How James Houghtaling made 45 sales in his first year by training before day one

James Houghtaling00:00

At the end of the day, it’s accepting that most of the people that you speak to are not gonna do business with you. And if you can accept that, if you can be okay with the fact that, hey, I gotta talk to a lot of people to find the ones who actually are interested in doing something, and then of all those people, only a percentage of them are ever gonna actually do business with me.

00:19If you can get your mind wrapped around that and just keep showing up, you’re gonna succeed.

Loida Velasquez00:28

Brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry to share with you their tips and strategies so that you can implement in your business immediately. Now, today’s guest is a real estate coach, and he’s gonna be sharing a lot of amazing tips, so you might want to make sure that you have a pen and paper ready.

00:49So with that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and bring on James Houghtaling. So James, welcome.

James Houghtaling00:54

Hey, thank you very much, Loida. It’s so great to be here. I appreciate you.

Loida Velasquez00:58

Yes. So for everyone that’s watching that maybe is not familiar with you, just go ahead and give us a little bit about your background.

James Houghtaling01:05

Yeah. Great. This is my 27th year of being involved in coaching and leading events, speaking, et cetera. So I’ve been around for a number of years and really had a lot of opportunity to work one-on-one with not just real estate agents, but team leaders, broker owners, and even some people outside of the initial real estate space from a business perspective.

01:27That was after a successful career myself. I was very fortunate to have great mentorship when I got into the business, and it allowed me to have some early success, and that was kind of the springboard into my career, if you will, as being a coach and a consultant and a speaker. So I’m just blessed.

01:45The real estate industry has been very good to me.

Loida Velasquez01:48

That’s awesome. I wanna take it back to when you were newer in the business. Can you kind of share what that looked like and when you started to see success? ‘Cause I think it’s always cool to see the transformation that agents

02:01end up having.

James Houghtaling02:02

Yeah. Well, for me, my story was a little bit maybe unique or different, and I had the luxury of really being exposed to some high-level training before I ever even got my license. And so I spent a long time, I mean, the better part of a year preparing to get into real estate while I was still in college, believe it or not.

02:22And so by the time I hit the ground running, the day I got my license, I was already in the trenches. I knew how to prospect. I knew how to go do a listing presentation. I knew all of those things. I had a business plan. I had goals. I understood the concept of vision boards and mindset and all of those things that had been instilled in me, and so that allowed me in my first year to have 45 sales knowing nobody.

02:46I literally moved 1,500 miles away from where I grew up and just plunged into a market cold, and I just did what I had been trained to do, which was go knock on doors and prospect and work FSBOs and expireds and connect with people and go make presentations. And so again, that’s not everybody’s story, but it was my story, and it really made for a very fun time for those several years as I continued to expand and grow a small team, and then ultimately I was given opportunities to kind of share with people like, “Hey, how are you doing this?”

03:20And, “Come tell us about how you got started at such a young age.” And so I had those opportunities presented to me to go and speak, and that’s what kinda made the light bulb go off that, hey, I actually enjoy teaching this and presenting on this even more than I do going out and doing it, right?

03:40And that, of course, was before coaching became what it is today, which, I mean, sometimes we joke about it that there’s a new coach every other day, right? That appears on the scene. It was before all that. It was just a little bit different time in the coaching space, but hey, I’m still here, I’m still enjoying what I do, and I love the relationships I’ve built.

Loida Velasquez04:02

That’s awesome. And it’s great that you’re teaching agents and kind of sharing with them your success and what they need to be doing, not doing, and things like that. I think especially now with the way that things are and the way that the real estate market is, it’s really important. What are some of the things that you’re currently talking about with the agents that you are coaching?

04:24Because we’ve seen a lot of agents just kind of leave the business.

James Houghtaling04:27

We have. And let’s be honest, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think for those who were involved in the industry back in 2007 through 2012, we saw a similar, I think on a different level, but we saw a similar thing where the industry was on fire 2005, 2006, even into 2007, and then toward the end of 2007 into 2008, everything came to a screeching halt.

04:51And we went from somewhere around 1.3, 1.4 million licensed agents, that within a couple of years we were down to somewhere around 700,000. We lost a lot of people out of the industry in those years. And yet interestingly, so many agents that I know, and some of them that I had the privilege of working with, had some of their best years in the business in 2009, 2010, 2011, et cetera, because they just stayed true to what they knew they needed to do to find business.

05:21And so today, yeah, we’ve had some shifts. We’ve had some things that have happened that have made things a little bit more difficult than maybe they were a couple of years ago. But when you ask what’s working, conversations are still working. Getting involved in conversations with people, it’s a contact sport, so to speak.

05:41And so the importance of finding ways to connect with people, people still have a need, right? There are still people who need to buy, they need to sell, they choose to invest. Our job is just to figure out who they are and get in front of them and make a compelling case as to why they at least need to meet with us and find out what it is we offer and why they should choose us.

06:03And so for a lot of agents, it’s teaching them those skills, but you know what? Quite honestly, it’s even more important that they have the mindset. That they have that mental belief around themselves and what they bring to the table, because people pick up on that. That is contagious. And so for a lot of agents, the most important thing they’re working on is staying mentally strong and positive and focused on doing their job.

Loida Velasquez06:30

Yeah. I think mindset and the skills is really important. So when it comes to mindset, let’s say an agent is watching this and they’re ready to get to prospecting, making these calls, having these conversations, but perhaps they have call reluctance, or maybe they haven’t had the success that they thought they were gonna have because of all of

06:50the shifts in the market. How do you help agents kind of work through those things?

James Houghtaling06:55

Yeah. Well, I think part of it is accepting that this is just what tends to happen when you start prospecting. In other words, I tell agents all the time, they’ll say things to me like, “Oh, you know, I went out and I spent a couple of hours prospecting, and I only got to talk to X number of people, and I didn’t find a lot of hot leads and whatever.”

07:17And I’ll say to them, “Look, that’s exactly what was supposed to happen.” Meaning, it’s a numbers game, and what you’re experiencing is what everybody else experiences as well. In other words, it’s not you. I mean, yes, there are things we need to work on. We have skills that we need to continuously work on to get better conversions.

07:35We do have tactics and strategies, some of which might get a little bit better results than others. But at the end of the day, it’s accepting that most of the people that you speak to are not gonna do business with you. And if you can accept that, if you can be okay with the fact that, hey, I gotta talk to a lot of people to find the ones who actually are interested in doing something, and then of all those people, only a percentage of them are ever gonna actually do business with me.

08:05If you can get your mind wrapped around that and just keep showing up, you’re gonna succeed.

Loida Velasquez08:10

So when it comes to the skills, the way that I see things and I tell agents is, I feel that once your skills are very good, you feel more confident with having these conversations.

08:23You have better conversations.

08:25You’re not afraid of the nos. If someone yells or anything, you move on, because you’re so excited. I know that that’s how it was for me. I was excited when people would yell at me, ’cause I’m like, “I’m that much closer to somebody that needs my help.” So

08:39when it comes to skills, what are the skills, and what does a daily schedule need to look like for an agent to make sure that they have the skills that will be able to have great conversations and convert these leads?

James Houghtaling08:52

Yeah. Okay. That’s a great question, and it’s kind of a twofold question. So there’s different types of skills.

08:58As you mentioned, there’s communication skills, there’s actual prospecting skills, there’s closing skills, objection handling skills, presenting skills. So there’s a lot of skill sets, so to speak. And listen, how do we learn anything in life, right? If there’s anything we’ve ever gotten good at in life, I don’t care if it’s playing a guitar or juggling or shooting a basketball or whatever it is, it’s come through repetition, right?

09:30Repetition is the mother of all skill, and skill is the mother of separation. In other words, how do you get better? How do you separate yourself from everybody else? You just improve your skills. The better your skills are, the more separation you create, but the only way you’re gonna improve your skills is through repetition.

09:45And let’s be honest, it’s boring, right? It’s boring to have to continually go through and rehearse and practice. But that’s how professionals have been doing it for decades. If you look at professional athletes, they may practice an entire week to play a one-hour game. And so first of all, it’s understanding that it’s just gonna take time.

10:07I wish, believe me, I’ve said this to clients many times, I wish that there was some way to just take a thumb drive and stick it in our ear and, whoop, everything just gets downloaded instantly into our brains and we’re ready to go. But that’s not the way it works. So you gotta put in the time, you gotta put in the work.

10:23You must commit to practicing every single day, just like every other professional does. And you gotta have people that want to see you and help you get better. Not people that are just gonna keep telling you, “Yeah, that’s great,” but people that are gonna say, “Hey, you know what? You probably should’ve asked a few more questions,” or, “You probably should’ve closed me a couple more times.”

10:42So your schedule, yeah, it’s gotta reflect time on practice, for sure.

Loida Velasquez10:48

How much time would you recommend for agents to be practicing daily?

James Houghtaling10:53

Hey, if I told you my real number, everybody would be like, “What is he, a lunatic?” But again, think about what we said a minute ago. Professional musicians, they might practice their different songs or their lineup or whatever they’re gonna be performing.

11:08They might practice four to six hours a day. There’s athletes, and we see the stories all the time, and we read the biographies, and we watch the specials on Netflix of these athletes that will practice hours and hours and hours a day, right? Now, realistically, we’re not gonna be able to go practice our scripts and skills for four hours a day.

11:28But you know what? If you’re newer, or if you know that there’s a certain area that you need to get better at, hey, you gotta make the time. I would say an hour. You need to be putting in an hour of just going through and practicing and rehearsing and getting it down. If you’re just kinda trying to keep the blade sharp, I think 30 minutes.

11:47Minimum 30 minutes.

Loida Velasquez11:49

But if not, an hour or more. What would be that number that you said probably would scare people? I wanna know.

James Houghtaling11:57

It would probably be multiple hours a day, three to four hours a day. I mean, again, no one’s gonna do that. That’s not realistic necessarily, but I’m telling you, if someone ever did that, and there probably have been some who have, you would be so good, so much faster.

12:13And the truth is, though, that we can’t, obviously we can’t practice all day and not go play. We have to get out there and play. We have to make our actual calls. We have to go visit people. We have to set up coffee dates with our database, and we have to do all the actual things.

12:31But my belief is, and it has been for a long time, that agents just minimize… They talk about role play and scripts practice and all that, and they agree. See, here’s the thing. We need to stop treating it like it’s just a good idea, and actually start doing it as though it was a requirement for our success.

12:48And if you can make that transition and just stop agreeing that, “Yeah, it’s a good thing, I probably should do it more.” How about you actually do it? Commit to minimum 30 minutes or maybe an hour a day, and mix it up a little bit. You’re not doing the same thing every day, obviously. One day you might work on your expired scripts.

13:05One day you might work on your FSBO scripts. Another day you might work on your database scripts, your listing presentation, your commission objection, whatever. So you gotta mix it up.

Loida Velasquez13:14

Yeah. And as we’re getting close to wrapping up this year, what are some of the things that you are having your agents start to do to set themselves up for a successful 2025?

James Houghtaling13:25

Man, that’s a great question, and what I’ve been saying so far this week is that, look, we got about three weeks-ish until we kind of break for Christmas and the end of the year and all of that. Think of this as it’s your trial run, it’s your test run. So by now, your business plan and your goals and everything should be established for 2025.

13:43You should know what you’re gonna do. You should know the tweaks and adjustments that have to be made. You should know the things that you’re not going to be doing anymore that just haven’t worked. And so this next three weeks is a chance to actually start implementing some of those tweaks, some of those adjustments.

13:59Maybe it’s a different source of prospecting. But whatever it is you do, you need to be working. You need to show up, because the majority of agents begin to scale back, or they’ve already started to scale back in terms of how often they show up at the office, how many people they speak to.

14:16They’re kind of in this cruise and coast mode. And so if you’re willing to show up at the office and do your job and work and go talk to people, man, you can get such a head start. So just treat these next three weeks like it’s the test run, it’s the trial run. You wanna have everything polished and worked out so that by January 1st or 2nd you’re in full speed mode going forward.

Loida Velasquez14:42

So if someone’s watching this and maybe this is their first or second year in the business, and they’re trying to figure out what they should analyze to see what they need to change for next year, what are some of the key things that you would recommend?

James Houghtaling14:55

Yes. Again, great questions. Part of analyzing and seeing what to adjust assumes that you’ve been tracking and paying attention to things, because you can’t adjust what you can’t see, right?

15:11And so for a lot of agents, part of the problem is they don’t track their numbers, so they don’t really know how they got to where they are, good or bad. But I would say that if you know just intuitively, even if you don’t have the number in front of you, but if you know you went on a bunch of appointments this year and you didn’t get a lot of contracts signed, then I would say, look, you gotta be working on your presentation skills, right?

15:34You’ve gotta be working on those things that you’re gonna do in the moment to get someone to say yes to working with you. Maybe for some agents it’s just like, “Hey, I gotta have more connection with people I know, more of my database. I need to stop being the secret agent. I need to maybe get out and visit some people this time of year and bring them a little something for the holiday and just connect and get a commitment that, ‘Hey, in this next year, I’d just love to stay in touch a little bit more often if that’s okay with you, and here’s what that looks like.'”

16:05It’s a really easy way to be in the trenches, so to speak, at this time of year. There’s lots of great things you can talk about with people. But again, if you’re looking for what to tweak, the biggest things you have to measure are how many people a day am I conversing with? How many leads am I adding to my pipeline?

16:25How many appointments am I getting set or am I going on? And how many people are saying, “Yes, we wanna work with you”? Pay attention to those things, and start now. Don’t wait till January.

Loida Velasquez16:39

And I think it’s very important for agents to be disciplined when it comes to tracking all of this information.

16:45And not just do it for like a month, a week-

16:48and then they fall off, and then you as a coach, you ask them, “Hey, what were your numbers last year?” And they don’t know. Out of all those things that you mentioned, is there one specifically that you see is a very common one that agents usually fall off on, or are not doing correctly?

James Houghtaling17:07

You mean as far as their numbers and things?

Loida Velasquez17:09

Yeah, as far as something that they’re not tracking.

James Houghtaling17:13

Yeah. Quite honestly, it’s probably the most basic thing, and that is, how many actual real estate conversations a day are you having? Seriously, how many people are you getting into a real estate conversation with?

17:27And by the way, that doesn’t just mean a cold call or going to knock on an expired door. That might be you’re in line at the coffee shop and you just get talking to somebody, and then you got a little bit of rapport going, and you just say, “Hey, what do you do for work?” And they say, “Oh, I’m an accountant,” or, “Oh, I’m a teacher,” or, “Oh, I’m a,” whatever.

17:51Most of the time, reciprocity says that person’s gonna ask you the same question. “What about you?” And then you’ve got your open door. “Hey, I’m actually a professional real estate agent.” And immediately, as soon as you say that to somebody, the first question almost all the time, “Oh, how’s the market?” And now you’ve got the open door

18:09to start talking about real estate. So point is, you can create real estate conversations pretty easily. But how many people a day are you actually speaking to about real estate? And look, again, your income is directly tied to that number of conversations. So if you’re looking at your income for this year and you’re saying, “Man, I wish I’d made a little bit more.

18:33I’d really like to make a little bit more next year,” the simplest thing is just add more conversations a day. Find more ways to get into conversation with people where it might end up uncovering a need that they have that you can then address.

Loida Velasquez18:50

Exactly. So for any agent that’s watching this and maybe is like, “You know what?

18:55I want James as my coach. Everything he’s saying is making sense,” tell us a little bit more about how they can find you, the coaching with GloverU, and anything else that you wanna share.

James Houghtaling19:06

Yeah. Well, that would be wonderful, first of all. And I would say, look, from the standpoint of GloverU specifically, it’s like, hey, check out some of the free resources.

19:16Get an idea of just what it is as an organization that we stand for, what are our values, what are the things we talk about. And the easiest way to do that is go check out our social media on YouTube, and there’s a GloverU app you can download that’s got all kinds of resources. But if you know you already want some coaching, then you just reach out.

19:38Reach out to probably info@gloveru and just ask, like, “Hey, what are the different options? What does that look like?” ‘Cause there’s one-on-one coaching, there’s group coaching, there’s different things that are available as far as some of these tools and resources. And hey, if you say, “Yeah, I would love to work with James,” most of the time they’ll try to make that work, right?

20:00But just, again, maybe come to an event, or check us out on social media and listen to some of the trainings. There’s a ton of incredible content. And quite honestly, we have a great relationship with you guys at Vulcan7. That’s a big part of our organization, is supporting you guys, and you’re a tremendous resource for so many of our agents and our clients.

20:25So we already have that connection back and forth between our two organizations.

Loida Velasquez20:30

Awesome. So what are three things, as we wrap this up, that agents need to be doing right now?

James Houghtaling20:37

Three things right now. Number one is, if you don’t have it, finish your business plan. Finish your roadmap for 2025. You need to know where you’re going.

20:47Clarity is power, right? So you have to know where you’re going. I think number two is you need to establish your game plan for December. Like right now, how many days are you gonna work this month, and what is your commitment in terms of conversations with people? Decide now. Don’t just stumble into it one day at a time, but create a plan for what are you actually gonna do to be productive in, or excuse me, in December of 2024.

21:10And I think the third thing is really just make a decision on one other aspect of your business that you’re committed to improving, and begin to take some steps. Maybe it’s your social media. Maybe it’s like, “Hey, I know I gotta get more consistent around content creation on social media.” Maybe it’s your skills, like we talked about.

21:29Like, “I’m gonna get serious. I’m gonna start practicing.” Maybe it’s, like we said, the database. You’re gonna start loving on your people more. But just pick one thing, one thing that you’re really gonna go deep on and build the habit. Build the habit now, like we said before, so that by the time January gets here, you’re already in motion.

Loida Velasquez21:48

Awesome. Perfect. I love all those three. And James, thank you so much for everything that you have shared in the past couple minutes. I’m sure that there’s gonna be some agents that are gonna watch this a couple of times, probably take notes, reach out. Maybe they’ll reach out to GloverU. But once again, thank you so much for being here, and I’m sure that we’ll have to do this again.

James Houghtaling22:07

Yeah, I would love to. And thank you. I really do appreciate the opportunity, so I wish everybody a wonderful holiday season as we close out the year.

Loida Velasquez22:14

Yes, thank you. We’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

James Houghtaling22:17

Okay. Bye-bye.