micaiah:
But regardless, the stress level doesn't come yeah, same way, yeah, and it just comes with kind of experience and learning. The workarounds for every bad situation that kind of comes, you know, after you know two, three years of doing this, you go through a lot of transactions and, like you say, every deal is different. You learn something new every time. So managing expectations for your clients can go a huge way in not having blowups, blow up even more kind of thing. So because we're realtors, I think it's kind of fair to give a little bit of wisdom to other realtors and just some kind of tips for realtors that are maybe stuck in a bit of a slump, maybe new realtors that are just just starting and they're kind of looking for, you know, where can we kind of find those first deals, what can we do? So I'm going to give them a tip and then, uh, and then you can, you know, think hopefully it's not going to be the same tip, but uh, think on it and then just give, give your thoughts on where somebody can, you know, do something. So my first tip for new realtors and stuff that are kind of listening in or maybe you've been doing it a while and you're just stuck in a slump my biggest source of clients and deals has come from my, like, sphere of influence. Now, I know that everybody obviously doesn't have that, but everybody has some kind of influence somewhere right.
Micaiah:
When I first started, I made a list of like over a hundred names and just put them in Excel, got all their numbers or had them in my phone and I literally just stayed up like all night texting people saying hey, you know, I'm in real estate, or hey, I'm just just reminding you I'm still in real estate. If you or anybody you know is interested in buying, or hey, I'm just reminding you I'm still in real estate. If you or anybody you know is interested in buying or selling or just wants to know anything about the market, just reach out and please let me know, kind of thing. No-transcript they buy a house and two months later they're like oh, actually I want to sell, you know. So you know, just stay in contact with them and just reach out to people, keep doing follow-up and reaching out. But that's my kind of tip. I hope that that's beneficial in some way. Or maybe just a reminder to hey, you know, maybe I should text that person that I've been thinking about for a while. But yeah, that's my tip. What can you?
Jake:
give them. Well, I have two things, so one, I'll touch on your point A lot of us don't have a sphere depending. You know, like I said, um, at the beginning, I moved here to sell real estate, which is, I was told by every single person I had known and respected that that was the craziest and stupidest thing they ever heard. Um, because you know they're going to pick the big name over you. They're going to want to work with other people that they know or from their community or whatever. I think that is not true, um, in essence, cause I think that you know, if you think back to why you picked, you know your real estate professionally. You and your wife bought your first house with um. It wasn't really based on it really wasn't based on anything more than a feeling, a positive feeling if you're able to leave a lasting, good first impression on somebody. That that's going to matter.
Jake:
That's the most important thing, I think, for beginning agents to realize is you know if, use whatever advantage you have. If you are not a big name and you are not someone that's done 100 transactions, use that to your advantage. Say, listen, I'm eager. Um, this is new for me, I'm ready to learn, and no one's going to work harder for you than I am. Yeah, because I need this deal worse than anyone does, you know, and I need to make sure that you find your dream home.
Jake:
So then you give me more clients, and this is this. They're very reliant on that. Yeah, um, you know. And and also to um to, to that point of you know, like finding your very first deal is, um, you only need to find your first deal one time. Right, like I know it sounds basic and silly, but like if you just go all in on your very first transaction, like, yeah, you know, we don't sell very many houses every year, we don't, we don't you know, either one of us sell 70, 80, 90 houses and the majority of real estate agents in the normal 50 percent of range that are comfortable with their lives.
Jake:
They're only selling 25 or 30 houses a year. Your commissions are going to be decent on their first house, yeah. So if you need to do, if you know nobody, my suggestion for brand new realtors here's here's what you can quote here. It is if you're a brand new realtor and you need one deal, you can. Door knocking will always work. Now people think about door knocking and they think, okay, well, you know, I can knock 10 doors or I can knock 20 doors.
Jake:
When it comes to any kind of cold outreach whether it be cold email, cold calling, door knocking they're all cold things. You should be measuring by the hundreds or by the thousands, not by the 10, because we realistically I know people um, or you know a good example is like bell, alliant and rogers. They have door-to-door guys that make great money and they can hit up to 200 doors in a day. If you can tell you to tell yourself okay, I have to, I have to hit 1000 doors, which I think's too many. I think you can get two deals out of 1,000 doors, oh yeah.
Jake:
But I mean, what's that? Four days, yeah, four days of work for your first real estate transaction, and then you did it. And then you said you could do it. You know what I mean and you accomplished it. So it's really just about picking a cold outreach method if you don't have a sphere of like FUs on the phone and just like discouraging talk of like you know, don't bother me, and you get very discouraged and you think this is never going to work. But in reality it's just always a numbers game. Yeah, the colder always yeah.
Micaiah:
Now there, there is a time when I'm going to have Jake back on this and we're going to talk in more detail about what he's doing currently, right now, to get more clients. We're not going to talk about that today, no, because I'm still doing it to get clients and I'm not giving it to you.
Micaiah:
But one of the things but the point of it, my point behind kind of want to talk about it eventually is he's been super consistent with it and it's proof that kind of consistency is key, you know. But if you look at me, if you ask you know Jake, other realtors in my office, my wife, you know my marketing director, anything like this they'll all tell you the same thing that I'm kind of just all over the place, like I do a little bit of everything, like I'll sit down with Jake and we'll cold call like straight for a week, or I'll go and we'll go door knocking for a week and I'll just try a little bit of everything. I'm kind of all over the place, but my, my niche and my way of getting clients isn't or hasn't been you know that. You know thousand cold calls or thousand door knocks.
Micaiah:
Um, it hasn't been that, but it may. That may just be something that you have to do, um, if you're in a different situation. So, but whatever it is, whatever it is that you're doing and what I'm doing is is different now but whatever it is, um, you just need to be consistent in it and, uh, you know you need to do it for a full year, or a six months to a year at least, because because then you'll get kind of you'll hit every season of the real estate market and you just gotta be consistent with it and um and just just stay busy and not stay busy.
Jake:
Stay productive, um yeah, and also to, to, to touch on that, it's, you know, as you said, when it comes to consistency, that's going to be the most important thing. When it comes to prospecting in general, whether we're talking about cold or reach, or we're talking about sphere of influence, marketing or drip campaigns or whatever, it's always based around consistency. Yeah, you know, you're, you're, you're making, you're building a mountain, one layer of paint at a time, so you know, would you brush your teeth six times in one day because you didn't brush them all week?
Jake:
no, you wouldn't.
Jake:
You'd brush your teeth, you know once a day every week, so yeah, but I mean, when it comes to consistency, it always just comes back to choosing the path of least resistance. Yeah, finding something you can consistently manage every day and picking that. You know, anybody can do 100 doors in a day, but not everybody can do 20 doors for five days a week, and that's what's important is that you can do 20. We just talked about this recently. It also would tie into how to prevent burnout as well, too. Is just, you know what can I do every single day, like brushing my teeth?
Micaiah:
that is an effort towards prospecting and will positively compound you know yeah so it's about finding that yeah, and when we, when I first kind of started in real estate, one of the first tips I got was, you know, from somebody who said, like business cards, even just business cards, like hand out, you know 25 business cards a day or five business cards a day, right, five business cards a day turns into like, say, 25 a week. If you're just doing like a five day week and then like a hundred a month, so you're handing out 1200, you know you're reaching 1200 people. You know, just through business cards that are just you know, go around, hand them out, talk to somebody, make conversations. But if you're consistent with that, that also is going to kind of translate into some deals. You might not convert as much or as high on that, but it's one of those things that's consistent. You know you're getting your name out there, talking to people, making conversations happen.
Micaiah:
Jake, I just really appreciate you coming on here and it's been a lot of fun and Jake's definitely going to be back. You know, as we kind of progress through our careers and as we do different things, you know we're going to come on and talk about it One day. Jake's going to share some info about his secret to getting clients. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, man, no, it's been awesome. So thanks everybody so much for tuning in. Tuning in.
Micaiah:
This is the MGR podcast. If you have any questions at all or want to get connected, you can check out my website at gosmanca anytime. And other than that, I look forward to having you on the next episode. See you later. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you have any questions or want to learn more, feel free to check out my website at gosmanca Wherever you're listening from. Leave me a five-star review and let me know what you'd like to see in future episodes. Also, and let me know what you'd like to see in future episodes. Also, if you're a buyer or a seller and looking for some guidance in this ever-changing real estate market, I wanna work with you. So get in touch today through my website at gosmanca, or you can search Makai Gosman Realtor on Google and get connected with me through any of my social media platforms. Thanks so much. We'll catch you on the next episode. We'll catch you on the next episode.