Squeeze the Orange, Become the Godfather in Your Market — Nate Martinez, AZ

Experience trumped all in today’s episode — our hosts and guests had a combined 75 years of experience in Real Estate, and our guest Nate Martinez with RE/MAX explained not only how he built a sustainable business but also provides tips for longevity in an industry where the only constant is market volatility.

The conversation covers the importance of mindset and consistency in the real estate industry. It highlights the success of agents who are committed to doing the work and executing their strategies. The topics discussed include the power of mindset, the effectiveness of open houses, the benefits of farming, and the value of building relationships through agent referrals. The key takeaway is that success in real estate requires a positive mindset, consistent effort, and a commitment to building relationships and providing value to clients and fellow agents.

Connect with Nate Online: https://the-nate-martinez-team-glendale-az.remax.com/

The Neighborhood Realtor is proudly sponsored by Treadstone Funding and Neighborhood Loans. For more tangible tips in real estate marketing, check out Matt's book, The Tangible Action Guide for Real Estate Marketing available on Amazon.
🔑 Treadstone Funding: https://www.treadstonemortgage.com/
🔑 Neighborhood Loans: https://neighborhoodloans.com
🔑 Real Estate Marketing Guide: https://www.amazon.com/TAG-Tangible-Action-Guide-Marketing/dp/1698339747
🔑 Connect with Josh May: https://marketgrandrapids.com/

📲 Learned something new, or have a suggestion? Message Matt Muscat on Instagram! 

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Transcript

(upbeat music) - I think the basis of this whole conversation is mindset, consistency, and attacking, you know, what you want to do in your business, as Jim Harbaugh would say, with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.

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(upbeat music)

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Hey everybody, Josh May here from Grand Rapids, happy to be co-hosting again with my buddy Matt Muscat, also in Grand Rapids, marketing expert of the Neighborhood Realtor podcast, and we have a special guest, I'm super excited today, to bring in Nate Martinez from the greater Phoenix area. I always refer to him as the godfather of real estate, he's a legend in this industry, and a lot of people know him around the country.

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You know, he has been there, done that, seen it all. So we're gonna dig into today, you know, what it takes to be successful in this market, in a changing market. We always talk about consistency,(...) and you know, who's winning, so we're gonna dive into who's winning out there, we're gonna talk about some examples of how Nate is winning, and we're also gonna get into the art of agent referrals, and building a brand around yourself and your network, and capitalizing off of that. So Nate, welcome, I'm super excited you're here, and the other thing you gotta know about Nate is, he does a ton of business as a broker owner, a team leader, he's been upwards of $85 million,

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a year in transactions. So he definitely is an industry expert. So Nate, thanks for being here, buddy. - Hey man, I'm excited to share, good to see all you guys. Love the hair, Josh, you're looking so good.

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- Well, I appreciate that, maybe Matt you can throw some video out there for us, so somebody can see this, you know, because I worked hard on that today. - I think Brian Serhan likes to do you for copying his look though. (laughing) - No, that's funny. So let's get into it, you know, there's a lot of noise out there right now, would you guys agree? A lot of noise in the industry, and the one thing I'm seeing is, the agents that are successful are doing their best to eliminate the noise and go to business in a work-like manner and execute. So Nate, and somebody that's been doing this for 36 years, and I mentioned you, you could tell stories about market changes probably four or five, six times at this point. So talk to me about what you're seeing from your area, national perspective, who's winning out there? Because you're seeing your team members, you're seeing your agents, who's doing the work, who's winning, let's talk about it. - Gosh, I coach different realtors or broker owners around the country. And the mindset is the key piece, you know, I would tell you this year, my mindset was a little down, our numbers were down here in the Phoenix area. Last year we did about 105,000 transactions, this year they're gonna come in right in the low 70s. That's a big decrease, right? We have 60,000 agents in our market.

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And there's a lot of agents that are not doing transactions. And, you know, but at the same time, there's a lot of agents that are doing transactions, and there are agents that are doing better than the year before.(...) So when I look at the different types of agents,

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it's mindset, right? I hired a girl the other day,(...) added her to my team. I wasn't looking for somebody, my CEO, my company says, "Hey Nate,(...) brand new agent, I'd love her to be on your team so she can get mentored." Because we have a mentor program or a brokerage where an agent will take a new agent on one-on-one for the first six transactions and walk them through every step.(...) He goes, "Why don't we put her on your team and let's see what happens, right? Instead of having one person mentor her, your team of eight can mentor her." I said, "Okay."

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I wasn't real excited about it, you know, to be quite honest.(...) I was a little negative about doing it. Anyway, she showed up at the first meeting. I hadn't even told my team yet. She got there 15, 20 minutes before the meeting started. I walked in and she was already talking to Nate Jr., my team leader, and Christine, my transaction coordinator. And they were having like a huddle. They were just going at it. And I go, "What's going on?" She goes,(...) "Well, this lady got,

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her license was, you know,(...) hung with our office on Friday.(...) So over the weekend, it was Monday morning now, she had already sold a brand new home and had a brand new listing in her hand. She didn't know what she was doing, right? She's three days into being a realtor.

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So we got to talking and she, after the meeting, she was excited. And I spent a little time with her and she goes, "I got to go." And I go, "Where are you going?" She goes, "I got another buyer. I'm going to go show new homes too. And if they buy that house, we need to sell their house." So literally within the first couple hours that I've known this lady, she has four deals on the board, right? And the next day she came back with another new home sold and another listing agreement.(...) So at the same time in my brokerage and other people that I coach around the country, there's a lot of people hanging their head down, oh, the market's different. When you come off a couple of years like we had in the nation with high production,

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I like to tell people the market is like,(...) for the last 20 years I've been riding this horse, right? And just been riding strong. All of a sudden you change your horse into a unicorn. So we were basically riding a unicorn for two years. The market was crazy, multiple offers, high sale volume. And all of a sudden that changed when interest rates started going up last year.

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So a lot of people have their head down. This brand new agent walks into my life and within 24 hours of knowing her has four deals on the board.

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She doesn't even know that the market's down. She doesn't realize interest rates are high, right? She just took charge.(...) And I think we need to think about that. And for me, that was probably a really good lesson

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to just not let the market be in the way. Not all the bad news get in your way. Just dive in, right? And she hasn't stopped. And I have a few more like that that have just come into the market and just blossoming right now.

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Well, and I've heard multiple stories of agents like this girl you're mentioning, they get their first deal in their first couple of days in real estate. Because what you do at that point is you force yourself to figure it out, right? Like you can learn as the transactions are going along. And I think the people that are able to like hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, get that first deal as quickly as possible. It's a race to number one.(...) They're the ones that make it. Then I think the second thing there is that

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in real estate, like once you have momentum building, like once the snowball is rolling down the hill, although Nate, you might not understand that reference because I don't know if it snows that much in Arizona like it does here for Josh and I. Once that snowball gets rolling, it's hard to lose momentum. And I think a lot of existing agents out there right now who had that momentum that was building for years, they lost it really quickly this year. And they need to remember that hustle from their first year, first years of real estate to get that ball rolling again.

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- You know, I agree with that. One of the biggest things that we do is basics, right? And one of the basic things to do in real estate is open houses.

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Now my team, pretty much the majority of their business comes from open house activity, right?

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So you can have people on my team that were used to the last two years when they would do an open house and have 20, 30 people flocking through to today where you might have zero or maybe less than five come through. And the mindset, I have a gentleman whose mindset was open houses aren't working, they're not working, right? Like they used to. I get it. Another brand new girl to my team,

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she started doing open houses and she's only been on the team 60 days.

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She went and did an open house on a $2.5 million

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new construction home that just finished that we had listed.

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She had like 10 people on Friday and seven people on Saturday, you know? And that was more than what everybody else was getting. But you know, she leaned into it, right? She got on Canva and did a bunch of marketing. She got on Red X, like I told her, she did a circle prospecting called 100 people around there.

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Out of that open house, she got a listing appointment for us, a $1.7 million house.(...) And she has another buyer that's gonna be buying in that same price range. But that seller's also gonna buy it. And they also have a secondary home they want us to sell. One open house, probably her second or third open house in her career, but she leaned in. She didn't just go put up four signs. You know, she put up, I think, 17 signs she set. She did the circle prospecting. She door notched, put out flyers. She did the work that needs to be done to be noticed, right? So again, another brand new agent in the marketplace,(...) eager to learn, willing to do the work. And they have nothing else to do but work, right? And she's getting great results.

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She did another open house this week. She has another listing. We're gonna meet with the sellers on Monday. That listing will come onto the market as well. Based by, you know, what has she done? Open houses, circle prospecting, making flyers, putting up open house signs. Very basic work, but just getting to it.

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- Real estate has a lot of contracts. I want this podcast to have a social contract as well. Here's what I need from you. If you're listening to the show and you get something valuable out of it, or you hear something that you think, that's awesome, I want you to send me a DM on Instagram, or if you find my email, send it that way. The more feedback that I get helps me to put together better shows and attract better guests.(...) - You know, big piece here. We all have a choice every single day and that's focused on our mindset.

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We're gonna choose if we're gonna work hard or if we're gonna, like you said, put your head in the sand.

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And what I'm seeing in West Michigan, like you guys said, is the agents that are accepting reality, going back to being aware of what's happening in the market. You've gotta work harder. You've gotta execute. Those are definitely the agents that are succeeding. Getting back to the consistency. Getting back to these new agents that, like you said, Matt, are not spending all day trying to learn

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how to do this presentation. They're out there doing the daily income activities. They're doing the open houses. They're picking one thing or two things or three things and executing with absolute relentless consistency. And I think that's the key. And where I'm going with this is, and I do wanna share for everybody that Nate Martinez

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was my real estate coach for years and mentor for years. And he's still my mentor and I got a ton of respect for him because he's changed my business under this next conversation we're gonna talk about. It's called farming.

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And him and I had a lot of conversations about farming and I was not doing it with consistency.

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And Nate has been incredibly successful being consistently farming around his community. So Nate, let's dive into that next. Like, how can you talk about that? In terms of execution, consistency, just not stopping, not giving up, tell me about it. - Well, whenever someone asks a question about farming, I pretty much tell them, you know, you gotta commit for a year.(...) The biggest challenge is everybody commits and after a month or two, there's no transaction. So they quit, they say it doesn't work. It's a very consistent. If you understand the numbers, right? And today's numbers, according to NAR, is we used to talk about the average homeowner stayed in their house around seven years before they moved. That's going up. You know, I've heard eight. I even heard a podcast,(...) 17 years. I think that's a little much, but people are stuck in their houses because they have a lower interest rate. So they're not moving as much. You know, they're gonna remodel, add on, what have you.

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So maybe, you know, the average years a homeowner is gonna be in their home, it's gonna probably be eight to 10 years over the next couple of years. So if that's the case, let's just use 10. It's an easy number to calculate.(...) If you're farming 100 people, only 10 people are gonna move in the next 12 months, right? So if you market to somebody January, February, March, and nobody bites your apple, if you will, they may not have had the thought that they were gonna move yet, right? So you might've missed out. So farming is consistency, as we said.

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I've been farming different areas for years, right? And I think the key to farming is you have to match the market. For instance, I live in a guard gated community. It's a golf community,(...) 600 homes.

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They range from, I don't know, say 700,000 for like a start, it's not really a starter home, but a $700,000 home to $3 million is the range of this neighborhood. So it's very eclectic.

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So I just have been marketing this neighborhood forever, right, since it started. It's probably been 10, 11 years ago, I started marketing this community.

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And it's a consistent piece. I just come out with the piece that feels good, looks good, it matches the market, right? So these homes are, like I said, between seven and $3 million.

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The piece has to look good. It has to look very professional, has to feel good in your hand, it has to have good information.

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So I think that's key. Another way to market a larger area, for instance,(...) I'm in a community called Vistancia. It's in the Northwest Valley.

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Vistancia has 4,500 single family homes in what they call the Lower Vistancia. They have Vistancia North going in now, which is gonna bring another three or 4,000 homes to this big community.

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And I can't afford to reach that community consistently.

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But I was able to,(...) during COVID, good things happen, right? So this is our Vistancia magazine, right? That comes out every month. It comes from the HOA.

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They have articles, information on growth in the area,

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grocery stores coming in, et cetera, right? It's a community-based magazine.(...) During COVID, the back page was black, and it said, "Your business can be featured here." I'll tell you what, Josh, I couldn't run fast enough to grab my phone to dial to see if that page was available. And it was, and I've had it. So we have the back page, right? Every month we do a different ad. When we have written, now this is kind of a over Christmas, you can see Santa in the background.

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So this goes out to 4,500 homes.

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4,500 homes consistently every single month. And the cost is 1,100 bucks. I mean, if you do the math, it's pennies per household.(...) Now, both pieces I showed you are,

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let's say they're delegated off my team.

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We don't design the ads for either piece. They're done by the vendor that sends them out. So really, my contribution is the idea, the concept of what's going on, the monthly piece.(...) The other one is they have access to our MLS and they bring in all the data, all the statistics, all the active homes pending closed, et cetera, and they report all that market information.(...) So there's no time by me or my team for those two pieces to go out into the marketplace. So that's leveraging time. And I love to market that way. I love to do low cost, high impact,

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and just wait for the phone to ring.

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- So a couple of things about farming that I love from that strategy that I want to expound on for a sec. So number one, you're sending out high quality information to these people. And Josh, I think you must have got this idea from Nate because my neighborhood, I get your mailer that looks very similar with a lot of that information. But I think when you're sending out those statistics and all that market knowledge on a very consistent basis, you're actually doing something else. And what you're doing is you're giving people an opportunity to get that information without having to go online to Zillow or somewhere else. Even if you send that to someone and they're causing their brother, their uncle, some stepsister is a realtor,(...) they're getting the information from you. And the next time they need that information, they're not going to some random online site. They're thinking of you because they got the information from you and you're the gatekeeper of that. You're presenting yourself as the most knowledgeable person in the area. And that's kind of on the high end. But on the low end, realtors ask all the time, hey, I love Nate's idea, I love Josh's idea, but I can't afford to start with an 1100 person neighborhood. I think there are ways to get beyond that if you're a newer agent without the budget. I have an agent who sends out seven hand written pieces of mail per day to his farm. And throughout the course of the year, he hits the whole neighborhood. So he's spending $3.50 a day and half an hour of his time, but he's starting with investing more time than money because he has tons of time and he has no money. And he's getting an ROI of about one phone call for every 50 that he sends out. And as he's gotten more successful,(...) he slowly started paying for more ads, kind of like Nate has been doing and taking more on more sponsorships, but you start somewhere. So anyone that wants to do farming, if you can't afford it, that cannot be an excuse. You have to start somewhere.

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- You know, I have a lady in our office that has built a tremendous business. She was on my team and then she left the team after two years of mentorship and started on her own. She actually left our brokerage for a year and then she came back. And we get a lot of people that always leave and then come back. But one of the things that she has done, she kills at an open house, right?(...) That's her number one source of business and she's building the team now.

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Her number two source of business is events.

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This lady is killing it. She'll have like a wine party and she'll invite her database and she'll have 70, 80 people at her house for a wine party. She did a concealed weapon class. She thought she'd get 10 people. She had 60 people sign up. So they had to do it over multiple days.

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She's partnered with the city. Now in the Northwest Valley, I'm in the city of Peoria, it's Northwest of Phoenix. And she's working the city of Surprise, which is Northwest of Phoenix as well.

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But she reached out to the city. The city has funds to do like,

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I know Josh, you do a lot of events as well, but she partners with the city. So they bring out the fire trucks, the police cars. They bring out this van that has cornhole in it and tables and chairs. It's kind of like a party in the park, right? So she does these events. She does them around different things like, fall festival, Easter celebration, what have you. I think she does about four of them a year.

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And the city is promoting her by having the fire trucks come out and hang out and police cars, et cetera.

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It's a wonderful partnership.(...) And again, what does it really cost her?(...) She gets vendors. So she gets all bunch of vendors to help out, title, mortgage, home inspection, et cetera, et cetera, to kind of pitch in. And they have like a little table there at the event. And I'm not saying she's zero basing that type of marketing, but you know what? She's reducing her cost and she's bringing the community. When you bring your title, your mortgage, your home inspector, your insurance agent, whoever that might be into the event, they also invite their database.(...) So her events are like a zoo and there's tons of people. And again, it's not a high cost thing, Matt. You mentioned that a lot of agents don't have money to do that. That's why you go back to basics. I mean, a simple event bringing people in. Josh, how many events are you doing a year? I know you're doing quite a few. - Yeah, we do one a quarter, four months a year. So we're definitely attacking that.

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And I think with farming, there's a common misconception that it just needs to be somebody spending a bunch of money to send a bunch of postcards. But this is a really good point because there are so many different tactics you can come up with. Like I was really impressed with Matt, with the story you told. Obviously, Nate, there's event options.

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There's another agent I heard that was literally door knocking a neighborhood, putting together, market analysis for every single house, door knocking, say, hey, I just, you know, as a courtesy of the neighborhood, wanted to pass along this market analysis to keep you informed of the market.

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There is so many different ideas. I mean, one of the things that we're also having success with because our return is now great. So I can spend a little bit more money on farming, but we're starting to do some storytelling inside of our farm. Like, so we've just sold this house. Now let's take the next thousand people in our farm through that process of what it looked to work with their neighbor, you know, from the staging process to the vendor contacts to that 60 days before the house got listed. How did we set that neighborhood record? Well, we want to be able to story tell, like, what it's like to work with us, you know, and then there's open house ideas inside a farm. I mean, I'm very big on like, if I have a listing inside my farm, I want as many signs out as possible, you know?(...) We've done like a cool ice cream social in your neighborhood, Matt. I mean, there's just, I just keep throwing out these ideas because there's a lot of opportunities. - Well, this is the thing. I talk about this all the time, but it's been a while. So I'm going to mention again,(...) like good agents, great agents use every single thing in their business that they have going on. That's part of that snowball. They use that as ammunition or as bait to get more business, right? Like you had a listing in my neighborhood, which was your kickoff point to have an event in my neighborhood, which was the kickoff point to get all the neighbors information and send them a personal CMA, which is the ammunition you need to then add them on social media and develop a relationship there. I mean, if you have a listing, that's ammunition to go door knocking to the neighborhoods and let them know that a new listing is coming up to do an open house. And I think, you know, if you're a new agent or a slow agent and you don't have your own ammunition, you need to find someone like Nate or Josh, who's an industry veteran with, you know, 20, 40 plus years of experience, find out what opportunities they're missing out in their business and offer to help with it. Like Nate, can I do an open house for you? Josh, can I help you with some CMA's to your database? And if I get one for you, we'll figure out a referral. I mean, like Josh, you're going on an evacuation soon? Like, can I cover for you and show some houses for you while you're taking your kids to that U of M game next weekend? Like if I'm a new agent, I need to hustle and find someone else's ammunition to use as my own until I have some. I think that's probably a good segue into chatting about, you know, working with other agents, because you two both probably get more agent referrals than any agents that I know. You've been doing it for a while. Josh, you know, you've been working on this for, and I've been going to conferences with you for seven, eight years, but I know in the last two years, something really changed and clicked in you and after differently. So guys, like, let's talk about the agent referral game and what done for your business.

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- Right. Well, I think this is a great, so some of these topics we're chatting about today are great because these are things that a lot of people actually don't think about. And I hadn't thought about like, I mean, I enjoyed receiving agent referrals over the years, but then I realized there's a real opportunity here to make this a big part of your business, which I don't think a lot of agents really think about. I mean, this is such a long-term play. If you're going to be in this business for the next 10, 20 years, start now building those relationships. And Nate will give you some ideas because he's been doing this for 36 years and is the king of referrals. But I will just say that over the past two years, I have made a commitment to make this a part of my business income. You know, last year, we can equate 13% of our income came from agent referrals, and that number is going to continue to grow. But I've had to be strategic about it. When I go to an event, I'm going to make it a point to meet people. I'm going to continue to sign up for these events and build these relationships. Furthermore,(...) one of the things that I had never done until this past year was I'm going to build an agent database inside of my CRM that I'm just going to have this as a subsection of my CRM because I'm not going to market to them like I'm going to market to my clients every month. But I do want to have the ability to market to 300, 400, 500 agents that I've met over the past 20 years in a good, positive way. Maybe shoot them like we're just sending them Christmas cards, shoot them like a video once a year.

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So there's some really good opportunities there if you are strategic and if you are consistent.

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- Neighborhood Realtor podcast is proudly made possible with the support of our sponsors, Treadstone Funding and Neighborhood Alarms, two amazing Midwest mortgage companies that now have offices all around the country. If you're a real estate agent looking to partner with an amazing lender,(...) DM me at DM, Musket 88 and I'll connect you with someone in your market. If you're a lender and you want to join, you want to do a mortgage company DM me and I'll connect you as well.

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- Well, especially to remembering that it's a long game, right? Like when you're marketing to business partners and like I market to Realtors, you market to other Realtors, I'm not marketing to you and then going to stop because I didn't get a referral from you this week, you might not have had anyone moving to Michigan this week. But when you're consistently marketing quality stuff to 400 people, almost every month, someone is gonna have something for you assuming they like you, they trust you and they can trust their referrals to you. Josh, how much business did you do this year alone in Realtor referrals? - Well, yeah, that's what I was mentioning. Well, close to 13% of our business.

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So six figures in commissions,

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over six figures, well over six figures in commissions just from putting in the work.

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What about you, Nate? Like I've heard incredible stories about you over the years like being the King of Arizona and showing up at these events and just really making that a part of your business, which has obviously paid off for you over the past three decades. Talk to us about your strategy. - You know, it's funny, Josh, it's one of those things that works so well, you quit doing it. You know, so I've been with REMAX 33 years and since the first convention, I went and I got a booth in the trade show and they were literally bags with my picture on it and it said, "The name you know, Nate Martinez." And I watched that first day at the airport after the convention, all these people using my bags to carry their extra stuff home.

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And so every year I would have a theme. One year I made 2000 Wayfair glasses and the only thing on the side said nateshomes.com and I passed those out at Fun Night and everybody was wearing them, the band was wearing them, the band was talking about them. So it was always to do something, you know.(...) I hadn't really done anything on a large level but some of the smaller events that we go to, I just happened to be at the premier broker summit for REMAX in Sonoma, California and we were at a winery.(...) So those hundred brokers, I think, have about 40,000 realtors under them, okay?(...) So, you know, I sent out a very nice email to them of a winery that we had for sale and it was just a good tie-in but those are ways just to lean in. I tell people you have to lean into networks, right? Whatever network you're involved in.(...) I know twice I've been out of the country during an annual event that Josh and I first met at called the Elite Retreat and you know, you have killed it, Josh. I know about three years ago, you started doing a-- - Bootcamp. - A morning workout, yeah, yeah. And then Josh would have these shirts for everybody that was there and we'd go work out with him on the beach and he'd hire the trainer. It was well planned and you know, people look forward to that every year, right? You've done that, is that two or three years now? - Yeah, we just got done with our third year and to be honest with you, my mindset on that was again, with all of the agents out there, there's a lot of realtors, there's a lot of relationships, how can you set yourself apart?(...) And my theory was like, I'm just gonna provide somebody, I'm gonna provide these 300 agents with an opportunity to experience something really cool and I'm going to order these t-shirts, I'm gonna come up with a slogan every single year,

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a cool acronym, it's not gonna be really branded to me. Of course, I have my logo like very small in the back, but I wanna make it about them, hire the trainer, but there's a lot of follow-up. There's a lot of pre-event follow-up, post-event follow-up. I've done cool stuff like,(...) we've taken everybody's pictures, I send a handwritten note afterwards saying thank you for coming to the event,

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let's crush 2024 together. So there's all these creative ideas and it goes back to how can you set yourself apart and how can you continue to do this in an organized fashion?

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- You also brought it back to where we started, Josh.

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It's not just about doing the event, it's not just about doing it one time like Nate said earlier, it's about all that pre-work of getting the invites out, it's about all the post-work of what you're doing afterwards. And I think whether we're talking about like agent-to-agent marketing, whether we're talking about events, whether we're talking about farming, like if you have a plan and you stick to it and there's a before, during and after, you're gonna crush it. But it has like the after and before, that's where the money's at. - You know, I learned this many years ago, that's called squeezing the orange, right? That's getting more juice out of that orange than the orange itself, right? So when Josh does an event, he invites everybody ahead of time, right? He's there the day of the event, he has a takeaway that people take home, the experience.(...) Josh used to invite me before you did that event to a small workout, it'd be like five or six of us go out to some random gym in whatever city we're at and just have a hell of a workout. You took that idea and shared it with like 300, right? And so it's that event that he did, one event, probably five, six, seven touches from before to the end with pictures and posts. And then everybody else posts pictures on Facebook, hey, thank you, Josh, great workout today. You know, that just has risen you to the top of everybody's funnel, if you will, if anybody's moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, they know you're the man. - Well, no, I appreciate that. And it's cool, I actually have a listing, I have a listing under contract that I can equate right back to that event. And so it is a long-term game like anything else. I mean, I think what people are getting out of this conversation is we started with consistency and commitment and getting in the right mindset.

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We talked about that with open houses. We talked about that with farming and being creative on your farming techniques. And we've talked about that with agent referrals and making that commitment.

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So I think the basis of this whole conversation is mindset, consistency, and attacking, you know, what you wanna do in your business, as Jim Harbaugh would say, with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. What do you guys think?(...) - Well, as a Michigan State grad,

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I appreciate the sentiment to your team and you guys are crushing it this year.

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I'll let that one slide since you posted today and you crushed it. - You know, I heard-- - One thing I, sorry, go ahead. - I was gonna say, I heard a quote the other day that has really, let's say stuck with me, okay? So, you know,(...) most people tell me they don't have enough time,(...) right? You know, we have an accountability group that I run at our company and I made it real simple. It's like, hey, just 10 conversations a day. That's what I want, you know, we have a telegram, just need to put in the number of conversations you had that day, right? I don't really want excuses,

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oh, my dog ate my homework or I was sick. Just, you know, if you had 10, put 10, if you had four, put four, no comment or no judgment, right?

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But the biggest thing that I think people say is I don't have enough time.

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And I had Brian, heard Brian Bufini speak at this conference I was at. He said, replace the words,

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I don't have enough time with it's not important to me.

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And man, that is, every time I start to say I don't have enough time, I said, it's not that important to me, right? It makes me refocus on what I'm doing. I think like a nice cozy blanket, something to cuddle up with to make you feel good. I equate that to using the word, I don't have enough time. That was my cozy blanket to get out of doing something that was hard, right?(...) And or just being consistent, right? So, you know, I would just share that with you. You know,(...) if you don't think you have enough time, it's really not that important to you. Not important for you to prospect. It's not important for you to farm. - I just wrote the job verbatim from how it came out of your mouth. That was one of the best pieces that I've heard all day. And I'm gonna be sending that out to all of my sales staff because Nate, that was genius. And I think we all kind of get it. Like it makes sense because we all operate in the same way. And I think, you know, the spirit of this show is doing, like do something. So, you know, an easy one, we talked about, I wanted to end this with like a tangible thing that everyone can do today. We talk about, you know, connecting with other agents, agent referrals,(...) and Josh and Nate are so willing to share. So if you're listening to this and you're outside of like, you know, the Grand Rapids market for Josh or the, you know, the Phoenix greater area for Nate, find them, add these guys, like connect with them on Instagram, add them on social media, have a conversation, see what you can learn with them. How can you network with these guys? If you wanna network with me and you haven't already, do that too. But Josh, where could they find you on Instagram if they wanted to?

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So yeah, Instagram, you can check out May Group GR. Anybody wants to find me, I got a really easy name. So you type in Josh May to Google, I will come up, number one there. And then our website is marketgrandrapids.com.

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How about you, Nate? If someone wants to connect with you, learn with you, engage, how would they do that? Yeah, I think just like Josh should just go to Google and type in Nate Martinez Realtor, Nate Martinez, Arizona. You'll have all kinds of listings from our Facebook pages. We have several, our websites, but just reach out. I'm here to help out. And that's one thing I love to do. I love,(...) when I met my mentor 33, then 35 years ago, that person changed my life. And I think about this man almost every day. He's been deceased now for almost 10 years.

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But I even get kind of emotional just thinking about and talking about him. That was Howard Britton, by the way. And so he taught me things that I continue to share. And I think giving to people knowledge that can make their life better is really what, that's the juice, right? That's the most important thing to me. I think that's why I'm a rematch broker owner. I love to bring in people, help mold them, help them reach their goals. Quite honestly, it's really exciting to see them exceed their goals. So whatever we have, we're willing to share. We're an open book. We don't hold anything back.

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Speaking of books, I did write a book a couple of years ago. - Oh yeah, you did write a book. - They always dominate any real estate market. You can pick that up on Amazon. And there was a sister book that is a planner

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that you can find there as well. It's a daily planner.

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- Everybody check out the book. - Endless plug.

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- Wait, can you repeat that book again? I'm sorry, repeat the book name again.

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Eight ways to dominate any real estate market.(...) It's written by my co-author, Sarah Bliss and myself.(...) Sarah was a buyer's agent that joined my team over 25 years ago. And we just kind of took what worked(...) and nailed it down to just eight ideas that you can do daily or in your business, right?(...) And yeah, check it out, Amazon.

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- I love that. Well, everybody listening,(...) what I wanted to do is find one of us on social. If you did something that you heard on this podcast and it worked for you, tell us. We thrive, all three of us thrive up with feedback. We wanna hear your success. I get juiced when I hear what worked for you. So please share, please leave a review for the podcast. That helps us grow and find more good guests. And we thank you guys so much for being here. Thanks, guys, for being so. (upbeat music)

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