How Wayne Fredrick raised his income 400% in a year by calling expired listings

Wayne Frederick00:04

This is probably one of the more challenging times I’ve seen, because there’s so many things getting thrown at agents all at once. For the last five or six years, traveling around and from the stage, I’ve called it the perfect storm. We’ve just had a lot of things working behind the scenes that all seem to be coming to fruition right now.

Wayne Fredrick00:22

So it’s a challenging time, and yet I know that every time there’s disruption, there’s also a great opportunity if you can back up and have the right mindset about it.

Loida Velasquez00:34

Welcome to a brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry to share with you their tips and strategies so that you can succeed in this business right now. Now, we know that there’s a lot of changes that are coming in the real estate world. Now, the question is, are you ready?

00:52Do you know what you need to be doing, what you need to change so that you can thrive in what’s going to be happening soon? Well, with that being said, I am so excited to bring on today’s guest, because we’re gonna be breaking all of that down. So I’m gonna go ahead and bring on our guest, Wayne Fredrick.

01:08Welcome, Wayne.

Wayne Frederick01:09

Well, thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here with you today. Yeah, the industry is… I’ve been in the real estate industry now for going on 40 years, from salesperson to broker owner to regional director of a major brand to now the consulting work that I do. This is probably one of the more challenging times I’ve seen, because there’s so many things getting thrown at agents all at once.

Wayne Fredrick01:38

For the last five or six years, traveling around and from the stage, I’ve called it the perfect storm. We’ve just had a lot of things working behind the scenes that all seem to be coming to fruition right now. So it’s a challenging time, and yet I know that every time there’s disruption, there’s also a great opportunity if you can back up and have the right mindset about it.

Loida Velasquez02:04

Yes, exactly. And that’s why I’m really excited to dive a little deeper in this conversation. But before we get to that, for someone that’s watching that maybe is not familiar with you, go ahead and give us a little bit about your background.

Wayne Frederick02:17

So I got in the real estate business by default, like so many people seem to still to this day.

Wayne Fredrick02:25

I originally… You can see the golf stuff behind me. I was originally gonna be a golf pro, and I realized that I would work a tremendous number of hours, make no money as an assistant golf pro, until finally one day maybe I’d make some money. I decided I didn’t wanna do that, and so I got in the real estate business.

02:43I got in the sales business by default. I was gonna go work for my father, who was a developer. And I graduated from college, and my father sold out and said he was gonna spend six months in Florida. I live in Springfield, Missouri, and he didn’t offer to take me with him, and so he said, “Why don’t you get your real estate license till you figure out what it is you really wanna do?”

03:06So that’s what I did. After four years, I’m done. I can’t understand how this business works. It doesn’t seem to make any logical sense to me, and so I’m going to quit. And lucky for me, I went to some training, and I got my eyes opened up to the possibilities of actions you could take. I convinced my wife to give me a year to try to figure this out one way or the other.

03:31My income at the end of a year went up about 400%, from 50,000 to about 200 grand at 26 years old. And from then, I went on to owning a brokerage. Actually owning two brokerages and building those. I ran a region for a major brand, and then 10 years ago, I started my own consulting company working with brokers, teams, and agents, basically on the lessons that I learned about myself and what I watch happening with our industry today.

04:09And so I have a company called See The Field Consulting. I’m a golfer, so if you’ve never seen the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” that’s where the title of my company comes from. There’s a pivotal scene in the movie. Will Smith and Matt Damon are the actors in the movie, and Will Smith looks at Matt Damon and says, “I think it’s time.”

04:28And Matt Damon says, “Time for what?” And he said, “I think it’s time for you to see the field.” And Matt Damon says, “I see the field. It’s 450 yards long and it’s got a red flag at the end of it.” And Will Smith says, “That’s not it. If you saw the field, you wouldn’t be hacking at the ball like you are.” And that resonated with me years ago.

04:49It resonates with me to this day, that if we really understand who we are and what we will consistently do, everything will fall into place. And for most of us in this industry, we get into this industry… I’m one of the very few, this is all I’ve ever done. I did this right out of college. That is somewhat of a rarity in the real estate industry.

05:14Most people, this is a second, maybe even third career. And so on the brokerage side, I was able to sit down, and I still do it to this day with people, if we can marry someone’s style, things that they’re already confident in, with a business plan, it works literally every time. And that to me has always been the disconnect in our industry, is we think that we need to be doing things that we’re not comfortable doing.

05:41So many agents say to me, “Well, but Wayne, if I was just more consistent.” Well, if you really stop and look at the entirety of your life, you only consistently do the things you’re confident in, right? If I’m not confident, I won’t go do that regularly. So why don’t we design business models for ourselves around the things that we enjoy?

06:05And we will be consistent on that, right? And we’ll be able to build our confidence up even more in the areas that we need to if we’re clear. I call it the three Cs. So number one, you have to really establish what is it you’re really trying to do, right? And have complete clarity with that.

06:25Number two, where do I need to build my confidence in order to manifest that thing that I have in my mind? And then number three, consistency will just happen. It deals a lot with people’s behavior styles. It deals with the various options that are out there. As I tell all of my clients and when I speak to people, the cold reality of real estate sales is everything works.

06:50It all works. It’s just, will you consistently do it? And so if we can shred away this theory that we need to be doing a little bit of a lot of things, because if you are lucky and blessed as I am to deal with some really, really cool people in the industry, you figure out that of the 48 to 50 possible ways to do this, the top people are doing two or three.

07:15They’re doing them very, very well. They’re very consistent with their execution, and they have great lives. And then you have all the rest of the agents that are, “Well, I saw this today, so maybe I ought to try this,” or, “The guy down the hall is doing that, maybe I’ll try that.” And that just gets us into turmoil.

07:33So that’s probably more of an answer than you wanted on how I ended up here. But I love my work. I love what I do. I’m very blessed. I get to work with some really, really cool people across the country.

Loida Velasquez07:43

Yeah. That’s amazing. I mean, from how it started to how you started to make the changes.

07:50I’m glad that you brought up how you even spoke to your wife. You told her, “Give me a year.” Because even recently this week, I was having a conversation with an agent and she said, “You know what? My husband is telling me maybe this is not for me, but I’m telling him no, one more year, I’m gonna make this happen.”

08:08And I think that there’s a lot of agents in that position, where they have been in this a couple years and it’s not going how they thought it was gonna be going.

Wayne Frederick08:15

Yeah. I’ll be honest with you, it’s even worse now than it was when this happened to me. My wife looked at me and said, “Hey, you need to go get like a real job.”

Wayne Fredrick08:26

We had had our first child and she’s like, “This is not working. You’re always stressed out. You’re this, that, and the other.” And it was funny, because I set three rules for myself at that point. I gave myself a year. I convinced her to give me a year, and I set three rules, and everybody told me I couldn’t do my three rules.

08:47And my rules were I wasn’t gonna work weekends, I wasn’t gonna do open houses ’cause that would’ve violated the weekend rule, and no one was gonna call me at home. Now this is back pre-cell phone, right? And the seasoned veterans told me I couldn’t do it. And I said, “Why?” And they said, “Because the customer expects it.”

09:07I said, “Then I’ll quit.” Because I was gonna quit anyway, right? I mean, we get into this industry because we’re gonna be our own bosses. We get into this industry because it’s unlimited income, and yet the first thing that happens is we lose track of that in a lot of cases. And it’s in there for all of us.

09:26I would say this to whoever you were talking to. We just have to figure out which parts of this you enjoy, and then drive the business that way. I mean, this is still the work that I do on a daily basis with people. It’s such a great industry. It is literally unlimited income, but as one of my mentors taught me years ago, when it can be unlimited, it can also be zero.

09:52Yeah. And that’s part of the yin and the yang of the industry. But yeah, there’s a lot of that going on right now. And it’s worse now for people, because a lot of agents now are coming off of 2020, ’21, and ’22, and golly, we were so busy, the money was just hitting us, and now we’re in the middle of a reset.

10:16And it’s scary, but if your mindset’s correct and if you’re doing things consistently, it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.

Loida Velasquez10:27

So for you, you mentioned the three things, right, that you told yourself you’re gonna do. People were telling you it’s not gonna happen. So can you walk us through that process of how you made it happen and kind of told them, “You see?

10:40I did it.”

Wayne Frederick10:42

So for me, life is… And people laugh at me, but I don’t really care at this point. I believe in serendipity. I believe that you’re always talking to who you’re supposed to be talking to. I do believe you can set your own rules for your life, and I decided to set my rules of no weekends.

Wayne Fredrick11:02

We had just had our first child. I wanted to be home with my son on the weekend. And I play golf, right? I’m a golfer, so I want to play golf on weekends. And I’m like, okay, well, if I’m going to not work weekends, I’m gonna have to learn how to get on the listing side of this equation. And so I looked at the various options for getting to the listing side.

11:29The overall goal was I need to make X number of dollars and I can’t work weekends. And so I explored things that didn’t work, that I didn’t enjoy, and I was wanting just to move on to the next. And for me, my life changed when I started calling expired listings. And I got really, really good at it.

11:50And all of a sudden I had a listing inventory, and one of the top agents in town, and actually in my office, came to me one day and she said, “Do you have a lot of sellers who call you that are disgruntled with their agent?” And I said, “No.” I said, “I got six listings last month though from people that needed a new agent.”

12:13And I said, “I get here every morning and I work expireds.” And I said, “Now if you start doing this, I’m in trouble, because you have a track record, right? You have the name, you have the ad dollar. I don’t have that. I’ll have to go find a new sandbox.” And she said, “Well, don’t worry.

12:30I’m not going to.” She said, “I did that.” She goes, “I just saw that your business is really starting to take off, and I wanted to know what you’re doing.” She said, “I’m really proud of you because most people won’t do the work.” Well, that obviously filled my tank up, right? And what I’ve always said to people in our industry is there’s always room, always, there’s always room for talented people in real estate sales.

12:53In fact, the marketplace will get out of your way. So many people are like, “Wow, where’d they come from?” Right? And that talent level, or the way that we do this, I talk to my people a lot about the three buckets of business. There’s three buckets in business. Number one, the number one bucket is referral, right?

13:15So if you get into the real estate business and you know a lot of people, it’s just easier to get up and running, but it doesn’t mean that you have to know a lot of people to be successful in real estate sales. The second bucket of business is, are you predisposed to go consistently talk to people that you do not know?

13:37And that gets into DISC testing and Myers-Briggs and behavior styles and all of that. But you’re wired that way or you’re not wired that way. And then the third piece of the puzzle, the third bucket of any business, is advertising. And so to me, what we have to start doing is saying, “Okay, do you know a lot of people?

13:59Because if so, here’s the game plan for that. If you don’t, but you’re predisposed to talk to people that you don’t know, well, here’s the scripts, here’s the dialogue, here’s the mathematics of that. And if you don’t have the first two, do you have any money?” Because we can effectively spend money to get people to contact you that you don’t know.

14:20But the reality is if you strike out on all three of those, I don’t know anybody, I just moved to town, I’m not wired to talk to people that I don’t know, and I don’t really have any money to put into this, don’t do this. And I don’t mean in real estate, just don’t be an ent-… don’t do this, because we’re just delaying the inevitable.

14:43And that was my journey, still been my journey. I love my work. I have my three-legged stool of life now that I try to run all my decisions through. And I know everybody can do it, ’cause I barely got out of college. And I’m not that smart. I graduated at 2.1 grade point average, ’cause you had to have a 2.0 to play college golf, so I just got barely over the bar.

15:09But there’s a way life works, right? And if we can kind of get ourselves in flow with that, it’ll all take care of itself.

Loida Velasquez15:18

Absolutely. And when it comes to your coaching and the students and the agents that you have, obviously 2020, ’21, ’22, things were different to what they’re now, and the changes that are coming.

15:31So how are you helping these agents, or what kind of questions, what are you guys changing in the way that they work?

Wayne Frederick15:36

So I think the biggest change that’s happened in our industry that we really aren’t talking about, okay? It’s not this lawsuit thing. That’s a bunch of forms.

Wayne Fredrick15:47

It’s not about the new forms. It’s the shift in consumer behavior. And I think it’s the biggest issue that agents aren’t really dealing with. The stats have been out there forever for us. Absent a strong relationship with a realtor, people now go online. That is a cold reality.

16:16On the listing side, they go to Google, and we could go down the route of Google business pages and reviews and local service ads. On the buy side, like it or not, they go to the portals. They do go to a Zillow. They do go to these various things. Homes has their play going on.

16:35And the thing that agents need to be focusing on is furthering their relationships with their past clients. And we’re horrible at it, because servicing your past clients, staying in flow with your past clients, is a series of routine, mundane tasks. And we’re salespeople, and we don’t like routine, mundane tasks, right?

16:58We like the fun stuff. And because of that, our people are not staying our people, and they’re going to portals. This is, to me, the biggest challenge in the industry. Now, we’re all focused on this lawsuit thing at this point. That’s irrelevant to me. Are you in flow with your people? Do you even know how to get in flow with your people?

17:18Do you even know who your people are? Because most agents have a gigantic database of people that they contact sporadically at best. And this was my own personal decision years ago, to narrow my database down, but deepen with a smaller number of people. It works every single time, and yet we’re not really talking about it as an industry.

Wayne Frederick17:45

And I think it’s a tectonic change in the industry, I really do. I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface now of the changes that are going to happen in the industry. Some people won’t make it through it. Let’s be frank about it. They’re not gonna make it through it, but there’s always room for talent if you’re willing to assess where you are and what you’ll really do, it will resonate with your people.

Loida Velasquez18:11

Absolutely.

Loida Velasquez18:11

Now, as we get ready to wrap this up, tell us a little bit more about your coaching. Just what agents can expect getting connected with you, and how they can reach out to you.

Wayne Frederick18:22

So probably the difference with me is you get me. You don’t get handed off to somebody else that kind of talks about my theory.

Wayne Fredrick18:31

You get me. I always start it with just an introductory phone call. It’s about a 30-minute call, and we talk about what you’re trying to do. We try to scratch around a little bit about what’s keeping you from doing the things. Probably the way that most people get to experience the mindset of what I talk about first, we have a product called Wednesdays with Wayne, that you can go to waynefredrick.com and see how to sign up for it.

19:02I go live on Zoom every other Wednesday, and it’s a live training. It’s Q&A at the end, and we do it by design. There’s not a schedule that comes out really early, because we’re always adapting to whatever the marketplace gives us. And then there’s also my private coaching clients that I talk to every other week about the specific issues of their businesses, be they a team, be they a broker, be they an individual agent.

19:35So waynefredrick.com is the easiest way to get me, or wayne@stf, See The Field, consult.com, stfconsult.com.

Loida Velasquez19:43

Excellent. And we’re gonna make sure to put your links in the description box below. Awesome. But last question. What would be two things that you would tell an agent right now they need to be doing?

Wayne Frederick19:57

As one of my clients said the other day, a team leader, he said, “How do we get better?”

Wayne Fredrick20:02

I said, “We practice.” It’s the only path. You should practice more. Think of yourself as an elite athlete. The elite athlete spends way more time practicing than they are on the actual playing field. As an industry, we don’t practice. And that’s because we ultimately think of practice in the two words that strike fear in everyone’s heart, and that’s the words role-playing.

20:28Nobody likes to role-play, I get it. And yet you’re really role-playing with real live members of the public if you don’t practice. So think of yourself as an elite athlete, read about elite athletes, and watch how they do it. And then the second thing is double down on your past client systems.

20:44And honestly, if you don’t know what that looks like, if it scares you… So many people go, “Well, I don’t wanna be creepy,” right? “I don’t wanna be bothering these people.” We have a methodology to have people take a couple of steps towards you and tell you that, “Hey, I’m one of your people.

21:06Now you can contact me as many times as you want to.” But that’s the disconnect. So it would be practice more than you’ve ever practiced. This lawsuit is not about forms, it’s about dialogue, it’s about processes. And get in touch with your past clients like you never have before. Deepen those relationships and make sure that you’re at the forefront.

21:26And we coach people on a lot of different strategies for that.

Loida Velasquez21:30

Awesome. Well, Wayne, thank you so much for being here, for all of the amazing tips that you gave. Once again, all of Wayne’s links will be in the description box below. And with that being said, we’ll see you on the next one.

Wayne Frederick21:41

Bye.

Wayne Fredrick21:41

Thank you very much for the time. Bye-bye.