Key takeaways
- Works three lists and no more: expireds, for sale by owners and absentee owners
- Follows up with every for sale by owner on a Monday and a Friday, through the 7 or 8 weeks it takes, until he is the only agent still calling
- Opens each follow-up with something useful, new listings in their area or an appointment nearby, rather than asking again for the business
- Treats expireds as a numbers game where most sellers tell him to stop calling and one is ready today
- Earns $10,000 to $15,000 on an Orlando commission after six or seven calls to the same seller
- Works out and takes a cold shower before prospecting, because sitting down cold does not work for him
- Says that without a system he ends up on Facebook or playing poker, so the software has to make it push-play
Transcript
00:00 — Why you need a system before you sit down
“Mighty Mike” Reid00:05
If I don’t have systems in place, I’m lost. I’ll sit down and I’ll check my Facebook. I’m a master poker tournament winner, so I will play poker on my phone. You have to have a system so that when you sit down, you can push play and it just goes. And so I’d want to have a software that I could actually sit down, get on Vulcan7, call my expires, call these people, know the search specific market that I’m trying to call in so that I can actually speak with intelligence.
Ren Jones00:34
It’s 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 who’s consistently taking several listings each month, and we have an exciting guest today. We encourage you to take notes and get as much of their knowledge as quickly as you can, and then use the copycat principle. Let me introduce my co-host from Greater Cincinnati, actually in the little town of Camp Dennison, Ohio, where the horses run free. Sarah Close. Hi Sarah.
Sarah Close01:09
Hi Ren. Thanks for having me today. I really appreciate it.
Ren Jones01:11
Glad you’re here. Sarah has a large Keller Williams operations, several offices throughout Cincinnati, Dayton, Ohio, and serves northern Kentucky and runs a big real estate team. You have about 550, 600 agents, something like that…
Sarah Close01:30
I run about 550 agents.
Ren Jones01:31
Yeah, 550. And you run a team that lists property calls, expires, for sale by owners and everything else for sales this year.
Sarah Close01:39
Yeah, I have a partner helping me with that. But yeah, we are very fortunate we get to work with a lot of great people. So it’s been a lot of fun.
Ren Jones01:45
What’s the goal for sales this year for the team?
Sarah Close01:47
For the team the goal is 250.
Ren Jones01:50
Two fifty. Awesome! Well, let me introduce our guest today from the Orlando, Florida area, my favorite place in February, Orlando, Florida. Mr. “Mighty Mike” Reid.
“Mighty Mike” Reid02:04
Hey guys, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be in the presence of royalty.
Sarah Close02:09
Great to meet you, Mike. What does your active prospecting look like today? Obviously it’s probably evolved over time, but talk to us a little bit about when you’re thinking about who gets your time and your allotted prospecting time, what’s the anatomy of that going to look like for you?
02:24 — Expired, FSBO, absentee: the three lines to write down
“Mighty Mike” Reid02:24
So working out every morning, getting a sweat in, getting the cold shower in, sitting down to do the prospecting is… It’s a must. And I’ll tell you the times I haven’t done it, and it’s different for everybody, but for me and for most of the people that I’ve learned from, that’s how it is. You need to set your body, your mind. You’ve got to be working hard on yourself so that you’re in the right mindset.
02:48So I love expireds too because it’s a numbers game if you call… So expireds is, most of them are upset because they just don’t have… Just understanding the mindset for a second. If someone’s taking notes, just write three lines, “Expired,” and then, “FSBO, “and then “Absentee.” And those are the three things, there’s a lot of other ways to go about it, but those three, if you want a listing today, an expired listing, call as many as you can. And it’s like hitting the jackpot. It’s like hitting the lottery. You’re going to call one that’s going to say, “Yeah, come out and list it. I was going to call and try to find another person” but… Most of them, just so you know, most of them are going to say, “Stop calling me. I don’t ever want to hear from you.” And so you’re just really just digging for gold on those expireds because they already trust agents in general that they have the professional aptitude to get it sold better than they can.
Ren Jones03:46
It is a gold mine. I know.
03:50 — Monday and Friday until you are the last one calling
“Mighty Mike” Reid03:50
And then for sale by owners, Brandon the king at this, I don’t know… I mean, Brandon, just the idea of building these relationships, reaching out to folks and basically just building that relation, knowing that it’s a seven-week process, eight-week process, but if you’re the last person standing following up, and that’s my follow-up process right now, with any For Sale by Owners, when I’m teaching my new folks is, it’s Monday and Friday, Monday and Friday. It’s Monday is like, “Hey, during this week here, we got a few new listings in your area.” Or maybe, “I got a few appointments in your area. I’d like to know if I could come by” and just serve them in some way, put a, “For Sale by Owner” sign in their yard, go buy them one or whatever, build a relationship with them so that when seven weeks comes, you’re the only one still calling and basically, you’re their friend already.
Ren Jones04:42
Yeah. Isn’t that funny how that works after a while because everybody else drops off. I mean, talk about some of the easiest money in the world to make, and what’s an average commission for you, Mighty Mike?
“Mighty Mike” Reid04:52
Yeah, so in Orlando, I want to say it’s anywhere between $10 000 and $15 000 in the beginning…
04:59 — Running it like a business rather than winging it
Ren Jones04:59
For $14,000, when you look at what you’ve done, you’ve called them six or seven times and you make that. And obviously you run this like a business because you’re very systematic, not only with your database, but with the systematic approach with For Sale owners and expireds and everything else. So would it be fair to say the organization, the structure that you are applying is the big key to this because a lot of people in our industry fly by the seat of their pants. They go, “Well, I’m done with my buyer from Chicago. Maybe I’ll spend a couple of days calling expireds,” and they just wing it. And you’re running this very organized, well-oiled machine.
“Mighty Mike” Reid05:37
So I love that you said that because thats exactly the goal. But I will say that, I will say that…
Ren Jones05:46
Even you can get pulled off?
“Mighty Mike” Reid05:47
I will say here I am in New Mexico, flipping a house…
Ren Jones05:50
Well, there you go!
“Mighty Mike” Reid05:51
Replacing the floors in this house and it is insane.
Ren Jones05:56
Mike, you list a bunch of property, then you go to New Mexico, you come back and you’ve sold three or four too, right?
“Mighty Mike” Reid06:02
Yeah.
Ren Jones06:02
Try that with a buyer.
“Mighty Mike” Reid06:04
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, listings is definitely the way. We didn’t talk a lot about that, should be a given.
Sarah Close06:09
Mike, let me ask you, if you were starting in real estate today and you were going to have your first day and your first month and then your first quarter on the job, what would be the three things that you would want to know as a brand new agent today, knowing what you know now?
06:24 — What he would want to know starting today
“Mighty Mike” Reid06:24
Wow, three things. So today, let’s start with today. So what I would want to know today is what are the tools that I can use? What am I doing? Obviously, let’s assume I already know how to do well in real estate, so I would want to know my market. So I’d want to know right away what area of the city that I’m in. Are people buying and homes flying off the shelf? If I get a listing in that community, is the home going to sell quick? Now, in a lot of communities, for a while there was just like every community, but there’s listings now that are stale. There’s listings that are sitting around, even though they’re priced decent in certain areas because the market is shifting a little bit, there’s still a crazy scarcity of homes. There’s a lack of homes, but in some areas there’s not.
07:18So it’s very pocket, especially in Orlando because we have a big Airbnb community and stuff like that. So I would want to know who I’m calling and I would want to know the software. I would definitely, I love Vulcan7. I love being able to just basically sit down and make it automated. So that’s what I would do right now if I didn’t have, that’s one thing I’ll tell you guys… If I don’t have systems in place, I’m lost. I’ll sit down. I’ll check my Facebook. I’m a master poker tournament winner, so I will play poker on my phone. You have to have a system so that when you sit down, you can push play and it just goes. And so I’d want to have a software that I could actually sit down, get on Vulcan7, call my expires, call these people, know the specific market that I’m trying to call in so that I can actually speak with intelligence.
08:09I would say that doing consistently, that is one of the things that I’ve struggled with, but I’ve learned how to stay consistent in my own way. So some people would say, if they don’t call Monday through Friday, then they’re done. If they don’t call every single day, they’re done. For me, what I do is I say, “Hey, I need to earn X amount of dollars. How many sales do I need to do to earn that so that I can take the rest of the time off?”
Ren Jones08:36
Well, this has been awesome. This is powerful. This is a lot of good information that’s going to help a lot of people that are trying to get some traction. And it’s very simple. It’s not easy, but it’s very simple and it pays better than anything else you can do. And obviously if Mike, what’s the best way for them to reach you?
08:56 — A year and a half in, and the equity in the time
“Mighty Mike” Reid08:56
So I actually wrote a book that’s just came out and it’s really the best way. I have a website, it’s called mightyfreebook.com. If you go to mightyfreebook.com, you get a free book and I’ll immediately reach out to you and every week you’ll get another well-thought-out video from me, where I’m teaching real estate principles on my show and mightymikereid.com is kind of where I have all of my different things, different companies, different services and things that I offer. But like I was saying before, Ren, I really just want to emphasize how, I mean, I’ve only been doing this for a year and a half. I’ve already had a business mindset, which put me ahead, I think. But if you understand that, what is the equity that you’re going to get from the amount of time that you’re putting into this, you can really just scale up in a way that you can’t do in any other business.
Ren Jones09:56
It is. If people will follow a formula, they need to align with somebody that knows the formula and then follow that formula verbatim. You can make more money than you can being a brain surgeon in a lot less time.
“Mighty Mike” Reid10:11
Yeah.
Ren Jones10:12
Would it be fair to say, in order to have money and the time to enjoy it, you have to list property and refer out or have somebody else take care of the buyers? Is that a fair statement?
“Mighty Mike” Reid10:23
It really is. And the other thing too is there’s so many other services that I’ve seen that agents try to go after the shiny object syndrome. And I try to let them know, you know, can get a listing, talk to the seller once, and automate the rest of it, have other people involved and things like that, and still do a great job.
Ren Jones10:45
And it’s amazing how many don’t do that. They will just kill themselves on the buy side until they finally leave the business. I see that Oura Ring, by the way.
“Mighty Mike” Reid10:55
Oh yeah. You like that? I love this thing, man. It tells me…
Ren Jones10:58
Everything about your life, it tells you what your income’s going to be next year. Oura, O U R A, they’re pretty wild.
Sarah Close11:08
They’re pretty cool.
11:09 — Filtering down to absentee owners only
“Mighty Mike” Reid11:09
Yeah. Well, you guys are definitely doing some really cool things there at Volcan7 and I, this might sound like a sales pitch, but it’s really not. If anyone watches my show, you can see that I review softwares about once a week. I review a different software for real estate investing, real estate in general, and just business things for taxes, all kinds of stuff. And Vulcan7 has been just, you guys really figured it out, not just with pulling the leads and putting them in the system, but also with being able to hit dial. And like I said…
Ren Jones11:48
Right, or just say, “I only want absentee, I only want the non-owner occupied. I want, I want to talk to everybody that does not live in their house.” So yes. Well, this helps a lot of people. There are a lot of people watching that want to catch the stride. And what’s interesting is because of the show, a lot of people have watched, they’ll watch two or three or four or five people and then they copy that and then they are one of them. They’re all of a sudden making $400,000 a year, $700,000 a year, $1.2 million a year in income, commissions paid.
“Mighty Mike” Reid12:20
Yeah.
Ren Jones12:23
And it’s a lot of fun. And then they can be in New Mexico like you.
“Mighty Mike” Reid12:26
Yeah, flipping an old house. Yeah.
Ren Jones12:28
Appreciate everybody being here. This has been wonderful. Mighty Mike, and thank you Sarah for being here as always.
Sarah Close12:36
Absolutely, thanks for having me.
Ren Jones12:36
And Mike, thanks, we’ll have to have you back.
Sarah Close12:39
Mike, it was a pleasure. Thank you.
Ren Jones12:40
We’ll check in nine months from now, somewhere.
“Mighty Mike” Reid12:44
Stay mighty.
12:44
Questions this episode answers
How often should you follow up with a for sale by owner?
Mike Reid calls every Monday and Friday for the seven or eight weeks it typically takes. He opens with something useful, such as new listings in their area or an appointment nearby. By the time they are ready, every other agent has dropped off and he is the one still there.
Which lead lists should a real estate agent work?
Reid names three: expireds, for sale by owners and absentee owners. He argues that if you want a listing today, expireds are where to call, because those sellers already accept that an agent can sell the home better than they can on their own.
What should you expect from calling expired listings?
Reid describes it as digging for gold. Most sellers will tell him to stop calling and that they never want to hear from him again, and one will say come out and list it. He treats the volume as the point rather than the outcome of any single call.
How much is a for sale by owner listing worth?
In Orlando, Reid puts a commission somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000. Ren Jones points out that at $14,000, having called the same seller six or seven times across a couple of months is a strong return for the effort involved.
What stops agents from prospecting consistently?
Reid is blunt that without a system he ends up checking Facebook or playing poker on his phone. He wants software he can sit down to and press play on, with the specific market already loaded so that he can speak about the area with some intelligence.
Mighty Mike Reid
Sells in Orlando, Florida, about a year and a half into real estate, and reviews software on his own show.
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