The Parham Team: Lindsey and Matt Top Agents Palatka

REE #260 Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt Parham: Being as good as we’re at in the field that we’re at, what we can do for those people—just because of the context we have, the knowledge we have, and the things that we can forewarn them of. Being such a subject matter expert on those, can give them so much more leverage compared to other people. And I think just having that confidence and that knowledge in that means the world.

Hey, welcome back to the Real Estate Excellence Podcast. Today’s guests are a powerhouse real estate couple, redefining hustle, heart, and what it means to build a legacy through real estate in Northeast Florida. She went from working multiple jobs as a single mom to becoming one of the top producing agents in her market, closing 22 homes in her first full year and over 40...

[00:01:12] Tracy Hayes: ...in the next. He is a former electrical systems expert who deployed around the world, left corporate grind to join his wife...

[00:01:20] Tracy Hayes: ...full-time in the business, bringing leadership, systems thinking, and a passion for building something of their own. Together they’ve built a real estate team that’s turning heads, learning fast, and showing what’s possible when your work ethic matches your ambition. They’re proof that you don’t need a perfect start—you just need the guts to start and the grind to keep going. Let’s welcome Lindsay and Matt Parham to the show.

[00:01:45] Lindsay Parham: Thank you.

[00:01:45] Tracy Hayes: Thank you. Thank you. That was ChatGPT. Isn’t that awesome? Yeah. I’ve been using it lately and what I’ve been doing is, I took the bio that you submitted online, I put that in there and I say, “Hey, I need a thing,” and that’s what it came up with. So, you know...

[00:02:01] Lindsay Parham: A lot of agents actually use that for the listing descriptions too.

[00:02:05] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just gotta check it.

[00:02:08] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:02:09] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Read through it. I don’t go—but mine is a little more simpler than the listing description, 'cause there’s some legalities obviously involved.

[00:02:17] Lindsay Parham: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:18] Tracy Hayes: What I’m amazed—I've been using it more and more for the social media, for the show, as I had a guest on a few months ago and she's like, “You need to be using—you know, use ChatGPT to do the captions for Instagram.” So what I do after each show, I have a transcript, I upload the transcript, the show notes, have all your social media links and so forth. I upload that to ChatGPT so it knows now because I have kind of...

[00:02:40] Tracy Hayes: ...set a standard—this is what I want the caption to have in it. Promote the show, put this link, put their social media and all that kind of stuff. And I tell it, “Hey, on this reel, this is what they were talking about. Find it in the transcript and give me a caption.”

[00:02:53] Lindsay Parham: That is awesome.

[00:02:54] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So it’s always got—it’s consistently, you know, for the SEO.

[00:02:58] Lindsay Parham: Yep.

[00:02:59] Tracy Hayes: And then always, you know, if you go on anyone’s caption that has links—so anyone looking at it can actually contact you through the show. So, yeah. But like I said, we’re only just tipping—just the tip of AI right now.

[00:03:11] Lindsay Parham: Oh, absolutely.

[00:03:12] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. What it’s gonna be able to do for you. But welcome to the show. Glad you guys made it all the way up from Palatka. You know, it was funny, I was just—I was talking about my last guest, Gel, from Miami...

[00:03:24] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:25] Tracy Hayes: ...and I was telling her, I said, “Hey, you know, some areas to look into,” you know, she does some fix and flips and that sort of thing. But she’s big into real estate investment. I said, “Green Cove Springs and then Palatka next.” And I think right now you can get in there really well.

[00:03:34] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You know, right now, you got Clay County, St. Johns County, and Nassau and even Flagler County—their median sales price point is like a hundred thousand over Putnam.

[00:03:47] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:48] Lindsay Parham: There’s so many deals to be made. He does a lot of investor stuff, so he’s more into that area. But yeah, Palatka is—it’s starting to really be—we got a Wawa and a Longhorn.

[00:04:03] Tracy Hayes: Where’s that seafood restaurant that’s kind of in the middle of town? I’ve been there. It’s very popular... Fours? Fours? I think Russell Wights? It's...

[00:04:10] Lindsay Parham: People like Corky Bells because you can walk on the river.

[00:04:13] Tracy Hayes: I don’t remember walking on the—but...

[00:04:14] Matt Parham: But if you want good food, you want Musselwhite’s.

[00:04:15] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:04:15] Tracy Hayes: Musselwhite’s?

[00:04:16] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. They're often Musselwhite’s.

[00:04:17] Tracy Hayes: Whites. Whites. Whites. Oh, Mussel—that might actually—I'll have to check. It’s been a while since I’ve been down there. I’ve driven—we drive through obviously every time we go to Gainesville, it leads us back through Palatka.

[00:04:29] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:04:30] Tracy Hayes: To cut across there. You know what...

[00:04:31] Lindsay Parham: You might be thinking about Bradley’s too.

[00:04:31] Tracy Hayes: Mm. But Matt, you’re a fisherman and you’re—that’s like, I mean, Palatka is like the place to be for bass fishing, am I right?

[00:04:39] Matt Parham: Yeah. Yeah. That’s my stuff. And rattles between bass fishing, red fishing, shrimping during the summertime. There’s always—always something out there.

[00:04:46] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Yeah. Do they do—is there some of the national tours, you know, the bass fishing Pro-Am or whatever they call it?

[00:04:51] Matt Parham: Got some of the biggest comes through there.

[00:04:52] Tracy Hayes: Biggest ones?

[00:04:53] Matt Parham: Yes. Yeah. We’ve got some of the biggest ones that are in there, everywhere from Pal up near the bridge, all the way down south towards Salt Springs.

[00:05:02] Tracy Hayes: My parents were RVing basically from about ’96 to 2016. And then we got ’em outta the RV. They lived in an RV for 10 years, but they came one winter and spent it in Welaka.

[00:05:12] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:12] Tracy Hayes: You know, which was really unique.

[00:05:14] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:15] Tracy Hayes: Little place. I mean, there’s some treasure of Florida, I think.

[00:05:18] Lindsay Parham: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There’s...

[00:05:20] Lindsay Parham: ...one red light in Welaka. Yeah. No, that’s definitely a very special part of Putnam County. And then you have Georgetown. It’s like a little teeny tiny spot in Putnam County that’s really neat as well.

[00:05:32] Tracy Hayes: You know, you’re with Momentum, so you got the agents all over Florida calling in. When we have these clients who are looking for—they think they want acreage and so forth, is there still opportunities at a reasonable price to get down there and get five or six, ten acres land? Is that—do you get a lot of referrals from that?

[00:05:50] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:05:51] Tracy Hayes: Because people—'cause there’s nothing. St. Johns way too expensive for anything like that, although there are some plots and areas. But to go over into Putnam, from the tax standpoint and the price point...

[00:06:02] Matt Parham: It’s—it’s huge. Yeah. I mean, had a closing probably six months ago or so now. I mean, a couple came in—VA loan—and they were in the mid-two hundreds and were able to get into a home on four acres of property.

[00:06:13] Tracy Hayes: Nice.

[00:06:14] Matt Parham: So that was awesome for them. And then we’ve also got some of the cheapest waterfront property too.

[00:06:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:06:19] Matt Parham: Satsuma is probably one of the premier areas for that, just because you’ve got deep canals, easy river access, Dunns Creek, stuff like that. And you can get a house on the water in the low twos.

[00:06:30] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Have you just—but you can’t turn that tip of that mic, so you’re kind of—so it’s pointing... Yeah, there we go. Good. Is that better?

[00:06:36] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And another thing about Putnam County when it comes to land and building, we still don’t have...

[00:06:40] Lindsay Parham: ...impact fees, where St. Johns County impact fees is what, 16,000 or...

[00:06:45] Matt Parham: Or more.

[00:06:45] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Or more. Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge. I didn’t actually realize that, because having—I told you I was on the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee in St. Johns County, and that’s the biggest nemesis of trying to build an affordable home or get these builders to build an affordable home—

[00:06:59] Tracy Hayes: —exactly, as they start off 15, $20,000 in the hole because of an impact fee.

[00:07:04] Lindsay Parham: Yep. Yeah. There’s actually some new construction homes from Century Complete that have been in Crescent City, Welaka, and now they’re starting in Hollister, which is right outside of Palatka. And you’re buying a brand new house for $235,000. Three bed, two bath.

[00:07:20] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. We’re on the subject, but I just wanna stay on it for a minute 'cause that’s gonna lead us into talking about Palatka in general. Going back in history—obviously you guys live there, so you’ve experienced what the history of Palatka—it's grown. There’s also a tremendous amount of manufactured homes there.

[00:07:35] Lindsay Parham: Yes. Yes.

[00:07:36] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And I remember going—I mean, like I said, my parents spent the winter one time in Welaka, so we were down there kind of, you know, took a turn off the road and stuff. And you find some of these neighborhoods—those go back to the '80s, the '70s—when people were kind of, you know...

[00:07:52] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:07:53] Tracy Hayes: ...migrating down slowly before Florida really kicked in.

[00:07:55] Lindsay Parham: Yep. Yeah. We got one for sale right now that is a 1971, one bed, one bath on a little under a quarter of an acre. It’s an older home and it can’t be financed because of the age.

[00:08:06] Tracy Hayes: Age, yeah.

[00:08:06] Lindsay Parham: But it’s only $60,000.

[00:08:08] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:08:08] Lindsay Parham: You know, we are very well educated when it comes to mobile homes now and what inspections are required. But there’s people that will move out of state and they’re like, “I’ve never seen so many mobile homes,” but living in Putnam County—it is so common.

[00:08:22] Lindsay Parham: Like nine times out of ten, that’s what we sell.

[00:08:26] Tracy Hayes: How difficult is it for someone—like you got 1971, but the lot’s great, right? How difficult is it for them to get that one removed and a new manufactured home in?

[00:08:37] Matt Parham: Yeah, so it’s not too terribly hard. I mean, if you’re looking at just bringing in a single wide, you’re looking at $10,000 to $15,000.

[00:08:43] Tracy Hayes: To bring it in, set it up—remove the old one?

[00:08:46] Matt Parham: To get rid of the old one, yeah. That’s just to get rid of the old one.

[00:08:48] Tracy Hayes: Okay.

[00:08:48] Matt Parham: Yep. One of the biggest issues, like she was talking about, that we run into though is because people aren’t familiar with a lot of the mobile homes. Just because, like she said, if they’re coming in from out of state, the lenders they’re working with aren’t familiar with it. The insurance companies they’re working with aren’t familiar with it.

[00:09:04] Matt Parham: So it really does pay to help—to have somebody that’s familiar with those processes, with the lenders that work with it, with the insurance companies that work with it. Because I’ve had several buyers that I’ve been working with, and they’ll have a lender tell 'em, “Hey, listen, you’re good for $300,000. Go find you a home.” And they never...

[00:09:20] Matt Parham: ...disclosed to them the fact that they meant a stick-built home or a concrete home, not a mobile home. Right? So they went out, we’ve spent two months looking for a place. They finally found something they really fell in love with, and then they called the lender and the lender says, “Oh, well I didn’t mean that kind of home.”

[00:09:33] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:09:33] Matt Parham: So having local lenders, local insurance companies, local realtors...

[00:09:38] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:09:38] Matt Parham: ...that know the market, that know the infrastructure, kind of what it takes to build that entire case around your mortgage and your loan.

[00:09:45] Tracy Hayes: It’s really, really not—I mean, all manufactured—all lenders—I’ve worked for several of 'em, 20 years in the business...

[00:09:51] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:51] Tracy Hayes: ...they all have their, their—we call 'em overlays.

[00:09:54] Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[00:09:55] Tracy Hayes: You know, like how old it can be. Some lenders only do double wides—they won’t do a single.

[00:10:00] Matt Parham: Right. Right. Some do double wides, some do single wides, some—some lenders only do post-’76, right? Once HUD labels went into effect. You know, we work with some lenders that do pre-’76, on a case-by-case.

[00:10:10] Tracy Hayes: You need to find those if you’re—'cause that—you’re in there.

[00:10:13] Matt Parham: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s kind of part of the value that’s associated with working with somebody that’s in the market, that knows it. You know, we can tell you right off the bat before you’ve wasted time, money for inspections, all these other things, whether or not you’re even gonna be able to do anything with it.

[00:10:27] Tracy Hayes: Right. Yeah. And I think, also, especially if you’re dealing—if you’re on the sales side, you’re on the listing side—it’s good to have someone who’s savvy in those—in dealing with, like, getting the engineering. We know an engineer—here’s the engineering report, right?

[00:10:40] Tracy Hayes: You—a lot of times we—I’m sure you deal with it—a lot of times you get these agents that never sold one before or only sold one manufactured. They don’t...

[00:10:48] Lindsay Parham: They don’t.

[00:10:49] Tracy Hayes: ...know some of these little things. But you guys—

[00:10:50] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:10:51] Tracy Hayes: Because you’re living in it—that’s your zone. You know, “Hey, this is what you need to do and here’s who you need to call.”

[00:10:56] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. He actually had a closing, I think about a month ago. And so not only do we have to worry about the engineer report for the tie-downs and whatnot...

[00:11:05] Lindsay Parham: ...but he had to literally tear down panels in one of the closets to find the HUD—

[00:11:08] Tracy Hayes: No.

[00:11:09] Matt Parham: I had to pull off the siding off the house to find the HUD labels because they—

[00:11:12] Tracy Hayes: They recited it at one time?

[00:11:13] Matt Parham: They recited it. The IBTS report wasn’t coming in in time, so I had to go out, pull off the vinyl siding to the house, locate both HUD labels to get to insurance and lender to get...

[00:11:23] Tracy Hayes: But you had an idea where it was?

[00:11:25] Matt Parham: Yeah.

[00:11:25] Tracy Hayes: So there’s—

[00:11:26] Lindsay Parham: So there’s like two or three spots in a mobile home where it can be. A closet, underneath the sink, and on the outside.

[00:11:35] Matt Parham: Yeah. Right. Well, those are the reports, and then your HUD labels are on the exterior.

[00:11:39] Lindsay Parham: Yeah, normally on the tongue.

[00:11:40] Matt Parham: On the tongue where they trailer it.

[00:11:43] Tracy Hayes: I remember years ago when I was first working—I was working with Quicken Loans at the time, now Rocket. And yeah, that was a thing, 'cause people remove 'em—or in this case they covered 'em, which is probably more like the case. Yeah. They covered it up because they recited or whatever. But yeah, it was a—we kind of jumped ahead a little...

[00:12:00] Tracy Hayes: ...bit in my normal program routine, but we got on a good subject. I didn’t wanna interrupt it. Let’s talk about growing up in Palatka for the two of you. Tell us a little about—you know, and then what—your life led you to doing some different work, you working in restaurants and so forth. Everyone—a little background about yourselves. Matt, if you wanna go first—how’d you get to Palatka and what was it like growing up there?

[00:12:21] Matt Parham: Yeah. No, so I mean, I was blessed growing up. I grew up on a small farm. We had about 15 acres and had a 50,000-acre backyard that was the hunting club. So when I was younger, we grew up doing everything from riding four wheelers to horses to even taking the VHS recorder and videotaping us riding the hogs before we had sent 'em out to the fair.

[00:12:41] Matt Parham: I think I’ve still got those recordings somewhere, but it was the annual hog riding contest.

[00:12:44] Tracy Hayes: Oh! You need—I heard those tapes will actually eventually go bad, so you probably want to get those later—get those over to digital later.

[00:12:51] Matt Parham: Yeah. But no, that was awesome. And when I was about 17 or 18, we moved over to St. Augustine—kind of introduced me into a different clientele other than where I grew up, which was out in Bardin.

[00:12:59] Matt Parham: Which was great—just, there wasn’t a whole lot there. Not a lot of industry, not a lot of people willing to do things outside of the box. And when I moved over to St...

[00:13:20] Matt Parham: ...especially in the marine environment. And I worked at West Marine for a couple years, and while I was there, I got introduced to charter captains, I got introduced to people that manufactured rods for folks. I got introduced to a lot of influential people in the area. I mean, to the point where I was getting invitations to go out on million-dollar yachts that I could never even imagine having.

[00:13:41] Matt Parham: Just because they wanted somebody to go out with them that knew the electronics or knew the systems—or, I mean, hell, just was there.

[00:13:49] Tracy Hayes: Was this sort of a passion? 'Cause I was reading your bio and so forth. Obviously, growing up in Palatka—great fishing—you were kind of there, and then you come over to St. Augustine. You set a passion for boating and fishing and that sort of thing?

[00:13:58] Matt Parham: Yeah. I mean, that was really the genesis of why we moved to St. Augustine—was to be closer to the ocean. Loved diving, we loved offshore fishing. You know, growing up in Palatka, we did a lot of freshwater fishing, but as soon as I got my first taste of saltwater fishing, that was about all I did.

[00:14:13] Matt Parham: You know, you go to catch two or three bream, or you catch a cobia. You tell me which one you wanna throw in the cooler.

[00:14:15] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I told you I grew up on Cape Cod, and sport fishing was what I did. My dad actually—I crewed for the captain my first summer. Next summer, he bought in as a partner—my dad did. And then that partner eventually left after a couple years, he was older anyway, and moved on. So we—that’s what we did.

[00:14:36] Tracy Hayes: And now I don’t. I’m like, okay, I’m gonna go out, I just wanna catch one big one.

[00:14:40] Matt Parham: Exactly.

[00:14:40] Tracy Hayes: That’s my—don’t give me a bunch of small ones. I can go to the restaurant and they can cook it for me. I just wanna catch the big one.

[00:14:42] Matt Parham: We call that “hero or zero.” Either way, it’s a good deal. Either way, you go home and you don’t have to clean fish, or you go home and you get to clean a really nice fish.

[00:14:49] Lindsay Parham: When we first got together and he started taking me offshore—you know, girls, we don’t really care about fishing, or most of us don’t. And I’m like, “Oh, dolphins, where?” I’m like, porpoises.

[00:14:59] Lindsay Parham: So there’s like a—no, you can’t say dolphin on the boat.

[00:15:07] Tracy Hayes: So you're at West Marine?

[00:15:09] Matt Parham: Yep. So I worked at West Marine for a while. You know, minimum wage—well, not minimum wage, but $8.25.

[00:15:16] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:17] Matt Parham: Not making anything. And got an opportunity, just in kind of, again, that sphere I was telling you about in the marine industry, where I got to know one of the local owners of a company—Soldier Stick. And it was Brian Bosley. I got to become friends with him. Worked at that company for about 11 years.

[00:15:33] Matt Parham: And did everything in the world—from building systems to running QC, to running an engineering team. Really every facet of the company. And kind of got burned out there after a while and figured, you know, go from trying a small corporation to a large corporation to see how that does—how that feels.

[00:15:52] Matt Parham: And that didn’t work either. That didn’t jive.

[00:15:55] Tracy Hayes: There’s something about us, you know—growing up on the water—it sounds like that’s pretty much what you did. You grew up on boating and fishing, and you’re out there. It’s very hard for us to come into—especially when you’re still young—and to come into that corporate setting.

[00:16:08] Tracy Hayes: I remember calling my parents and going, “Hey, I got this job opportunity, I can do this,” or, “I got, you know, Quicken Loans and I’m working in a cube answering the phones.” They’re like, “No, you ain’t gonna do that.” So I ended up doing it, and I’m still in the business, but just doing it much differently than that. But—hard to rein us in.

[00:16:30] Matt Parham: It is. Yeah. And, you know, I’ve told her this and I’ve told other people this: the greatest sense of independence you will ever get is being offshore on a boat. And there is no greater sense of independence than being offshore on a boat by yourself.

[00:16:44] Matt Parham: Because there’s nobody else there. There’s nobody to help you. There’s nobody to fix anything. It is up to you.

[00:16:49] Tracy Hayes: Silence.

[00:16:49] Matt Parham: And it’s silence.

[00:16:52] Tracy Hayes: Oh, that is—it’s a beautiful thing. Freedom.

[00:16:54] Matt Parham: And, you know, that feeling was there in a small company, because I had the ability to kind of manipulate some of it. It’s totally gone in a large structure.

[00:17:02] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:02] Matt Parham: Even though the pay’s better, you know, you’ve got the better benefits—all of these other supporting facets are there.

[00:17:08] Matt Parham: But at the end of the day, it’s not just about the pay. And I think that’s kind of what pushed me away from there. Because you could be the guy that’s offering 1%, or the guy that’s offering 150%, and at the end of the year, you get the same pay, the same raise, the same everything as this guy sitting here on his thumb.

[00:17:22] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:17:23] Matt Parham: And once she kind of started to get to the position to where she was making enough that we could kind of sustain on that, it gave me the ability to take a step back out of that structure and kind of incorporate myself into what she was already doing—to build it even further.

[00:17:42] Tracy Hayes: Alright, Lindsay, let’s talk—let’s talk. 'Cause now—we’ve got, right? That kind of takes us up to here. Yeah. Let’s go. Growing up in Palatka—and you was, you know, what’s some of the first things you did? And obviously waiting tables was some of the last things you did before getting into real estate.

[00:17:56] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. So I grew up—my cousin—obviously our cousins are always our first best friend—she had, you know, 10 to 12 horses at all times. So I grew up riding horses, going to the Palatka Horseman’s Club.

[00:18:09] Lindsay Parham: My mom’s a beach fanatic, you know, just outdoors—what Florida really is, and not the tourist part.

[00:18:19] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:19] Lindsay Parham: I grew up riding horses. Graduated the same year he did, from the same high school. Moved to Louisiana for about six years. I became a mom at 19, mom of two by 23, and I was a stay-at-home mom then.

[00:18:36] Lindsay Parham: So I never really had a chance to go to college. Since I was a mom at such a young age, I never really went to college, never started a career.

[00:18:44] Lindsay Parham: And then in 2016 when I got divorced, I was like, “Oh crap.” You know, I have nothing—except two kids that I gotta provide for.

[00:18:53] Lindsay Parham: So I started serving, and when my now 10-year-old started school, I started substituting on top of serving at night. And then when we got married—we got married in March of 2020. So our wedding got canceled and we got a COVID baby.

[00:19:16] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, I saw that in your bio—March of 2020. That was... So you just answered my question then.

[00:19:20] Matt Parham: Yeah, I just wanna say that we did have the kid 10 months after we got married.

[00:19:23] Lindsay Parham: We got married two months before we found out we were pregnant. So it was kind of like—good thing we got married when we did.

[00:19:28] Lindsay Parham: So I was still serving, and I have back issues. I told my husband, I’m like, “Look, I can’t do this anymore. It’s killing me.” He goes, “Okay, so you have two options. You can continue to work and be in misery, or you can go home and you can do something that’s gonna further you.”

[00:19:48] Lindsay Parham: He goes, “If you get off of working, you’re not gonna sit on the couch and eat Cheetos and be lazy—you’re gonna do something.”

[00:19:59] Tracy Hayes: That is an actual quote?

[00:20:01] Lindsay Parham: Yes, yes.

[00:20:03] Matt Parham: I think it was a little bit more along the lines of, “If you wanna keep doing that, then shut up and stop complaining—or do this.”

[00:20:11] Lindsay Parham: Right. Yeah. So I was like, okay. His mom is in real estate. She’s been in real estate since 2017. So I was like, you know, why not? My mom tried it, but it was—God, I think it was around 2004 or something, when things were really starting to go bad with the mortgage industry.

[00:20:28] Lindsay Parham: So I was like, well, it’s a few weeks course—or a months course—or however you can do it, 'cause it’s on your own time, right?

[00:20:33] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:34] Lindsay Parham: So I took the course. I finally got my license in July of 2021. And it’s history. I mean, I started with my mother-in-law at Century 21 in July of 2021, and I was there for about 10 months. And then in May of 2022, I moved to Momentum, and my whole life changed.

[00:20:56] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:20:56] Lindsay Parham: It’s been breathtaking. It makes me emotional just thinking about it.

[00:21:01] Tracy Hayes: So let’s dig into that a little bit. So you did have a pseudo mentor—your mother-in-law?

[00:21:06] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:06] Tracy Hayes: Was there—what would you—I mean, was she doing really well or just kind of an average agent?

[00:21:13] Lindsay Parham: So she had a full-time job at Northrop Grumman. So she kind of just did it when someone came up to her and said, “Hey, I am looking to sell my house.” She wasn’t full-blown into it because she was, you know, working 60 hours a week already.

[00:21:24] Lindsay Parham: So when I went to Century 21—you know, when you pass your state exam and you take that class, yeah, you learn a little bit, but you don’t really learn.

[00:21:35] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:21:35] Lindsay Parham: I needed education. I needed people teaching me what to do, when to do. Chris Moore says this every time I talk to someone—when I went to Momentum orientation, he says, “If you are a Realtor and you are bored, you are doing real estate wrong.”

[00:21:51] Lindsay Parham: And for some reason, that has stuck with me.

[00:21:54] Tracy Hayes: Resonated with you?

[00:21:56] Lindsay Parham: Yes. Yes.

[00:21:57] Tracy Hayes: Interesting. “If you are in real estate and you are...”—how’d he say it?

[00:22:01] Lindsay Parham: “If you are bored, you are doing real estate wrong.”

[00:22:02] Tracy Hayes: Right. What did you take from that statement? What was he saying to you? Is that how you interpreted it?

[00:22:09] Lindsay Parham: So just because I may not be actively working with a buyer or seller, there’s a thousand other things that you can be doing. You can be getting on YouTube, watching the best agents on how they do an open house. Or you can, you know, go door-knocking.

[00:22:22] Lindsay Parham: I used to love door-knocking. Holly and I—our other partner—her and I, the first house we ever door-knocked on was a sale.

[00:22:30] Lindsay Parham: There’s just so many different things.

[00:22:36] Tracy Hayes: That motivates you. Instead of, do 100 doors—you knock...

[00:22:38] Matt Parham: To get to the 101—the first one out of that hundred.

[00:22:42] Tracy Hayes: And it...

[00:22:42] Lindsay Parham: It was a $250,000 lot. Vacant lot on the St. Johns River.

[00:22:47] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So from what I—and correct me if I’m wrong—from what I’m interpreting, your vision of real estate—you just saw this low entry of, “Hey, take this 60-hour course,” right?

[00:22:56] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. Whatever.

[00:22:56] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, and get licensed. Low-level entry—I can do this from home, which made it even lower.

[00:23:00] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:23:00] Tracy Hayes: So you’re like, “Okay, okay, I did.” But then—okay, what’s the next step? “Well, okay, I gotta join a brokerage,” 'cause my mother-in-law already belonged to Century 21. So when you walk in the door at Century 21, was there a lot of discovery?

[00:23:14] Tracy Hayes: Did they—you know, and as I’ve mentioned before, we always talk about brokerages here 'cause I think it’s so important to be with the brokerage that fits the way you want—you guys want to do business.

[00:23:24] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:23:24] Tracy Hayes: There’s a lot of different ways you can do this business. So to find the one that clicks with you—so when you walked in there, and of course your mother-in-law, she’s at Northrop Grumman all day long, so it’s not like the two of you are tagging along—what did you do to start learning about real estate and what a real estate agent is actually supposed to be doing when you’re doing it full time?

[00:23:50] Lindsay Parham: Yeah, so I did floor duty. And don’t get me wrong—Century 21 is great—but it’s not a place for new agents who don’t know what to do, who don’t have the past clientele for the referrals and everything. There’s some amazing agents there.

[00:24:05] Lindsay Parham: But for someone like me, I need someone to text me every day. Like John Brooks—he’ll put on our Momentum page an inspirational quote.

[00:24:14] Lindsay Parham: I need someone to be like, “Hey Lindsay, get off the couch. Stop eating those Cheetos. Let’s go.”

[00:24:20] Tracy Hayes: And I’m gonna have you pull the mic just a little bit, just in case. I hate to, after the show, realize I didn’t tell you that. Yeah. Okay, good. You’re good.

[00:24:27] Lindsay Parham: But no, I think Century 21’s a great company—there’s some amazing people there—it just wasn’t the right fit for me.

[00:24:35] Tracy Hayes: Well, was it necessary in, let’s say, Century 21—or just that brokerage—as some of the brokerages in Palatka, you know, they just have this core group of agents, just some matured there, and they’re not thinking about the green agent coming in?

[00:24:51] Lindsay Parham: No. And I love it. So, when I moved from Century 21—our partner Holly Parham, my mother-in-law—she worked with Madison Beal at Century 21, and that’s how we got into Momentum.

[00:25:05] Lindsay Parham: And when we met Maddie to talk about moving, she goes, “Lindsay, what do you want?” And I was like, “You know, truthfully, I just want to be able to go buy my kids shoes whenever they need shoes. I don’t wanna have to worry about picking up another shift or anything like that.”

[00:25:20] Lindsay Parham: So we moved to Momentum, and it’s truly just been life-changing.

[00:25:24] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I just wanna get into your mind a little bit—that first, if you want to call it, the first 10 months. Because I think a lot of people, what they—no one grows up saying, “I want to be a real estate agent.”

[00:25:36] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:36] Tracy Hayes: I mean, I think there’s a couple people now—because, you know, obviously I’ve had some really... Maddie’s obviously as young as she is.

[00:25:43] Lindsay Parham: Oh, she’s amazing.

[00:25:44] Tracy Hayes: Someone got her looking at it really early and she’s caught on. But for the most part, most real estate agents—it’s after they’ve done something else and life took them down this path. So they don’t really have an image at this time—did you even have your own home at this time?

[00:26:00] Lindsay Parham: No.

[00:26:01] Tracy Hayes: No. So you don’t even have your own personal experience—let alone, you know, one transaction. You’re going in there and you’re like, “What is this real estate all about? How’s this business actually work?” You know, basically you’re feeding yourself—you’ve gotta go out and...

[00:26:17] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:26:18] Tracy Hayes: ...plant the seeds.

[00:26:20] Lindsay Parham: I’ll be honest with you. When I took the course, I just took it because I kind of had to find something to do. I never in a million years dreamed that I would have the passion and the love and just desire to do this every day. It was never something I really thought would turn into this.

[00:26:36] Lindsay Parham: I’m really not one that—when I pick up something, I continue with it.

[00:26:40] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:41] Lindsay Parham: So I think it shocked everyone, including myself.

[00:26:44] Tracy Hayes: Until you find something you’re passionate about.

[00:26:45] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:26:46] Tracy Hayes: That’s the thing—if you don’t love what you do... Right? So this actually brings me to this. I got this book Grit—and if you have not read this, I recommend getting this book by Angela Duckworth.

[00:26:57] Tracy Hayes: ’Cause I wanna write a book—all the transcripts that I have, all the agents on—'cause I really think real estate agents need to have a level of grit.

[00:27:07] Tracy Hayes: The reason why 80% fall out is 'cause they don’t have that level of grit—or choose the wrong brokerage. And, you know, again, grit comes in: do you fight through it? Do you find the right brokerage for you? You know, do you search out and go—it's all pulled out to me. I put it under grit, but I break grit down into three things. I call it the LLC.

[00:27:26] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:27] Tracy Hayes: Love, laughter, and consistency. It sounds—and this is why I went to this topic, 'cause I’ve been bringing this up recently—is it sounds like you found a love in this.

[00:27:39] Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[00:27:40] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Tell us why you love real estate.

[00:27:42] Lindsay Parham: So normally when people think of real estate and they’re thinking of going into it, it’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna make all this money.” You know, “I’m gonna do it for me. I’m gonna do it for me.”
My first sale ever—the buyer, they were renting and they were not renting in the greatest of areas.

[00:28:00] Lindsay Parham: The neighbor across the street didn’t even have a front door. And they were videoing kids.

[00:28:06] Tracy Hayes: Oh my gosh.

[00:28:07] Lindsay Parham: Their kids. And just knowing with each sale—I mean, sellers and buyers, they all have different reasons for purchasing or whatnot—but I’m actually helping them.
And I think because I’ve always wanted to help. Originally, I wanted to be a nurse or something. But just knowing that she’s not worried about her kids being videotaped—or, you know, we had a closing yesterday where this veteran had fallen on hard times and he’s been sleeping in his car for three years.

[00:28:36] Tracy Hayes: That’s unbelievable.

[00:28:37] Lindsay Parham: And we actually got him into one of our listings where it was fully furnished. It’s not a brand-new mobile home, but it’s got a brand-new roof, brand-new A/C, brand-new water heater—nothing is going to break on him anytime soon.

[00:28:55] Lindsay Parham: And it’s his.

[00:28:55] Matt Parham: And he moved in with food in the fridge. With spices in the pantry.

[00:29:00] Lindsay Parham: The sellers even gave him $300 for the water deposit to turn on.

[00:29:05] Matt Parham: Yeah.

[00:29:06] Lindsay Parham: And he didn’t pay for any closing costs. He paid for the four-point inspection, which cost $100—and that’s it.

[00:29:12] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:29:12] Lindsay Parham: Matt went out there and fixed a board that came up on a WDO. He put lattice around the back porch.
You know, that is a great thing about working with us. If something comes up—and there’s something small or something that you can’t do or you don’t have the funds for—if we are able...

[00:29:30] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:31] Lindsay Parham: We love going out there and helping people just for this reason.

[00:29:34] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:29:35] Lindsay Parham: I think the average agent—they sit behind the computer and the desk and, you know, they don’t have the joy of seeing it the way that we do.

[00:29:46] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I think this goes back—I put a lot of stuff under grit—but I think this has to do when you’re able to go out and... Some agents have made it a clear statement—and you probably have this statement in your head, but you just didn’t say it—is you’re finding there’s opportunities that come up...

[00:30:00] Tracy Hayes: ...that you can really wow the client. And, you know, you’ve only been doing it a few years, but it sounds like—you don’t get to the production that you’re doing without the people you’ve dealt with referring you those next deals.

[00:30:14] Tracy Hayes: You’re out there marketing and trying to find someone you’ve never met before, yeah, but if you don’t have those people that you’ve worked with in the past being your cheerleader, you’re on a slow growth process.

[00:30:26] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely. Yeah. He had a deal—I think she, Jennifer Fields...

[00:30:32] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:32] Lindsay Parham: She closed, and he got her a deal of a lifetime.

[00:30:37] Matt Parham: She moved in with $50,000 worth of equity.

[00:30:40] Tracy Hayes: Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:30:41] Matt Parham: On a $200,000 house.

[00:30:43] Lindsay Parham: And a house—not a mobile home.

[00:30:46] Matt Parham: But yeah, no, I mean—it’s—I love what we do.
And she started off by saying this, you know, this is so much more than a financial transaction.

[00:30:54] Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[00:30:57] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:57] Matt Parham: You know, this is exponentially more than that.

[00:31:00] Tracy Hayes: Well—and this question goes to both of you. Is it the process that you love, particularly? If you can really kind of narrow it down—you may never actually thought about this 'cause you’re just—you’re going through the process and you just enjoy it—is it the reaction of the people, or to be able to help other people like this veteran that you have?

[00:31:14] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely. So—and I tell almost everyone when we go to the closing table—you know, we spend at least 30 days talking to these people almost daily. They become like a best friend.

[00:31:25] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:25] Lindsay Parham: And so we get to learn about their story and their struggles. And helping them get to the finish table—it just brings so much joy.
I tell everyone it’s like a horrible breakup, 'cause then we stop talking every day.

[00:31:40] Tracy Hayes: Alright, so that’s the love part. Matt, did you want to make a comment on the love part? Why—I mean, you’ve been full-time into this now...

[00:31:46] Matt Parham: Eight months.

[00:31:47] Tracy Hayes: Eight months now. What is the high that you get at? Why are you enjoying it?

[00:31:52] Matt Parham: Probably the driver for me is—it’s a combination of helping families get something they never thought they could attain...

[00:31:59] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:59] Matt Parham: ...but probably a secondary part of that is us being as good as we’re at in the field that we’re at—what we can do for those people. Just because of the context we have, the knowledge we have, and the things that we can forewarn them of.
Being such a SME—a subject matter expert—on those, can give them so much more leverage compared to other people. And I think just having that confidence and that knowledge in that means the world.

[00:32:24] Tracy Hayes: Talk a little bit about—because you—I’m gonna use a phrase a friend of mine uses: the Swiss Army knife of connections. Right?
You’re a Swiss Army knife of connections. But having grown up in the area, knowing a lot—and you guys probably don’t even really think about it, because these are just people that you’ve—whether you met them in a restaurant or doing what you’re doing—it’s people you know. And you’re like, “Oh hey, I got a problem—hey, John can help with that,” and he’s in your Rolodex.

[00:33:02] Tracy Hayes: But how that actually gives you so much credibility as an agent—to have that Swiss Army knife to help with all these whatever issues come up.

[00:33:02] Matt Parham: It’s invaluable. It is.
If somebody comes up and asks for an appraisal—hey, you know, we’ve got two or three guys that do appraisals or electrical repairs or plumbing repairs or whatever it may be.

[00:33:14] Matt Parham: You know, it’s not guys that we’re looking up in a phone book that might give you a call back in two months when they get a slot open. It’s guys that—we know that and we like to call it—have skin in the game.

[00:33:20] Matt Parham: It’s somebody local that I know, that I’ve got a relationship with, that if they screw up, we can hold them accountable. And that’s what we need.

[00:33:32] Matt Parham: I don’t want some Joe Blow going in there that I don’t know, that I can’t hold accountable for something that he or she does.

[00:33:36] Tracy Hayes: Or—you know what just made me think—is that guy that you know you can call and say, “Hey man, I know you’re busy today. We’re closing tomorrow. I need to get this done. Can you come over after work and fix this? I’ll get you a six-pack of beer afterward,” and whatever it is—and it gets done.

[00:33:51] Matt Parham: Exactly. Because at the end of the day, I mean—to us, this really isn’t about a commission or a paycheck.
Yeah, it’s great—we have to feed our families, we have to provide for ourselves—but that’s not why we do it.

[00:34:05] Matt Parham: I mean, I’ll never forget the first year that she did it—she walked out of the tax office crying. Just absolutely crying because she realized she spent more in that first year—way more than what she even made.

[00:34:12] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:13] Matt Parham: You know, and we were at a net deficit. So we’ve since obviously grown from that point, but it’s been an awesome path. It really has been.

[00:34:21] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And so when it comes to, you know, the contractors that we know—I have a little black book. Our inspection company—we actually graduated high school with them. Kayla and Austin Bradley.

[00:34:32] Lindsay Parham: And they actually worked with her father-in-law doing inspections for years before they started their own company.
And then we have a neighbor that used to work for—what is it? Clayton Homes?

[00:34:40] Lindsay Parham: And I have a seller that—she needed some paneling for a mobile home replaced—called our neighbor. He can get basically anything that you need.

[00:34:52] Lindsay Parham: We just have connections, yeah. Just because we have been there.

[00:35:40] Tracy Hayes: On the connections part—so just to an agent who may be listening...

[00:35:42] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:43] Tracy Hayes: You guys are kind of fortunate enough that, you know, you grew up in the area. You know, it’s that small-town feel—everybody kind of knows everybody else’s business and everything, but they’re also looking out, helping each other out.
“Oh, I can help you out.” “Yeah, great. Buy me lunch,” or whatever.

[00:35:55] Tracy Hayes: For a new agent getting into this business, to spend some of that time—like you said, the statement of, “If you’re bored, you’re not doing it correctly”—one of those things you should be doing is trying to find some of these handymen, whatever, because there’s so many different things. Calling on other agents—who are you using for this and that and the other thing—just so you start to build a Rolodex. And go have coffee with some of these people...

[00:36:17] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:36:18] Tracy Hayes: ...to get to know them. What would you recommend to that new agent—how important it’s really been to your success?

[00:36:22] Matt Parham: I’ll let you answer that one.

[00:36:24] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. I mean, business is 100% about relationships. 100%. If you don’t have relationships, you will fail. You cannot do everything on your own.
If you don’t reach out and start making those connections, it’s just not sustainable.
You know, we started since day one—gathering contacts, building rapport with them. And again, like I said, everywhere from plumbing repairs to electrical—because when the time comes, if you don’t show a sense of urgency and have somebody on hand and ready, clients will not be impressed.

[00:36:49] Lindsay Parham: And it’s not gonna behoove them.

[00:36:50] Lindsay Parham: It’s a reflection of us as well.

[00:36:52] Matt Parham: Yeah.

[00:36:54] Tracy Hayes: The next—I call it—so we were talking about love and it led into that. The next part of my LLC is laughter.
And I call it laughter because I think we go through life and, you know, I imagine—you talked about going offshore in your boat, being way offshore—I’m sure there was one time, I can only imagine, you went to start the engine again and it didn’t crank up right away or ran out of gas and you’re like, “Oh my God, Lord, what are you doing to me?”

[00:37:13] Tracy Hayes: You have a quick story on that?

[00:37:15] Matt Parham: This is that 16-foot semi-dory I was telling you about?

[00:37:17] Tracy Hayes: Right, right.

[00:37:18] Matt Parham: Got a 25-horsepower two-stroke tiller handle on it. Me and a buddy were out 30 miles, doing some sea bass fishing in the wintertime. Decided to come back in, and the carburetors messed up.

[00:37:29] Matt Parham: Actually had to take the cowling off the motor, rebuild the carburetors while we were offshore—because we had all the tools in the boat. Put the carburetors back on to get the motor fired up...

[00:37:38] Matt Parham: ...and bring it back in.

[00:37:39] Tracy Hayes: Sweating the whole time. “Is this thing gonna start?”

[00:37:41] Matt Parham: But that’s grit.

[00:37:42] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Most people would just avoid that situation. “I’m not going 30 miles offshore with a 25-horsepower engine.” But we laugh about that now. That moment was a lot of stress on you.
Like, you know, no one really wants to call the Coast Guard. Maybe you’re lucky someone’s out there to tow you in. Maybe.

[00:38:00] Tracy Hayes: But has there been a moment you’ve been in, Lindsay, where something has gone awry in the transaction? Or maybe just a customer—you know, we’ve all come across some semi-hostile customers that don’t really give the real estate agent or mortgage person any credibility, you know, type of thing.

[00:38:15] Tracy Hayes: And they kind of say some things or don’t treat you well, let’s put it that way. But something that’s really like punched you in the gut where you almost were like, “Am I doing the right thing?”

[00:38:26] Tracy Hayes: Because I think a lot of real estate agents—if you haven’t hit that point, you haven’t been in real estate long enough, where something’s just gone awry—a deal blows up, falls out, or something really kind of sets you back. But then you step back and laugh about it today.

[00:38:29] Lindsay Parham: You know, I’m trying to think. So, I think it was in 2023—there were multiple offers on a nursery, like a plant nursery, right down the road from us. And we got into multiple offers, we did not win, but I had called the agent a certain day. She goes, “How did you know? The deal just fell apart. Send me a contract.”

[00:38:50] Lindsay Parham: Like, “Crap.”

[00:38:52] Lindsay Parham: So the buyers—it was a daughter, a father, and the sister of the father. And I guess the sister of the father had purchased like 30, 40 houses.
She’s a lot—so she knows the contract stuff. I didn’t really know the contract stuff at that point. And she kept sending it back to me: “You need to fix this, you need to fix this.”
And I’m just like—just let it end.

[00:39:17] Lindsay Parham: I looked at my husband, I’m like, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
Because it makes me look horrible. You know, eventually got it and everything worked out, but it’s embarrassing.

[00:39:39] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:39:40] Lindsay Parham: Because the contract—it’s so important, obviously.

[00:39:43] Tracy Hayes: She diminished you to a point where you were like, “Do I want to deal with what I’m doing?”

[00:39:48] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. Absolutely. It definitely made me question it.
And I’m the type of person—if I don’t get it done correctly the first or second time...

[00:39:56] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:56] Lindsay Parham: I’m ready to give up.

[00:39:57] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:39:58] Lindsay Parham: But that scenario definitely had me questioning it that night.

[00:40:02] Tracy Hayes: So, since then though, how many contract classes have you been to?

[00:40:07] Lindsay Parham: You know, I don’t do classes.

[00:40:08] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:09] Lindsay Parham: What I do is—I’ll get on YouTube, and I’ll watch how they go through it. But I mean, I’ve written so many by this point, I can preach them.

[00:40:20] Tracy Hayes: Right.
Well, you know, because obviously, anyone—I think Matt, I would just be—“Well, okay. Alright. You dealt with that really bad person.”
If we were coaching you: go learn the contract. You’ve learned how to do everything else. Learn how to read the contract upside down, is what they basically tell you, right?

[00:40:33] Matt Parham: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, really, to be honest—every transaction has got one of those.

[00:40:38] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:40:39] Matt Parham: I mean, the carburetor-in-the-boat kind of scenario—every single transaction’s got one. And it’s just how you react.

[00:40:42] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:40:43] Matt Parham: You know, if you sit there and you’re scared about what’s gonna happen, and you drop a bolt in the ocean, you’re done.
Right? Same thing with that contract—if you screw it up and it doesn’t go through, it could be losing that deal.

[00:40:53] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:40:53] Matt Parham: But it’s just staying confident, making sure you get it done, taking your time, and just double-checking yourself.
Make sure everything’s good, you cover all your bases, you get your inspections ordered on time, you make sure you’re getting the right inspections—just all of it.

[00:41:06] Tracy Hayes: That’s why I feel—you know, they talk about the computers of the world or whatever replacing the real estate agent.
I don’t believe a real estate agent can be replaced, because every transaction’s different.
The person selling houses here at Jax Beach—if we threw them into Palatka, the things that you guys have to deal with and different treatment...

[00:41:23] Lindsay Parham: They can’t walk the property in high heels. I can tell you that.

[00:41:27] Tracy Hayes: So you know, in the negotiations, right? I mean, it’s like the art of the deal.
You’re expecting after the inspection they’re gonna come back—it’s natural. “How am I gonna deal with it? How am I gonna react to it?”
How have you—I mean, obviously I think that’s a big part of a real estate transaction: how to handle negotiations. Tell us how it evolved.
And I imagine the two of you probably work together a lot of times on: “How are we gonna respond to this?”

[00:41:54] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. So we actually were up until midnight—talk about grit—writing an email for a contract. It’s actually our sellers...

[00:42:03] Matt Parham: Not being our side of it—we’re doing this negotiation for the other agent.

[00:42:07] Lindsay Parham: So—and this is, you know, another thing about it being really important to choose your realtor and your lenders wisely.
You know, if your realtor recommends a lender, it’s not because they’re getting money off of it—it’s because they’ve worked with them and they trust them.

[00:42:21] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:42:21] Lindsay Parham: We were supposed to close like two weeks ago and the lender is, like, not even giving us updates at this point.

[00:42:28] Tracy Hayes: Because they had chosen their own lender?

[00:42:30] Lindsay Parham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I’m sorry—I totally forgot where the question was going.
Oh—repairs.

[00:42:36] Tracy Hayes: Well, just the negotiations. Because I think to me...

[00:42:40] Tracy Hayes: It’s one of those top two or three things an agent does—and how you react to it. Like you said, you’re creating an email. Some agents get all personal, and their egos get involved and so forth.
And a lot of times I think when the request comes back, “Hey, we want these things fixed,” you need to just take a step back for a moment—it’s not your house.

[00:43:01] Tracy Hayes: It’s not your house. How do I keep this deal? How do I—at the end of this, at my next move—how do I keep the transaction going forward?

[00:43:07] Lindsay Parham: Right. So, what we really do—and this is the great thing about having him along with me—is he knows the inside of homes. He really knows what’s really important, and that’s what you have to explain.
As long as we have a clear four-point and insurance says it’s okay, then it’s okay.

[00:43:21] Lindsay Parham: You know, if you’re gonna have to update the counters—well, that’s your personal preference. There’s nothing wrong with the counters there.
You know, when you hear “there’s a leak,” okay—it could be a tiny leak.
You have to really just talk to them down to earth and explain to them what is really an issue and what is something that’s really not an issue.

[00:43:44] Tracy Hayes: Well, I imagine, Matt, you jump in a lot as a—“Yeah, that’s gonna cost you $300 to fix that. I’ve got somebody that’ll do it for you—just get it done.”

[00:43:52] Matt Parham: We had a closing two weeks ago. This was a cash transaction—super easy...

[00:43:57] Tracy Hayes: Oh God.

[00:43:57] Matt Parham: ...and, you know, we ran into way more repairs than we thought we were gonna run into. I mean, we were $5,000 for a roof, we were almost $6,000 for electrical because they found cloth wiring in there.

[00:44:06] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:07] Matt Parham: There were glass fuses.
And I mean, we were to the end of it where we had all these repairs done, the sellers have got a tight budget—you know, this is their final home, they’re buying, they’re retiring in it.
They need every bit of equity out of this they can, so they’re moving in—and they’re tapped out.

[00:44:22] Matt Parham: Right. They don’t have any more. The buyer’s coming in and she’s tapped out because she’s moving in from way out of state.
So all of her funds are gonna be tied up between the offer and moving stuff.

[00:44:30] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:44:30] Matt Parham: You know, and it got to the point to where we were having to go in there and do some of the small water leaks behind the sinks and fixing stuff like that—or just connecting electrical stuff to get it to pass for insurance.

[00:44:44] Matt Parham: You know, but the amount of things that can come up is unbelievable.

[00:44:44] Tracy Hayes: Well, I mean, yeah, I think you just—you know, that’s amazing.
My wife had a review, a person said that she was still picking the weeds in the yard—in the flower beds—even after the contract was done.
Where I think a lot, like you said—a lot of agents, “Oh, I got the contract. We’re done.”

[00:45:04] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:45:04] Tracy Hayes: And they let those weeds... She was still out there picking the actual...

[00:45:08] Lindsay Parham: Right.

[00:45:08] Tracy Hayes: ...weeds someone—the buyer—so I couldn’t remember which side it was that mentioned it. The fact that you’re like—they’re tapped, tapped.
The only way we are making this as the Parham team is to actually go in there and fix some of these things ourselves.

[00:45:17] Lindsay Parham: And almost all of our deals are like that. I remember one of my first deals—we had a WDO underneath a mobile home. And Taylor Douglas, he was the listing agent, he goes, “Listen, the sellers are out of town. They won’t give us a clear WDO until this is cleaned out.”

[00:45:32] Lindsay Parham: So I stuck him—climbing underneath, crawling underneath the mobile home.

[00:45:37] Matt Parham: I think it was just—

[00:45:38] Lindsay Parham: I got a guy for that.
It was just a few pieces of board underneath the home that had old damage.
But because it was a WDO...

[00:45:50] Matt Parham: Yeah.

[00:45:51] Lindsay Parham: ...it had just a freaking board. It’s a box.

[00:45:54] Matt Parham: Yeah, it was checked off and it had to be unchecked, but...

[00:45:55] Lindsay Parham: Just stupid stuff like that. Like, seriously silly stuff that comes up.

[00:46:01] Lindsay Parham: Where you get someone, you know, from Jax Beach walking around in a suit and $5,000 shoes or something—they’re not gonna climb underneath a mobile home.

[00:46:11] Tracy Hayes: They’re not all like that...

[00:46:14] Lindsay Parham: You would be so surprised.

[00:46:17] Tracy Hayes: Well, I don’t think I would crawl underneath there either.

[00:46:20] Lindsay Parham: Well, and it’s not just that—you know, we get calls all the time, “I can’t believe you answered.”
We’ve tried to reach three or four different agents and no one answers the dang-blasted phone.

[00:46:32] Tracy Hayes: That’s what always amazed me.

[00:46:33] Lindsay Parham: Or call you back.

[00:46:35] Tracy Hayes: That’s the thing. You know, obviously, you go to any of these trainings—the first thing is like, “Just answer the phone.”

[00:46:38] Lindsay Parham: It’s your phone!

[00:46:40] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, yeah. I mean...

[00:46:40] Matt Parham: I’m putting a contract in—just got an executed contract two days ago on a $350,000...

[00:46:45] Tracy Hayes: Home.

[00:46:46] Matt Parham: Mm-hmm. And we were talking to her a couple days ago, and she sent me a message and said, “I’m so glad I worked with you guys. I’m so glad I called y’all. I spoke to four other agents before I even talked to you, and none of them called me back.”

[00:46:59] Lindsay Parham: Yep.

[00:46:59] Matt Parham: Now, I’ve been working with her for probably six months now. So it’s been a process—you know, we had to get credit repaired.
It’s another VA loan.
We hooked her up with some lenders here in town that got her credit repaired so they could get on the track.

[00:47:13] Matt Parham: 'Cause, I mean, the house they’re living in right now—she, the woman, has dialysis two or three days a week.

[00:47:18] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:47:19] Matt Parham: So God bless her for dealing with that.
And then she goes home and she says that she can’t even stand in the kitchen because there’s boards missing on the floor, and she’s gonna fall through.

[00:47:27] Tracy Hayes: Oh my God.

[00:47:28] Matt Parham: She’s got her kid there, there’s mold in the house. The landlord refuses to do anything with the home.

[00:47:35] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:47:36] Matt Parham: And they’re just—misery. Just absolute misery.

[00:47:38] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:47:38] Matt Parham: And, you know, again—it’s being able to take people from a situation like that and kind of help orchestrate that to now they’re moving into a house with a waterfront view, so they can go fishing off the back porch.

[00:47:51] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:47:52] Matt Parham: I mean, what sort of transformation is that?

[00:47:54] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, that’s awesome.

[00:47:56] Matt Parham: And to be able to be a part of that is just—yeah. It’s amazing. Amazing.

[00:47:57] Tracy Hayes: No, I think you guys are gonna—I mean, just hearing your story and your mindset on life—you are going to reap the world.
If you’re adding value to people, as the Lord says, you know, teach them to fish, whatever—you guys are doing that. You’re making things happen for people, and it’s just going to continue to happen.
Positive things happen for you guys. That’s just awesome.

[00:48:17] Tracy Hayes: Consistency.
What have you developed over time—because that’s the third part of our LLC: consistency. And I imagine it’s changed for you over time.
What do you think you’re doing today consistently? What’s something you try to do—whether it’s every day or every week—in your business?

[00:48:32] Tracy Hayes: Because there’s the referral business, but now you’ve got mom and your husband involved in the business—there’s three of you. So there’s some systems...

[00:48:37] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:38] Tracy Hayes: ...that need to be developed.

[00:48:39] Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[00:48:40] Tracy Hayes: What are some of those things that you have worked on and developed that you’re either consistently doing or trying to...

[00:48:40] Tracy Hayes: ...consistently do in your business to keep moving it forward? ’Cause you always want to—you always want to attract that new customer into the thing.
You can get referrals—that’s great, that’s really great—but you’ve gotta throw some new people into the pot.

[00:49:07] Lindsay Parham: So I think the number one thing for new referrals is social media.
You know, like the horse video that you were talking about. I really, really started noticing an increase in the phone...

[00:49:20] Lindsay Parham: ...calls that I was receiving after I really started posting, you know, all of my crazy stories. Like getting chased by freaking geese at a showing.
Or the camel. And then there was a bull loose in the backyard—I mean, just all kinds of crazy stuff, right?

[00:49:32] Lindsay Parham: Like, there’s always something new in real estate because nothing stays the same.
But social media is huge. And then, John and Brittany talk about the follow-ups.
You know, I try to—for instance, we did a Christmas thing... if you—was it reviews? Or—no...

[00:49:47] Lindsay Parham: If you bought with us in October, November, or December, we bought you a real Christmas tree.

[00:49:52] Matt Parham: Come down to the local Ace and pick it up, tell us. And it was a local company as well. There was something to it, you know?

[00:49:57] Matt Parham: Like you said, it was a local company, it’s a real tree—it’s...

[00:49:59] Lindsay Parham: Right—something to it.
And then for Valentine’s Day, if you gave us a review or if you bought with us from January to—I think it was February 10th—we gave you Valentine’s Day dinner on us.
Well, it turns out, they didn’t want to have it on them—they wanted to have it with us.

[00:50:17] Tracy Hayes: Oh, that's a double date. That’s cool.

[00:50:18] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And they were actually from West Palm and I became really close with them.

[00:50:30] Tracy Hayes: Right. Cool.

[00:50:31] Lindsay Parham: She’s the horse girl and she kept the chicken, and they bought my grandma’s house, so I really got to know them.
But it’s just the follow-up. And then we just did one for St. Patrick’s Day—“We’re so lucky to have you part of our business,” and sent out a dollar scratch-off.

[00:50:40] Tracy Hayes: Right. It’s just touching. Right. Yeah. Touch, touch, touch, touch it.

[00:50:49] Tracy Hayes: Well—and I don’t know—I imagine John and Brittany have listened to Brian Buffini, but it sounds like Brian Buffini or the other one... the Ninja.

[00:50:57] Lindsay Parham: Oh—what, Ninja?

[00:50:59] Tracy Hayes: I don’t know if it’s Ninja Selling or something like that.
But Brian Buffini talks about having events—or in this case, you’re having, you know, just a little contest or whatever it is.
You’re going back and recognizing those people.

[00:51:12] Tracy Hayes: But I think Buffini recommends—and if you’re still small—to actually maybe do it with several other agents where everyone brings in their past clients and you have a barbecue or something.

[00:51:24] Lindsay Parham: Right. Like Demi Judd—one of my really good friends, who you’ve had on here as well...

[00:51:26] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:51:27] Lindsay Parham: She does clientele events, along with Kaitlyn—Lauer? I can’t say her last name.
But there’s a lot of people with Momentum, where John and Brittany, you know, they started with clientele events.
You know, we’ve talked about that. And I think Holly is wanting to start one this year, but we haven’t gotten quite that far into it.

[00:51:47] Lindsay Parham: But I don’t think what, you know, our past clients realize is—we’ve touched their lives in one way or another, but they’ve also touched ours.

[00:51:56] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:51:56] Lindsay Parham: There’s people I’ll never forget. Like my Miss buyer—and now seller—moving from out of state. She moved here on 21 different medications...

[00:52:07] Lindsay Parham: ...and found the best doctors, and now she’s leaving with an implant and off of almost all of her medications.

[00:52:15] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:52:15] Lindsay Parham: You know, it’s stories like that that truly, truly get to you.

[00:52:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Let’s transition to the move to Momentum.

[00:52:22] Lindsay Parham: Okay.

[00:52:22] Tracy Hayes: ’Cause you were very passionate about how that really changed your whole vision on the business.

[00:52:29] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:52:30] Tracy Hayes: And I wrote down here—'cause you mentioned coming out of the tax office after her first year and realizing...
John and Brittany—I remember John, maybe, I can’t remember Brittany exactly saying this—but John is really big on, “It’s not how many transactions you did, it’s how much money you walk away with.”

[00:52:47] Tracy Hayes: Are you doing things efficiently and running your business—not blowing money on this or that.
’Cause I think like any small business owner, they blow so much money in their initial years on advertising and trinkets and trash or whatever that doesn’t actually give them a return.

[00:53:02] Tracy Hayes: He’s big on that. So tell us—what immediately did you see?
You met with...

[00:53:07] Lindsay Parham: Madison.

[00:53:08] Tracy Hayes: Madison. Yeah.
Who said, “Why don’t you come over and talk to John and Brittany?” Is that...

[00:53:11] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:53:13] Lindsay Parham: Yep. So after that meeting with Madison, Holly and I—we talked to Brittany, and we joined Momentum.
And I think one of the main things that I attribute to my career is all the training they provide.

[00:53:27] Lindsay Parham: ’Cause if it wasn’t for Anna Cougar—who talks about, you know, different scenarios and resolutions to those scenarios—and then you have the top-producing agents coming on like Brett Neeson and the Jax Listing Sisters, they all kind of do a Zoom and they give you what they’ve done and what’s worked for them.

[00:53:50] Lindsay Parham: You know, John says, “Why are you making up your playbook when you can copy someone else’s playbook?”

[00:53:53] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

[00:53:53] Lindsay Parham: You know, there’s just so many amazing people at Momentum. And you can’t replace that.
And the fact that they’re giving us value—that’s just amazing.

[00:54:06] Tracy Hayes: Alright, I’m gonna put you on the spot a little bit.
Can you think of—because I can imagine these conversations, and I’ve seen John post some of them or everybody on their Zoom or whatever—just something that someone said that just...
“Hey, we’re doing this,” or “We did this,” something that you were like, “Whoa, I never even thought about that,” and maybe even implemented it into your business and got a return from it?

[00:54:31] Lindsay Parham: Oof.

[00:54:32] Matt Parham: Mailers.

[00:54:33] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:54:34] Matt Parham: I mean, we just got a listing off of that.

[00:54:38] Tracy Hayes: Dead. You were farming a particular neighborhood or what?

[00:54:41] Matt Parham: No—just reaching out to past clients with mailers.

[00:54:44] Lindsay Parham: Oh yeah. So the person from our sale from door knocking—she’s one of our neighbors.
She stopped by my house—’cause we have a 4-year-old that fricking slings baseballs and almost hits cars going by—and we were chit-chatting.
She’s like, “You know, I was thinking about possibly getting something bigger. Obviously, I want to use you. But I want to stay in this neighborhood. I want to get on the river.”

[00:55:11] Lindsay Parham: And I was like, okay. So I did up a little mailer, sent it—I got on GIS so I could get their name and address, ’cause I’m not rich and got all these other apps like all these other agents do—like REDX or whatever it is.

[00:55:25] Lindsay Parham: So I sat down with the GIS, going through each house. And if they live out of state, I sent one to that address and one to the East Palatka address.
And we got a few emails out of it.

[00:55:37] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:55:37] Lindsay Parham: Nothing set in stone.

[00:55:39] Tracy Hayes: So you just said, “Hey, I have a buyer who’s looking for your size home or whatever in this area. Are you interested in selling?”

[00:55:45] Lindsay Parham: Yes. “This is what she’s looking for, this is what she’s moving from—here’s the difference.”
Because, you know, agents—you get mailers all the time from tree companies or whatever.
So I wanted them to think, “Okay, this is really legit.” And we live in the neighborhood.

[00:55:59] Lindsay Parham: So I used to have this big banner in my front yard so they know my name anyway.
We didn’t want them to think we were just scouting to get their listing—we really wanted them to know that we actually have a buyer.
And a cash buyer at that.
And we got a few calls and emails, but nothing set in stone just yet. But I mean, you do those little things—they actually make a difference.

[00:56:20] Tracy Hayes: I’m gonna give you a little tip—and any agent listening right now—because it’s come to fruition to me that this is not happening enough.
But if you called me—now, I’m not saying no other lender would do this, 'cause I think they would if they were asked the question—is do they have the marketing department to actually execute it in an efficient, professional way?

[00:56:42] Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[00:56:43] Tracy Hayes: That’s the challenge. But if you called me and said, “Hey, I’ve got this neighborhood. There’s 300 homes...”

[00:56:48] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:49] Tracy Hayes: “...someone wants to buy in this. This size, whatever it is—just like you were talking about...”
We would put together—whether it was a letter, a postcard, or whatever—and send it. Create it all.
Obviously, you’d proof it.

[00:57:03] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:04] Tracy Hayes: We’d just co-brand it with you.

[00:57:05] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[00:57:06] Tracy Hayes: And it would go out.
And I don’t think enough agents in the—you know, to go on my little soapbox for 10 seconds here—agents are popping around to lenders.
I see some of you—I know you use Catherine a lot, if I recall correctly, and there’s Kim Barnes and Black, and she’s amazing too.

[00:57:18] Tracy Hayes: I see too many of the top agents—when I look down at their transactions—there’s one, one, one, one, one next to the loan officers that they’ve used.
If you are not leveraging the loan officers and their company to be doing some of this type of marketing—because at the bank, we’ve got these people—I go up there and say, “Hey, I need...”

[00:57:56] Tracy Hayes: John’s Golf and Country Club.

[00:57:58] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:59] Tracy Hayes: “I need all the addresses.” They have that within minutes.
Yeah—all this technology out there, they will do that stuff for you.
We have to split the cost with you as far as when we mail it out or whatever, but really when it comes down to it—I mean, I was sending out—you see those magnets right there?

[00:58:13] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:58:14] Tracy Hayes: Those are a dollar fifty cents.

[00:58:16] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[00:58:17] Tracy Hayes: Okay? Give two...

[00:58:18] Lindsay Parham: I put one up on one of those.

[00:58:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
Send out a Palatka High football schedule—whatever, you know, type of thing.
But if you aren’t asking, you’re not gonna get. 'Cause I have to say—some of my—we mention it a lot of times as loan officers, but I don’t think the agents are getting it.

[00:58:32] Lindsay Parham: No. No, no.

[00:58:33] Matt Parham: And you know, also the thing is—you’re talking about a made lender. You gotta realize the average agent—what did they sell last year? Four homes?

[00:58:40] Tracy Hayes: I thought you were gonna go there. Basically, 74% didn’t even sell a home.

[00:58:45] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
So when you’re talking about even knowing how to do something like that—if you don’t have a good brokerage that is giving you these ideas, or a lender that you stay in contact with, you’re never gonna know any of that.

[00:58:56] Tracy Hayes: Right. Right.
I think some of the big marketing things that could be being done, that agents are missing out on—again, if you’re listening, take notes.
You know Krista Maho—you see a lot of her advertisements—she talks about farming neighborhoods.
I’ve had her on the show.
She talks about farming neighborhoods—if you want to farm a neighborhood, get with a lender.

[00:59:14] Tracy Hayes: Now, if you’re giving them deals, they have no problem co-marketing.

[00:59:17] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. Catherine does that with us.

[00:59:18] Matt Parham: You’ve got to leverage. You have to.

[00:59:20] Tracy Hayes: And if you’re not utilizing it, you’re missing out.
I mean, First Coast does a decent job out there. Those things are out there.
And I think too many agents are—getting on my soapbox here—“Oh, I gotta give you three,” because they’re afraid something’s gonna come back.

[00:59:34] Matt Parham: Dude, something’s gonna come back somewhere along the line.
One deal—if one deal costs you your entire real estate career, maybe you shouldn’t be in real estate.

[00:59:42] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, exactly.
Because something’s gonna come back somewhere. You just need a lender that—when something is going south—they’re calling you and saying, “Hey, not gonna be able to close this.”

[00:59:54] Tracy Hayes: I had—last August—had a condo deal that I’ve done deals in that complex before, and that’s how it got to me.
Two lenders wouldn’t do the deal in there, for whatever reason—'cause I think some of the condo things have changed...

[01:00:08] Lindsay Parham: Yes, they have.

[01:00:09] Tracy Hayes: ...as far as what they’ll allow.
And we—the smart lender that couldn’t approve him—she sent me over all the stuff.
We had ’em closed.
Eight days later they were closing.

[01:00:18] Lindsay Parham: Wow.

[01:00:19] Tracy Hayes: You know, we had to extend it to eight because they were basically at closing.
But because she cooperated, she still saved face because she found a solution.
Hopefully that real estate agent doesn’t take it out on her.
“Hey, we decided we’re not gonna do it, but I found you someone, and we closed it in eight days.”
Everybody’s happy. That’s all that matters.

[01:00:28] Lindsay Parham: Get the deal done.

[01:00:29] Matt Parham: Yep. Get the deal done.

[01:00:30] Lindsay Parham: There are different lenders, and we tell everyone this—different lenders have different qualifications, all of this.
We have Catherine Barker, we’ve got Kim Barnes, Delaney Bravo—there’s a few of them that we work with.

[01:00:43] Lindsay Parham: Like Kat—I don’t think she takes anyone under a 580 credit score.
Just reached out to Kim Barnes—he’s calling her today.

[01:00:51] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
I will tell you—you start to get south of, well, south of 620, south of 600, south of 580...

[01:01:00] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[01:01:02] Matt Parham: Like the one we’re doing right now—it’s a manual underwrite.
It’s sub-600. You know, but they’re still looking at $300,000.
And it’s just like you said—it’s having the right person for the job.

[01:01:15] Tracy Hayes: Yeah—for that condo.
The right lender for the gig.

[01:01:18] Matt Parham: Yeah.

[01:01:19] Tracy Hayes: I think a lot of lenders don’t mind it.
If we go in—you know, like I said, we start getting sub-6% rates, and if the frenzy goes on, they won’t want to because they clog up pipelines.
That’s what happens.
The underwriters have to spend way too much time going through—like you said—a manual underwrite.

[01:01:34] Tracy Hayes: Oh my—you know, that’s just a nightmare.
But yeah, you’ve gotta know someone that is willing to do that.

[01:01:40] Tracy Hayes: I’ve been in the business too long. I wouldn’t say I am a fan of that. And the bank really doesn’t—it’s not.
They’ve got enough business of people that are north of 620, I think.
We’ll go with 600 on a VA loan.
VA loan’s much more forgiving.
But anyway, you gotta have those people in your pocket.

[01:01:54] Lindsay Parham: Well, and you gotta realize too—in Putnam County, if we get someone pre-approved for $200,000—we’re freaking ecstatic.

[01:02:03] Matt Parham: And that’s another big deal for where we’re at—the price points are so much lower.

[01:02:07] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[01:02:08] Matt Parham: The volume of deals that we have to do is exponentially higher.

[01:02:12] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[01:02:12] Matt Parham: I mean, you know, a lot of our deals are $160K, $200K, $210K...

[01:02:18] Tracy Hayes: I think you guys are planting the seeds though—'cause I think those numbers will double in the next 10 years.

[01:02:22] Matt Parham: Absolutely.

[01:02:24] Tracy Hayes: If not the next five.

[01:02:25] Matt Parham: And that was the thought with staying in Palatka...

[01:02:27] Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:28] Matt Parham: Um...

[01:02:28] Tracy Hayes: I was just about to say that. Yeah—I’ll let you finish it.

[01:02:29] Lindsay Parham: So when I first got into it—and got to Momentum—John and Brittany, they always talked about farming. “Pick your area.”
And I’m like, “Crap, Putnam County? We’re so freaking broke around here.”
But then I got to thinking about where St. Johns County is now.

[01:02:40] Lindsay Parham: And we’re already seeing St. Johns County and Clay County people coming to Putnam County.
I want to stay where I’m at, because by the time it really starts to boom, my name will be up there—because I’m gonna work hard.

[01:02:54] Tracy Hayes: You’re gonna have a lot of past clients and—

[01:02:56] Lindsay Parham: Yes.
And I know the area better than St. Johns County.
Have I sold there? Yeah. I’ve sold in Flagler County too.
But is it really mine somehow?

[01:03:06] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
I relate that to these agents who come on who want to head to the Nocatee or Viera area, and they don’t realize that there’s offices out there with hundreds of agents.

[01:03:18] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[01:03:19] Tracy Hayes: And some of these ladies just do desk duty—just to hopefully someone walks in once a month...

[01:03:26] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[01:03:27] Tracy Hayes: ...or once every other couple months and they can sell a home.

[01:03:30] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.

[01:03:30] Tracy Hayes: But that only lasts so long.
I don’t—to me, I don’t mind—I mean, if I’m not busy, whether it’s PI or working a deal or whatever, you lose your game.

[01:03:42] Lindsay Parham: You do.

[01:03:43] Tracy Hayes: You’ve got to stay in it. And everyone wants to be out there.

[01:03:44] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.

[01:03:46] Tracy Hayes: having this little corner of the world down there, and like you said, you stay in line long enough, it's a sweet spot. You'll be. Yeah, a hundred percent.
[01:03:53] Matt Parham: We'll be, we'll be set.
we'll be set.
[01:03:54] Tracy Hayes: Well, you could be, you're gonna be considered the expert.
You these small builders too are gonna be calling you too, because you have
[01:04:00] all these people, you know, Hey, we're building this community over here. Will you come represent, you know? Yeah. Some of these guys that don't, you know, not like dream finders or, you know, yeah. the big home builders that don't have their own site agents, that's the kind of stuff that's gonna be created out there.
[01:04:13] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. No, absolutely. And there are a few, new subdivisions coming. Um, I think there's a Dr. Horton and a KB Holmes.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
there is a guy that knocked on our door 'cause on our, Google business profile, I have it at our address because we sell Ina He goes, I dunno if this is where I'm supposed to be, but, uh, I'm at a house.
I'm like, yep, that's me.
Um,
Um, and he, he passed out a pamphlet for a new subdivision going into Inter Lukin or Hawthorne or something like that. like Oh, sweet man. Yeah.
[01:04:42] Matt Parham: For brand new homes and, you know, the mid too. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, well, which is what we need
[01:04:46] Tracy Hayes: because we, we are so short in affordable housing.
[01:04:48] Matt Parham: Absolutely. I was gonna say absolutely. We need affordable housing in Putnam County. Yeah. Because I mean, I bought my house when I moved over there in 2015 for $15 an hour. I mean, that's what I was making at my job.
[01:05:04] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
[01:05:04] Lindsay Parham: He bought it for 80,000 too, and we're a block from the St.
John's River.
[01:05:08] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
[01:05:08] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. It's like tripled its
[01:05:10] Matt Parham: value. Oh,
[01:05:11] Tracy Hayes: yeah. Yeah. But
[01:05:12] Matt Parham: it's, you know, there's no, I mean, affordable homes just isn't. Yeah. You know, some of these new constructions are getting there to where you're in the low twos and
[01:05:20] moving into a brand new home that's.
But
[01:05:21] Lindsay Parham: only in Putnam County too.
[01:05:23] Matt Parham: Yeah.
[01:05:24] Tracy Hayes: Is there opportunities out there? One of the big real estate podcasts is BiggerPockets and the guy, the gentleman on there, he's big into like the, the manufactured home communities and buying 'em and so forth. Is there opportunities out there where you can get five or six acres and actually absolutely.
You know, zoning, is it very difficult to get the zoning? Yeah.
So
So, you know, to have good rentals,
[01:05:45] Matt Parham: it's not super hard. Yeah.
Yeah. Um,
I mean, there was a time just four or five years ago, there's quite a few of 'em, when you could've came in and bought a lot of these, you know, older, seventies, eighties, single wides.
[01:05:55] Mm-hmm. And they were selling with the land. This is not on rented land. Yeah. But with the land for 10, 15, $20,000 a pop. Yeah. And these places are going for $60,000 now.
[01:06:07] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And I have an
investor too.
[01:06:10] Matt Parham: Yeah. So, I mean, there's, it's not hard. Mm-hmm. Like I said, there's existing ones that people have worked into.
As far as getting land and splitting it in Putnam County, R two is easy to deal with. it's not hard to subdivide parcels. there's really actually a, a pretty good ROI if you can come in
[01:06:30] mm-hmm. And stand on your own two feet on it. Yeah. Um, you know, if you can get a four acre or five acre parcel, subdivide that out to, you know, one and a quarter acres with an easement down the center.
You bought it with one home on there. You've already got one home, one septic in there. You bring
[01:06:40] in another, well, $6,000 a pop. You bring in a septic, you're looking at 12 to $16,000 a pop per septic.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: You can have a brand new double wide dropped placed with ac everything on it for about $110,000.
So now you've got about $400,000 worth of investments there. And you know, on top of whatever you put the property for, and you're looking at easily, you know, two and a quarter per. For home. Yeah.
[01:07:05] Tracy Hayes: Are, have you been working with clients who've gone out and, purchased a lot and went down to Clayton Homes and Yeah.
Haven't come in? Well, and, and,
[01:07:11] Matt Parham: and you know, this is outside of our spectrum, right? Yeah. This is always something, again, isn't about the commission to us, it's about helping families get into something. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, something we always present to people like Clayton Homes. They've got an amazing program there.
So you go in there, you find a lot of land, you want, you find the home that you want. And again, we're outta the picture at this point, but you can point out, I want this home on this land. And you don't owe a penny until you've actually got the CO for that property. So you've had that house now for six.
[01:07:48] 'cause it can take 6, 7, 8 months to get the land cleared, the septic put in, you know, all the permits, the house dropped in, on top. So
[01:07:48] Tracy Hayes: Clayton is, either rolling like the taxes and everything into the. Purchase.
Matt Parham: Yep.
Tracy Hayes: and they're putting their veteran, or maybe they're doing an FHA loan, they're whatever's little money, whatever, little money down payment, but they're putting
[01:08:00] all that into the deal for
[01:08:01] Matt Parham: all of it until you get the C and you're not doing it until you actually, so you don't have two mortgages, you know, while you're sitting there renting your home.
'cause
how
of a pain would that be? Right? And how hard is that gonna be for somebody, right? Yeah. can find a lot, put a house on it, get into it, and you don't pay until you actually step foot in the house. Yeah,
[01:08:16] Lindsay Parham: yeah. No, I do have an investor who's done exactly that. he bought a piece of property from me last summer on a canal and Bostwick, he split the property.
Now it is, you know, small lot. he's put two single wides on it. They're about to go active on Tarpon Boulevard about, uh, two weeks. and so there are three bed, two baths, a little under 1200 square foot on the canal for about 180.
[01:08:41] Matt Parham: So waterfront
[01:08:42] Lindsay Parham: property.
[01:08:43] Tracy Hayes: alright, so lemme follow you. So he goes, he, he his property, gets it subdivided.
Lindsay Parham: Yep.
Tracy Hayes: And into he puts two new single wides on them.
Lindsay Parham: Yep.
Tracy Hayes: And then he is turning around and selling them for 180,000 a piece.
[01:08:54] Matt Parham: So you've got waterfront property, $180,000 in a brand new home.
[01:08:58] Lindsay Parham: Yep.
[01:08:59] Matt Parham: If that's not a
[01:08:59] Lindsay Parham: afford, it's already got the tie downs, it's already you. How much do you
[01:09:02] Tracy Hayes: think he's got? How much has he got into it?
How? 120? I mean, what did the manufacturer, what does a single wide manufacturer, I think there's
[01:09:09] Lindsay Parham: like 80,000 for a single wide.
Tracy Hayes: Okay. And
[01:09:11] the lot, probably. Did he even pay $20,000 for the double? For the,
Lindsay Parham: I think it was a little bit over 20.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So $10,000 when you split it?
[01:09:19] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
[01:09:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So
[01:09:20] he's only, he's got 90 grand, basically.
Roughly. Oh. Plus he had to develop it. Right. Put the seven. So he's probably 120, 30 grand into it. Yeah.
Easy.
[01:09:28] Matt Parham: Yeah. And you know.
if you're not so focused on making $200,000 off each transaction and you just make a decent chunk
Lindsay Parham: mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: Then you can just keep that cash flow rolling and going into the next one.
sell it faster.
[01:09:38] Tracy Hayes: Sell it faster. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. I'm, I'm thinking wow. As an investor, it's, it's actually very clean and there's some steps

[01:09:50] Tracy Hayes: involved. 'Cause you gotta, yes. Some roof, get the permits and stuff, but it, but I mean, how,
[01:09:50] Lindsay Parham: it's not his first rodeo either.
[01:09:51] Tracy Hayes: As agents advising, advised a lot.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: Are you getting some background on, I mean, how hard is it in Putnam? Like for instance, this, these lots were on the water to, okay, hey, we need to get the permit to put a septic and well in here. Is that really difficult?
[01:10:07] Lindsay Parham: No, as long as you know the setbacks, which I always. The Putnam County Property Appraiser's Office knows my voice by now. You know, I have the setbacks, uh, downloaded on my computer so I can just send it to anyone. You know, on the Property Appraiser's website, the GIS, it gives you, you know, the length and the width of the lot.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: And you just, you know, you can either call county or you can, you know, look at it yourself.
[01:10:31] Matt Parham: Right.
Yeah, funny, it’s, it was actually the county that was calling me before the show started here, you know, 'cause we've got a home that, so
[01:10:40] this home is stated that it’s built in 1900. So back before 2000, Putnam County didn’t pull a lot of permits for a lot of the structures there.
A lot of the older homes, there are no permits, no information, no, no—anything on. And in some of these situations, whenever they do that, it just defers back to a zero, which is 1900. So this home was obviously not built in 1900 and insurance costs are astronomical because of this—$10,000.
Matt Parham: Yeah. $10,000 for Ken Insurance right now, which is insane. Yeah. Stick home with a metal roof.
So I’m working with the county to get an appraiser to get back out there. I’m getting 'em some inspection photos and stuff like that to reassess the age value. And, you know, there’s a lot of real estate agents who wouldn’t even know—
[01:11:23] Tracy Hayes: Right.
Matt Parham: —to do that, I've never heard—
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I mean, doesn’t shock me that there’s stuff that, like, they default back to 1900.
Tracy Hayes: Right. But like you're saying too, I wouldn’t even have thought about it. You gotta get somebody out there to actually figure out when was this place built?
[01:11:34] Matt Parham: Right. The real, real age estimate.
Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: Yeah, because there was no permits on the house being built, so there is no proof. So we’ve gotta get out there and you know how—like, when did the—
[01:11:42] Tracy Hayes: Property tax change, they must have changed. How far did the property taxes go back?
[01:11:46] Matt Parham: It did. Yeah. So like I said, before 2000, a lot of it was paper documents and a lot of that stuff wasn’t uploaded.
[01:11:54] Tracy Hayes: But, uh, does someone have those files in Platin?
From what I understand, a lot of 'em got—I know one of the title companies
[01:12:00] in St. Augustine acquired all the old stuff when the county went digital.
Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: They took all the files to digitize it, and then they still obviously still had the original paper, but one of the title companies actually—good luck finding it.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
So known to be able to be the person—that title company—to go to when you have that really old home.
Lindsay Parham: Exactly.
Tracy Hayes: That hasn’t changed hands in—
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: —60 years, right?
Lindsay Parham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:12:21] Matt Parham: But, uh, yeah, no, so like all the uploaded documents are just blank, so there’s nothing.
[01:12:27] Tracy Hayes: Wow.
[01:12:27] Matt Parham: Yeah.
Matt Parham: But anyways, we're going in there to get that going through because it's—it’s realistically, it's probably like a 1960s build, maybe 1980s.
[01:12:34] Tracy Hayes: I wanna go back to your—the two lot things, because I’m really interested. Because really for him, he goes and he—he obviously, you gotta get the permits, right? You get the per—
But doesn’t like Clayton Homes, they have people that come in and like, will put those—
[01:12:47] Matt Parham: Yeah, they do all the work. They do all—yeah, they do all—they don’t do anything.
So you split the parcel. Once you get that done, now you say, “Hey, Clayton, yep, build. Go put in a home here, a home here.” He files the paperwork, wells and the septic, everything, does the well, he does the septic, he does the AC, he does the foundation—
Matt Parham: Yep.
Lindsay Parham: Tie-downs, everything.
[01:13:06] Lindsay Parham: Clean. And you know what’s so funny?
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: About this, uh, investor—I’ve been working with him for over a year now, and when he called me, he called me from my Google Business profile. And he says, “I’m looking for
[01:13:20] someone who’s not gonna bid against me when I go to put in an offer on a home.” So I guess that agent he had worked with was bidding against him on a house that he was trying to purchase through—
[01:13:31] 260 Video: —the—
[01:13:31] Tracy Hayes: —a through this agent.
[01:13:32] Lindsay Parham: Yes. And so, you know, that also goes back to the honesty and, you know, really pick who you work with wisely.
[01:13:38] Tracy Hayes: You would think there was a limited amount of land. Right. You know, there’s a unique beach house that there's only—only comes up every—every once in a while, a house like that. So you—you could be—but you're—go find another lot to buy.
[01:13:51] Matt Parham: Yeah. I mean, that’s—because that’s really the genesis of it.
Matt Parham: It is. You know, it’s all off the deal, you know, if—you can find the lot. That’s right. That’s what matters.
Yeah. And, you know, having agents that do that kind of stuff, because the investor’s done a lot of the work to find that particular spot at that particular price.
[01:14:05] Lindsay Parham: I mean, he does all his own research.
[01:14:07] Matt Parham: Yeah.
[01:14:07] Lindsay Parham: He bought—I probably sold five to seven of his properties last year, and now he’s officially retiring and he’s ready to sell everything that he’s bought with me.
He’s a great guy.
[01:14:17] Tracy Hayes: Yep. How—what—so what’s the market over there right now? Do you—so you said you're putting these two—
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: —ones that he’s done on the market this weekend.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So what’s—I mean, what kind of hang time are you actually, you know, predicting here? Are we seeing 60, 90 days on the market, or you think 'cause these things are on the water, they’re gonna go—
[01:14:35] Lindsay Parham: You know, John Brooks has it right. When you price a home, you're—
[01:14:40] you can sell a home if it’s priced right.
The advertisement and location. Right now this is in Bostwick, so it’s kind of in the boondocks per se.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: But it’s on a canal. And it’s under—it’s affordable.
Tracy Hayes: Right.
Lindsay Parham: Right? Yeah. And you know, I have Scott—
Tracy Hayes: Ba—
Lindsay Parham: Do you say his last name? Gal? Ah, the real estate stenographer, Scott Alek or something like that.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: He does all of my pictures and he’s absolutely amazing. Like, he makes my ad stuff look really good.
Lindsay Parham: Like that’s the best Snapchat filter ever.
And as long as you have good pictures, a good price—
[01:15:14] Matt Parham: I mean we had one—yeah, we had a—a house in town that we put on the market above appraisal.
[01:15:21] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
[01:15:22] Matt Parham: Had multiple offers, multiple contracts put in—
[01:15:25] Lindsay Parham: Within three days.
[01:15:25] Matt Parham: Within three days.
[01:15:27] Lindsay Parham: And it fell through because the buyers decided to get a divorce after they got under contract.
[01:15:32] Matt Parham: We had another contract within 12 hours.
Lindsay Parham: Yes.

[01:15:34] Lindsay Parham: Multiple contracts.
[01:15:35] Matt Parham: Twice.
Matt Parham: Right. Twice.
It's, it's all about the open houses.
The advertisement.
Matt Parham: Yep. The photos, the making it look good. Reaching out to local and silly videos—local, here. Silly.
[01:15:45] Lindsay Parham: Oh my god.
[01:15:46] Matt Parham: Silly videos. But it's just,
[01:15:49] Tracy Hayes: You want to do—right.
[01:15:50] Matt Parham: And—
[01:15:50] Tracy Hayes: I haven't told this story in a long time, but I saw this guy, he was from Montana, and Montana has these people from California that think they wanna live in Montana.
They don't—
[01:16:00] —realize like there's areas, like there's no cell service. Yeah. You know, you actually should have a snowplow and everything else 'cause you're out in the middle of nowhere. And he went out. He was—the story goes, he was, he was showing a house to these people like 20 miles outta town.
Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: So it's like they're out in the middle of nowhere, there's no cell service, whatever. And so on his way back into town, he just said, you know what? I'm gonna do a video on living in Montana. So he literally just stopped on the side of the road. You could see the mountain—you know, you imagine Montana is the Rocky Mountains behind him.
The road just goes and then just disappears. Right?
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
And he goes on and he goes, there's bears. Whatever. Right. You got the—the wildlife. Living in Montana.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: And he just goes on and talks about that. That video goes viral.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Okay. He goes on and now, you know, it’s, it's gotten him business. Ended up—he was doing blogs already and some book writer called on him and they put his blogs together and wrote a book. Now he's like the guy.
Tracy Hayes: A video on living in Palatka—the fishing, the opportunities that you're talking about. I'm surprised you guys—have you guys flipped a home yet? I'm surprised you haven't found some.
Lindsay Parham: No flips.
[01:17:06] Lindsay Parham: But we are working on that.
Tracy Hayes: On that.
Lindsay Parham: On—
[01:17:09] Matt Parham: Yeah, that's this quarter.
Tracy Hayes: That's our goal.
[01:17:09] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
I'm surprised you—you gotta dive into that. 'Cause I imagine there's some opportunity there.
[01:17:14] Lindsay Parham: He wants to do flips. Like a safety net. I like to, you know, I like just doing the real estate.
[01:17:20] Lindsay Parham: He really wants to do the flips and stuff like that.
I told him,
"Don't make us broke."
[01:17:26] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Get a mentor on that one.
Yeah. Just more—John Cook, we're coming for you. Listen,
[01:17:30] Matt Parham: I'm not going in there blind.
[01:17:32] Tracy Hayes: Me—my, one of the first things my wife and I did after we got married was, uh, we flipped a house. We were living in Arkansas at the time. She was working for Alltel Wireless.
That was an experience.
Tracy Hayes: I have to say. We—we broke even. We got some tax deductions. That’s all I'm gonna do on the first one. Um, yeah, no, it—luckily a friend helped us with a possible money pit situation with it, and we—we discovered quickly what it was and fixed it inexpensively. Thank God.
Tracy Hayes: But yeah, you could turn—um, let's finish up with a—just some—our listeners, some just some real estate advice, tips, whatever you want to call it.
If you—you've got a—girlfriend calls, you say, “Hey, I'm—I'm looking to get into real estate. Tell me about it.”
Tracy Hayes: What are some things you really need to explain to them? Because it's not all sunshine and roses, you know.
And you—and I imagine you've run in, whether it was at Century 21 or even some people that joined Momentum that are having a tough time right now.
Tracy Hayes: There’s some agents that are really doing well.
[01:18:21] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
[01:18:21] Tracy Hayes: Like, even better than some past years. And then there's some other agents who are truly struggling right now.
[01:18:26] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And so I just say to you, like, your nights and weekends—if you do—it’s not for you.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
Lindsay Parham: You have to work nights and weekends. I mean, like I said, we were up until midnight last night.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Parham: Emails. You gotta answer your
[01:18:40] phone. And there's times where, you know—we got a board of, you know, what we did last year, what we've done, you know, this year, what we've done last month, what we've done this month. And when that board starts getting, you know, three pendings, we really start freaking out because, you know...
Previously he had a job that could, you know—
Tracy Hayes: Right.
Lindsay Parham: —support us, you know, if I wasn't doing very well. And now it—it’s, it's scary.
[01:19:03] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
[01:19:03] Lindsay Parham: But, you know, we have such a good work ethic, and we have the passion to support that work ethic that, you know, I'm—
[01:19:13] Matt Parham: And I'll put it this way—we were at three active Saturday.
Saturday. We're at like eight now.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Matt Parham: So it happens fast.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah, it does.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
[01:19:23] Tracy Hayes: But there's a—but you gotta stay—you gotta have some faith in that.
[01:19:27] Matt Parham: Well keep doing the things, but you gotta keep pushing.
Matt Parham: Be ready to be hungry. You're gonna be hungry.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: You're gonna be hungry for a while.
Matt Parham: It's not overnight.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
Matt Parham: It takes—
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Matt Parham: A while.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Matt Parham: You gotta have somebody supporting you.
[01:19:39] Lindsay Parham: Yes. Absolutely.
[01:19:40] Matt Parham: I couldn't have been in this without her and she couldn't have been in those stuff without me.
[01:19:44] Lindsay Parham: Especially starting out. 'Cause it was every single weekend. I did not have a day off for like—I still don't really.
Tracy Hayes: A out—well, yes.
[01:19:50] Tracy Hayes: The one thing I think people don't realize, and it—uh—it’s been—my wife and I, just—we’ve both—we met at work and we both have lived—it's a 24/7 business.
[01:20:00] It doesn’t mean you're working for 24 hours.
Tracy Hayes: Correct. You might not—you might have everything done at eight o'clock in the morning and you're like, “Hey, let me go take care, get my nails done,” whatever it is.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: And then all of a sudden, 10 o'clock, someone’s saying, “Hey, I wanna go see a house at noontime.”
Tracy Hayes: Absolutely.
Tracy Hayes: And then you're busy all afternoon. I—I think my wife was talking to somebody last night at 9:40.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: In the evening. You gotta be—when you're trying to get your business going—now when you get up and rolling, your business is going, you've got all the—you know, maybe you have some assistants or whatever, and you start—set some parameters like, “Hey, after eight o'clock we will talk about it in the morning.”
Tracy Hayes: You know? But you—how many times you’ve been counseling people at eight o'clock at night saving marriages sometimes?
[01:20:35] Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
[01:20:36] Tracy Hayes: Um, and—

[01:20:36] Lindsay Parham: You know, real estate's not just being a realtor about homes. You know, we talk about family, we talk about, you know, just life in general. But yeah, you're right.
I mean, it's—I've had—I start my emails sometimes at four o'clock in the morning, and, if not when I go to the gym, because I can't go to the gym during the day because my phone does not stop.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And I answer—you just, you know, we went to The Bahamas and he had had a rough contract, and we finally got the cleared close and he was on the phone for two days.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah. You know, getting the final few things going so she could finally close. Yeah. You know, every vacation we go on.
[01:21:13] Tracy Hayes: Now, I imagine John and Brittany hopefully have talked to you. 'Cause I think one of the challenges—you guys sound like you're at that point where you're kind of at maximum
[01:21:20] capacity.
Lindsay Parham: Yes.
[01:21:21] Tracy Hayes: Which I'm sure your—comes in a little bit of helping out. 'Cause you guys are in The Bahamas where she's—
Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.
Tracy Hayes: She's helping. And if you don't have the trio of you, the three of you, you've gotta have some other agents to help pick up some of the slack so you can go and have a long weekend.
[01:21:35] Lindsay Parham: So, and I'll tell you where it all kind of started. This time last year, you know, the busy season—I held two open houses Saturday, two open houses Sunday, and had two or three buyers each day as well. Came home by Sunday because, you know, I'm just—it's busy season.
Lindsay Parham: Mm-hmm. I'm by myself. I have no help. Came home and started bawling.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah. I told my husband, I'm just like, you know, I can either be a mom and a wife or I could be a realtor 'cause I can't do both anymore.
Lindsay Parham: Right. It was just—I was done. And that's when he goes, "Well, you kind of made more than what I make all year in your first quarter, so let's talk about this."
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
Lindsay Parham: And so then when he joined on August full-time, you know, I was expecting to have, you know, some extra time off. Hell no. He gets just as busy as I do.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And we're still, like, scrambling for time.
[01:22:25] Tracy Hayes: Right.
[01:22:25] Lindsay Parham: Um, and then his mom—she's, she was right at retirement, like, oh, hop on the train.
[01:22:31] Matt Parham: Yeah.
[01:22:32] Lindsay Parham: And—I mean, she's—
[01:22:33] Matt Parham: She's out doing—so we had a miscommunication on some inspections this morning. We thought
[01:22:40] somehow or another that the same inspector that we used was gonna be at two different houses at the same time for us. It turns out we got the wrong time. So it was supposed to be at 10 o'clock this morning. I was supposed to open the door, but you know, fortunately we're up here to do this.
Matt Parham: Yeah. And she's still back there at home base and she's able to go open the door for 'em, get 'em in.
Matt Parham: Yeah. So there's no disruptions there.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Helps.
Tracy Hayes: She helps. Do you see yourself maybe
[01:22:59] creating a little team? I mean, as business grows in Palatka, you guys are—I don’t know, brokerage towards you?
Tracy Hayes: Or even—just some—'cause I think everyone hits their lid. Yeah, they hit this lid. And if you don't have, whether it's a transaction coordinator or just an assistant, someone answering the phone—
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. For you and hopefully diverting the whatever they need to you—what calls you actually do need to take
Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.
Tracy Hayes: Versus others or just, “Hey, you know, they take care of it,” or “Hey, someone needs to be over there to get that over there. Inspection.”
Tracy Hayes: I—I mean—
[01:23:28] Matt Parham: It's chaotic. Yeah. It's—I mean, so I—I—I know it, especially John coming from him, you know, he's, he's shoving TC down our throat.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.
Matt Parham: Um, we have different views. You know, we're still somewhat comfortable with it.
I mean, we're looking at about 60 transactions per year right now.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm. We're still pretty, pretty good managing all those contracts by ourselves without a TC, but organization is key.
[01:23:48] Tracy Hayes: Well go back to the word—the one thing that you had in, in the bio was systems, right?
Tracy Hayes: Creating—you gotta create the system. You gotta create the systems. And you're at the right place. You—there’s a lot of smart people. Yeah. The Jacks listing sys—you know—
[01:24:00] Oh, absolutely. Michelle over there. But they all have TCs as well.
Lindsay Parham: Yeah.
[01:24:03] Matt Parham: Um, and we're kind of in a—a different realm there because again, going back to the value of our homes, the price points—yeah. There's not really enough juice in that squeeze for all these different facilitating factors—
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.—that some of these larger listings do have.
[01:24:18] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
[01:24:18] Matt Parham: You know, there’s not enough in there to really kind of squish out. I mean, 'cause we're already knocking down commissions a lot of times just to help out buyers and sellers.
Matt Parham: Yeah. Yeah. And by the time you get through that there’s not another, you know, $500 or $1,000 in there for a TC or, you know—
Matt Parham: Yeah. These other—other portions of it.
Matt Parham: Yeah. So it's—it is—yeah. At some point—
[01:24:37] Tracy Hayes: At some point you're gonna have to make that leap across that.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: Um, and—and hopefully don’t look back.
[01:24:43] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. And we're still trying to figure out what that is. The systems from when he joined—'cause it was me for so long and I'm a control freak. I don't want anyone to have anything.
Tracy Hayes: But don’t talk—
[01:24:54] Tracy Hayes: —to my clients. I talk to 'em.
Lindsay Parham: Well, no—
[01:24:57] Lindsay Parham: Not so much that. It’s just I’m such a control freak. I don’t want you to send out that email.
Lindsay Parham: I want to make sure what’s in the email is what I want to send out in that email.
[01:25:05] Tracy Hayes: But that’s where ChatGPT comes in. You make it sound like her.
[01:25:08] Lindsay Parham: But—you know, write this—
[01:25:10] Tracy Hayes: Emails if Lindsay wrote it.
[01:25:12] Lindsay Parham: You know, we're still figuring out things. We actually have a call with Brittany Brooks on Thursday because when she heard what we’re doing, she’s like, “We gotta have a conference.”
[01:25:20] Lindsay Parham: Y’all are all over the place. I’m like, we know.
[01:25:24] Tracy Hayes: Well, I think the—the great thing about it is you are—I wouldn’t say you're fumbling. You’re successful, but you’re fumbling forward at a high rate. We’re rolling forward.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
Tracy Hayes: You’re rolling forward. And when you—you start to get those systems, you’ll start to polish it.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And then business will just start to even grow exponentially from there. You know, I told—
[01:25:43] Lindsay Parham: Brittany, when we were talking about this, I said, “Look,
I—
I’ve bullshitted my way all the way here. I—I’m just gonna have to continue to do it.”
Lindsay Parham: Hasn’t stopped yet.
Lindsay Parham: We're—we're just very blessed. And to have our brokerage, we’re very blessed to have our family.
[01:25:57] Tracy Hayes: I—I wanna talk to you again after—there’s gonna be a point where you’re gonna have to make this—
[01:26:01] Matt Parham: Yes.
[01:26:02] Tracy Hayes: —transition.
Tracy Hayes: Some sort—hire an assistant, transaction coordinator, or whatever.
Tracy Hayes: Whatever. It’s—and then after you evolve that and been doing that for months and got this down, you’re like so many agents that are successful—they reach this lid.
Tracy Hayes: Yes. 'Cause they're gonna reach the lid and then they gotta make that gap.
Tracy Hayes: My wife said this situation because that’s why I bring it up a lot of times on the podcast—and getting the right good position.
Tracy Hayes: I think you're with the right people. What you learn, what you evolve for your business and then how—what happens after you get that transition—
Tracy Hayes: Hopefully your business grows that much more.
[01:26:33] Matt Parham: It will.
Tracy Hayes: Exactly.
Matt Parham: And it’s just like small business—not a—
[01:26:35] Tracy Hayes: Timer.
Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Or—um—
[01:26:37] Matt Parham: Um, you know, there's a lot of small companies will hit 10
[01:26:40] million—
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm.—gross. But there’s a gap between that 10 million and 100 million dollars revenue.
Matt Parham: Mm-hmm. And once a business can cross that bridge to get up there, sky is the limit.
Matt Parham: Yes, exactly. There’s so many internal things that are involved—hinder that growth. But once you break through it, it’s sky’s the limit.
[01:26:58] Tracy Hayes: Exactly. So I—I wish to hope we have—I’m gonna end it right there. We’ve been going over an hour and 35 minutes, but a lot of good stuff.
Tracy Hayes: I’m excited for you guys. I really—I’m really curious. I—like I said—yeah, when you expand it, I want to bring you guys back on and how you did it and what your life—how your life and systems changed after that.
Matt Parham: Yeah.
[01:27:16] Lindsay Parham: Yeah. I’d love to. Yeah. Love to.
[01:27:17] Tracy Hayes: Appreciate you guys.
[01:27:18] Lindsay Parham: Absolutely.
[01:27:18] Matt Parham: Thank you.
Matt Parham: Thank you.
Matt Parham: Thanks.