How Patrick Southern took 32 listings in one month and still nets 90 percent by running a lean team

Ren Jones00:06

Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a great agent who is consistently taking two, three, four listings a week, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of the knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. So be ready to write, type, whatever — you want to record as much of this information as you can and get there as fast as you can. You’re going to have an opportunity to ask questions as we get near the end of the show and at the bottom of the hour. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway, that’s carleyhathaway.com. Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway00:53

Hi. Hi everybody, thanks for joining us. Real estate is amazing, San Diego’s a really hot market right now, so great time to take listings.

Ren Jones01:03

It is, isn’t it? Good. And I like your price point there.

Carley Hathaway01:07

Yeah.

Ren Jones01:07

Talk about the Vulcan7 challenge. Carley, I know you heard it last week — Bernie Geller and Annie — we didn’t even talk about the Vulcan7 challenge, and he said early at the beginning he was hopping on planes, and every two or three weeks he was flying and shadowing people he was convinced were doing a lot more than him, to get in their head, find out what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. He did that for several months, so he followed the Vulcan7 challenge even though that’s not what it was called — he just wanted to learn. So what our Vulcan7 challenge is: once a month, shadow a great agent in another market that’s doing what you want to do, taking two, three, four listings a week. Either drive two, three, four hours to another market or get on a plane — just get on a plane. Get there that afternoon, have dinner with them if they’re available, get to their office early in the morning, follow them around, record what they’re doing, download an app to record the audio, take a lot of notes, go to lunch with them, head back home. If you do that once a month, at the end of 12 months you have 12 amazing friends who are highly successful, and you become one of them.

Carley Hathaway02:17

That’s pretty exciting.

Ren Jones02:19

So before I introduce our guest, I want to remind everyone we are also simulcasting the show on the private Lead Gen group on Facebook — they have 40,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well, and we’ll be pausing for a little commercial message later in the show as a thank you to them. If you want to get involved with them, they’re at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections, all one word. Over a decade ago — well over a decade ago — our guest got in the business working mostly buyers, seven days a week, and was barely eking out a modest listing. He switched to sellers, followed best practices, and he’ll share what that is, and overnight his life changed dramatically, and he became a powerful listing machine. Years later, he has a highly profitable real estate business and a great life. From Hoboken, New Jersey — and I warned you, Patrick, you won’t hear the applause even though there are a lot of people watching, you’ll hear Carley applaud and I’ll applaud — Patrick Southern from Hoboken. Hey, buddy, how are you? How you doing, Patrick?

Carley Hathaway03:33

Hi, Patrick.

Patrick Southern03:34

Hi, Carley.

Ren Jones03:35

Good to have you here.

Patrick Southern03:37

Of course, my friend, it’s been a long time.

Ren Jones03:39

I know, it has been a while. It’s good to see you.

Patrick Southern03:42

I’m Jersey City based, by the way.

Ren Jones03:44

Jersey City based, okay, right next to Hoboken. You were in Jersey City — are you the same company?

Patrick Southern03:52

No, I did something pretty interesting about a year and a half ago, and I got a pretty good opportunity to go to a different place, which actually hasn’t been done yet in the country that I’m aware of. Part of the problem with brokerage is that the agents take so much money that the brokerage can’t make any money. When the brokerage can’t make any money, they can’t support the agents. When they can’t support the agents, the agent then can’t give a service out to their sellers. About a year and a half ago I was able to make a connection with this very big REIT out of New York City called Dixon Advisory — it’s a $1.2 billion New York REIT. What’s exciting about that is I have access to their 150-plus person back office staff, to allow myself to provide even more service to the end user. So it’s a pretty incredible opportunity, and most importantly, it’s just really exciting for the sellers to be able to have more services. Let’s face it, we don’t provide good enough and strong enough service as an industry as a whole, so it’s nice to be able to take care of people at a higher level.

Ren Jones05:00

That is nice, that is nice.

Patrick Southern05:02

Yeah.

Ren Jones05:03

So that changes it up quite a bit.

Patrick Southern05:05

It does.

Ren Jones05:06

And how long have you been doing what you changed to?

Patrick Southern05:09

So I’ve been there a year and a half, but my business still runs exactly the same. I’m an independent contractor that gets up and takes listings every single day — it’s just they happen to be the owner of the company, that’s all. So I’m in exactly the same spot as when you and I met a decade ago.

Ren Jones05:26

Yeah.

Patrick Southern05:27

Nothing much has changed except the owner of the company is just a very different animal.

Ren Jones05:34

Fantastic. Well, it’s exciting to hear. And I said this to Bernie last week as well — you’re way up here at this point. A lot of people on here maybe are taking two listings a month, some less, some more, maybe three or four, and they want to get to six and eight and 10. So if we look at your year two, year three and year four, we can really focus in on that so they can see what that’s like, because it happened pretty fast once you said, “Oh, this is how you do it.” It took a lot of energy — now you’re selling a lot more with a lot less energy — but if they can get that picture, it would really help them.

Patrick Southern06:20

It’s almost painful to think back on it. I say to myself sometimes, would I ever be able to do it again? And I don’t know what the answer to that question is. I think what people have to realize is that nothing worthwhile tends to come easy. You’ve got to put the time in on yourself with skills, and you’ve got to be extremely focused on being able to provide the best service that you can. Offering that service means getting better at what your skill set is — the better you can present, the better you can negotiate, the better it is for the client and everyone involved in the transaction. But getting to that point, you’ve got to make sure that you’re relentless about getting your skills where they need to be.

Ren Jones07:14

And when you say skills, what are those skills? What are we talking about specifically?

Patrick Southern07:18

Everything from client acquisition to presentation to negotiation. Really the basis of our business should only be looking for work, presenting work, and negotiating on work — that’s what we’ve got to spend our time on. I linked up when I was 21 or 22 with the Ferry organization, Mike Ferry, the real Ferry, and I’m still with them now. I owe everything to them. They give you a clear-cut plan, it’s based on hard work and telling the truth, and if that plan is followed — at least this was for me — you could actually do something. But it takes time. It took years to start to get the snowball to roll down the hill and build up speed and size. Now that it has, it’s a lot easier to look back on, but the sacrifice you have to make early in the business is tough.

Ren Jones08:19

What would you boil that down to, to make it tangible? It’s year two or year three, and all of a sudden you’re a declared listing agent. Every morning you’re making calls to find somebody that will list with you. What was that struggle? Picture yourself in that day and time — what were the walls you were hitting?

Patrick Southern08:45

Every phase of the business you’re in, there’s a new wall to either climb or break through, so I don’t know if the walls ever stop. But back then, the hardest part was being okay with the fact that you have to wake up unemployed daily and go look for work. It was scary. What I found myself doing — which I’m better at now — it took a long time to realize that action is not necessarily progress. Sometimes action can just be action. Waking up, going through the motions of your day, getting in and prospecting doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good prospecting, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re calling the right people. Once you determine what that plan is, what you’re trying to accomplish, is when things start to accelerate. It’s almost like if someone says, “Hey, let’s go to the beach” — you don’t just get in your car and start driving. You find out, do I go north or south? What’s the best way to get there? When I get there, what beach do I go to? You find out where you’re going well in advance of getting into the car. So treat your work day very similar to that, where you’ve got to know where you’re going from the second you step into the office, not just get around and start banging on the phones. You’ve got to have real intention. I think that’s one of the biggest roadblocks to get past.

Carley Hathaway10:09

So when you first started, you were calling and prospecting — what did your schedule look like? When did you get on the phones, what were your goals for the day?

Patrick Southern10:19

Not much different than today. The hardest thing is I now have kids in the mix, so it’s not as selfish of a day as it used to be. You wake up, take care of yourself in the morning, some sort of workout on some level. I would typically get to the office much earlier than I do now, usually around 7:00 or 7:30. I’d prepare everyone that I was going to start calling, take care of all the stuff that happened the night before — we’re in the northeast here, a New York mindset, where unfortunately you work really long hours, it’s expected, so a lot of stuff comes in over the evenings. I’d take care of that, I’d role play and get stronger on the phone, and then I’d start banging probably around 8:30 or so, through 12:00.

Carley Hathaway11:15

And what was on the top of your list to start calling down? Did you start with expireds, did you start with FSBOs?

Patrick Southern11:21

Expireds, for sale by owners, past clients, old expireds, and just listed, just sold — the stronger stuff first. And right or wrong, I would always throw in strong lead follow-up in that time also. I never separated the two. Technically I think you’re supposed to, by the rules of the organization of how it goes, but I’ve always included lead follow-up in my prospecting time. So if I had someone that was warm from the day before, I damn well was banging on them the next day.

Carley Hathaway11:59

And how did you get past getting beat up on the phones and stick with it?

Patrick Southern12:06

You’ve got to want it more than the pain of the fight. I like to win. I don’t like not winning. My mindset is, if I’m going to play, I’m going to win. And I never viewed the negative stuff as anything but positive. I think the title of the book is Go for No — a very interesting book about the sales world, where you never really viewed the no’s as bad. They were just part of what you had to go through to get to a yes. He was trying to have less of a valley between peaks, get the yes’s closer together. Over time that just happens because of skill set. How many contacts I used to have to make back then, I’d have to look, but it probably wasn’t like the 60s or 70s, where now it’s in the teens.

Carley Hathaway13:09

Just from focusing on your skill set, overcoming the no’s?

Patrick Southern13:14

Yeah, 100%, and just getting better on the calls. It’s skill. Just because someone’s an expired, 10 people can call on it, but there’s a reason why I’ll get the appointment — it’s skill. And the sooner you can get yourself detached from the outcome… Mike always says you’ve got to detach yourself from the outcome of the call and really focus on what that client needs. You get so much further when you’re not looking at trying to make money or make a commission. If you can really go after the needs of that person — your pay is really a direct byproduct of the services you’re offering. If you’re wondering what kind of service you offer, just go look at what your 1099 was. It’s a direct comparison. People will gravitate to you when they know you’re not there for your own needs, you’re there for them.

Ren Jones14:10

It sounds hokey, but that’s really what we’re here to do — help people with their assets. The byproduct is to earn money off it, but our job is to help them. I’ve heard you say that before and it really stood out in my mind, because if all of our focus is on how do I help this person accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish, then the right words come out of your mouth. They can tell — they know if that’s your intention or if you have commission breath.

Patrick Southern14:39

It’s so easy for them to pick up on it. When you treat people like human beings, they treat you like a human being. One of the things early on that I never understood, that I see more clearly now, is when you’re with that prospect, you never know what else there is. If you’re looking at them like they’re an expired listing, that’s all they are — but they could be a lot more than that. Unless you’re willing to ask questions and get to that point of helping someone, you never know what’s behind that door. If you’re not focused on yourself and you’re focused on them, you could find out you can’t help them with that listing, but the 15 others they have, you can. So you never know what’s there until you go for it.

Patrick Southern15:35

You’ve got to play the game long — everything’s got to be played long. You’ve got to play the clients long, play the game long. Nothing is meant to be just a quick turn and burn, it’s not sustainable that way. And the other thing I see a lot of agents getting into trouble with, I’ll give this example: you see so many people in the industry, when the market’s good, they run to the North Pole and want to list luxury; then the market’s bad, they run to the South Pole and they’re short-sale experts. But the amount of time it takes to get your boat all the way from the North Pole down to the South Pole, you can never stay on top of where the market is, because your pivot is wrong — you’re trying to go to two different extremes. You’ve almost got to visualize the business as built around the equator. When things get good, you flip up a little bit; things get bad, you flip down a little bit. You stay right there, because it makes you faster to accommodate market change. When things are good, you focus on the business plan of when they’re not; when things are not good, you focus on the business plan of when they are, because life is happening so fast you can’t adjust in real time. You’ve got to be ahead of what things are doing. Part of the reason for the move I made with my company is we’ve all got technology breathing down our necks, and it’s a very highly paid commission industry. One day Zillow Realty is going to open up and it’s going to be a big problem. If you don’t have a special service to provide, and you walk into a listing presentation talking about your marketing, you’re in big trouble. You’ve got to figure out a way to stay ahead of the times. If you think life stays like this, you’re very wrong — it’s moving very fast, and you’ve got to constantly be working on what’s next, not what today is, because it’s too late today.

Ren Jones17:28

So there are people on here who’ve been in the business 10, 12, 15, 18 years, and they’re on here because they want to learn how to take two or three listings a week. Let’s go back to your second year or so, when you were a declared listing agent developing a morning routine. How many listings were you taking then, and how many contacts did you have to make in a day? Were you calling all the way through the afternoon?

Patrick Southern17:57

I probably didn’t do much — probably like 40 a year or something like that.

Ren Jones18:04

40 listings sold a year?

Patrick Southern18:07

Yeah, probably that. One a week, one a week.

Ren Jones18:10

So you would call all morning and take one listing a week — go on two or three listing appointments, take one, and then keep going. But if you’re taking one a week for a month, for a lot of people — Raleigh, your market — you’re rich.

Carley Hathaway18:34

It’s the nice part about San Diego. Four listings a month is not tough. Our average is 600, 650.

Patrick Southern18:50

I think people have an unrealistic metric of what this business is, because the bar is so low. You look around your office and say, “Wow, they sold four homes this month,” and they get a medal. In any other business, you’d be fired. People have a skewed view of what production is because the commissions are so high. Let’s take the commissions out of it and just talk about progress: if someone’s going to go to work for me, shows up 60 hours a week, and only gets one or two things done a month, you’re gone. Your job is to go find work — your whole day should be consumed with finding work. If you’re not doing that, you’ve got to ask yourself what you’re doing with your time. You’ve got to go for it.

Carley Hathaway19:47

You do like to win. Tell me about your early morning routine — do you still have that? Are you going to the gym early in the morning?

Patrick Southern19:54

I still do, not every day, but my schedule permits a couple days a week. I prospect from home now, then I go out into the field and do appointments — I don’t really go into the office ever. It’s just easier for me with family life and traffic to get more done. I used to need the mindset of being in the office; now I get off on being able to do it at home. I try to list as much as I can just by the phone, not going to the property.

Carley Hathaway20:35

Oh, so you take listing appointments over the phone?

Patrick Southern20:38

I’m in a high condo market. If you’re selling in a building that was built all in the same year, you know all the lines — do you really have to see that property? Once you start asking yourself, “Am I doing my business the way I want it done, or am I doing what the client wants?” you’ll be surprised at the answer. So let’s take a prospect — they’re very busy at work, busy with family, busy in general. Wouldn’t it be easier for your schedule and theirs if you said, “Hey Mr. Seller, I offer this service to a lot of my clients. We don’t actually even have to meet in person given how busy your schedule is. If you want, I could hang a lockbox on your property, you drop a key in there on your way to work, I’ll conveniently go by when it works for me during the day and take a look at your home. Then next Tuesday at 4:00 or 4:05, whatever’s best for you, I could put on a presentation for you via the phone. We don’t even have to meet if that works better for your schedule.” And you’d be surprised how many times they say, “We can do that?” I say, “Yeah, of course we can,” and they say, “That would be great.”

Ren Jones21:44

And that’s ideal, because you’re still seeing the property, slipping in there during the day.

Patrick Southern21:48

You’re doing it on your schedule. This way I could bang six of those in one day if I had to, line up all the presentations, bang them all out on the phone. Not everybody wants to see you.

Carley Hathaway21:58

It’s almost the same experience agents lucky enough to be in an absentee market have. They enjoy the benefit of that — all the listing appointments are over the phone.

Patrick Southern22:09

Some people want to meet you, that’s cool. But some people don’t. I don’t want to see people in my regular life — I could care less. If someone says, “Hey, do you think you could” — sure, but I don’t want to see you, I’ve got things to do, I’m busy. And if you’ve got the kind of asset that’s not super unique — not to make condo owners not unique, but if you see the “02” line and there are 20 of them and no renovations have been done, do you need to see 2802 and 2602? They’re the same property. You know what they are. So you’re actually respecting their time. The ones you want to meet, you can meet, but the point is ask them the question. You could get more efficient with what you do if you just wait to hear what people want rather than assuming you know what they want. There’s a sign I have on the terminals of everyone that works with me, and it just says, “Don’t assume.” It’s the most deadly thing in the world. Don’t assume in business, don’t assume your partner’s happy, don’t assume your friends are happy. If you’re married, do not assume — ask her that damn question and find out.

Carley Hathaway23:29

So you’re digging deep, asking a lot of questions.

Patrick Southern23:46

You just have to. It goes back to the theme where you’ve got to be relentless about service — serving people the way they want to be served, not the way you assume. The way I view it, schedule is really important, and what’s the number one thing that takes you off your schedule? People. So a good way to judge how good your service is: does your phone ring? In my world, my clients should never have to call the office, or me. Every time they call, you should ask, “What could I have done to get them to not call me? Where could I have provided service where they didn’t have to go looking for it?”

Ren Jones24:20

Wow, so there’s the yardstick. How do you do that — setting call times with some of those clients?

Patrick Southern24:25

You just have to be really honest with yourself. You schedule everything — you hit them before they hit you. We’re not reinventing the wheel. You know what the questions are, you know what they want to hear, you know what they want to know. Very rarely has someone called me and asked a question where I’m like, “Wow, you want feedback after the weekend showings? That’s weird.”

Ren Jones24:48

And if they have to call you, you end up promising too much, isn’t that how it goes?

Patrick Southern24:52

You’ve got to set expectations and then follow the plan. If you pay attention every time they call in, you’ll start to notice a lot of people call in for the same stuff, which means your systems as a business operator are poor, because they’re coming after you for something you could be providing proactively.

Carley Hathaway25:14

It seems like you really go out of your way to get to know people on a human level and take care of their needs. But when you’re calling expireds, do you stay on script at the same time as trying to figure out what they really need?

Patrick Southern25:31

That’s a real good question. This is going to be hard for some people who are just starting out to understand, but let me try to explain it. The scripts are merely there to get you to learn what to say. Once you master the scripts, you technically know what to say, which means you start to become that script. You still have the DNA and the structure of the call, but you’re able to maneuver at a very different rate because you know what the end game is. I don’t want to say go off script, but I can pick up when people need something now — even though it might be question seven and I’m on question two, I can go to that quickly because I can feel it coming. The ultimate goal of the script is to get you what to say. Put me on a real estate call and I sound confident, and people are like, “What a confident guy.” You put me in front of an auditorium full of mechanics and ask me how to change oil, I’m not that confident, because I don’t know what to say. Once you get to a certain level, it sounds hokey, but you start becoming them — you know every objection handler, you know what they’re going to say, you know what to give them for what they need, and you know what other agents aren’t trying to tell them.

Ren Jones27:16

Unconscious competence.

Patrick Southern27:18

Yes, you fully get it. You open your mouth, you don’t know what’s coming out, but it’s the right thing. It got to the point where I could do presentations and actually think about something totally different. I have to stop myself — I’ll be mid-presentation and start thinking about other things while I’m talking, and I’m like, “Holy cow.” It just becomes so ingrained.

Carley Hathaway27:39

How long does your average listing presentation take? And do you send a pre-listing package over? What do you include?

Patrick Southern27:44

20 to 30 minutes. Full comps, contract, marketing pack — really simple, nothing crazy. My appointments are so tuned up to sign and so ready to roll that it’s quick. And that’s because there’s a real difference between going out and finding the job versus having the job come to you — it’s about control. When you’re prospecting and cultivating your center of influence, by the time you finally go to that appointment, they’re already ready. Versus if someone calls in and says, “Hey, I saw your sign, can you come see me?” — that guy’s in control, and the win ratio is very different. You’ve got to understand where the sourcing comes from and stay competitive. How many times do I pick up the phone, call an absolute stranger, go there and list them? It’s not as often as the ones I cultivate, where I might have gotten an expired, they’re not ready to rock and roll yet because something has changed, and I’ve updated them quarterly for the next two years. When it’s time to go, where are they going? They’re wanting to go with me.

Ren Jones29:13

And I remember you saying to me one time that you take a little extra time on the phone to cultivate them, so that once the appointment is set, they’ve already decided they’re listing with you before you got there. They’ve already decided, “We’re listing with Patrick.” Then he heads over there, sits in that rotating chair, spins and talks to those people, totally engaged in the conversation, and when he’s done, they know that’s who they’re listing with. He’s gotten that good. It’s really exciting, but it took a lot of hard work.

Ren Jones29:59

And people on this call — let’s say somebody’s taking just one listing a month right now — they can go through the process you did, and within the next 12 to 18 months get to where they’re taking one a week or two.

Patrick Southern30:11

100%. Like we said, the bar is pretty low in this business, it’s not that hard. In my marketplace the average agent sells two and a half homes a year — I don’t know if that’s a national statistic, but there are 7,800 agents and they sell two and a half homes a year. It’s bad. So with a little bit of work ethic, a little bit of discipline — you’ve got to want to win.

Carley Hathaway30:35

So you’re still calling those expireds every morning? How many hours a day are you calling?

Patrick Southern30:44

Unfortunately, it pays the bills. I’ve been prospecting three hours a day, five days a week, for I don’t know, a decade and a half. The only thing that’s changed is part of that prospecting now, I include my own stuff. Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to make a couple bucks and buy a property, so I include that as part of my prospecting now, because it’s becoming a significant financial gain. At the same time, you’ve got to set yourself up — and I don’t want to sound like an ego maniac, but if you’re going to play at a very high level and take in a tremendous amount of business, it definitely has a toll on your body. It’s not sustainable at this pace, at least for me, to do it for 30 years. I don’t know if I’m going to have it in me 20 years from now to get up and bang around with an expired. So if you make a couple bucks, set yourself up, get some rentals. You’re in the business, you’ve got access to good things — buy a couple rental properties, so if you ever want to peel off that accelerator, you can.

Ren Jones32:12

You’ve got a lot of doors now, don’t you?

Patrick Southern32:14

Pardon me?

Ren Jones32:14

Yeah, you own a lot of doors now.

Patrick Southern32:17

I guess, I don’t know. There’s people who own a lot more.

Ren Jones32:21

I know, but it makes perfect sense. Whenever we talk to people that are doing what you’re doing, they’re accumulating property so that one day, all that passive income.

Patrick Southern32:33

Yeah, I’m fortunate, I’m in a nice urban area and I only really speak that language. But yeah, buying apartment buildings is a good deal. You can’t go wrong.

Ren Jones32:44

You can’t go wrong. Let’s do some questions here. Do you want to do a little role play, just for fun? Want to call on a guy?

Patrick Southern32:52

No.

Ren Jones32:54

He said no. Okay.

Patrick Southern32:57

That’s okay. I just got off like three hours of a call, I don’t feel like it, I’m sorry. I’m rolled out for the day.

Ren Jones33:06

Oh, got you, that’s fine. I’m looking at questions. Your number one prospecting source — what is it? Is it your sphere at this point?

Patrick Southern33:18

I guess not. The key is I’m in such a transient market — the average person lives there 10 years and moves three times, which is great real estate business to be in. But the problem is when they move, they move, so you’ve got to continuously replenish that sphere of influence. Because the expireds are so light in our market, they’re really non-existent now compared to how they used to be. Just listed, just solds are a huge source of income. I also work people around capital gains landmarks. Anyone who’s bought a home — after two years, in my marketplace, if they’re above a certain price point — I don’t call anything below 700 — anything that passes capital gains, I’ll reach out to them, let them know congratulations, you’re past this point, when do you think you’re going to be moving? You bring something of value during a landmark. If someone rents out a property, you call them at the two-year mark before they go into capital gains. There are creative ways to work a marketplace depending on what your market is. Not to sound too repetitive, but find where the service you can provide that prospect is, and that call becomes a hell of a lot easier. Rather than, “Hey, I’m looking to do something,” you call and say, “Hey, are you aware that you’ve passed this great threshold of capital gains? Do you know how that works?” They say, “Oh gosh, I didn’t know anything about it.” Right away, you’re providing service.

Ren Jones34:48

And you’re the authority they go to when they have a question like that. So, Robert’s asking, how many deals do you plan on doing this year?

Patrick Southern34:57

Around 200.

Carley Hathaway34:59

Amazing, that’s awesome. How many listings did you take last month, October?

Patrick Southern35:03

October was an abnormally big one. I did about 32 new listings, and I did 22 million in pending.

Carley Hathaway35:23

That’s amazing. So you have a team in place? What is that team structure like? Is Shay still your buyer agent?

Patrick Southern35:31

Very small. I think the teams are nonsense — these people who put together… They make me crazy when someone says, “I did 200 deals,” and you say, “Great, how many people on your team?” and they’ve got 50. For myself, it’s just: I do the listing side, my sister Shay does the buyer side, and I’ve got another guy, Anthony, who does buyer side as well. Then I have a listing coordinator, a transaction manager, and a personal assistant that does it all.

Ren Jones36:06

So you keep all the money. Some of these teams get a little crazy, and it’s a dirty little secret — they don’t make a whole lot.

Patrick Southern36:16

No. The ones I’m aware of that I’ve investigated are running 15 to 20% margins of profit, which is crazy. It’s not good.

Ren Jones36:24

No. They’re at that number, I know some that are worse.

Patrick Southern36:27

You’re probably right. We keep — I keep about 90%. We run very lean. But yeah, that’s about the total. The biggest misconception about getting a team and a buyer’s agent — and this is my opinion, you’re welcome to disagree — is that a buyer’s agent is a direct result of the inability to handle a business load and service it correctly. What I end up seeing is a listing agent or team head buying buyer agents all over the place just to build a bigger team. The reason I first got my first buyer agent was I didn’t have any time to deal with buyers anymore, so it had to happen. The reason I got a second is we were busting at the seams with one. Could I hire 15 more people to run around and do nothing? Sure, but is that really what we’re supposed to do? It’s my obligation to feed those buyer agents with leads — that’s my job, to get them work. And not buy it off Zillow, not buy it off Trulia. So we run lean because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Ren Jones37:44

Robert was saying, what suggestions do you have on practicing and internalizing scripts?

Patrick Southern37:51

I used to do a lot of different things. What Ren used to help me with during this time is you read through it like 10 times at super speed once a day. My wife reminded me of this a couple years ago, which I totally forgot I did — Mike Ferry used to have these scripts by his son Matt Ferry that were done to baroque music. I slept with those for a year and a half, two years straight. My wife used to think I was a maniac. I thought it was a good idea to go to sleep with the listing presentation playing in my head for a year and a half, which I did. I would go to productivity school four times a year back in the day. I was just committed to getting better. But the best way to practice scripts is pick up the phone and start making mistakes. The more you call, the more you have to do the script, the more you totally mess it up, which means the faster you learn, and then you just get better and better. When you do something that’s not receptive, logic says you shouldn’t be doing it that way, so you start to fix it. There’s no better practice than jumping on the phone. You’ve got to get up and call.

Carley Hathaway39:15

I notice a lot of people, when they’re newer, get one little objection from a seller — “We’re just going to leave it off the market” — and they say, “Oh, okay, great, have a good day.” How do you persist two or three or four times when a seller is giving an objection like that and stay on the phone? That seems to be the tougher thing that many successful people have mastered, staying engaged until things start working your way.

Patrick Southern39:48

There’s probably two answers to that. The one I really want to give you I probably shouldn’t do on a live broadcast, because it’s more of a funny internal joke with my crew and it might not be well received. So I’ll watch my answer. Back in the day I used to play the seven-penny rule, if I remember correctly, where you couldn’t get off the phone until you closed seven times — you’d slide the penny up. You’d set a game where you’d allow yourself to hang up only after you’d asked seven times. Either they have you over or they don’t, and either way they’re right. If they say, “No, we’re not going back to market,” you just say, “Okay” — what’s the difference if you push a little bit harder, because they’re not going back to market already? How can it get any worse than that answer? A no is the worst it can get, so let’s go a little further and see if it’s there. And the most reflex response to anything is no.

Ren Jones41:02

And from everything I know about your market up there in New York, people are a little aggressive with each other, so they wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t bark back a little.

Patrick Southern41:11

I think any business person, if you’re dealing with a big asset, chances are you’ve done business. Do you really want a salesperson that rolls over anyway? When I hire a sales professional, I want someone that’s going to go out there and kick some ass. I’m not looking for a friend, I’m not looking for a guy to have a talk with — I’m looking for someone to go get me a service so I don’t have to do it.

Ren Jones41:39

Dave Coker’s writing this, and we’re seeing it from two or three people, so let’s answer it. You’ve got two buyer agents, Shay and Anthony working some buyers, and they’re asking, do you buy buyer leads, how do you get them leads? But honestly, folks, he took 32 listings, he’s going to sell them all, those people have nowhere to live, the buyer agents take care of them — they have to buy immediately. He doesn’t need to buy buyer leads.

Patrick Southern42:03

On top of that, the best advertising is putting points on the board. When you have listings, guess what you get? You don’t need to buy buyers if you list property — the buyers come in. The chance of someone calling you about a property and buying that exact property is not high; they typically want to buy something else than the thing they called you on. So you retain buyers through that channel. When you have property, you don’t have to advertise, because the property is your advertisement. The buy side of the business could get Uberized any minute, so to be clear, I do have to do the Zillow Premier in my market — whatever allows me to claim my listing, so some kid living in his dad’s basement can’t sign on to my listing. The only thing I don’t advertise for buyer leads is just to make sure my name is on the listing, so when someone contacts that property, they don’t get Joe Schmo, they get me. I don’t know what that package is called, but that’s the one I have. That’s my right to the seller, by the way — my beef with the Zillows of the world is that they disrespect the most important person in this process, which is the seller. They pay the bills. What the Zillows do is take the asset and let all other people advertise on it — they hired me to handle their asset, not some kid buying a Zillow ad that’s going to mislead them. It’s your right, and your duty to the seller, that you’re the one managing the incoming calls. That’s your job.

Ren Jones44:01

Nick Steer says, “What are your thoughts, now that you’re in an overheated market?” I don’t think this applies now, but it did at one time when we were in a balanced market — what’s your thought about taking overpriced property?

Patrick Southern44:15

It’s not a good idea, but more importantly, you’ve got to understand what the motivation is, and you’ve got to tell people the truth. Let’s say a property is worth a million bucks and the seller is willing to sell it for a million dollars — if they just have to go to market at 1.1 for a week or two to feel like they did it, would I do that? Sure, because I told them the truth. When it doesn’t sell, I’m not going to be the one in the crosshairs that they’re yelling at — I’m going to say, “Hey, remember that conversation I backed up with an email before we listed? Why don’t you pull that up?” And they go, “Oh yeah, okay.”

Ren Jones44:57

So you document it, so it isn’t just words they’re remembering. Learned that the hard way. Fantastic.

Ren Jones45:08

Dan Hendrix has asked twice — and I don’t know if it works in your urban market — but there’s a strategy we see with very successful people where they get up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, find out who’s expired, say “I want this one, this one, this one,” and drop a packet by that expired listing at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning, that people see as they’re leaving for work. Have you ever done anything like that?

Patrick Southern45:34

I did that for about two years. It’s okay. I think it was probably better for me mentally than it was time spent, because doing acts like that really makes you feel like you’re going for it.

Carley Hathaway45:54

Yeah, the mindset piece, the discipline.

Patrick Southern45:56

There’s something about that where you feel it really builds you up. You feel, for lack of better words, tougher. You’re thinking about your competition, like, “I’m out there first thing in the morning, going for it.” When you get on the phones after that experience, you just feel tougher. Was the package the key? No, because if that were the case, you’d just wake up, put packages on, and go back to bed. What the package did for me was make me so strong going into that call session — I just felt different. It gave you a sense of security and toughness, at least that’s what it did for me.

Ren Jones47:16

And when these people are listening to this call, you exude confidence, you exude passion — you can feel it. Based on your tone and your cadence and your conversation, people on the other end of the phone are going to feel that, and they’re going to want you to come over and list.

Ren Jones47:45

The questions have slowed down a little. Here’s one: what book have you read lately that you can recommend?

Patrick Southern47:48

That’s a good one. There is one — what’s the last one I just did? I’ll send you the title, Brent, but it was really cool. It’s on breakthrough thinking, about how to stretch your thoughts and where very good thoughts come from. I’ve been thinking a lot about different types of businesses and different things to do. My real estate sales business is the most important thing I do, that’s for sure, but I’m involved in a lot of other stuff, and I want to grow that too. So I can’t think of the name of it.

Ren Jones48:38

That’s the type of book you tend to read — just thinking big, all about breakthrough thinking, getting stronger in your mental side.

Patrick Southern48:48

Yeah, or books on people — Ted Turner or whoever it might be. I think that author’s Janet Lowe, she does a speak series, a bunch of books on that kind of stuff, like biographies of different people.

Ren Jones49:08

You can’t go wrong going to that category. Even if you’re watching Tony Robbins on YouTube every morning, get into the mindset of thinking big.

Patrick Southern49:17

There’s a great series — I think it was on Netflix — called The Defiant Ones, the one on Jimmy Iovine. Dr. Dre did the Beats headphones, and Jimmy Iovine is the guy who put together Interscope Records. It’s awesome. If you want to learn about guys who push and are innovative, watch that. It’s a four-show series, it’s outrageous.

Ren Jones49:54

I’m going to write that down, that sounds awesome. Well, this has been a real treat. I think anybody watching this may want to watch it two or three times and apply a lot of this, because this will get you there fast. It’s a mindset, as everybody sees. It’s not easy what we do.

Patrick Southern50:17

Simple, not easy.

Ren Jones50:18

I know. So thank you so much, Patrick.

Patrick Southern50:22

I hope it was helpful, man. It’s nice to see you again, it’s been a long time. Thanks for the Vulcan stuff, I appreciate it.

Ren Jones50:27

For people on the Vulcan7 network, you get an automatic replay, so you can watch it — you’ll get an email tomorrow when they post it, and people on the Lead Gen site can also watch it if you’re a member of that group. I want to thank Aaron Wittenstein from his Lead Gen group on Facebook, and he has his expiredmasteryelite.com that he promotes — thank you again for letting us broadcast on your network, we appreciate that a whole lot. And then when you’ve done your job, spent four or five hours lead generating, you’ve got to treat yourself — get a big spoon and get some good Graeter’s mint chocolate chip. You reward yourself, and then you can go do it again tomorrow. Thanks everybody, we’ll see you again. We’ll have somebody in seven days that takes two, three, four listings a week, or in the case of Patrick, eight a week last month. Have fun in San Diego, Carley, and we’ll see everybody next week.