How Caroline Young grew from $400,000 to $2.5 million in three years by calling expireds every morning

Ren Jones00:00

It is that time. Welcome to Roadmap, how to take three listings a week until you’re ready for more. Each week we interview a great agent taking several listings each week, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and apply as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from San Diego, Carley Hathaway — that’s carlyhathaway.com. Hi Carley, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway00:37

Hi Ren. Hi everybody, thanks for joining us. Real estate in San Diego is great, homes are selling quick, so it’s a good time.

Ren Jones00:44

Great. Before I introduce our guest today, I want to remind everyone that we are also simulcasting the show on the private lead gen group on Facebook — they have 52,000 members, so we have a large audience there today as well. We will be pausing for our commercial message during the show as a thank you to the lead gen folks. Let’s welcome our guest today from a great area of the world — Northern Virginia, Maryland, little parts of West Virginia, Loudoun County, up there in that DC area — Caroline Young. Hi, Caroline Young, welcome to the show.

Caroline Young01:19

Hey, thanks for having me.

Ren Jones01:21

Thanks for being here. I’m excited to talk to you. We were talking a couple seconds off-stage about some things and you have an exciting life, and we’re looking forward to diving in a little bit.

Carley Hathaway01:35

Yeah, we’re so excited to have you today. Thank you. Hey, can we start out with—

Caroline Young01:38

No problem.

Carley Hathaway01:39

Yeah, can we start out — what’s your goal this year?

Caroline Young01:42

So our goal this year as a team — we’ve been on a growth spurt over the past four years — but our goal is to hit 250 transactions and 2.5 million in volume, or in commissions.

Carley Hathaway01:55

2.5 in commissions, love it. And are you on track?

Caroline Young01:59

We are. We’re ahead of it.

Carley Hathaway02:01

Nice, love hearing that, good, good. So what is your main source of income? How do you create more business — are you a buyer’s agent, listing agent?

Caroline Young02:11

So I have a team, and our team has four agents on it including me. And basically I maintain the listing inventory — I do most of the listings.

Carley Hathaway02:24

Okay, and how do you bring those listings to you? Just sit around and wait for them to call you, or Facebook ads?

Caroline Young02:33

Nope, nope, I take more of the hunter mindset. I use Vulcan 7 — I’m a big fan of it, definitely changed my career over the last few years.

Carley Hathaway02:45

Okay, great, so on the phone you’re calling, you’re hunting?

Caroline Young02:49

Yes. Our team is big on prospecting — for us, especially right now with all this COVID going on and everybody’s social distancing, we kind of did it all the time anyway, but we do it more. We’re all on from 9:30 to about noon and we’re prospecting, we all prospect, we’re all trying to set appointments every morning, and then usually the afternoon, evenings and weekends we’re on appointments.

Carley Hathaway03:18

Nice, I like it. And you start your prospecting at 9, 9:30 — who are you starting those phone calls with? Who’s your first call in the morning?

Caroline Young03:27

My first call the morning are all the new expireds.

Carley Hathaway03:29

Okay, all right. And do you stay on script when you’re calling these expireds, or do you just kind of wing it? What are you doing?

Caroline Young03:37

So I do a lot of coaching, I’m in with Tom Barry, and I love the organization, and I’ve studied a lot of scripts. But I think for anybody, you can’t be scripted — you have to make it your own. So I’ve got the mindset behind the scripts, and it probably comes out a little bit differently for me.

Carley Hathaway03:58

Yeah, okay, all right, good. But it’s question based and things like that.

Ren Jones04:03

Has this always been easy for you, or— I mean, how did you get into it? You like a little rejection here and there?

Caroline Young04:10

You definitely have to thicken your skin a little bit for that rejection. In the beginning, I was inspired by people who were doing it in a group I’m in with Tom Barry. When you start calling in the beginning I thought, “Wow, people are doing really well and I can’t wait to do it.” And I started calling and I’m like, “Oh my God, I was getting eaten alive.” People don’t want to be called. And I hung up a couple of times in tears — I was like, “Man, this is brutal.” But I kept saying that old saying, “If they can do it, I can do it.”

04:48So I just kept listening to what I was saying, changing what I was doing, changing my attitude when I’m talking — it’s just like anything, you’ve got to figure it out until it works. And then once I got to the point where I was adjusting things, I started getting some appointments, and it took a good six months to get a good rhythm going. From that point on, we pretty much began listing anywhere from 15 to 35 homes a month.

Carley Hathaway05:19

Amazing, that’s great.

Ren Jones05:21

So if I hear you correctly, you’ve got the dialogue — in other words, what you were saying in the first few times worked all right, and then you got better at it and better at it, and tried this sentence and that sentence, this script and that script and that dialogue. So the skill is an important factor.

Caroline Young05:39

And confidence, Ren. The more you do it and you get a few and you understand the process more and what you can do to help people — because for me, I come from a place of empathy. I like to help people, I like to help people figure things out. So for me, it’s important when I call — you’re stuck, things didn’t work out, I want to know what I can do to fix it.

Ren Jones06:05

If you’re coming in contribution, man, people love it.

Caroline Young06:07

They love it.

Carley Hathaway06:10

And it’s a good mindset to go into the calls with too.

Caroline Young06:14

Yeah.

Carley Hathaway06:14

So now when a new expired eats you alive, do you start crying? What do you do now?

Caroline Young06:24

No. Well, at this point it makes it fun — now actually, I enjoy it. So it’s fun, I don’t mind at all.

Carley Hathaway06:36

Because you’re confident and you know what to say.

Caroline Young06:38

It’s almost like they’re a little wounded, a little upset, and a lot of them have had bad experiences. So it’s my job to turn around and give them a better sense of what it’s like to work with someone that knows what they’re doing and someone that can help them figure things out.

Carley Hathaway06:56

That is such a great attitude to have. And so you get on the phones at the same time every day — do you have a really strict morning routine, or do you kind of play it by ear? How does that work for you?

Caroline Young07:10

So my goal is to try to get on the phone every morning from nine to 12. We’ve been on a very continued growth path over the last four years, and for me it’s a challenge trying to manage everything. So my goal is to make one hour uninterrupted, just focus, one hour of calling. And if you do that every day, it’s going to change your business — I don’t care who you’re calling, calling your friends or whatever, you just got to call people for an hour. But I like to call longer, we have a lot of listings, I have a lot of stuff pending, so I’m a little bit of a big multitasker. So…

Carley Hathaway07:58

Okay, that’s good, but—

Caroline Young08:00

I do try—

Carley Hathaway08:00

Go ahead.

Caroline Young08:02

In the morning, I try to stay focused in the morning — I do line calling.

Carley Hathaway08:04

Yeah, because you want to be one of the first ones to get to those new expireds, right?

Caroline Young08:09

It doesn’t matter, to be honest.

Carley Hathaway08:10

Oh, yeah? You’re that special?

Caroline Young08:13

They think they need to be first, but then you don’t. It’s just when you call, you just need to get on the phone call — you want to call at least sometime that day or the next day. But it doesn’t matter if you’re first or 30th, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re the 30th they might be a little bit more upset.

Carley Hathaway08:32

And they kind of learn how to get other agents off the phone too — they almost have a script down when you’re the 15th, 16th, 17th call.

Caroline Young08:40

Yeah, but it’s still fine, though. Once you do it for a while, you can still get them to talk.

Ren Jones08:47

Right, because of your skill level. So if you’re a newer agent, being early helps a little bit, because you don’t necessarily know what to say, and that person hasn’t built up any defenses.

Caroline Young08:59

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Ren Jones09:01

So again, skill.

Carley Hathaway09:03

Yeah, skill. And then the skill is going to give you that confidence, and the confidence does show through on the phone, for sure.

Caroline Young09:09

Absolutely.

Ren Jones09:11

So you’ve been doing this for a few years, not too many — how many years?

Caroline Young09:16

I have to think— I think it’s my third year in.

Ren Jones09:22

Third year in. But even with your sheer volume, you’ve got a good size database of past clients now.

Caroline Young09:28

Oh yeah.

Ren Jones09:29

So are you working them, your past clients?

Caroline Young09:34

Yeah, we take care of our past clients and always trying to get new ones. It’s a constant struggle between what you do.

Ren Jones09:41

Okay, so you’re talking to the people you know.

Caroline Young09:45

We try to stay in touch with everybody now.

Ren Jones09:47

Okay, all right, just checking.

Carley Hathaway09:49

So the phones are your main source of business — I mean, to bring in 2.5 in commissions and you’ve only been doing this three years, that’s pretty incredible.

Caroline Young09:57

No, no, I’ve been an agent for 27 years.

Carley Hathaway09:59

Oh, okay, but you’ve only been calling for…

Caroline Young10:03

I just started changing my business for prospecting about three years ago. In the past 10 years before that, I was between four and 500,000 in GCI. When I started doing it, the first year I went to a million. Last year I went to 1.8, and this year we’re shooting for 2.5.

Ren Jones10:26

So prospecting’s made a dramatic difference between driving that little Toyota that you drove and whatever you have now — just kidding. Well, I mean it’s a dramatic jump, that’s a dramatic jump.

Caroline Young10:38

Yeah, it’s funny that you asked, because I’m actually buying a Tesla today.

Carley Hathaway10:42

Yeah.

Ren Jones10:43

Which one are you getting?

Caroline Young10:46

I’m getting the Model X.

Ren Jones10:48

I’ve got a Model X, it’s my second one. You’ll love being—

Caroline Young10:52

I’ve heard great things about it.

Ren Jones10:53

It’s a happy life. It’s a happy life.

Carley Hathaway10:57

Did you see what calling can do for you? Wow, you’ve tripled your business just by starting calling three years ago.

Caroline Young11:05

Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot more people that— if you don’t pick up the phone and call people, I don’t care who you’re calling, if you don’t pick up the phone and call your clients, your sphere, your expireds, for sale by owners, reaching out to people that need help, you can’t expand your sphere and the people that would know you. The only other way you can do it is by geographically doing a lot of mailings, and that’s a lot of money and it takes a long time to recoup from it.

Carley Hathaway11:37

Yeah, that’s like a long term play.

Caroline Young11:38

It’s not instant. It’s not instant.

Ren Jones11:40

Right, and that comes off the bottom line. The phone call doesn’t cost a thing, but those…

Caroline Young11:44

The ROI is great on the phone.

Ren Jones11:48

I know, but those postcards can add up — that can just be like, “Oh, I got all this money. Oh, I had to pay all these bills.”

Carley Hathaway11:54

Yeah.

Caroline Young11:56

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been great, it’s been great.

Carley Hathaway11:59

So what would be a really good tip to give to our new agents that are just starting out calling and aren’t really strong on the phones yet, not really confident?

Caroline Young12:10

So I think that, with anything you do, you just fake it until you make it — you’ve got to just do it. I talk to a lot of people that ask me about this and they’ll say, “Well what do you mail? What’s your email? What’s your fancy campaign?” I don’t mail anything, I don’t do nothing, it’s just calling. So you just got to do it, and if you don’t get it, who cares? If you have to call 500 people to get your training in and get hung up on every time, keep figuring out what to say and what to do. You just have to do it. People over prepare — what’s the whole saying, “Ready, aim, fire”? I just say go fire. Just do it.

Carley Hathaway12:54

I love that advice, it’s so true. Just call, don’t overanalyze. Don’t start digging into the expired and looking at the bedrooms and bathrooms — just call.

Caroline Young13:07

That’s right.

Carley Hathaway13:08

Amazing advice, thank you so much.

Ren Jones13:10

Right. There are a lot of people that want to get there, and I think it’s very — in Caroline Young’s case, it’s very Nike. Just do it. Just don’t stand there and think about it. I mean, how many times do people call and go, “I’m getting ready to call this one — oh, let me look and see when they bought it, oh, let me look and see how much they paid for it, oh, let me look and see how much their mortgage is,” before they even call, and talk themselves out of it.

Caroline Young13:36

I don’t even look at it. I just call.

Ren Jones13:40

Right, there you go.

Caroline Young13:42

If I start engaging in a conversation, then I’ll pull it up. But you don’t need to do any research in advance.

Ren Jones13:51

No, I know, and it’s a form of call reluctance when they do that. How many people do you think you talk to every morning? How many conversations do you have when you make your calls?

Caroline Young14:05

I would say right now there’s no inventory, so there’s not very many properties coming off — the conversations are tough just because there’s nothing new. I’m actually going through some of the old inventory right now that didn’t sell, because it is the time to sell, but there’s no inventory.

14:27But my goal is to— I was doing a lot more appointments, Ren, and I had to back off because I was working myself to death. I was going on about 25 appointments a month and I was like, “Man, that was just a lot,” so I had team members step up their goals more. At this point, my goal is to list 15 a month, and I have a good average on the listings I take versus what I go on — about a 95% average that I list the ones I go on.

Ren Jones15:05

95%.

Carley Hathaway15:07

That’s a good batting average.

Ren Jones15:08

No, that’s almost impossible. So you’re prequalifying really well and getting it pretty well established before you head out, I gather.

Caroline Young15:19

Yeah.

Ren Jones15:19

And you have a pretty strong presentation. Would that be a fair estimate?

Caroline Young15:24

Yeah, but I think a lot of it is— it’s funny you say that, I pre-qual a lot and I don’t.

Ren Jones15:31

You don’t?

Caroline Young15:32

More so I do a little bit. But a lot of people try to over qualify their appointment, and if you’re a new agent, I don’t care if somebody is unmotivated — go meet them, because it gives you a chance to do a presentation. I went on all of them.

Ren Jones15:48

I think that would be fair — if you’re brand new out of the box, you need the practice. So…

Carley Hathaway15:53

Yeah, that’s true, try to get through it.

Caroline Young15:54

But I still go, most of mine. In the last six months, I had three listings I went on that were all 250,000 overpriced.

Carley Hathaway16:09

Oh my gosh.

Ren Jones16:10

Well, that’s because all the prices are high up there. What’s the typical— well, you’re like San Diego.

Caroline Young16:16

We’re just overpriced.

Carley Hathaway16:17

That’s really overpriced.

Caroline Young16:18

But the one I had that was listed at 1.8, I said, “Look, I don’t even know if you want to talk to me. What are you thinking? Where are you getting the info from?” And they’re like, “Well there’s no comps.” I’m like, “What do you mean there’s no comps? There’s two comps for your house, your house ain’t that unique.” So I said, “I’d be willing to talk to you, but you’re way off on your pricing here, and if that’s the case, just keep it for the rest of your life before it’s going to get where you want it.” You know what I mean?

Carley Hathaway16:48

Good.

Caroline Young16:50

But anyway, oddly enough, they listed and they reduced it $300,000. So…

Carley Hathaway16:58

Because you planted that seed — “You guys are out of your minds” — and then they digested it.

17:05By the time you got out there, they knew you were not going to list it at 1.8.

Caroline Young17:09

But if I’d talked to them and pre-qualified and they’d said, “We think our house is worth this and we’re not reducing,” maybe you wouldn’t go, but you don’t have the opportunity to ask for that.

Carley Hathaway17:21

Yeah, good call.

Caroline Young17:22

You’ve got to be careful about over qualifying, I think.

Carley Hathaway17:25

Yeah, that’s true. Especially for new agents, like you said, it’s really good practice to get through the entire presentation even if you don’t close. It’s really good practice.

Caroline Young17:34

Hey, I tell you, even if you don’t get any of the listings, if you can go on three or five listing appointments a month, after about four or five months you’re going to be pretty good at your listings. You’re talking to all different personalities and people and styles, and it’ll definitely help you get your skills together. That’s for sure.

Carley Hathaway17:52

I agree.

Ren Jones17:54

This is very, very, very helpful information. And I think for a lot of people watching right now — like Caroline, they do one or two buyer sales a month, they get a listing because they meet somebody looking for a house that has to sell one, and they would love to get to where they purposefully take a listing or two every week. This is helpful stuff, they just need to go do it — talk to as many people as they can every morning. And with that, what did you say — hunter mindset?

Caroline Young18:27

Yes, yes.

Ren Jones18:29

That’s it.

Caroline Young18:29

You’ve got to list to last, right? So…

Ren Jones18:32

You’ve got to list. Well, that’s the thing in our business — if you’re heavy on the buy side of the business, after about eight years your brain just sort of explodes and you leave the business. But if you’re on the listing side, people that have been out there for a decade or two later, they are happy — and you’re one of them, with your new… what color are you going to get that new Model X?

Caroline Young18:57

I’m getting the black.

Carley Hathaway19:00

Oh, chic, I love it.

Caroline Young19:02

The black car, black rims, tan interior with the wood trims.

Carley Hathaway19:07

Ooh, I love the tan interior.

Ren Jones19:08

Nice, nice, nice.

Carley Hathaway19:09

You have to send us a picture of you in front of it.

Caroline Young19:12

I will.

Carley Hathaway19:13

I’ll put it on our vision board.

Caroline Young19:16

I know I’ve tortured myself with it for about the past year, and I said, “You know what, I’ve worked—” I mean, I’ll tell you too, it’s not like I have this great well-balanced life, I’m working like one-offs, I work on that.

Ren Jones19:29

Yeah, well you are going to be hooked, you’ll probably never go back once you’ve switched to electric.

Caroline Young19:37

I have several clients and friends with Teslas and everybody says, “If you get one…” And honestly, for me, because I’m on the phone so much when I’m in the car, it’s the safety features of the self-driving and stuff — I think it’ll be super helpful to me. But I’ve been working my rear end off for the past three years, and it’s something I want, and I decided I’m just going to go ahead and do it.

Ren Jones20:04

It’s just a joy to drive, it’s just a joy to drive. I have a gasoline car and it’s got like 3,000 miles on it and it’s a year old, because I never drive it, it’s no fun to drive. But the Model X is a hoot. It just is.

Caroline Young20:18

It’s what everybody says.

Ren Jones20:19

It’s just so much fun, you will never go back.

Caroline Young20:22

Yeah, I can’t wait, I’m super excited.

Carley Hathaway20:24

Good for you, congratulations.

Caroline Young20:25

Yeah.

Ren Jones20:26

I want to thank you, Caroline, this has been great, this is inspiring, this will help a lot of our folks. And do you want referrals? Do you want people to send you some referrals?

Caroline Young20:36

Absolutely, I would love that.

Ren Jones20:39

That DC, Northern Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Loudoun County — is it carolineyoung.com?

Caroline Young20:49

Carolineyounghomes.com.

Ren Jones20:50

Carolineyounghomes.com. Okay folks.

Carley Hathaway20:53

Send referrals.

Ren Jones20:54

Send her listing referrals or buy referrals, or both — or yourself, just go buy a home from her. So folks, if you’re watching on Vulcan 7, you want to get involved with the lead gen Facebook group who simulcasts the show — they are at facebook.com/groups/gotobjections. And finally, if you’re watching on Facebook and you’re not yet involved with Vulcan 7, make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a very special deal. See you next week when we have another exciting guest. See you guys then, everybody. Thanks Caroline.

Carley Hathaway22:13

Bye. Thanks everyone. Thanks Caroline.

Caroline Young22:14

Thank you Ren. Thank you Carley. Bye-bye.

Carley Hathaway22:16

Bye.

Ren Jones22:16

Bye.