From $38M Agent to Broker Owner: What Tanya Cosmini Learned the Hard Way | Ep. 329

Tracy Hayes  0:00 

All right, that's on 321, Hey, welcome back to the Real Estate Excellence Podcast. Today, Tanya Kazmierni joined me on episode 97 She had just launched Realty One Group Elevate and had big goals, big plans. Today, we're checking in what's happened since, what's changed, and what she's learned about running a brokerage that you can't learn any other way. Please welcome Tanya Cosmini to the show. Oh my gosh, Tracy, thank you so much. I'm really excited to come back. That was quite an honor. I'm excited you come back, because I really thought, you know, this is really going to be a good show, because we're always talking about a new agent getting started. What did you learn, all that kind of stuff, and you went from a top producing solo agent by yourself to opening your own brokerage, and which I'm sure is a lot of agents that you know out there, like they have some maybe an aspiration or a thought about doing that, and you've, you've, you're there, and you've been now almost four years, closing on four years, so we want to learn what you've learned.

Tanya Cosmini  0:59 

Wow, a lot, you know, I would say that what do they say, hindsight 2020 and it wasn't what I thought, and that's both good and bad, right? You know, you can look at anything and say, all right, you know, I thought I thought it was gonna be this, and now it's that, and that's really what it is, you know. I went into it thinking I was gonna like, like guns blazing, like defend the agents every day on all these like crazy things, and it's really not like that, you know. For the most part, real estate's kind of calm and easy, and it's me,

Tracy Hayes  1:28 

like, saving their deals

Tanya Cosmini  1:30 

left and right, and whatever. And you know, because I didn't have that before, and when I had some problems in real estate, I didn't have a broker that really defended me, and that always disappointed me, and I always like to learn from how I was treated to treat somebody differently.

Tracy Hayes  1:44 

Speak to that a little bit of what you found by some of the agents, because I imagine a lot of them had your same experience, or even new agents that never really worked for anybody else but you. When you are, you're obviously willing and stepping in, what are some of the feedback that you've gotten from that?

Tanya Cosmini  2:00 

All super positive, like literally last week, just last week, one of the agents called in tears, right, because there's feelings in real estate, right, because there's money, and she was like, "Hey, Tanya, you know, one of my customers is going to call you, you know, he's threatening to call my broker, and I was like, "Bring it on, let him call me, can't wait to hear from him. She told me the situation, and of course it had to do with compensation, right. It's always about money, and it was just a not understanding that, right, as all the realtors know, you can't get paid more than what's in your buyer broker agreement, but we can get paid less. So she had agreed to get paid less. Her BBA was for one amount, the agreement was for a lesser amount, so they send out the modification, the buyer broker agreement, and he understood it as a combination of the monies, as she was getting, we'll just pretend 10% just to make it up, and bananas,

Tracy Hayes  2:56 

we'll say bananas, like Patty said,

Tanya Cosmini  3:01 

but and he was like, I'm not gonna do that, you're wrong, you guys are unethical, you know, I'm not gonna combine the monies, and and he was so frantic that he wasn't listening, I mean, he was cussing at me, I mean, it was, it was crazy, yeah, and you know, I left the conversation with, hey, I'm going to send you a summary of our conversation with the dates and the correlation of those documents, explaining that this is actually here to protect you, because we could actually collect the difference, and he didn't respond to any of it, but she left it feeling empowered, which is really all I care about is that she felt supported, that she knew that in a time when a customer's threatening to call her broker, that her broker is going to answer the phone, then explain the situation, and just be there in her corner.

Tracy Hayes  3:54 

Yeah, because I imagine this, it's well, we, we know there's great brokers in the area, but there's probably twice as many ones that are really not staying out in front, are not quick, quick to answer the phone. I've heard that. Well, I think in our business, how many times I heard, "Oh, just answer the phone, you'll, you'll get deals. Well, I mean, obviously, a big part of yours, you recruit, but you also, retention is just as big as recruiting, because you can't be letting them go out the back door, and part of that is putting yourself out in front and be willing to take that phone call and get on the phone with a with a client at eight 9o'clock at night, if that's what you have to do to calm them down,

Tanya Cosmini  4:31 

of course, and I, and I tell the agents that, hey, listen, just like I don't answer the phone when I'm sitting with you, I'm not, I might not answer your call right away, but I will get back to you super, super quickly, right? Time in front of somebody is really important. You don't want to, hey, let me see who that is, you know, checking out your little.. I stopped. I stopped wearing one for that reason, because it's like an addict, an addiction check. Yeah, so you know, I try to like put my phone away, I'll glance at it. I'm a single mom, my kids are really important to me, it's the only people I answer for are the kids, but. I will always get back to you as quickly as I can, and if it's been a long time, I might say to the person I'm sitting with, 'Hey, you know, blah blah blah from the brokerage called me. I'm just going to shoot them a quick text message, just make sure it is in an emergency, and they're like, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, they understand, because I do try to take as much time as I can with them, because whatever they called about to them is an emergency and is important, and I want to give them the time they deserve for that.

Tracy Hayes  5:24 

Well, people that are in front of you know, you know, you're a leader, and you, that's that's what you've got to do. Your job is to, hey, I need to step out, because I got to take this call, one of my people need me, correct? I try as much as I can. Yeah, yeah, so that's hopefully no one called me right now. You, you said it, how you, how you phrased it. You obviously you had a vision and expectation, but it wasn't that.

Tanya Cosmini  5:53 

Yeah, like to

Tracy Hayes  5:54 

explain it. What was your vision? And then what did you, what did you find out wasn't all that?

Tanya Cosmini  5:59 

So it's, it's so hard to quantify, like, I, I guess I thought they, they would, there would be, like, I guess more problems, for lack of a better word, or more fights, it's like I'm like kind of scrappy, so I just thought there'd be like more, more of that. Well, there hasn't been, which is so good, right? I'm so happy that there actually hasn't been, but I just imagine there'd be more, in all, in all fairness, it's, it's, it's a lot of, you know, I'm gonna actually say it's, it's, it's because I've trained them well, well, that's why I was going to go to, are you being,

Tracy Hayes  6:32 

maybe it's because your proactiveness and having been in the trenches, and you still doing your own deals, that you are foreshadowing issues, and you're covering them early for them,

Tanya Cosmini  6:44 

and I think that's a big part of it. So, there's a couple of things we do that I think sets us apart, and you hit on one of them, and I get a lot of criticism out there for it. And I say today, I sell real estate. I've done research on it. There's about 96% of broker owners that sell real estate, about 24% of them hide it, not gonna hide it. It's not who I am. I'm transparent about everything I do.

Tracy Hayes  7:06 

That just makes that makes you, then people are questioning if you're hiding, you like, well, you told us you weren't doing deals, but you just did a couple deals over here. What's going on? That just makes everyone start to second guess your overall integrity.

Tanya Cosmini  7:19 

Absolutely, and I, and there's, there's reasons I sell real estate, but really, the number one reason is, How can I help you as an agent sell real estate? How can I navigate the contract with all the changes and the climate of real estate changing? If I'm not practicing it right, real estate is a practice, it's not, you're never going to master it, I don't care who says it, is they do it, stay away, it's a practice, right? The customer changes, the agents change, and if I don't hear it and feel it and see it, I can't help them properly. And so I am proud that I still sell real estate, you know, because I'm able to help them with the contracts. I'm able to commiserate with them when things don't go as planned.

Tracy Hayes  8:05 

Well, I knowing in this one particular broker, how I mentioned Howard all the time, because I feel he does - he's not in the producing category, but he does a lot every day to constantly pouring into his agents, so he has to find things that are out there that he feels that you know where you're actually experiencing them, because you're going down the same road with them, and as much as Tom says a lot of times, you gotta keep your hand on the electric fence, it's when you release, you're, you're no longer feeling the current through the fence anymore, you start to, you know, distance yourself.

Tanya Cosmini  8:44 

It's like keeping your pulse on the market, yeah, like literally and physically, and, and you know, I use it as it helps the agents too, right? It allows them, you know, like for instance, right now I have a listing in a neighborhood that one of the agents lives in, so her signs there, right? It gives her presence in the neighborhood, it makes her feel really good that she's able to do that, because it, it, you know, it's a brokerage listing, so anyone sign can be there, right, within the brokerage, but it looks like it's giving her street

Tracy Hayes  9:11 

credit, and then people are gonna go buy, oh, that's my, that's a neighbor, oh, she lives over a couple streets over, yeah, yeah, yeah, I

Tanya Cosmini  9:16 

mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know a lot of other people that give those opportunities to their agents, I don't want my signs in yards. I don't, I don't, I'm not growing a real estate business, but I love that my business can support them. That's my goal for my agents.

Tracy Hayes  9:30 

Yeah, I don't like the well, in that you see some stuff, right, but people have got, you know, they say I'm out of production. To me, that takes just, it's not probably more work when you're out of production to keep the credibility and the pulse on what's going on, the issues that are going on, and especially if you're trying to get off the ground, you know. I think you probably say you, for four years, you're probably not off the end of the runway yet, you're not really truly flying. And that you, that you, you know, your great aspirations that you have dreamed about, so you've got to get there, and the only way is for you to keep experiencing, see what's going on, and be out there in the interaction, interacting. I mean, I'm sure you've tried to recruit agents who have been on the other side of some of your deals. I mean, that's just a natural thing. Yeah, yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  10:17 

sure, for sure. You know, like, they see what I'm like, I see what they're like, or the other way around. I have not recruited agents on the other side, because I don't like the way they, you know, interact with people. Yeah, and that's, and that's okay too, right? You know, not every brokerage is for everybody. That's the most amazing part about all of this, is that all these different brokerages have different platforms and different ways of doing things, and it's not a one fit all shop,

Tracy Hayes  10:43 

so two big things, and I believe in you, might you might have a couple things add to this list, but from an outsider looking in, two main categories, obviously retention, we mentioned that keeping the agents that you have, keeping them satisfied, and you know to take your brokerage to where you want to go, and I know you had some great aspirations when we originally spot recruiting. What have you learned about that?

Tanya Cosmini  11:09 

The number one thing I've learned is number one, it's so much harder is a tough word, but it is harder than I thought. It's a longer game than I thought. You know, the majority of the agents that that I've been recruiting, that have joined, it's been like a one to two year cycle, like it's been that many, that long, and that many conversations in my mind, it's like we meet once and you like sign the document, let's go, not happening, like pretty much ever, which is, which is fascinating to me, because that's not how I joined brokerages, like I guess I maybe did my research differently, and by the time I met with that broker, I'd probably already made my decision that I did sign almost immediately. So it's just been very fascinating to just see how that just that transgression, it's just been so processed. Yeah, that process has just been so significantly different than I thought. Well, what's been the toughest? The toughest lesson has been to understand the recruiting cycle. Yeah,

Tracy Hayes  12:08 

from the from the agents who you've approached might be cold turkey, in other words, they weren't even thinking of moving, and then you're coming and talking to say what's going on. So that, that I could see them going, well, should I move? What I mean, versus obviously someone who is trying, is already has reasons to move, is probably going to move a little bit, a little bit quicker, because I imagine you've run into both situations.

Tanya Cosmini  12:28 

Oh, sure. So, so I'm going to say some like things that broker brokers say. We say, like, all agents have one foot out the door at all times, like all agents are about to leave, they're

Tracy Hayes  12:39 

looking for the green or grass on the other side all the time, I

Tanya Cosmini  12:42 

know a lot of you guys out there are like, oh, that's interesting, I never thought about that, but I know you're constantly getting recruited, I know you're getting phone calls and emails and text messages from tons of brokers, and it doesn't matter if your business is doing really well or not doing well, they're recruiting you for both reasons, either way, they were going to tell you, while you're doing so well, you should move over here, because our product is better, or, oh gosh, you're not doing well, it's because you're a broker, you should move over here, because we're better. So, it's just a very interesting phenomenon, like the whole recruiting situation. I would say that has been the hardest lesson to learn, is no realtors move quickly, whether they're successful and they're doing well or the opposite, and their reasonings are all over the map, like I can't say, "Oh, it's always because of this" or "it's always because of that. It's a million different things, it's quite fascinating, because I'm an animal. Well, they're

Tracy Hayes  13:42 

all running their business differently. They all have different issues in life, and, and then they're human, so they all have what they think is important to them, you know. And their business is all different,

Tanya Cosmini  13:52 

absolutely. And I'm very analytical. I have my backgrounds in science, so, like, I have a, you know, I keep notes, and so I have, like, the reasons, and I, if there's no rhyme or reason to it, it's like, sometimes, like, I like who sits next to me.

Tracy Hayes  14:04 

How do you stay in front? Because I imagine in four years it's, it's evolved, changed. What are some of the top two or three reasons why they are changing brokerage and blend into that, because I imagine there's same reasons of why they should be changing their brokerage, and they probably, they may not even be thinking about it, because they just don't know,

Tanya Cosmini  14:28 

absolutely. So, so overall, the number one reason why agents change brokerages is support, and that support is very broad. It could be support of technology, it could be support of their broker, it could be support of, of, of, of the admin support of whatever's happening at the office, but that support is generally why they leave, and so usually it's an agent that you know you've been talking to for a while, and it's just a shot that road camel's back, you know, they, they had a deal going to hell in a hand basket, and they call and. One answers, yeah. And then they're done. Tanya, I've called you 10 times. I'm coming over right now. I mean, that's, that's like, then probably the number one way I get agents is because I do answer the phone, you know. I'm very honest about agents

Tracy Hayes  15:12 

working with another brokerage called you for your knowledge. You helped them out, and,

Tanya Cosmini  15:16 

oh yeah, I can list. I can, I mean, I'm not going to say their names, but I can list 10 agents selling 15 to 20 million that call me weekly because their broker isn't available.

Tracy Hayes  15:28 

Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  15:29 

yeah.

Tracy Hayes  15:29 

At what point do you finally say, "Why don't you just come over to my shop?

Tanya Cosmini  15:33 

So it's,

Tracy Hayes  15:35 

you have to close the deal eventually. There is

Tanya Cosmini  15:38 

so weird, and I would, I would love to get them all together in a little, what's it gonna take? Could you come up, and whenever I say that, I don't hear from them for a while, right? I like hurt their feelings or something, and or make it uncomfortable, and not try to make it uncomfortable, because obviously I'm helping them, because I think they're a great agent, I think they'd be a great fit for the brokerage, obviously they need help that they're not getting, and I want to be that support system for them, and I guess I must remind them that I'm not their broker, and they're like, "Well, shit, I've been calling the wrong person, and they don't want that reminder, and so I don't do it as I do, I don't do it often, and sometimes when they call me and I can't answer the phone, I'll text them and say, "Hey, I'm with one of my agents,

Tracy Hayes  16:20 

yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  16:20 

and that I think is enough to remind them, you know, because I do love helping the agents. I, you know, something I'm very proud to say, that the agents know, and that I know, is I am obsessive about the contract.

Tracy Hayes  16:34 

I'm really curious, you, you go to somebody for their knowledge once, twice, three times. Now you're pushing it. If they're regularly calling you once a month, or whatever it may be, maybe once a quarter. It's because I mean, how often does an agent call their broker? You know, as you find out, it's not - it's not every deal. They don't need to call you on every deal, and you know you're they're asking you for your knowledge and your experience. You know, I could see where they would say, "Hey, Tanya, but we, the technology or something over there at that other brokerage is just so much better than to actually say, 'You know what, Tanya's got my back, I'm going to have her back, because in reality, you and I know it's the broker doesn't - the brokerage sign is not what's getting them deals.

Tanya Cosmini  17:23 

Absolutely, it's

Tracy Hayes  17:23 

them, their branding, and so forth. Now they're, they look better when they're got the support that will, that you give out. But why, you know, to me it's being a little selfish. Sean, I'll say it, and you, you don't have to. I think you'd be, if you're calling any broker, whether it's Tony or anyone else, is not your broker regularly to save your deals, because your broker won't answer the phone, you need to check up from the neck up, or some of it is

Tanya Cosmini  17:47 

that they don't feel their broker knows, knows, knows what they need help with. I get that a lot. They're like, oh, you know, I sat with you in a contract class, and you know, you knew the answers. They're like, I don't know, you know, my, I don't know if my broker even knows, you know, and I'm like, oh, I'm like, hey, I love the contract, you want to sit down, talk about it, like, I know the line numbers, and I do love it, like, I like, am a dork about it, like, and a geek, like, I love, I mean, you can win deals and protect your customers by knowing the contract, so if agents out there, if you, if you don't feel like you know the contract, learn it.

Tracy Hayes  18:27 

What are you finding? Because we kind of covered question number ones, like the there's no defined reason. I think my question before was, what was two or three things that's making them come over? I don't think we actually got to two or three distinct things. One was support was the general answer. What are you seeing? Since obviously it's a hot topic, I believe it's where a lot of the big names are going to the Compass. Well, now Compass is a huge family now. I mean, name brokerages that aren't under Compasses, Compass Holdings, now Compass International Holdings, you know, technology. Obviously, a lot of people went over to Real, that's run by a technology guy, and so forth. What are some of the things I don't believe every agent's actually using the technology? They may say technology, but most of them aren't even really using the technology, is actually being provided.

Tanya Cosmini  19:23 

You're 100% right. And so something that we're really proud out, proud of, proud about at Realty One Group is that we have really supportive technology that's very comparable to Reels and to Compasses. It's just that we don't feel it's going to replace the agent, so it works hand in hand with you as an agent, so we have AI built into all our platforms that are there to support you. We have a growth coach built in for your goals, so like let's just say you've been selling 3 million a year and your goal is to sell 5 million, you literally have a conversation with a growth coach and say, "Hey, this is what I've been doing, you. In order, things I can do, and it gives you suggestions, and then as you enter your transactions in, it keeps you up to date, and the other nice thing is, then I'm able to see it and see what's going on, so, so we have great technology, and I don't really know if agents move and groove for the technology, because I'm a data person, right, they say about 36% of agents actually use the tech provided by their brokerage. Yeah, they might in their mind help. It might be like the cherry on top of the sundae, that is the reason why they're like, 'Oh, okay, I'll move because I really like the tech. But most top-producing agents have their own shit that they're using, and are they really going to morph it all over?

Tracy Hayes  20:42 

Well, that they've obviously, over years of using it, and it's produced fruit for them, so they just keep working that play

Tanya Cosmini  20:50 

correct

Tracy Hayes  20:50 

over and over again. I think, yeah, there's this.. well, you know, you mean, how many? How many phone calls you get? How many emails you get every week? Mailers, probably. I'm sure it's a brokerage of every little trinket.

Tanya Cosmini  21:04 

You mean shiny objects,

Tracy Hayes  21:05 

shiny objects? Yes, shiny. Yes, exactly.

Tanya Cosmini  21:08 

My favorite, my favorite part about realtors, shiny object syndrome. Yeah, I suffered. I'm in recovery of shiny object syndrome. You didn't ask me this question, but I'm going to answer it. People always ask, like, what's the secret sauce in real estate, right? Like, what? What makes you successful? Like, why or how is it going to make an agent successful? And it's really boring, and it is not a shiny object, it's not a system, it's not a coach, it's not a script. All it is is consistency, that's it, but it's consistency in something, consistency in calls, consistency in open houses, consistency in your sphere, but if you're consistent with those things, you'll be successful. That's it.

Tracy Hayes  21:52 

You've got to find that, well, like you said, you just said that, you know, that some of the older agents are, you know, they got their own things because they found their own system, and they're being consistent on it, and it continues to bear fruit, so they just keep driving, consistent

Tanya Cosmini  22:04 

with it, you know. It's literally the secret sauce, and yeah, if you want to get strong and, like, you know, have the muscles right, you have to, what, consistently lift weights. It's really not mind-blowing, but when you think about it, it's what's going to help you with anything, like if you want to lose weight, you got to consistently eat better. I mean, it's, it's not, again, mind blowing, but if you think about it, that's all you need to be successful in whatever it is you're trying to get better at, is just be consistent with it.

Tracy Hayes  22:32 

What's the chatter in the.. I mean, imagine you know there's different things come out that some of the agents are talking about, maybe you don't have, or maybe it's talk of stuff coming down the pipe. I don't know. What are the.. what's.. what's the scuttlebutt amongst the agents, as far as what they think they need to from a tech standpoint. Oh gosh,

Tanya Cosmini  22:52 

they need some type of AI bot, right? They need, like, you know, and we have it, but you've got to teach it, right? You've got to, you've got to like train it, you got to start talking

Tracy Hayes  23:02 

to it, you got to do the

Tanya Cosmini  23:03 

things, you've got to set it up properly, you know, automation, right? They all want automation, but you know what, what, what happens when it says the wrong thing?

Tracy Hayes  23:11 

Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  23:12 

because it might, you know, it has a bad day, like it's not, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a computer, like it might not say what you want, what you asked it to. We've had

Tracy Hayes  23:19 

calculators for decades, but that doesn't mean we stop teaching the Mac, because you need to know

Tanya Cosmini  23:25 

correct pretty much what's going on in the background of what that calculator is calculating, you know. This is.. I can't believe I'm going to say this, and I've been saying it all month. This month marks 20 years in real estate. 20 years, all real estate's about is conversations, right? So, can those conversations be a text message or an AI bot thing? Absolutely, but at some point, you know, I'm gonna pull it out. It's a magic thing. There's this, and you do this thing like this. Hi, you have to call people. Like, I know it's scary, like we're not used to talking to people, but you've got to have conversations like a real one, at some point text isn't going to work anymore, and you've got to have a real conversation with people to close a deal. Text can

Tracy Hayes  24:10 

tech can help you create, remind you of those conversations, create the situations to have those conversations, but like you said, ultimately, are you using your CRM at sending out regular communications, but you got to insert yourself somewhere along those lines. It cannot just do everything yourself. Eventually, they can't

Tanya Cosmini  24:30 

replace you. That's why you have to talk to them, right? They can't for you. Yeah.

Tracy Hayes  24:35 

Brand new agent walking through their door. What does your actual coaching look like in the first 90 days.

Tanya Cosmini  24:43 

Absolutely, I love this. So I always tell them it's, it's slow, fast. I know that sounds really weird, but the agent comes in and they're like ready. They're like, I'm going to close the deal in the next 30 days, and I would love that for them. But I always tell them you need a strong foundation, like once that foundation is really. Good, you'll be set up for life, and, and I'm saying that because no one told me that I'm like, so disappointed in how I was trained, because no one allowed me to have a strong foundation, so I had to, like, do things backwards and pay people to set things up properly, because it wasn't like that. So, the first 90 days is just a lot of training and coaching on, you know, like simple things, like how to log into the MLS, and which MLS to join, based on, you know, where you live, because you know there's Nefar and St. Augustine. Do I need both? Why wouldn't I? And answering all those questions for them, but helping them know where do you get business and what does that look like. So we have twice weekly meetings for the new agents, where generally one's on Zoom and one's in person, we do live calls with them. We, when they get an appointment, if they don't want to go on their own, we go with them, right? Because you've got to feel supported, right? We don't want any agent to say, "I love, I made an appointment, but I'm terrified to open the door, right?

Tracy Hayes  26:00 

Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  26:00 

that would be, that would be terrible. We had a great analogy in the brokerage about not going with them on open houses, right? We're only there's two of us that do the coaching. I can't go to 15 open houses on the weekend, and the analogy was that, as a coach, if we use basketball as an analogy, if you're a basketball coach, you're not playing the game with them, right? You're setting them up for success in that, where they have to do some stuff on their own. So we encourage them to host open houses, we practice conversations, so it's tiered every week. There's there's a plan, there's homework, teacher in me, there's goal set up, and it just builds every week. I do have data on what the agents have done. I was just talking about it this morning. Every agent in our coaching program has gone on at least six appointments. They have some buyers and sellers in the pipeline, which is, which is really exciting, because the data is not good on new agents, right? About 90% of them fail, so our goal is that within those first 120 days they get something under contract.

Tracy Hayes  27:06 

How big are you in getting with a mentor? Actually, you know someone they can call before they call you all the time.

Tanya Cosmini  27:16 

Yeah, we have one built into the brokerage. Yeah, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  27:19 

so it's someone that they can go, or or shadow. We probably talked about this, because I've talked about with many agents, how important is for a new agent to try to, you know, get under the wing for three or four, six months, whatever it takes. Do open houses with the experienced agent, go out on listing appointments, etc.

Tanya Cosmini  27:37 

Yeah, it's super, super important to us. It's actually a part of our literally our core values is coaching, and we have a mentor program built into the brokerage, and so, yeah, we have all that built in, and we, we have a really collaborative culture, which I'm really proud of. So, you know, the agents that do have listings, open them up to the agents for open houses, which is amazing. I mean, that's that's a really great door to have open for you that you have the opportunity to host open houses, because that can be hard, because you're like, great, I have my real estate license, and what do I do? Where do I go? How do I get business? So they'll, they'll often come to me, you know, who do you think I could talk to about this, and, and I, you know, help them, you know, partner with somebody. Sometimes an agent brought them on, you know, there might have been, like, a, you know, kind of like a referral, so they'll often use that person as their mentor, even though they, we have an assigned mentor in the brokerage, so there's, there's a lot of opportunity there for them to feel supported.

Tracy Hayes  28:31 

What have you found from the culture you've been in the business a couple decades, you've been out there, you've been with other brokerages, you know, not all agents play nice, for some reason, just whatever their personality, I don't know, whatever it is, but then you, but now you're now you're the leader in the office, you're the, you're the point person, and yeah, I imagine you probably have had some bad apples, some bad attitudes, whatever. How do you, how do you handle that?

Tanya Cosmini  28:58 

So, this is what I've learned, my goal is to foster a collaborative culture with an abundance mindset, and if you don't have that, it kind of makes you ill to be around it, right? If you don't feel there's enough business for everybody, and you don't want to share your listings for open houses for other agents, or you don't want to share maybe your buyer consult paperwork, or the documents you leave in your listing, you're not going to make it, and they'll just leave, they weed themselves out. Yeah, which is, which is pretty great. Obviously, it's a bunch of competitive people working together. There's going to be awkward, gross things that happen. Just having the conversation about what we can do better is really important. I don't feel calling them out on it, being like, hey, John, you did this to Sally. It's been like sitting them down is even the right thing to do, right? I more do like examples, like in the event this happens, and they kind of figure it out, because if it happens once, it's going to happen again. So just, just try. To build that collaborative culture to say, well,

Tracy Hayes  30:02 

knowing what you know, that there is plenty of deals out there. There may be a, you may look at some stat, there's 12, you know, the number 12,000 continues. I don't know if it's still 12,000 in the Northeast Florida. It kind of bounces right around, so in, but we know 70% of those people didn't even do a deal last year, so and then when you really look at it, actually, how many did more than three or four deals? Now you're really down to this real niche. I see a lot of people advertising, where we're the top one and a half percent. Well, yeah, and you're good, trust me, you're, you're, you're doing good, but when you say, 'Hey, I'm in the top 1% I mean, you're thinking, so it doesn't take what, because there's so many people on that list, there's plenty of deals out there to put yourself in the top 5% you're making a nice living, and you may, you know, someone looking for the answers, the top 5% oh my god, you must be Ryan Sirhan or something, no, you're actually just someone doing a dozen or more deals, and you're already in that category, and when I, when I think, when agents realize that, you know, there are, there's plenty of businesses. How do I differentiate myself into not just do 3 million, but to do six or 9 million? It's, you know, what else do I need to, you know, what consistent things that I need to do to get there, and they realize the, the really game, it's like, like golf, you're really competing against yourself.

Tanya Cosmini  31:22 

That right there is the hardest thing for agents to realize, is they're not really competing with other agents, they're competing with their self. You know, like you go on a listing appointment, you know, you lose the listing, right? You just lost to somebody else, you just look at it as a blessing, right? It's okay, it wasn't meant for you, it was meant for somebody else. But what could you have done differently? Like, was you've got to think back. Okay, when did the body language change? What did I say that made me lose the listing? It's okay, you learn more from failure than you do from success. I say that every day of the week. It's easy to win, easy. That's easy. That feeling is easy, and it's hard to lose, really hard. So, when you look back on it, which you've got to have a constant, a constant sense of reflection, it's the only way you'll get better and improve on whatever didn't go well. So, when you look back on that listing appointment that didn't go well, you've got to think back, like, when did that seller, you know, lean back, like when did they stop leaning forward at me, or when did they, you know, that's what you've got to do differently next time. Yeah, that verbiage didn't go well, and then you just make it better, right? To say, I'm so glad I lost that listing, because that taught me that that part of my listing and presentation is off.

Tracy Hayes  32:37 

Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  32:37 

you've got to look at everything in the positive, because, man, are we surrounded by a lot of negative crap.

Tracy Hayes  32:42 

Yeah, yeah, I, you know, listening to some of the top agents, and you know, we're talking about listing appointments, and obviously the biggest question is, you know, you got that seller who wants to list a house for 20 $30,000 higher than what you're comping it out at, you, and every agent will tell you, any agent with any experience, if you list that for 20 or 30,000 higher than what everything else in the area is selling for, and what I'm comping it out for, it will sit, and it does, and you have to kind of, you have to learn how to put that across with, you know, if we were going into Claude or Chat GBT, you know, nice tone, don't be confronted, but be influential, you know, and learning how to do that is not an easy skill for a lot of people. That we won't, we often, we want to become combative, or obviously our adrenaline gland goes off, and now we need to get in defense, versus saying, you know, learning, learning how to control your emotions, and then put it across in that soft tone, or you know, whatever it is, that yeah situation in the past month, which you can go back further, but I don't think you have to client agent deal that that has stuck with you. Did you keep thinking about,

Tanya Cosmini  33:55 

oh wow, like that the realtor brought to me?

Tracy Hayes  33:57 

Yeah, so something that's happened, and it's still going on your mind, whether you won or lost it, but maybe it was like, wow, I never saw that before, or wow, that was, you know,

Tanya Cosmini  34:05 

well, I mean, that one I brought up earlier was, was really crazy, also because the customer has a real estate license who didn't understand the paperwork, so it was really, really fascinating,

Tracy Hayes  34:16 

Florida license,

Tanya Cosmini  34:17 

Arizona, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  34:18 

okay, well, there we go,

Tanya Cosmini  34:20 

Arizona real estate license, and so when I was talking to my realtor about it, she was like, "Hey, you know, I didn't do my full buyer consult because they had a real estate license, and now I feel like I failed them. And I said, "Well, what kind of questions did you ask? And she's like, "Well, I said, you know, are you familiar with the buyer process? And they said, well, of course, I am. I'm an agent, and they said, okay, so you know about, you know, the buyer broker agreement that after august 17, of course, and all he did was cut her off, so she's like, I didn't do my full thing, and now I have this like epic fury of anger at me about the whole process. Us and I said, well, do you feel you did the best job you could given your situation? And she said, absolutely. And I said, well, then you did everything right. And so that one has stuck with me a lot, because she was so upset, right? You know, it was out of state buyers that everything was done virtually, and you know, and you know,

Tracy Hayes  35:20 

I would be curious to look this person up and see if they've actually even done a deal,

Tanya Cosmini  35:24 

and so we talked about that. I said, do you know how many deals there's they've done? Is he really

Tracy Hayes  35:29 

producing? Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  35:30 

and that's our only regret, is like, did they sell any real estate or did they just have their license and referral? Wasn't questions we really asked, just that they have real estate license, and we moved on. So that one stuck with me, I had another agent who reached out. She got a referral from a past customer for a listing, and I don't know about you guys, but or any other agents out there. I encourage all my agents to put the people in forewarn, which, if you don't know, that is like a background check system. She sent me the forewarn, and she was like, I was like, oh, okay. Well, what are you gonna do? She's like, well, the referral said he's okay, but this is a little dicey. Yeah, and I said, all right, well, so she knew the referral person, she knew the referral person really well, done a couple of deals with them, you know, was like more than a customer, like they'd had, you know, dinner together and stuff like, so like, in between a customer trusted that

Tracy Hayes  36:23 

person, but the question is, How much trust is between that person and the person they referred?

Tanya Cosmini  36:26 

Yeah, but all the like, we'll just call it the bad stuff, yeah, was long ago, and I said, Well, do you feel people can change, and she said, Well, yeah. I mean, people make mistakes, and I said, so you know, what are things we can do for safety, and so you know, blah blah blah blah. She did go on the appointment, and, and, whatever, and I said, hey, did you feel unsafe, and she's like, mad, and you know, just obviously made some, you know, made some bad choices in their, in their youth, and so, you know, I think something really important that I do not think is talked about enough is realtor safety, you know, and I hate to be like a doom and gloom or about it, because I am a super positive person, but I do encourage every agent, if it's a stranger, even if that wasn't really a stranger, right, it was a referral person, to put them in forewarn, because you know

Tracy Hayes  37:18 

every per I've heard, you know, obviously, you know, my wife's in the business. She talks about, she forewarns everyone that, that calls in, and stuff like that. Like that story you just gave me is a story that she used to, you know, she was trying to make that judgment call. Oh, it looks like it was, you know, 1015 years ago, whatever. But you, you go in with your, you know, your eyes open and your ears burn. We

Tanya Cosmini  37:44 

just talked about it, you know. Share your location with me. What's the, you know, I tell all the agents that they should share their location with somebody that they feel, you know, whatever it is. Tell them

Tracy Hayes  37:52 

where you going.

Tanya Cosmini  37:53 

And then there should be some type of like secret call you can make that tells the person you're sharing a location with that, you're in trouble, that won't alarm the person you're with. My some code

Tracy Hayes  38:05 

word has

Tanya Cosmini  38:06 

to do with a pet that's deceased, right? That, like, no one is like, 'Hey, hey, will you start the meeting with that buyer or seller? Hayes, don't you know, my dog is in that hospital right now, so I might have to make a call if I get a text message. So they already know about the possibility, so doesn't seem out of the blue. You just gotta set yourself a friend. Well, I had

Tracy Hayes  38:24 

this on the last episode. I talked about this, The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. You've gotta read

Tanya Cosmini  38:31 

it. I don't know it, so I thank you.

Tracy Hayes  38:32 

Yeah, Gavin studies these things. If you feel something is off, it's off.

Tanya Cosmini  38:39 

Fascinating,

Tracy Hayes  38:39 

not do not, what he found, and I, it's actually a real.. it's doing pretty good on YouTube right now, because I was talking, but the.. as humans, as people, we see, or we see a forewarn.. oh, he's probably, you know, he's probably cool now, you know, it's for. I don't feel comfortable, you know. They talk about people walking down the street, a female might be walking on one side street and sees a male coming down, and they're like, oh no, I'm not going to cross the street to, you know, avoid if you, your intuition makes you, your hair stand up on there, you get chills, or whatever you need, because then any other animal would run.

Tanya Cosmini  39:23 

Oh, you're humans.

Tracy Hayes  39:25 

Humans are the first to say, I don't want to be racist, I don't want to be judgmental

Tanya Cosmini  39:30 

rude.

Tracy Hayes  39:30 

Yeah, I don't want to appear to be rude, and that is where we get ourselves in trouble.

Tanya Cosmini  39:36 

That is really interesting.

Tracy Hayes  39:37 

Gavin De Becker, the gift of fear, and that's what it is. You have a, we have an intuition, something doesn't sound right, like you're talking, do the forewarn. Well, call them and have a conversation with them. Yeah, if after talking to them, you could tell they're double talking, whatever, and you just doesn't sound good. Yeah, you know, you probably should avoid that conversation. Tell them all the

Tanya Cosmini  39:59 

time, the money and. Worth it,

Tracy Hayes  40:00 

yeah, yeah. No, but safety should be a bigger, bigger part of what if you're not using forewarn right now, you're crazy. Obviously, I think what is it? Florida Realtors actually is part of your membership, your fees, right? Or provides that, so it's you're already paying for it, already

Tanya Cosmini  40:16 

paying for it. Use it, and all you have learned,

Tracy Hayes  40:18 

all you have to do is put in the phone number. Am I correct,

Tanya Cosmini  40:20 

just the phone number, and then it'll give you, does it

Tracy Hayes  40:23 

always hit with the phone number, or sometimes, because obviously, well, if you're

Tanya Cosmini  40:27 

using like a Google number, it won't work, so sometimes it finds nothing found, and then you can put in their name, and you might find something, but you know, unfortunately, a lot of common names, and so you might have to feed it, like,

Tracy Hayes  40:39 

well, are you

Tanya Cosmini  40:40 

John Smith, Jacksonville, Florida, or like the zip code, or whatever, you or

Tracy Hayes  40:44 

the association, or whatever. I mean, imagine some of the steps are, especially you've got someone you don't know that you, you know, that they send over their driver's license.

Tanya Cosmini  40:54 

So, so this is this is very interesting. So, I have a brand new realtor who got, I would say the text was kind of awkward, for lack of a better word, like

Tracy Hayes  41:04 

flag

Tanya Cosmini  41:05 

was a flag, right? And so she's reading it to us. So we had a, we have a brokerage lunch that we do three to four times a year. I call it Elevate with eight, because it rhymes. There's eight spots, and it's just meant for conversation, right? We have lunch together and just talk about, I call real estate being in the wild, so we just talk about what's going on in the wild, and this agent said, "Hey, I got this text message, can I read it to you guys? Sure, she read it to us, and we were like, "Oh, like the syntax is kind of awful. Well, what's what's your plan? Oh, well, there, and it said something like, "We'll just pretend the agent's name is Lauren. Hey, Lauren, I see you sell real estate, like, in the Northeast Florida, like, weird, yeah, you know, would you be interested in helping, helping my parents, yeah, and we all were like

Tracy Hayes  41:53 

parents, I mean, like, oh, you're including your parents, and then you must be, you must be cool because you're not doing stupid, right, like, super weird,

Tanya Cosmini  42:00 

so we were all like, hmm, so you know, so we read all the messages, and, and her plan was to meet them, thankfully, at a local coffee shop,

Tracy Hayes  42:07 

okay,

Tanya Cosmini  42:08 

and whatever they'd asked to meet at a house, she said no, you know, we need to talk about the buying process, like, so she did really well, really proud that she had listened to the coaching and whatnot, and she had forewarned them, and there was nothing, and whatnot, and she did meet them, and they just, you know, English wasn't their first language, and they're just for their real buyers that are really looking to buy a house, and there was nothing there, so you know, she did like I said, Smith, I'm in a public place, ask the right questions, they were, oh, and they were cash, which also just felt really wrong, like there was nothing. All

Tracy Hayes  42:43 

the triggers, yeah, all the triggers. Cash agents get excited. Okay, great. They got cash, you don't have to worry about it, you know? You know they got cash. We can close quickly. I'm gonna get paid, and then all these things excite you. Oh, hey, I'm buying from my parents. Oh, that's nice. Let the guard down now. Yeah, all those things were all

Tanya Cosmini  43:00 

yeah. But I was, I was so happy that because she hasn't been with us very long, like I said, she's a brand new realtor, that she let us know, and so she shared her location with some of us, and we followed up with her after the meeting, we're like, are you okay, are you okay, you're okay, and she did, and everything was fine, and they're active buyers that she's working with, and so she's been doing really well on social media, and that's how they found her.

Tracy Hayes  43:23 

I am, we use our family uses the 360 app, which has become pretty popular, and actually, I mean, I got my in-laws and my parents and the four of us, so we got eight of us on there, so we know where everybody's at all the time. The agents need to have it, if their family member needs to know where they, where they can pick up the phone anytime and see exactly where they're at. Like, hey, I keep calling you, but you're not answering. Where are you at? The cars parked on the side of the road somewhere. Like, why is that? Yeah, red flag, right? Yeah, that's actually actually why you were talking about forewarn. I got, I go, I'm gonna reach out to four one and see if I get somebody on the on the show, but

Tanya Cosmini  44:06 

even before, because Nefar provided it for a while, that Florida Association Realtors provided it when I had the real estate team, we provided it for the team, yeah, because we did, you know, online leads, they were strangers, and I would say to them, I will never be upset if you're like, hey, Tanya, John Smith came in. I forewarned him, and I didn't feel comfortable. Go with your gut every day, like you said.

Tracy Hayes  44:25 

From where you sit right now, what's the single biggest market shift in St. Johns County that agents in your area are still underestimating?

Tanya Cosmini  44:35 

So, number one is realtors still think that the houses are just going to sell themselves, right? They're, they're, and I hate to say some

Tracy Hayes  44:49 

do,

Tanya Cosmini  44:49 

and they, and they do sometimes, right? And

Tracy Hayes  44:51 

they got the pool, they're in the right neighborhood, right school, boom,

Tanya Cosmini  44:55 

but they're priced right.

Tracy Hayes  44:56 

Right,

Tanya Cosmini  44:57 

real estate hasn't changed. The pricing is the single most important thing, thing factor about houses. It does not matter if you spend $2,500 on the most beautiful pictures with the most amazing photographer, with the videos, with the things, and they're flying, and I don't even know what they're doing, and they're beautiful, and they're amazing, and everything. You could have everything, the house could look like it was staged, or you know, designed by the most amazing person, but if you haven't priced it right, it's not going to sell. End of story. It does not matter what you've done, it does not matter what brokerage you're with, or what you've paid for for advertising. It is the single biggest factor in sales, and people love St. Johns County, right? It's got the best schools, whatever you know, number one in the state of Florida, depending where you look at. So they think that's going to sell the house, right? Right, that that factor is going to, but underestimating the importance of strategic

Tracy Hayes  45:56 

pricing

Tanya Cosmini  45:57 

is, is I think what's harming a lot of realtors right now.

Tracy Hayes  46:03 

Every agent that comes on, obviously, I only have top producers on people that are doing business, some more seasoned than others, but they're doing business, so they got this. That's they all say the same thing that you just said. So, anyone listening should understand that, but you and I know that there are a lot of agents out there, either they don't have control over their seller, which sometimes happens where the seller wants that extra 20 or 30,000 You're like, I really think it's gonna sell for 700 but if you listed at 730 it could sit and they say list it for 730 and let's see what happens. Let's

Tanya Cosmini  46:37 

talk about that.

Tracy Hayes  46:38 

Yeah, what's well, what's the process from

Tanya Cosmini  46:40 

the instance.

Tracy Hayes  46:42 

Well, if you're going to quiz me, no,

Tanya Cosmini  46:46 

I mean, I can tell you, you could tell

Tracy Hayes  46:48 

me, I'll tell you, and then you tell me. I'm going to repeat what other agents basically said. If I could, if I could put that summary together in my head real quick. You need to walk them through the process of this, is what's going to happen, it based on my experience, based on what every agent's saying on the Real Estate Excellence Podcast, they're telling us that if we're pricing it for 20 or $30,000 more, it's likely going to sit, and then when you then effort has been sitting for 710, days, two weeks, whatever that initial agreement is, that we're going to let it ride, and you don't have any showings, what are we going to do next, and put that back on the seller. And then I want to know, I'm going to spin it back to you. What does it look like from a buyer's agent when you're sitting out there and you see this house go, oh, you probably will like that, it's in the right neighborhood, right size, all that's good stuff is good. They just had a price reduction. What are you now coaching your buyers, and when you're going to go see that? When you see that first reduction,

Tanya Cosmini  47:46 

so I looked at some data yesterday, because I love it, and sellers are getting about - I mean, this is across Northeast Florida, not just St. Johns County. So, based on the NEFAR data, through the end of May, about 97% of their list price on average. So, the market's healthy, right? That's 97%

Tracy Hayes  48:02 

on list, right? That's, you know, I mean, I don't know how much closer you can get to 100

Tanya Cosmini  48:08 

jaded, right? Because that does mean some of them are reduced. It's on this, whatever was okay.

Tracy Hayes  48:14 

They finally got to the

Tanya Cosmini  48:16 

whatever the advertised number, it doesn't, it doesn't, unfortunately, break it down for was it their original lease price, or what they reduced it for? So isn't there another category

Tracy Hayes  48:24 

for that,

Tanya Cosmini  48:25 

correct? But you'd have to, you know, it's a lot of more data crunching, right? Overall, so you know, overall the market's good for that, for the most part. You know, we're very sheltered here in that, because of people moving here, and new construction, and new construction totally jades our whole entire market, right? It totally screws all our data, because they put in a house for a day, right? Though they, then they put placeholders, they're in there for millions of days. It's.. it really messes with our, our data. But anyway, when, when, in my opinion, when sellers are very, very hard pressed, and if it's a customer you've worked with before, you don't want to lose the customer, you don't want to lose a relationship, right, because we're in the relationship business, we don't sell houses, we build relationships, and you don't want to lose that relationship, because the customer is always right, you've got to sell the fact that pricing at that is not the best choice, but we're gonna do it your way. Let's, let's let mr. and mrs. Seller, I want to do it your way, but when your way doesn't work, can we do it my way? But we're going to put it right here in the contract. We'll do it your way, and in two weeks, if we don't have an offer, we're going to put it right in here that there's a mandatory price reduction to the price I suggested, and it's then it's like a win-win, right? They got what they wanted, you kind of got what you're wanted. It wasn't at that inflated price long enough to hurt it. Do you feel a lot of

Tracy Hayes  49:49 

listing appointments are lost right there?

Tanya Cosmini  49:52 

What do you, when you, because they

Tracy Hayes  49:53 

don't come back with, they don't have a either, they don't naturally know how to,

Tanya Cosmini  49:58 

yes, explain that.

Tracy Hayes  50:00 

Or they have role played enough on how to handle it, that how they come across or get defensive, and saying, oh, you're just, you know, because I don't, a lot of sellers do not realize you guys are going out there and you're advertised, there's costs you have, you're incurring right from the get go when they sign that contract, that you're going to be there listening, you have costs incurred, so if they want to sit there and list a house, and then get disappointed, and then you end up losing the listing for whatever reasons, and you're out, whatever, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, or whatever it might be. A lot of people obviously don't, don't, don't you know that goes on.

Tanya Cosmini  50:34 

Sure, I think what I think what happens is agents say something like, "Hey, I will totally list it at your price, and then when it doesn't work out, we'll reduce

Tracy Hayes  50:41 

it, something very simple, stupid like that, yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  50:43 

right, and there's nothing in writing allowing you to reduce it, I mean, you still got to get a modification signed, and technically, yeah, but now that you've put it in writing, they've signed it, you know, you can say, hey, mr. and mrs. Seller, remember we said two weeks, gosh, we really had no showings, the market's spoken right, like when I built my business here on a couple of things, and one of those were expired listings, and I used to use really, really harsh words, like you're the market rejected your property, your home's been rejected, they're like, what I'm like, well, you listed it for 700 and it was listed for 200 days, and you got no offers, so the market rejected it. Yeah, and they're like, huh, you're right, it's been rejected. I want it accepted. How do we do that? Like, you, it's you, you've got to be a.. I mean, you can't be afraid of having hard conversations, and you're right, they've got to practice them,

Tracy Hayes  51:42 

but it goes also goes back to coming to the table with some data,

Tanya Cosmini  51:46 

yes,

Tracy Hayes  51:46 

right, and and the importance of that when you're sitting down with a price, they say you can't look at what's sold 24 months ago, we really got to look like what's sold in the last four to six months, and then what's listed in the neighborhood right now, if you're in our planned urban developments all over St. Johns County, for example, you've really got to look what has sold in our name in the neighborhood in the last couple months,

Tanya Cosmini  52:04 

right? Because you can't, you know, you don't want to be the most expensive, right? And you've got to look, gosh, can you imagine the neck? This is my favorite when, like, the same floor plans listed next door, and they're like, oh, but I put in ship lap, I mean, we should probably be listed 100,000 more, and I'm like, about 100,000 but you know, you just, you've just got to have a very comfortable conversation with them, and if you can usually figure out something they're into, like if it's the husband that's giving you a hard time, they're into cars, you can say, well, you know, let's pretend you're going to go buy a car, you know, would you buy the same car for $100,000 more, and they're like, "No, I'm like, well, that's what you're asking us to do. But you just got to feel comfortable.

Tracy Hayes  52:46 

They're typically not going to even.. well, your car's pricing is a little different for $1,000 more. I mean, but

Tanya Cosmini  52:52 

that could just be percentage. You're gonna.. are you gonna spend 10% more for the same thing? Right? Exactly. Well, no. Well, that one has heated seats, and you're.. and this one doesn't. So, aren't you going to pay more for it, unless

Tracy Hayes  53:02 

you're really into heated seats, but it's Florida. Well, though we do have those days where I've turned my heated seats on one of those

Tanya Cosmini  53:08 

things where you've just got to break it down for them, because generally speaking, objections are fear-based, right? When they say no, it's they don't necessarily mean no, it's because they're afraid. So if you can, well,

Tracy Hayes  53:20 

the fear of loss, yeah, their fear, the fear, you know, we have it all the time. Oh, someone's going to get a better interest rate, right? I told, I was telling a customer that I'm working with right now, it's like, okay, unless someone's buying the same house right now, putting the same amount down, same credit score as you have, you can't compare what they got, whatever, 30 days ago, whatever, two weeks ago, things are changed, and that's where you'll come, going back to the data part, and I think one of the one, I think one of the greatest tips, and that was brought up, I can't say people aren't doing, just no one said they were doing it, is taking them into the neighborhood, and showing the homes that actually are already listed, and say, compare your house to this, is your house updated, this one's updated, or that you know, which

Tanya Cosmini  54:09 

one, which one do you like better,

Tracy Hayes  54:11 

right? What would appeal to you if you were a buyer right now?

Tanya Cosmini  54:14 

Would you buy your house right now? Yeah, exactly, exactly,

Tracy Hayes  54:19 

you probably find most of them will say no, no, because the comps all say 700 and I want 730 you know, I wouldn't buy that. Yeah, tell me about an agent in your office who's talking about the revenue share, talk about the revenue share and the benefits of it. Is it really, uh, something, is it just some icing on the cake, really, for an agent to come over.

Tanya Cosmini  54:42 

Yep, so you know it's a hot topic, right? Rev share, because there's tons of brokerages out there that, that offer a lot, and, and in my opinion, they're almost trying to replace, and this is my opinion, don't, don't offend, don't you know, get mad at me about it, that they're trying to like replace the agents selling. Like they don't want the necessary to sell real estate, they want the agent to kind of grow that brokerage through recruiting, so they offer a ton of rev share, you know. I don't, I want to reward the agents for helping grow the brokerage, because I want them to be around agents they want to be around. It's, it's, it's a mutually beneficial thing.

Tracy Hayes  55:18 

If they come into office, they're friendly, they.. hey, they had, like, you know, they.. they.. that's why they, a lot of times, whether someone wants to get out of bed or not is their co-workers, right? And it's not necessarily that you're actually joined, that you're actually co-workers that have to sit in the office together and require a certain period of time, but when you have friends there, you're like, hey, so and so is going to be by the office, or so and so's going to the meeting, so I'm going to go to the meeting.

Tanya Cosmini  55:38 

Exactly, it's nice to be around people that, that you feel comfortable with, or that you can grow with, or whatever it is, but you know you can't have it be so much money that it's, it's almost becomes like obsessive for you to try to recruit, so that you can replace your real estate income. So, so we offer a small amount of money, and we like to say it's enough to go out for a nice dinner, and you know, at the end of the month, or keep your gas tank filled, because, good Lord, the price of gas is high, it's coming down though quickly. I have an EV, so I don't know about you. You prepaid your gas, you prepaid your gas, so you know we offer some, because we want to, we want to reward the agents for helping support this, you know, collaborative culture that we have, but you know, not, not like we're they're gonna quit real estate over it.

Tracy Hayes  56:27 

Buffini and Tom Ferry, you've trained under both, yes, different philosophies.

Tanya Cosmini  56:32 

Wow, how do you.. what

Tracy Hayes  56:34 

you.. I assume you take the best, what you feel the best from both and stick in your business. Tell us a couple things you take from Buffini, and a couple things you do that Tom Ferry.

Tanya Cosmini  56:43 

Sure. So, what's interesting is I'm probably a little bit more lean toward the Buffini model. It's just kind of stuck with me more, only because my business grew more when I was coaching with Buffini than I did with Tom Ferry. But very interesting, I stuck with my Tom Ferry coach longer. Just fascinating, I still talk to my Tom Ferry coach. He's a really great person. He actually stuck with me in the beginning when I started the brokerage to help me launch it, because he ran a Keller Williams office, so he kind of understood all of it. But what I love about the Buffini model is that it's based on relationships, and I even before I kind of knew that principle, I was doing it just not to the best of my ability. And what I like to tell agents, when they don't know what to do for coaching, or they don't know where to go, the amazing thing is that this social media platform, right, you can go to Instagram and Brian Buffini gives away lots of tips and tricks on there. So, if you don't know where to go, check it out. Or I'm sure

Tracy Hayes  57:39 

he's on YouTube too. Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  57:41 

you know, he has lots of lots of great things that he talks about, but the base of his business is to just work by referral, right? Is where are the people you know? Because in order for someone to buy or sell a house with you, they have to know you, like you, and trust you. And so, if you can get people who know you, like you, and trust you to refer you business, you're going to be okay. And the year that I brought on Buffini, I sold a lot of real estate, like 38,000,087% of it was referral based, and I previous to that I was probably at about half, so I know that the system worked, because that's a lot.

Tracy Hayes  58:18 

Are you bringing it into the office? Yeah, how are you bringing it to your brokerage?

Tanya Cosmini  58:22 

So it's part of the coaching program, especially with the new agents. Is I, as I remind them, hey, you don't have to pay for leads, everything you happen to bring the phone out again is in here. And I tell them, you know, this is, you're gonna laugh at me. The example I use is, if you were going to get married, who would you invite to your wedding? Because those are your people, right? Because those are the people that, like, you hold me, who

Tracy Hayes  58:44 

invited you to their, to their wedding.

Tanya Cosmini  58:45 

Yeah, yeah, right. Like, those are your people, right? People, because I don't know, they often use these dumb things, like your top 100 That is very.. who.. what do you mean? Top 100 I'm like, that overwhelms me. My top 100 of what? What do you want? You want me to? Because then they put, like, hairdresser, dentist. I'm not inviting my dentist to anything. Does that is very unauthentic to me. That's very hard for me to grab. You have

Tracy Hayes  59:07 

to be beyond just a dentist, like maybe someone I went to school with, grew up with, and I've known, and I use them as my dentist too. All

Tanya Cosmini  59:14 

groomer on there, like they're just trying to give you ideas, but that doesn't serve me. But I have the documents for the agents, because that does serve some people, but I like to say you're gonna get married. Who would you invite? Let's write them all down, right? Because that, your phone has so many people in it. They say every person knows seven people somewhere in the real estate cycle, so if you know 100 people, that's 700 people in the real estate cycle, somewhere buying, selling, thinking about it, downsizing, upsizing, buying investment property. So, if you can capitalize on that through consistency and systems, you'll be fine. You just have to figure out how to get that, and that's what Buffini taught me, was those, those systems, you know, sending out an email, sending them. Handwritten cards, and you know, it just, I like cards. That's probably why I liked Buffini better, but, but you know what, I do love from Tom Ferry. The thing I got from him was mastering the open house. He has the, what does he call, a mega open house, awesome, awesome stuff. I love, love, love, love, love his open house principles.

Tracy Hayes  1:00:20 

You can wear a lot of agents throw the open house to the side, like I gotta do an open house type of thing. The agents that focus on open house being their, you know, their, that's their business, really do well at it, because they go over and the neighbors see what they're doing, and they knock on doors and let everybody know, and they're doing all those steps. I'm sure Tom Ferry is in there. You must have said St. Johns County in our, in your little questionnaire I gave you for the show, so St. Johns County. Yeah, it's coming up all the time for a solo agent. St. Johns County doing four to 6 million right now. What's the first sign they're approaching the burnout wall, and what's the first hire or leverage move you coach them to make

Tanya Cosmini  1:01:02 

so the first sign of getting burnout is when they don't want to answer the phone, right? When they're like, "Damn it, is that customer calling me? They're just annoyed, like they like they're annoyed at work, right. And I've been there, we've all been there, right. But when you're like annoyed that you have a new customer,

Tracy Hayes  1:01:19 

and I think because we all get there, we're focused on something, because nothing is happening, you're really focused on this, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, the phone's ringing, you're like, I know that's going to take me away from what I'm deep into right now, so we immediately have that type reaction, talking about

Tanya Cosmini  1:01:37 

you're just like, gosh, really, are they calling me right,

Tracy Hayes  1:01:41 

but it's because we're doing some non-income producing task over here, we're focused on, and we want to finish it, and then someone's disturbing us, which might be a money call, which

Tanya Cosmini  1:01:51 

is most likely a money call, right? And when you're like annoyed by a money call, that's a problem. Yeah, and so that means you're not leveraging your time for money, right, because you either have time or money, not both, every single day of the week, which means you need to use your money to buy yourself time. I love The Million Dollar Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller. He talks about your first hire should be an admin. Totally agree, there's a ton of tasks that admins can take off your take off your plate. The amazing part about nowadays is they don't have to be like a real human in your office, right? I think virtual assistants are the most amazing thing. I have three that work for me, they're all part-time that do different things well for me. They've been with me for years. I love them like family. I mean, they've been.. they are so, so committed.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:42 

What are some of the tasks, and the three different things that they're doing? Absolutely,

Tanya Cosmini  1:02:45 

so, so one of them does a lot of data analytics for me. She'll look at, so she's, she is like, you know, the disc profile. She, I have a feeling she's 100% C, like she is the most compliant human being I've ever seen in my life, like, I laugh at her emails sometimes, because they're so.. like, it's a great.. she can't, like, she.. she can only be in a box.. there's no.. she cannot color outside the lines, she's in a box at all times, but it's awesome, because she can put all the things organized in a box for me.. I can send her a whole.. hey, can you.. can you tell me, you know

Tracy Hayes  1:03:20 

those are the facts and not opinions, because she's very focused on I gotta have something to back this up, you know. I'm reading it here or there, and there, there, and now I'm putting the so when you have her data, you know those that you can repeat it, because it's fact,

Tanya Cosmini  1:03:34 

perfect every day of the week, and it's, and it's amazing, and she's not going to fluff it, it's exactly what was there, and if I need it reorganized, you know, she, she takes the feedback wall. She's like, "Well, why did you ask for it this time? This way, you know, is that always how you're going to want it? Like, so it's she's amazing to work with. I have one that's a creative, so she does Canva templates for us, for the agents. We have a monthly calendar for the agents to use that has, you know, like what they could post Monday through Sunday on on on its link to Canva, and she creates that for us. We give her ideas, so it's like, you know, featuring a coffee shop or whatever it is, and it has the ad copy on there. They just have to enter, enter in their own pictures. So she creates that for us every month, which is pretty amazing, because if you've learned, I'm since I'm a science person, creativity is not my jam, so I'm very happy to have somebody that can put all those templates together for us, and the third person is just kind of like my go-to for all the extra stuff, sometimes checks my email, she also will give me the, like, the analytics, analytics for the brokerage, like she'll put together my weekly metrics and stuff, and she just kind of fills in the blanks for that, but it, and the one thing I'll tell you, though, if you hire a VA, you have to give them time, they don't know you, you don't know them, you've got to train them to do what you want, but once you have them, they are you.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:00 

Amazing, and obviously these are all part-time, so you're sharing them with other people, you're not carrying the whole load, and I think a lot of agents don't realize, especially with like transaction coordinators, there's pay for play transaction coordinators, why would you not be using you start to get to, you know, two and three deals a month, you have a transaction coordinator,

Tanya Cosmini  1:05:16 

and I, and you know that was the next thing I was going to say, is if you don't even, there's an argument out there, right? If you're a new agent, should you have a TC or shouldn't you? I can argue it both ways, you know. I think TCS are the most amazing offering of all time, right, because it's what I call the discount double check, right? They're there to look at your contract. I think almost all of them have a real estate license, so they're looking at the contract to ensure there's nothing missing. As a broker, I love them, because for compliance it's just somebody else looking at the contract, because I'm not, yeah, you got, and you got your own

Tracy Hayes  1:05:52 

business going, and you know,

Tanya Cosmini  1:05:53 

I might, I might, I might miss an initial here or there. So, between me looking at them, the agent looking at them, and the TC, it's amazing. So, whether you're a new agent or a highly producing agent, I think a TC is the best money you can spend, because your time should not be spent doing admin work, it should be spent getting more business.

Tracy Hayes  1:06:13 

I'm going to throw out there who I had on a month or so ago, listed Kit AI, and it actually put the contract in a transaction coordinator could use a solo agent, can use it. It actually reads the dates, it is checking it for compliance as well. Cool. Again, not 100% but it's again, you know, a lot of brokerages are going to use AI to do an initial review of the basics, and then by the time it gets to a human, they know all the base, they're really looking at the finer things of the contract to make sure things are good, which I don't know if you, I assume your newest agents for the first so many contracts, you are looking at them to make sure they're filled out correctly before you can graduate them on the, you know, trusting them to do it yourself, but listed kid AI, I forget what episode was, but that's one of the programs out there, and either constantly improving. I get updates all the time. Hey, we're adding this, adding that to it, but you literally just scan in the contract, it reads the date, sets the calendar, AI is doing all that stuff in the back background, so that stuff, that stuff is out there. New construction in St. Johns County.

Tanya Cosmini  1:07:18 

Okay,

Tracy Hayes  1:07:18 

agents representing buyers against builders, and what do they need? What do they need to know that buyers don't realize is going on.

Tanya Cosmini  1:07:28 

So, the number one thing they need to realize is that the buyer needs them, right? That it's okay, you know, that so many.. the for the most part, I think the site agents are amazing, right? They do a good job of saying, hey, do you have an agent, and whatever, but you've got to train your buyers to let the site agent know that they are working with an agent, because you know buyers love to wander around on a Sunday afternoon, they have nothing to do, so they're like, hey honey, let's go look at new construction today, and you know, we always said we'd use John if we were going to buy a house, and oh, wow, we fell in love with this model, and shit, now we're under contract, and they call John two weeks later, and something's gone wrong, and blah blah blah blah, so you know, you've just got to have those good relationships, and just ensure you've trained your buyers about those things, but new construction is still out there, and the other thing I'm going to tell agents about, which they're not going to remember that they can do, is you can negotiate your commission. Don't, those are those are not set in stone.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:30 

Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  1:08:30 

if they're offering seven bananas, you can ask for eight. All they have to do is say no. The answer is always no if you don't ask. So, realtors out there that don't think you can negotiate for it, everything's negotiable.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:41 

Oh, well, one of the tips that I picked up on a recent episode is to agents should not undervalue themselves in the new construction thing. If you're a new agent right now that has time to go and travel around to all the models, go around and meet the site agents, learn what's going on, and then become an expert. Working out the site agent may not say, maybe you could ask him directly. Obviously, I've never done it. You, you could answer this question, but each builder is different in what they do negotiate on,

Tanya Cosmini  1:09:16 

correct?

Tracy Hayes  1:09:16 

And there's some things that are set in stone that there's no negotiation that's the price for that, but you know these things over here, fixtures, whatever it may be, that is negotiable, but unless you know that you can't share that with your buyers, and therefore be the value add that you need to be when representing a buyer of new construction,

Tanya Cosmini  1:09:36 

and, and you're right, every buy, every, I mean, every builder is different, right? They all have different stuff. Every site's different. Some only sell quick move-ins, some never have quick move-ins. But be a student of real estate, right? Know the sites. If you've no business, go get it, right? Go seek it out. Go to the new construction sites. It is the most amazing thing that we have. Year we always have those do construction sites go film a video of it. You don't have to talk in it, set it to some cool music, leave a mysterious hook, don't get them all the information, don't tell them the builder, don't tell them you know everything where you're at, so you have a reason, you know, a call to action in your video, so they have a reason to reach out. So use that new construction as a platform to get business.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:19 

Yeah, I was just thinking of trying to think of an analogy, and it's like, you know, you go into Walmart, they do certain things their way, you go to Target, they do things, the builders the same way, correct? They have their, their different focus, maybe appliances are what is there's other builders, I'm sure the appliances are just openly included, and it's just, you know, but don't you need to learn what those things are, so you can, you could probably negotiate, and if you're a new agent and don't know, call your broker, cross, hey, you've been working with this builder a lot, you know, what is it, where are the negotiation points, where's the wins that I can get from my, my, my buyer, and because I think you would agree, you do one of two things, you negotiate, say, "Hey, I know this builder, I know this site agent, credibility is given, you get a win, hopefully that that person that used you to buy that, they're referring someone else to buy the next one, and the builders are putting out some good spiffs out there, they can, yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  1:11:20 

yeah, and I think that's something you need to get from the agents in your brokerage too, right? Is say, hey, because we have that in our little group chat sometimes, is hey, I'm going to look at a blah blah blah builder. Does anyone know of any bonuses, or who's your site agent preference at that at that site? So just be sure you're in a collaborative culture for those things.

Tracy Hayes  1:11:37 

Ask where the week with negotiation points. Yes, it's great to get paid. You need to get paid, but if you're going to win, you got to know where. What, what does this builder do? How do they, how do they sell their houses? Because they, they all have their own little twist on how what they think is valuable, included, not included, because there are certain builders, like that's just the way it is. There's really like no negotiations.

Tanya Cosmini  1:11:58 

It's like the Soup Nazi, it's not like Burger King.

Tracy Hayes  1:12:01 

Yeah, where are your relocation buyers coming from right now? Can you walk me through a specific referral situation where a buyer arrived from out of market and how did you close them?

Tanya Cosmini  1:12:16 

So I'm not, you know, really selling a ton of real estate, so I can tell you about the deals that come in, yeah, that comes to, yeah, that's where the, where they coming

Tracy Hayes  1:12:22 

from,

Tanya Cosmini  1:12:23 

they're everywhere now. I mean, we've got California, Arizona, a couple from New York, Washington DC, Chicago. One of my agents is really heavy into YouTube, so she gets a ton, a ton, a ton of relocation buyers. It's so cool to watch, watch them come through, you know, so I love that, that her YouTube channel is now serving her, right? Because that's the goal, right? You provide videos of, and actually, she does a lot of new construction, very good segue, a lot of new construction videos, and those are bringing people in, but they're coming from everywhere, but you know, the usual suspects of where, you know, taxes are high, and whatnot, but yeah, I know. I, in the last 60 days, I can say Arizona, California, Washington, D.C. Chicago, and New York,

Tracy Hayes  1:13:11 

I believe something's going to happen with the property taxes. The more and more I listen to it, the people, the bureaucrats who are nay saying it and trying to get the public to, but the, you know, the public doesn't want to pay the union. You heard the numbers of how the increase of the budgets of some of these counties versus their increase in population just doesn't add up. Like, do you have a surplus of money, or you're not spending it correctly from that same way? But we see any amount of reduction, obviously eliminating property taxes in general is like, you know, but even, even just a reasonable reduction, not that our property taxes are crazy compared to Chicago, New York, California, we see any sort of reduction there is just another reason to get people to move that are maybe procrastinating. Oh, the interest rates are, you know, what they're going to reduce the property taxes. Sure, our payments probably going to just because the rate tie, it's now going to be like paying 4% because the property tax is that much less.

Tanya Cosmini  1:14:11 

It's just going to make it a lot more palatable, like those people that are on the fence, or like, you know, the what? What do we hear? Oh, I've always wanted to live in Florida, now they want, now they're ready.

Tracy Hayes  1:14:20 

Yeah, yeah, this is it's something that that agents should start talking about, because I think you know, in November, and then obviously the legislature will get together if they put something we won't, wouldn't obviously see it till the 27 taxes come out, right? But I think it's something that that you should be talking about, because you know one thing DeSantis recommended, not that the legislature wouldn't actually, you know, taken point blank was, if we're going to do a great discount, it has to be for the people who are currently homesteaded residents now, and that someone who, after the legislation goes into effect, moves in, they should have, you know, he was recommending, like, a five years before they're technically, I guess, a floor. Meridian, right, and then get to, so put that out there. Say, hey, this is what's going on, and they're talking about, you know, a cut off date, so it could be five years before you see that reduction, but if you go ahead and move now, you could, you're going to get the reduction because you're already on the home before the legislation goes into effect. So, just something to throw out there that is being discussed, but I think agents should be educating and paying attention to what's going on from that standpoint. Obviously, DeSantis is out there preaching, but he's gonna be gone, and you know, obviously, I assume I think it's January 1, you know, November he's out, you know, the election, but January 1 he's out, but that's what they're talking about, and it's got people, you know, it's I think it's going to towards affordability, and hopefully push some people off the off the thing. All right, we'll go to this last question.

Tanya Cosmini  1:15:48 

Got it?

Tracy Hayes  1:15:48 

Actually, you know what I want to.. what do you want to ask this one here?

Tanya Cosmini  1:15:51 

Okay, I'm excited

Tracy Hayes  1:15:52 

because I think this is important because I think you're running into this. You've recruited a couple, you know, heavy hitters here in the last year. Sarah obviously has been on the show when a 10 or 15 year veteran walks into your office and says they're stuck. What are the first two or three questions you have to figure out what the real problem

Tanya Cosmini  1:16:10 

is? Sure, such, such, such a great question. So, I usually ask them to, well, first of all, I hope they have a P and L. Right? I want to see, because most agents that have been in the business that long have a business plan of sorts, right there, they're pouring money into their business in some way, shape, or form. So, I want to see what that looks like, like, are they are they buying leads, are they not nurturing their sphere, are they, do they not have a CRM? I mean, you would be surprised how many agents work on an Excel spreadsheet, and I'm not dissing on an Excel spreadsheet, I'm not, but if you're selling a lot of real estate, you do need automation, right? You need a CRM that's loving on your people often enough, so they think it's you. I mean, they know it's automation, but they think it's you enough. You know, nothing like a personal touch, like a handwritten card or a phone call. But what are you doing in your business to get more business, like, are you actually not asking people, and so it's really looking at what they're doing, and then what we could do better, and then how we can support them with that, you know? Do they do they need a recommendation of a VA, for instance, or do they maybe it is time for they get an admin, or maybe they're so busy selling real estate they're stagnant, because we look and we see a whole group of people, they're bringing in leads, they're getting all these referrals, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I brought in all these people last year, I didn't call 20% of them. You might need a buyer's agent.

Tracy Hayes  1:17:31 

Yeah, you could have a great year, and all of a sudden

Tanya Cosmini  1:17:33 

it plateaus. It's very, very common that you, you grow this business, right? You grow, grow, grow, but you're one human being. Yeah, only everyone has the same amount of time, and every day, so you bring in all this business, you're hosting open houses, you're getting all this referral business, because you're such a great realtor, and you don't have the time just to serve everybody

Tracy Hayes  1:17:51 

well. I think one of the biggest sins that corporations have, you know, having been on my side, you know, they pay all this money for these CRMs, real estate agent, any any sales falls in this category. They come out and teach all the bells and whistles that they have to the point where they, everyone has analysis paralysis. Yep, they're like, okay, where should.. instead of actually going in, either as an agent, being, you know, sole proprietor, 1099 whether the brokerage is providing somebody, and maybe they have to pitch into it, or they hire a virtual assistant to be working that CRM behind the scenes without you even all they're doing, you're just making sure everyone's added in, and that the lightest person you talk to, I think it was Markie Lemons, who I had on a few years ago, before the RE Bar Camp, said she likes to add eight people to her CRM every day, that's like a goal she could put, adds eight names to it. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, imagine if you just kept, I mean, not even half that pace, the amount of people you would accumulate, and then you're reaching out to them all the time, which obviously she cannot be doing it, because if you follow Markie, she's on LinkedIn, doing LinkedIn articles. She's, she's coaching, teaching all around the country, traveling for now. Yeah, she has automated and virtual assistants, working those things, and it's just snowballed to an effect. So, do you, do you share? Does a broker provide someone to nurture everyone's CRM, because the campaigns could be very similar all the way across the board. It's just absolutely, you know, making sure the CRM, because you're paying all this money for this thing that actually, because it's designed to work behind the scenes.

Tanya Cosmini  1:19:31 

Absolutely. So, so we have Tech Tuesdays, you know, once or twice a month, where we provide one on one training on our CRM, and it has automated campaigns already in there, like for instance, if you put in John Smith, your buyer, his birthday is january 1, 1985 You then just check birthday, it'll wish him a happy birthday automatically. I mean, you do have to check it that he's on the birthday campaign. You can do the same thing, it'll do a happy house anniversary automatically there. Is also a campaign for a new buyer campaign, a new seller campaign, that's automation for you. You can build a newsletter in there that gets sent automatically. I mean, you do have to make the newsletter, but or

Tracy Hayes  1:20:11 

you can hire someone to make it.

Tanya Cosmini  1:20:12 

Absolutely, you can totally

Tanya Cosmini  1:20:13 

use Claude,

Tracy Hayes  1:20:15 

yes,

Tanya Cosmini  1:20:16 

and it can make you a really amazing one that you have to load in there, but you know, the, it's, it's a tool to give you your time back. What you have to decide, as a, as a person or as a realtor, is how are you going to do it? Are you better served by saying, you know, on one day a week I'm going to spend four hours on my admin tasks, or do you do one hour every day? You have to answer that question, you know, because it's you either like to work in your business or on your business. I have found there's all the agents are kind of divided, right? Nobody likes both, and so whatever that is for you, you've got to figure it out. And so when I sit with agents that are, you know, at a peak in a valley, I'm like, hey, what do you like working in or on your business? And they're like, I've never even heard that term before. And so we talk, we talk about it, and I'm like, or thought

Tracy Hayes  1:21:03 

about it,

Tanya Cosmini  1:21:03 

or they really

Tracy Hayes  1:21:05 

think about what they're doing on a daily basis, you know,

Tanya Cosmini  1:21:07 

and so what happens is they figure out, you know, kind of what their kryptonite is, and then you either have to hire for it, you got to pay for time, or you got to figure out how to structure your day so that you can make that happen, because you have to work in and on it to grow, end of story. Every day it's back to consistency.

Tracy Hayes  1:21:28 

Make it, make it come. This is off the question list, but I think it's very important, because I do believe a lot of new agents might be enticed by some agents who might be working for, you know, these low split brokerages, or whatever, you know, the handle is for them, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I want the biggest check possible, so I want to go, but really, they, how important is to find the brokerage, even if it's at a cost that gets your business up and flying, and that might cost you a little bit of your commission, for you know, to a point where you feel you can do it all yourself, or you may find, I mean, there's, I know, there's some brokers, there's obviously some brokerages here in town that have a ton of top producing agents, and you and I know they probably have the, I wouldn't say the worst split, but definitely in the top five worst splits in England, but they can, but these top agents keep working because they're actually feel value in that,

Tanya Cosmini  1:22:24 

yeah, they feel like they got a lot of support for the money, right? Yeah, right, yeah. You know, I would say that you, there's got to be a balance, right? Like, you know, if we're going to talk about top agents closing 30 million a year and they're on a 8020 split, they could hire a whole human for that, right? 20% right? It seems silly, but that's okay. But for new realtors, you know, your foundation is so, so important. It is not something to play around with on those first, you know, one to three or one to four transactions. That if you don't have someone teaching you to write the contract. What the heck are you going to do? I mean, I mean, not only could you ruin the relationship of that person that you got the business from, but I mean, there's legalities involved, you know, that I

Tracy Hayes  1:23:14 

don't think new agents are actually taught the whole spectrum of the business, you know. You've mentioned here a P and L, well, you and I know 99% of the agents out there don't have a P and L, right? Yeah, but that's part of the spectrum, the CRM, you know, education, obviously, you know, you're constantly doing that, and when you actually show them this whole spectrum, you're like, yeah, that's what it takes to run a corporation, and that's me, and so what I don't want to have time enough in the day for this pie. How can I cut this quarter off, and you know, will the brokerage take care of that? Do they have people that will take care of that part, which some brokerages obviously do, that to take some of the load off, you know, type of thing, or do I, you know, go to a virtual assistant, but how important it is to understand the full scope and what needs to be done right away, and that's something you need to be learning, as well as the contract, if you want to get off to a great start and actually continue on success.

Tanya Cosmini  1:24:12 

I think it's really hard for new agents to realize, I mean, or even existing agents, right? They forget that they're running a business, right, they're all the things, right, they're just running

Tracy Hayes  1:24:20 

one deal to the next, but they're everything right

Tanya Cosmini  1:24:22 

there, their production, their sales, their marketing, their HR, right there, they're everything all in one, and and you're not going to be good at all of it, so at some point you have to source some of it out, whatever that looks like, and you have to be okay to say there's part of this I'm not good at, or I don't like, and I'm going to source that out. So, I think new realtors just have to remember, in the beginning, you've got to do all of it, but you just got to set up a good foundation, and that's with being at a brokerage that's supporting you, that's helping you. You know, I don't necessarily think they should give you leads, I think you should learn how to source your own, but. That's that's my opinion. Just because that way you have a build a business for life, it doesn't, that means you're not going to have instant success, but you'll have success later, because you'll learn how to.. would you agree

Tracy Hayes  1:25:10 

that a new agent, you have a brokerage is giving out leads a new agent, so they can get some at bats, but their goal should be to wean off those leads.

Tanya Cosmini  1:25:18 

Yeah, but it becomes really hard because you get busy, right, especially when you're a new agent, you're so worried about everything. I have found that they, they spend too much time, they get analysis paralysis on things, so when they're given a lead, they're like they're just spinning all the time, that then they forget to nurture the other things that might have been theirs. So I just, I try to steer away from it, because you get stuck, you're getting, you know, three to five leads a day, and you're calling and calling, and they're not answering, and you're trying to nurture them, and then you're not able to nurture your own.

Tracy Hayes  1:25:49 

I think is this finding the brokerage that takes that piece of the pie that I was just talking about, that you don't, the most, at least most of the pieces that you don't feel you're good at or not good at that, they have people, staff there that can take that, and what is the value of that? What is your split? Is if okay, as long as we give him that much, I only pay the transaction coordinator when I have a deal, that's a no-brainer in my mind. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, those types of things, it's something to think about, and obviously anyone listening, you know, Tanya, here can definitely help you out and break that down. You're running a producing brokerage in 26 Which AI tools are your agents using that are making a real difference, and which ones are just noise?

Tanya Cosmini  1:26:32 

Oh, wow. So, obviously everybody loves Chat GBT. I feel like it was like the foundation one, and I think that the majority of them are really embedded in that. We spent a lot of time, especially on, like, our Tech Tuesdays, talking about it. Some of us just came back from Savannah, where we had a Realty One group, one talk, which is like a world tour of small conferences, and one at that one, there was an AI expert, and which is really neat. He talked about how you have to prompt properly, which I think is like the newest thing coming up in AI, is remembering how to prompt. I have kind of put Chachi PT away. I've decided, first of all, I named her Charlotte, so I have put her away, and I am in a very deep relationship with Claude.

Tracy Hayes  1:27:20 

Yes, I've done the same thing. Oh, you've done the same thing. So,

Tanya Cosmini  1:27:23 

I really like.. I wouldn't.. I

Tracy Hayes  1:27:24 

wouldn't say I put Chechavi is really good at graphics now. It'll create good thumbnails, it'll create the posts that you see me post up, like I have it on this whole pre-Fourth of July thing, and it's the Revolutionary War battles. Yeah, but I'm the.. I'm the obviously I'm the Continental Army, and I'm defeating the bad lenders, who are the yes, and I'm saving, I'm saving deals for the, for the agents. Yes, I love it.

Tanya Cosmini  1:27:48 

Anyway, so you know, so, so we, we have very open conversations about all the different, you know, AIs. We have AI embedded into our back end. We have Roger, he looks like a little bull type guy, I don't, or a goat, I don't know his horns, and he's, he's built into our CRM, and he'll add people for you, he'll set them up on the campaigns and whatnot,

Tracy Hayes  1:28:09 

so you can talk to him. Yeah, did you say add Sally Smith, her address is this absolutely for you?

Tanya Cosmini  1:28:14 

And then we have a, we've, we have two different ones in there, doing, doing different things, so we have it embedded right, right in there, free to use, but between those two, most of them use that. I think people are sleeping on Gemini.

Tracy Hayes  1:28:29 

I use it occasionally when I'm looking for basic things, as I don't like to cloud my Claude and Chat GBT with kind of just like one-off questions or something, right? You know, where I'm not really like drilling down for days, and something. Yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  1:28:42 

so like I have found, and we talk about this because we like to have not specific meetings about specific topics. That sounds really stupid, but it's more like what's going on, what should we talk about, and it just morphs into something great. And so they often lead to AI, and so sometimes I feel that when you've not sounds horrible, I'm not getting the answer I want, but I don't feel like it's giving me, like I'm searching, not

Tracy Hayes  1:29:06 

getting it.

Tanya Cosmini  1:29:07 

Is that like prompting your reason? Gemini figures it out, and it leads me in a different direction. I'm like, there's the answer. I

Tracy Hayes  1:29:13 

will ask one to give me a prompt for the other. I said, give me a great prompt for I want Claude to do this. Give me a great prompt. I've

Tanya Cosmini  1:29:21 

never done that,

Tracy Hayes  1:29:22 

and it'll give, yeah.

Tanya Cosmini  1:29:23 

So, I think sometimes you have to use a very strong word, use a triangulate them. Well,

Tracy Hayes  1:29:29 

the one thing I've been using Claude a lot for, because it has a Chrome extension, is you can now I use LinkedIn, I post articles on there, but I do notice a lot of agents, it's either not updated or they don't have one. You can go and get in LinkedIn, get the extension, and say, "evaluate my evaluate my LinkedIn. Where am I missing? Where can I improve? You need a better bio. Your bio is not updated, but well, here, here's one for you. It'll put it in there for. You, you can go through, and I loaded it, actually, recently, because it was telling me I did not have enough reviews, so I loaded it with every guest that I've had on the podcast. I would give it, like, it's actually, it told me, give them 20 names at a time. I said, go through here, and so I'm doing something else. It's over here requesting reviews for me, sending those things out, and then obviously it spits out. We'll say, well, we sent these here, but these people aren't, aren't, don't, can't find them on LinkedIn, or they're a second or third. So I went in and said, okay, second and third, send them a connection request. So it could be doing all these types of things in the background. I use it for YouTube as well. It'll go through, I said, "Clean up my, you know, I'm not a, you know, make sure I have the right keywords. It's cool, so it's slowly going back through all my old YouTube videos and updating it. And then you'll just say, "What's the professional thing on the thumbnails? The thumbnail giving impact, it'll speak to you now. All I can say is, "Hey, this video, it's been out there for six months, and it's pretty stagnant, so I make some changes to it. Maybe it gets a few more views. I don't know, it's worth a try.

Tanya Cosmini  1:31:07 

Sure, when the other thing can only

Tracy Hayes  1:31:08 

get better, that's

Tanya Cosmini  1:31:10 

linked to my email, all my whole Google workspace, and so I will have it write emails for me, and it throws them in my draft inbox. And so, agents, if you're overwhelmed, I highly suggest you figure that out. I think you have to have the paid version. It's like 20 bucks a month, it's worth

Tracy Hayes  1:31:26 

it,

Tanya Cosmini  1:31:27 

because it's like a little assistant for you,

Tracy Hayes  1:31:29 

if you want. If you go in, and I've used this several times, I can tell you a certain story, but let me tell you, you want, you need to write a letter, or you maybe you're a little hot under the collar, whether it's that person or someone else has got you, and you know, whatever, but you got to write an email right now, whether you want to talk to Claude or Chat GBT, talk to it, tell it all the thing, all the net, you know, come off whatever tone you want, and then tell us, calm this down, I need to convince this person of this, it'll write the most pleasant email for you, and believe me, I've gotten responses from you, wow, that was a great email, right? I've had to convince underwriters on exceptions, and I went in and had them. I told it all the information I need to convince this underwriter. We need to get this exception. These are the reasons why. And then it puts the right tone. Yes, and some people get off on that. No, I

Tanya Cosmini  1:32:17 

totally agree. Yeah, I think that maybe what a lot of agents are missing is that again, time for money. If you need to pay for the service, like Claude or chat, and it can help your email, because it can check your email for you, and then it can, it can draft the responses, and it puts it in your draft folder, and then you can go in there and decide if it's good. And mine has been remarkable, yeah, like really good. Yeah, the responses, some sometimes it says the response, it's like, hey, I'm going to look into this, I appreciate it, and it is right, it's like, I don't know the answer, but at least it's drafted a response, so I can buy time, you know, while I get it, so right, right, that's really, really a really nice feature that I think agents are sleeping on.

Tracy Hayes  1:32:56 

Yeah, you have to start going in and dabbling, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube, I did find this out because I asked Claude, point, because I get you get the ads on Instagram and stuff all the time. Hey, you're all these special prompts. Here's 100 100 Claude prompts. I asked Claude, I said, I see these advertisers, these, these worthy, it's like, don't pay for them.

Tanya Cosmini  1:33:15 

Oh, fascinating,

Tracy Hayes  1:33:16 

do not pay for almost bought one, it'll actually tell you, and it was funny, Jennifer was at a training of AI in the basic things, you want to write a great prompt, ask Claude, what do you need to write a great prompt, it'll tell you what it needs, just fill in the blanks, and then

Tanya Cosmini  1:33:35 

yes, so that was my biggest takeaway from the one talk I went to on AI was that I wasn't prompting as good as I could, I wasn't like giving it enough detail. So, the example it gave was, if you're trying to write a listing description, you have to tell it what it is, like you are a real estate marketer,

Tracy Hayes  1:33:54 

you're a pro, you have to really actually embellish a little bit there, you're the best in the world, great

Tanya Cosmini  1:34:00 

writer, you, I have noticed

Tracy Hayes  1:34:01 

that it writes better when you actually do that

Tanya Cosmini  1:34:04 

persuasive writer for listing descriptions in blah blah blah, and then you can read it, and you're just like, wow. And then the other thing, which everyone, I hope you listen to this part, so you have to remind it to not have fair housing violations in your listing description. Yes,

Tracy Hayes  1:34:20 

well, if you're, if you're doing in my mind, like I've learned how to start projects, I've got a bunch of different projects going. It have a project for listing descriptions in the instructions, which you can constantly be updating as you learn, because you can ask it, hey, can we do this better? Like I was having it go through my YouTube videos, it's like, how can I, how can you do this better, that I don't use as many tokens, right? Because if it'll burn a lot of tokens, because it's taking screenshots and all this stuff, but you just, and you can change your section, but have a project to do listing inscriptions, and that should be one of the most important thing. You pray, the most important thing, do not violate fair housing in any of these things. Yes, you should. So, no matter what you say to it, it will not. It's reading those instructions before it's giving you the answer.

Tanya Cosmini  1:35:05 

So, the AI expert said, "Hey, we learned this because realtors were getting fair housing violations because they were having AI write their descriptions, because AI doesn't know it's just writing a good description. You asked it to be persuasive. Well, I

Tracy Hayes  1:35:18 

think when you.. it's like someone said it doesn't know what two plus two is. It actually, it's taking a consensus of the internet and realizing that everywhere it sees two plus two, it equals four. So then the consensus is that it's four. It's not, it's not calculating like your calculator would do. It's taking a consensus. So when it comes to fair housing laws, as you and I know, some of these government things are, where is it searching? Go to the CFP website, and you know, research what fair housing laws I could violate when talking about a condo or something, you know, whatever it may, you could tell it those specific things, so it's pulling it, but otherwise it's just wide open, and it's just searching the internet for a consensus, and it's just giving you a consensus, which may be over the edge.

Tanya Cosmini  1:36:04 

Yeah, which I thought was great.

Tracy Hayes  1:36:06 

Yeah. Last question.

Tanya Cosmini  1:36:08 

All right, I'm ready.

Tracy Hayes  1:36:09 

Well, I'm not going to ask you, why do you love real estate? Why do you love being a broker for Realty One Group Elevate?

Tanya Cosmini  1:36:17 

So it really just comes down to helping people. I love watching agents grow. I love watching them go through a problem and solving it. You know, it's just.. it's just so great. I love watching the brokerage grow, right? It's just.. it's just a lot of fun and rewarding to just see them blossom, you know? Whatever that looks like for them, I always, you know, there's sometimes agents that are like, "Oh, you know, feel like I've disappointed you because I thought I was going to sell this, and I always say, "Hey, this isn't about me, it's about you, it's your business, and I'm here to support that. Whatever that looks like, people get lifed right, things happen, but my favorite part about the brokerage is just the agents I meet, the agents I get to help grow, and just watching them build their business the way they want it to be, because every day it's about them and not me.

Tracy Hayes  1:37:09 

Excellent,

Unknown Speaker  1:37:09 

do.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai