S7 E11: $400k to $2.5million in 3 years!

Ren Jones (00:00):
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, Carly Hathaway. That’s carlyhathaway.com. Hi Carly, how’s the real estate business?

Carley Hathaway (00:37):
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 Jones (00:44):
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 Young (01:19):
Hey, thanks for having me.

Ren Jones (01:21):
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 Hathaway (01:35):
Yeah, we’re so excited to have you today. Thank you. Hey, can we start out with-

Caroline Young (01:38):
No problem.

Carley Hathaway (01:39):
Yeah. Can we start out, what’s your goal this year?

Caroline Young (01:42):
So our goal this year as a team, we’ve been on a gross spurt over the past four years, but our goal is to hit 250 transactions and 2.5 million in volume or in commissions.

Carley Hathaway (01:55):
2.5 in commissions. Love it. And are you on track?

Caroline Young (01:59):
We are. We’re ahead of it.

Carley Hathaway (02:01):
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 Young (02:11):
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 Hathaway (02:24):
Mm-hmm. Okay. And how do you bring those listings to you? Just sit around and wait for them to call you or Facebook ads?

Caroline Young (02:33):
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 Hathaway (02:45):
Okay, great. So on the phone you’re calling, you’re hunting?

Caroline Young (02:49):
Yes. Our team is big on prospecting. For us, our team, especially right now with all this COVID going on, everybody’s social distancing that 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 Hathaway (03:18):
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 Young (03:27):
My first call the morning are all the new expireds.

Carley Hathaway (03:29):
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 Young (03:37):
So I do a lot of coaching. I’m in with Tom Barry, which 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 kind of. Yeah, I got the mindset behind the scripts probably comes down a little bit differently.

Carley Hathaway (03:58):
Yeah, okay. All right, good. But it’s question based and things like that.

Ren Jones (04:03):
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 Young (04:10):
You definitely have to thicken your skin a little bit for that rejection. So in the beginning, I was inspired by people who were doing it in a group I’m in with Tom Barry. And so when you start calling in the beginning I thought, “Wow, man, 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.” I’m like, “People don’t want to call them.” 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.”

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

Carley Hathaway (05:19):
Amazing. That’s great.

Ren Jones (05:21):
So if I hear you correctly, you’ve got their 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 and this script and that script and that dialogue. So the skill is an important factor.

Caroline Young (05:39):
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 these people are… 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 Jones (06:05):
If you’re coming in contribution, man, people love it.

Caroline Young (06:07):
They love it.

Carley Hathaway (06:10):
And it’s a good mindset to go into the calls with too.

Caroline Young (06:14):
Yeah.

Carley Hathaway (06:14):
So now when a new expired eats you alive, do you start crying? What do you do now?

Caroline Young (06:24):
No. Well, at this point it makes it fun. So now actually, I enjoy it. So it’s fun. I don’t mind at all.

Carley Hathaway (06:36):
Because you’re confident and you know what to say.

Caroline Young (06:38):
It’s almost like they’re kind of 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 Hathaway (06:56):
Mm-hmm. 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 Young (07:10):
So my goal is to try to get on the phone every morning from nine to 12. We’ve been in a very continued growth path over the last four years. And so 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, but 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 Hathaway (07:58):
Okay, that’s good. But-

Caroline Young (08:00):
I do try-

Carley Hathaway (08:00):
Go ahead.

Caroline Young (08:02):
In the morning, I try to focus in the morning I do line.

Carley Hathaway (08:04):
Yeah, because you want to be one of the first ones to get to those new expireds, right?

Caroline Young (08:09):
It doesn’t matter to be honest.

Carley Hathaway (08:10):
Oh, yeah. You’re that special?

Caroline Young (08:13):
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 Hathaway (08:32):
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, 16, 17th call.

Caroline Young (08:40):
Yeah. But it’s still fine though. Once you do it for a while, you can still get them to talk.

Ren Jones (08:47):
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 in this. That person hasn’t built up any defenses.

Caroline Young (08:59):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Ren Jones (09:01):
So again, skill.

Carley Hathaway (09:03):
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 Young (09:09):
Absolutely.

Ren Jones (09:11):
So you’ve been doing this for a few years, not too many. How many years?

Caroline Young (09:16):
It’s my… I have to think. I think it’s my third year in.

Ren Jones (09:22):
Third year in. But even with your sheer volume, you’ve got a good size database of past clients now.

Caroline Young (09:28):
Oh yeah.

Ren Jones (09:29):
So are you working them, your past clients?

Caroline Young (09:34):
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 Jones (09:41):
Okay. So you’re talking them, you’re talking to the people you know.

Caroline Young (09:45):
We try to stay in touch with everybody now.

Ren Jones (09:47):
Okay. All right. Just checking.

Carley Hathaway (09:49):
So you’re Hitting the phone then the phones is your main source of business. I mean to bring in 2.5 in commissions. You’re on the phones and you’ve only been doing this three years. That’s pretty incredible.

Caroline Young (09:57):
No. No. I’ve been an agent for 27.

Carley Hathaway (09:59):
Oh, okay. But you’ve only been calling for…

Caroline Young (10:03):
I just started changing my business for prospecting about three years ago. I’ve always done in the past 10 years, I was between four and 500,000 in GCI. And when I started doing it the first year I went to a million. Last year, I went to 1.8 and then this year we’re shooting for 2.5.

Ren Jones (10:26):
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 Young (10:38):
Yeah. It’s funny that you asked because I’m actually buying a Tesla today.

Carley Hathaway (10:42):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (10:43):
Which one are you getting?

Caroline Young (10:46):
I’m getting the Model X.

Ren Jones (10:48):
I’ve got a Model X or it’s my second Model X I bought. You’ll love being-

Caroline Young (10:52):
I’ve heard great things about it.

Ren Jones (10:53):
It’s a happy life. It’s a happy life.

Carley Hathaway (10:57):
Did you see what calling can do for you? Wow. You’ve tripled your business just by starting calling three years ago.

Caroline Young (11:05):
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 that 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 Hathaway (11:37):
Yeah. That’s like a long term.

Caroline Young (11:38):
It’s not instant. It’s not instant.

Ren Jones (11:40):
Right. And that comes off the bottom line. The phone call doesn’t cost a thing, but that those…

Caroline Young (11:44):
The ROI is great on the phone.

Ren Jones (11:48):
I know, but those postcards can add up that can just like, “Oh, I got all this money. Oh, I had to pay all these bills.”

Carley Hathaway (11:54):
Yeah.

Caroline Young (11:56):
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been great. It’s been great.

Carley Hathaway (11:59):
So what would be a really good kind of tip to give to our new agents that are just starting out calling and are not really strong on the phones yet, not really confident?

Caroline Young (12:10):
So I think that it’s, with anything you do, you just fake it until you make it. You’ve got to just do it. You don’t need to… because I talk to a lot of people that call and ask me about this and they’ll be like, “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 is 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 everyone, 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. Ready, aim, fire.” I just say just go fire. Just do it.

Carley Hathaway (12:54):
I love that advice. It’s so true. Just call, don’t overanalyze. Don’t start digging into the expired and start looking at the bedrooms and bathrooms. Just call.

Caroline Young (13:07):
That’s right.

Carley Hathaway (13:08):
Amazing advice. Thank you so much.

Ren Jones (13:10):
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? 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 Young (13:36):
I don’t even look at it. I just call.

Ren Jones (13:40):
Right. There you go.

Caroline Young (13:42):
If I start engaging in a conversation, then I’ll just pull it up. But you don’t need to do any research in advance.

Ren Jones (13:51):
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 Young (14:05):
I would say right now there’s no inventory. So there’s not very many properties coming off. So the conversations are tough just because there’s not new, I’m actually going through some of the old inventory right now that didn’t sell because it is the time to sell because there is no inventory.

(14:27):
But my goal is to… I was doing a lot more appointments rent 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, it was just a lot,” so I had team members step up their goals more. And at this point, my goal is to list 15 a month. So I’ll go on, I have a good average on the listings I take versus what I go on about 95% average that I list the ones I go on.

Ren Jones (15:05):
95%.

Carley Hathaway (15:07):
That’s a good batting average.

Ren Jones (15:08):
No, that’s almost impossible. So you’re prequalifying really well and you’re built getting it pretty well established before you head out I gather.

Caroline Young (15:19):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (15:19):
And you have a pretty strong presentation. Would that be a fair estimate?

Caroline Young (15:24):
Yeah, but I think a lot of it is your… It’s funny you say that I pre-qual a lot and I don’t.

Ren Jones (15:31):
You don’t?

Caroline Young (15:32):
More so I do a little bit more. 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 like go. I went on all of them.

Ren Jones (15:48):
I think that would be fair. If you’re brand new out of the box, you need the practice. So…

Carley Hathaway (15:53):
Yeah, that’s true. Try to get through it.

Caroline Young (15:54):
But I still go, most of mine. I went on in the last six months, I had three listings I went on that… I mean the all three of these listings I went on were 250,000 overpriced.

Carley Hathaway (16:09):
Oh my gosh.

Ren Jones (16:10):
Well that there that’s because all the prices are high up there. What’s the typical… well they’re like, you’re San Diego.

Caroline Young (16:16):
We’re just overpriced.

Carley Hathaway (16:17):
That’s really overpriced.

Caroline Young (16:18):
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 comms.” I’m like, “What do you mean there’s no comms?” There is two comms for your house. Your house ain’t that unique.” So I said, “I’d be willing to talk to you.” I said, “But you’re way off. Your pricing here and if that’s the case, just run it. Keep it for the rest of your life before it’s going to get where you want it.” You know what I mean?

Carley Hathaway (16:48):
Good.

Caroline Young (16:50):
But anyway, oddly enough, they listed and they reduced it $300,000. So…

Carley Hathaway (16:58):
Because you planted that seed, “You guys are out of your minds,” and then they digested it.

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

Caroline Young (17:09):
But if I talked to them and I qualified and said, “Okay, they think their house is worth and they’re not reducing, maybe you wouldn’t go but you don’t have the opportunity to ask for that.”

Carley Hathaway (17:21):
Yeah, good call.

Caroline Young (17:22):
You got to be careful about over qualifying, I think.

Carley Hathaway (17:25):
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 Young (17:34):
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 so it’ll definitely help you get your skills together. That’s for sure.

Carley Hathaway (17:52):
I agree.

Ren Jones (17:54):
This is very, very, very, very, very helpful information. And I think for those people that are… because they’re Caroline, a lot of people watching right now, 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. And this is helpful stuff. They just need to just go do it. Talk to as many people as they can every morning. And with that, what did you say? Hunter mindset?

Caroline Young (18:27):
Yes. Yes.

Ren Jones (18:29):
That’s it.

Caroline Young (18:29):
You got a list to last, right? So…

Ren Jones (18:32):
You 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 are in the listing side of the business, people that have been out on the listing side of the business, you check with them a decade or two later, they are happy and you are one of them with your new… What color are you going to get that new Model X?

Caroline Young (18:57):
I’m getting the black.

Carley Hathaway (19:00):
Oh sheik. I love it.

Caroline Young (19:02):
The black car. Black rims. It’s the tan interior with the wood trims.

Carley Hathaway (19:07):
Ooh. I love the tan interior.

Ren Jones (19:08):
Nice. Nice. Nice.

Carley Hathaway (19:09):
You have to send us a picture of you in front of it.

Caroline Young (19:12):
I will.

Carley Hathaway (19:13):
I’ll put it on our vision board.

Caroline Young (19:16):
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 will 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 Jones (19:29):
Yeah. Well you are going to be hooked. You’ll probably never go back once you’ve switched to electric.

Caroline Young (19:37):
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 Jones (20:04):
It’s just a joy to drive. It’s just a joy to drive. I have a gasoline car and it’s got like 3000 miles on it and it’s a year old because I never drive it because it’s no fun to drive. But the Model X is a hoot. It just is.

Caroline Young (20:18):
It’s what everybody says.

Ren Jones (20:19):
It’s just, it’s so much fun. You will never go back.

Caroline Young (20:22):
Yeah. I can’t wait. I’m super excited.

Carley Hathaway (20:24):
Good for you. Congratulations.

Caroline Young (20:25):
Yeah.

Ren Jones (20:26):
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 Young (20:36):
Absolutely. I would love that.

Ren Jones (20:39):
That DC Northern Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Loudoun County. Is it carolineyoung.com?

Caroline Young (20:49):
Carolineyounghomes.com.

Ren Jones (20:50):
Carolineyounghomes.com. Okay folks.

Carley Hathaway (20:53):
Send referrals.

Ren Jones (20:54):
Send her listing referrals or buy referrals or both. Or yourself, just go buy a home from her.

Caroline Young (21:03):
That’s right.

Ren Jones (21:04):
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, can’t imagine, but make sure to sign up at vulcan7.com/leadgen for a very special deal. And everybody’s like puzzling like, “How do I just be a little bit like Caroline Young?” Well, I’ve got the secret folks. I’ve got the secret recipe. If you want to be like Caroline Young and be highly successful, all you do is after you’ve made your calls and got beat up, you go to the freezer and get delicious Graeter’s Mint Chocolate Chip. This is the one for listings. This is the one that if you eat a couple bites of this every day, you will list homes as fast as Caroline Young. It’s sold all of our North America. Go to graeters.com to find a store, get the mint chocolate chip, the Rocky Road flavor that’s working buyers obviously. So see you next week when we have another exciting guest. See you guys then everybody. Thanks Caroline.

Carley Hathaway (22:13):
Bye. Thanks everyone. Thanks Caroline.

Caroline Young (22:14):
Thank you Ren. Thank you Carley. Bye-bye.

Carley Hathaway (22:16):
Bye.

Ren Jones (22:16):
Bye.