Terry Kelly : Empowering Real Estate Professionals to Succeed

Tracy Hayes  1:04  
Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence Podcast is your host? Tracy Hayes, the show today is a great demonstration how powerful podcasting is. And I was just listening yesterday to another podcaster today, my guests like that podcaster me and I guess we haven't actually really sat down and interacted before. We've never done a deal before. I'm going to get to know our guest here today through this podcast, as you will here in the next 3540 minutes. And so enjoy. So sit back and relax. I guest here is a successful broker with exp Realty, the Florida coastal team is where he resides. He has a strong opinion about real estate agents and what it will take for them to be succeed. He's been in the business for 16 years. Just show up. Says my guest today, Terry Kelly of EXP Florida coastal team. Terry, welcome to the show. All right. Great to be here. Thank you. I'm glad you came by and always honored, you know, to have you guys in the in the house. We do invite exp to come in and use our facilities to training. And obviously, I know with you, and we'll talk a little deeper training is important to you. Yes very much. So yeah, and education. So before we get started, though, we will drop a little bit for our sponsors, our nice furniture here in the studio, from stage to sell stage to sell Realty. Is there a full service staging company? As you can see, they came in in our little square here and decorated it very nicely. Adrian and Keith at stage to sell Realty. All right, back to the show, Terry, tell us a little bit. Where are you from? Where'd you grow

Terry Kelly  2:44  
up? I was actually raised here in Jacksonville. Family relocated here when I was nine and graduated from Terry Parker and actually joined the Navy while was still in high school. So right after high school, I left, came back in 1988 retired in 1991 I've done a couple things since then. You got

Tracy Hayes  3:09  
married, John, I was looking on your Facebook. It looked like you and your wife met while you were in the Navy. Or was that a high school sweetheart? Or, well,

Terry Kelly  3:16  
that's a that's kind of an interesting story. I was I got to my first base which was in Atlanta, and they found out I was a certified lifeguard and they didn't have a lifeguard for the pool, so unfortunately, I got stuck being the lifeguard of the pool, which really wasn't a bad deal. My wife came down for a two week vacation after she graduated from high school in St Louis, we met and got married in that fall and been together for over 50 years now. So,

Tracy Hayes  3:45  
wow, that's awesome. Congratulations on that. That's really great. So, Terry Parker, go in the Navy. You say this is like, basically 91 you leave the Navy, right? What at that time? The whole world's in front of you. What were you looking to do at that time?

Terry Kelly  4:01  
Yeah, I didn't know. It was time to grow up kind of thing, right? I went back and pursued a degree, my associate's degree, and I went to UNF for quite a few years, but it for me, it just seemed to be every time I went into the counselor, he added another 10 hours to my requirement. So with 120 some credit hours, I decided to stop pursuing the degree in business, but I managed a commercial side of a real of a air conditioning company for about eight years. Decided that wasn't really what I wanted to do, and got my appraiser license. Realized you couldn't make the money I wanted to make. To doing that went into loans. I was with home bank back in the day. They went belly up and got my real estate license. Then in 2005 and just finally found where I was supposed to be.

Tracy Hayes  4:53  
That's, that's really interesting. You kind of, you tapped around a little bit. I was thinking what you were saying the HVAC. I say, Well, you see, you know. A little bit about that, you know, I'm sure some things have changed, but you could quickly update yourself getting into the appraising and lending side. So you have a taste of, really, the whole, you know, a good realm of of our business, as in the real estate industry,

Terry Kelly  5:15  
right? And I try to use that when I'm sitting down with customers and clients, that what's the best thing for you? You know, whether it be a loan program, is the house valued right in this market? It's, it's hard to figure it all right, all out without prices are running on us, but I try to take that experience and bring it to my relationship with our customers, right?

Tracy Hayes  5:38  
Right? Yeah, the the appraisers right now. I mean, they're on, they're on full overload. But I know, you know the change at and you may be able to educate a little bit. I know there was a change and how appraisals were ordered and everything after the collapse in 2008 and nine, you know, came out, how we were able to lender, or lenders ordering appraisals changed completely. And that really, I heard some negative talk from the appraisers, but that really kind of put a crunch in them, a little bit profitability.

Terry Kelly  6:09  
That was actually one of the things I was because, as I was coming in, that was starting, and so most of your small appraisal groups, which might be a lot more fun to work with, and all what they were getting gobbled up by the I don't know what they call.

Tracy Hayes  6:26  
So I call them clearing houses. I don't know what you call,

Terry Kelly  6:29  
yeah, because I've had it where I've had, I've had properties that we've had appraisers ordered on and it, I look at the appraisal, and it's way off, and I look in the guys from Daytona, or, you know, they're, they're all tied in together, so they're using them, and they just, they don't know that market they're using, like, waterfront property in Avondale to price a house in Avondale. And I'm going, you know, I had to call the guy. Go, no, you can't do that, you know, we had to get some changes.

Tracy Hayes  6:55  
Yeah, yeah, I've heard that complaint or concern there. But really it was designed, you know, obviously the design was to get the brother in law out of the business for them, for that lender, to be able to call the same appraisal company, you know. And, you know, who knows? I'm sure. Well, we know there was scrupulous stuff going on, not everybody, but some people were doing some things to to appease their regular customer, and that kind of cut that out so, so hopefully we're better for it, in the long run for it, I believe,

Terry Kelly  7:27  
I believe it did help cut back on some of that, because the horror stories were that, you know the agent, his brother owned the property, and his sister was doing the loan, and you know that. And you saw that. You saw those kind of things unwind, when everything collapsed, and a lot of the appraisers tell me, back when it's all started, tumbled back in oh eight, no nine. They were getting called in by the banks and having to justify their appraisals and not not a position that you want to be, they said. And that's why the, I think the smart appraisers, they go like, Look, I know your your emotions are telling you this, this is all I can support in pricing, right, right?

Tracy Hayes  8:07  
So you, you with the lending, and then appraising, or appraising, then the lending, appraisal, then lending, then you were lending. So you were dabbling in that. What made you make the jump over to the realtor side?

Terry Kelly  8:20  
Well, back then you could get, if you had a pulse, you could get a loan. And so I would meet young couples that would come in, and I'd sit down and talk to them, and yeah, I had a loan program for them, but you could see the writing on the wall, they were, they wouldn't last six months with it. Probably they were, they were struggling now, and it wasn't like they had just graduated and their income was going to increase or something. So I would advise them to go back work on your credit, save some money up. You know, go ahead and rent for now. Get ready to say you can make you move and get the best deal. And I'd send them on their way. I wouldn't, I wouldn't write them alone. And one

Tracy Hayes  8:55  
night, you had a conscious, yeah,

Terry Kelly  8:59  
one night, well, it's funny because they would sometimes leave my office and go down the hall and go into another loan officer, and they would write him a loan. But, but anyway, my wife, one night at dinner said, Do you realize you talk more people out of getting loans than you write? And I went, Yeah, that's probably a good indicator I'm not where I'm supposed to be. So I went ahead. My thought was, when I got the real estate license. I could do both, and, you know, help people find a house and write a mortgage for them, but that just that dropped away almost instantly. I went, That's not the path I want to be on. I just want to try to help people make the best decision for themselves, right? That meets all their needs and it's affordable for them.

Tracy Hayes  9:39  
Your first sale? Do you remember it? No, you don't remember your first sale? Well, yeah, I do. Now, you mentioned it's jog to memory there. How did it come it was just a friend or, I mean, it

Terry Kelly  9:54  
was a friend who was trying to buy a house, and I actually put them in an option loan. You. If you remember what those were, oh yeah, there were four options. You could pay the loan, or you could pay part of the note, or you could go upside down on the note. It was great for investors to have money, and I looked at it more as a short term thing, but I put him in that loan, and I sat down at the closing table and heard the attorney explaining all the options that were in it, and I'm going like, I didn't, I didn't know that, you know? So it caused me to go back and I went to go, got some schools.

Tracy Hayes  10:27  
And when I first started in 2005 the option arm was getting pushed out where I was at they they stopped. I just stopped doing it. And then, but then, all sudden, not, not, I don't know, a year later, they devise a very similar type product that came out. And for those who don't understand the option arm, you had an option to pay less than interest, you know, so you had interest being piled on the back your loan, so much like a reverse mortgage, where the balance is going up, because they were all speculating on the house value going up. I always remember it in 2005 2006 and I remember, you know, looking at the pricing of some of these homes, and I'm like, there's not enough Americans that make some I mean, the price point of some of these, I'm like, there's just not a there's not enough jobs that are paying that to afford that, but there is loan products out there, guys and girls that will lend you money. They don't know what you spend on Friday night. They see on that credit report, you know, your car payment, some credit cards, but they don't know you like to go out and spend and go to Disney World and pay cash or whatever. And when it comes down to it, when your house payments more than what's left in your budget, you're, you know, in danger zone. Yes, yeah. So you got, you had a conscious on that, and I it was, it was, it was hard for you. I i can understand exactly where you're, where you're at. There's, there's even people today, I unfortunately have pricing going up here in this area so much. And I see them come in and then they're they, they want to, I call beat the Joneses. They want to. They want the best school. Everyone does. But unfortunately, those properties are going to pay more, and they're putting himself in, really in a bad situation in the long run. But again, a lot of times, some people are making money on the side. We don't know. We like to tell ourselves that to make ourselves feel good. Maybe there's another income that, you know. Who knows? Yeah, they're babysitting a lot on the side. I don't

Terry Kelly  12:34  
know that's actually one of my passions, is trying to avoid that with people. And right now, as I'm sure you're know, the last numbers I saw was like, 1.9 million mortgages in serious default now in the United States. So it's there's a lot of stuff going to happen. And when we went through the last time back, I came in and oh, five. So I rode through the ramp, up to the to the crash, and we had people. I ended up, I owned it up for them on brokerage that dealt with foreclosed properties in 2010 and as I'd meet these people, you know, I got to admit, my initial perception was like these guys, you know, they didn't make their payments and they're losing their house. But as I met them, they were, they were living the dream. This is, this is where they're going to raise their kids and family and all that, and they were crushed, because there was an adjustment. Prices fell. They couldn't afford it anymore. The arms were hidden. So what, what I realized during that, early on in that process, was this, this could be me. This could be these, this, these aren't bad people. There's just something happened and turned and if they had known a little bit more early on, they could have avoided

Tracy Hayes  13:43  
it. I think education is where you're leading to there. I agree with you when I started, you know, these people doing cash out to 100% of the value of their home, you know, the stated income type stuff and but what I saw was they were buying that that house, which was reasonably priced in, those values are probably through the I can imagine where the houses I know the house there they were buying in. They go to an area of in Maryland, outside of DC. So they had government jobs. They the milk was there. So they were they had this government job forever, and the man that what they were doing is they would take 50 grand out of their house, and really what it was is to pay off, pay it down, pay off credit cards, because they all were driving the Escalades and have the 678, $100 payments on their cars. And they didn't, they didn't realize they were Yes, someone will lend you that money. They'll risk that money to put it on the street. That it's a game. The only person that can handle your own budget is you. Yeah, you're responsible for it. And I think a lot of people move in these neighborhoods. I, you know, like to say I live in a nice neighborhood. I see some of them. People move in neighborhoods like that, and I'm like, You know what? You're going to look at, the cars next in the driveway next to you, the cars over here, what the kids are doing, and got to have the big birthday party for the kids, because that's what the neighbors doing. And all of a sudden, the budget's out of whack, exactly, and you got to run with that. And that's that's something that unfortunately, no lender and no credit card company or car dealer is going to evaluate for you other than yourself. Yeah, yeah. So you, you were century 21 and then jumped over to exp in 2018 if I saw your bio correctly, what was the desire to you? Know, reasons to for that jump because you were broker at Century 21 as well.

Terry Kelly  15:42  
Right, right on the franchise to back up to, I started out with REMAX. REMAX was a great experience for me. That's when we went through the tumble. I focused on short sales. Back then, that's part of one of my passion is now that I saw that as well as then the aftermath with the actual foreclosures. But as with REMAX, for a while, I kind of broke away from a team, went on my own, my business partner now, Chris Snow was at REMAX. He came over, also said he wanted to join up, and so he and I took off

Tracy Hayes  16:14  
into you and Chris have been together for a while, because he's with you at the XP, correct. Yeah. We were

Terry Kelly  16:18  
actually in lending together all the way back. So, okay, we went to church together in a Bible study together. And you know, he's a lot younger than me. Okay, he's same age as my kids. But anyways, so he, he came over and joined me. We decided we saw the foreclosures coming. So we opened up our own independent brokerage. So they're an REO did, and just did foreclose properties for five years at the end of that run. And we can come back to it coaching. I got business coach about two thirds of the way through my time with Southern reo, right? And they opened my eyes to actually run a business, not, you know, dealing with emotion or ego. I was real proud that I owned my own brokerage where I was doing about 50 deals a year, you know. And it was life was I thought really good, but when I broke it down with the business coach at the very end of that, I was only making around 404 and $50 a deal didn't make sense at that point, right? So opened up another brokerage then to deal strictly or traditional home sales, right? And so at that point century, 21 approached us and offered us the purchase of a franchise. It's

Tracy Hayes  17:29  
interesting what you just said, Because I show you had a couple days ago. Angie Bell, she is a former realtor and a successful one. She is full time coaching, and she talked about when she was in the court before becoming into real estate. She got a corporate she was in the corporate world, got a coach then. So the first thing she did when she got into real estate was get a coach. How important do you think that is? And if you kind of explain, because I know you like to educate your fellow exp agents on how important what level should someone reach out to get a coach? And how important is that coach? Well, what can it really do for your business? The

Terry Kelly  18:07  
first step is, I think most agents don't look at their business as a business. They're they're working for a brokerage, but in actuality, it's, you know, they're a business owner. And if you don't look at your business that way, you'll never see the subtle changes that are coming in, and you find it like I did. I'm I thought I was living the dream back with those. Don't you know who would want to do around 5060, deals a year, but if you're only making, you know 30, 40,000 off that the seven days a week, 10 hours a day, yeah, yeah. But anyway, like I say, I went, it was, I got Reb school. Was the program I went to. They did a they did a real good job of breaking everything down for me. And they, actually, they said, We don't want to help you sell houses. We want you to form your business. This is, these are the structure. This is the structure you need to put in place to be successful. And you know, it was, you know, you looked at your finances, you looked at your marketing. You determined what your rate of return was on the investment. You know, you just he gave us all that, and that's what opened my eyes. It was actually I was at one of the seminars. One of the financial guys was we were just sitting in a hall talking. He says, Tell me about your business. And I told him, and he stopped for a minute, and he goes, Terry, I got a question, why are you even in the business? And I'm thinking, you know, what's this guy? And he says, he goes by the numbers you just gave me, you're only you're making less than $500 a deal. And I said, No, I'm making over three grand a deal. You know? Then when I did the math, he was right. So that that's what really solidified. That it was a decision I wanted to grow so I went to a coach, and it was early on he opened my eyes that I really needed,

Tracy Hayes  19:47  
because you can get caught up in all the Hey. I'm doing 5060, deals. Man, that's more than a lot of other people. But no not realizing, with all the other commotion you're making, what are you actually making? Even. Broken down to the hour. And it was, I was listening to another great podcast, actually, I think it was, if I'm not mistaken, an exp agent as a podcast out of Salt Lake City. But he was breaking it down from that standpoint point, he has the same attitude you do about making it a business, but when you break down by the hour, and it's like some of this little administrative stuff. You got to hire that stuff out, the stuff that's you can pay someone 12, $15 an hour, because you got to be that 345, $100 an hour person. You got to handle those things and make the $500 an hour, not sitting there at home twiddling with 12 $15 an hour that someone can do that doesn't have your experience, your vision and what you're trying to do.

Terry Kelly  20:44  
Yeah, there's a lot of, there's a push now to go to the virtual assistants, and you can a lot of the, you know, repetitive stuff that just needs to be done. You can farm out for, you know, you can get some college, graduate level people out there that'll work for, you know, $8 an hour, and you can, you can push all that aside, where typically I'm sitting down, doing the research and generating the publicity or whatever, and then putting it out there. So now that's a good point, and that's one of the things that the coaches pointed out too, was, how much are you making an hour? And they broke, when they broke that down, you know? Well, you're, you're, what you want to make is 250 an hour, and you're making around 18 an hour. So, you know. So, yeah, stop doing that. Focus on where you're good at, where you can generate the 250 304

Tracy Hayes  21:35  
I sense you, you enjoy, obviously, you became a broker. You, you know, you're leading up the Florida coastal team, you like giving back to the other agents help. You know, giving your guidance, your experience from that standpoint, when you were having this discussion, did you think, you know, maybe I should just be my solo agent and do my hopefully 234, deals a month and and not get involved with all this other stuff.

Terry Kelly  22:01  
Well, once I made the change to be a broker and own a brokerage, that all kind of changes, because the responsibilities there, and that's I talk to people, and they'll say, like, I'm going to get my broker's license, I'm going to open my own office, and I go. It was great experience, but it's probably the worst thing I ever did. But once you get into that, it's hard for me to conceptualize being out there on my own. Now, I don't, I don't do production. I, you know, if I have friends and family or somebody you know comes up says, Please, you know, sell me a house. I'll work with them. But pretty much anybody that comes to me, I pass on to a team member and let them handle it. I'm 70 years old now, so I'm not out there. You know, I'm not. I've already done the things I want to do. I don't have that big why that a lot of people do right? What I do have. So I want to give back. We talked a little bit about training. We're we do a monthly training. You've been kind enough to let us use the conference room here, and it's been awesome. But like we did social media last month, this actually, this afternoon, after this, we're doing a class on lead conversion, and this is open to everybody in the area. We publish it on Eventbrite, and anybody's welcome to come to it. It is not a exp recruiting event, but it is. Happens to be Chris snow and I that are putting it on so we both feel strongly that we want to raise the level of of the agent that it's working in our market area, because it's when you sit and you talk to some of them, you're going like they they are

Tracy Hayes  23:29  
struggling. I'm totally to come along. I'm totally and that's at, you know, we were talking earlier, and I was telling you how I, you know, how I evolved the podcast. But you know, I'm, I'm involved. I do a lot with the St Augustine Board education, because I do have the CDD class, which is not offered no one has. I eventually want to have time to develop it into a CE class, but making the the agents better. You know, I deal with it on a daily basis from a lending side, where I've got one right now where I think this realtor really after the deal is done. I mean, I'm probably not in the position to but I'd really like to sit them down and say, Hey, let me explain to you what you just caused, and this angst you created with between me, my manager, the builder, and your client and you, you had made this a miserable experience for them, because when it's all said and done, when that person opens that door with their key, they sign the paperwork. They now walk in. They don't really, they're not. They're not going to dwell on, oh my god, I just signed the paperwork for a payment I can't afford they're going to think about how they felt through this whole transaction. And that's what I think a lot of people miss, is, you know, it's like you hear things. It's not what you say, it's how you made them feel exactly. It's the same thing. And this is how do you feel when it's all over? Was it was, you know, me, there's always issues, and no matter what we do every you know. Not every transaction, but a lot. No matter what we do, there's bumps in the road and how people handle it and get a spec on and accomplish the goal. That's why we have jobs, right? That's why we have things to do, because there's problems and we solve them. And this particular agent, because they are not educated in the ways of how things are done, how to read the Loan Estimate. They're trying to, they're trying to educate a a buyer with a little bit of knowledge which makes them dangerous, yeah, you know, and it's really making a miserable experience. And I sense it from the my manager sensed it when she talked to the buyers I talked about, you know, buyers and the site agent all feel the same way that this agent is the one who keeps trying to make, you know, ruffle the feathers. It's like, dude, sometimes you just need to back off. We

Terry Kelly  25:47  
see that, you know, far too often that's, that's kind of what's got Chris and I going on the list. Let's put some stuff out there to try to help. But when you to your point, you get, you get in situations I'm dealing with. There's a local agent that I know that he called and he says, I need, I need your pump, something off you. And he's involved in a deal that is just like I would lose sleep over. He is losing sleep because, and it really, it's the agent on the other side has really, you know, he's, he's almost like he's playing an attorney, you know, like, we'll have to do that now everyone, he's been very argumentative all the way through it, and now nobody is happy. I can't imagine that that agents clients are happy now either. It's got to be just a night where across the board. So we try to, we try to avoid that with the agents that we work. We've got, I think, 22 agents on our team now, and that's something we really stress, is that, you know what, what? Tell me what's going on. How can we fix this? I don't. I don't. I don't want to hear that. You know, he really upset me in the meeting. I don't care about your feelings. I'm talking to my agents now. I don't really care what your feelings are. Now, what do we need to do? What we need to do to make it right. And like, the one agent that I'm talking to, there's going to be some extra cost go to his his buyers, and he's, he's stepping up. He's going to, you know, we're right. So he's paying for, you know, some of the things to make it all happen, which I think is the right do

Tracy Hayes  27:19  
you feel some agents get a little overzealous, from the standpoint that they want to show their value by fighting something that, I mean, that's sometimes it's they're fighting against a brick wall. It's like, but you keep fighting it and like, Dude, you're everyone else realizes that's a brick wall. You just give it up. But they keep fighting it. Though, I don't know if they feel they need to. It's an ego thing, or they need to show value to their client. I can't.

Terry Kelly  27:49  
Yeah, I've run into it and I've run it. I've had situations where you go, well, these people are being jerks. I mean, this is, you know, you got to be kidding me. And you meet them later on, and they weren't even aware it was going on. And we've, we've even had, I can't,

Tracy Hayes  28:06  
because the agent almost got involved like they were the buyer. That's exactly so

Terry Kelly  28:10  
now you're, you're in your deal on pure emotion and ego, yeah. And what I always one of the things I like to say is that we're the professionals here. We're the ones that need to focus on getting this deal done to the other agent when they start, when you when you can feel it starting to build that, you know, they're pumping their chest out, you know, like, I've got the right and I go, you know, you can be. What was it? The professor told me you can be. You can abide by all the laws of the land and be the most unethical person out there. And that's what we try to bring, that's, that's our job as realtors to keep everything together. We actually, we want to represent our client. We don't want to, you know, give away stuff to make everybody happy. But by the same token, you know, letting emotion creep into it doesn't help

Tracy Hayes  28:53  
him. Yes, yeah. You had a statement on one of your social media empowering real estate professionals to succeed. Yeah?

Terry Kelly  29:01  
Yeah. Well, again, there's a lot of a lot of agents are limited by where they're at, and

Tracy Hayes  29:08  
that, physically or physically,

Terry Kelly  29:13  
if you get to know me, I don't bad mouth brokers, it's just different. You know that they're in a place where they're not going to they're not going to succeed. They're not being advised to get coaching. If they're getting coaching that's being sold to them by, you know, somebody where, like at exp, you mentioned earlier, Grant Cardone. Grant Cardone is doing free coaching in exp now. And it's, I mean, it's open for everybody I do. I do coaching with exp. It's free. I do. I actually focus on return on investment. I have a spreadsheet I create, and once a month, I do a class about 50 agents from around the country attend, and I hand out this spreadsheet to help them track their business. That's what I want to do, is try to add value back to the agent so they can make. Make wise decisions for their business, and if they don't know about if. And it's amazing to me, I'll have 50 agents sitting in a classroom, and I'll say, How many of y'all are tracking your business, and nobody raises their hands. That brings up, and

Tracy Hayes  30:11  
it brings up an interesting thing, because you say that, and I've had, you know, some very high level, you know, couple Keller Williams brokers on here. They're very successful, and they talked about, when they started their careers, didn't know anything. They relied on the system. They relied on what others. Experts came down and said, these are the best practices. But how many agents do we see just they get that license and they just either don't know what to do next. They're bashful, shy, they don't know, you know, let me go find out the smartest guy in the room and sit down with them and find out how I need should, you know what I should do tomorrow morning when I wake up? What is the disconnect there for you? Think a lot. Well, a

Terry Kelly  30:58  
lot of it. People get into the business because you, you're on hours, you make all kinds of money and travel a lot, right? You know, you drive really nice cars. The reality is not so much you know you're going to put, you're going to have to put your time into it. And we, we try to, like, when I, I'll talk to a new agent coming in, I'll sit down and help them develop their sphere of influence that's free. Leads out there sitting that you can tap into. You may not close a deal with them right away, but you start building that relationship. And like you talked about with the podcast there, you'll have friends and family will see the podcast and go like, Oh, that's right, Ethan lending you know exactly. And so we try to, we try to develop that relationship that's free and easy. And then I have a little program and how you contact them, how often you do, what you say. And then from that, we start building on and again, like at exp, our platform, I can, I can run a Facebook post on any exp listing in the area, so I can actually post up. Did you see this house in St John's County or whatever? So again, that's free for them, so we try to develop that with them, so that now their business is growing. We give them the tools, like the training we're going to give this afternoon is the same training we give to every one of our agents. This is how you do business. A book that we like to hand out is fanatical prospecting, and if it really it weeds it out. We've had agents leave that that once we got into it, they go like, Oh, this is too hard. And it is hard. It's you work at it. The rewards are great. You can make, you know, more money and this business than most anywhere you can go.

Tracy Hayes  32:36  
Okay. Now, you told me earlier. Exp was originally created about 2009 but, but recently, it's exploding. And I was looking at some of your your social media you were giving, talking about some statistics about the amount of brokerages now, and how many are in line, you know, to come over to exp. What is exp doing now? Where some, maybe some of these experience agents, and, you know, been somewhere for 510, years. Hey, I mean, we see what's exp doing. What is exp doing?

Terry Kelly  33:09  
Well, we say that we're the disruptive technology in the marketplace now. We're a virtual office, which a lot of people go. I gotta have, I need, I really need, a place to, you know, physically sit. The reality is, nobody goes into the office anymore. No, you don't get any business walking through the door. I mean, some, you know, some of like Watson has, what, 1000 offices in the area. They'll pick some up, you know, but the odds of you as an agent, getting those are, are slim. I lost my thought, What's exp doing? So, so exp, we have, we offer all kinds of training. We have 70 hours of training a week. It's live training. We have heavy hitters like Grant Cardone coming into three of my past business coaches are now coaching at exp. It's a, it's a basic, you know, model, business model. But we, we like to point out that the agent is actually an owner, stock owner in the business. So

Tracy Hayes  34:07  
you're making all the experts that we were talking about, you know, your your new realtor, you just got your license. Okay, where should I go? And I think anyone who's been listening to my podcast so far, the agents have all told you you need to interview. You know, the broker that you're doing is this someone that is going to mentor you, because that's really what you're looking for. And then do you have access to the education that you need? And obviously, you know, obviously, no one's sitting there for 70 hours a day, but you know, you should be I'm sure you guys probably talk about you should be spending X amount of hours a week sharpening your sword

Terry Kelly  34:45  
Exactly. Yeah, we teach that you should be making calls about three hours a day. We recommend between eight and 11. That's one of the higher contact rate times of the day. And if you can't do that between five and eight, it's. But, but that's a that's a mandatory part of what you do as a realtor. You should be prospecting that. And then you need to know what you do when you get them on the phone. There goes. That goes into the training. But we offer the like, the 70 hours of training every Sunday night you get an email. So here's all the training next week. What I tell the agents go through and look at it and go like, Oh, I want to know more about, you know, return on investment. I want to know more about the platform we're using, or whatever highlight those. And then you jump into the training. We use avatars. It's a live like, if we were in the world doing this, which we could be, we would each have an avatar here sitting talking, but anybody that's watching it can hit their mic and say, Hey, Terry, I don't understand what you meant about that, and we deal with it. And so my class that I teach is very interactive, that the agents are always asking, why you put that there, or why? How do you get that number? So it gives me time to go back and explain it. So the training is at a level that I have never seen. I mean, I was a owner of a century 21 brokerage, and they have a lot of training, but it's it's taught by professional trainers reading from a script that's been generated by somebody that's been in the business at some time in the past, but they're not out there producing where our instructors typically are, someone like me. I've been in the business, I've got some experience and I'm willing to share it. And when somebody says, Let me help you get more listings, you sit in their class and they actually download their scripts and their the whole plan, the sharing is over the top. Then beyond that, though, the real attraction, what caused me to move over is I looked at at Century 21 my business plan was run the brokerage for 10 years and then try to sell it. And with exp, I am building an escape plan as I go along, through the stock program and through the revenue share program I've

Tracy Hayes  36:53  
heard about. Unfortunately, don't have time to talk about all of that part, but it's definitely someone as an agent out there and you're looking for a possible new brokerage exp. Obviously, I'm sure we'll get Terry's contact information, which will be in the show notes and so forth, and and I know Daniel's put it up on the screen for those watching Facebook Live. I'm sure Terry would gladly sit down with you and and go over the, you know, the pros and cons of EXP and what you you know, set proper expectations for that, how important, you know, I've got Ryan serhant here on my table. I talk about a lot of personal development. You know, Grant Cardone has got his books and so forth. From that standpoint, how important for you and your career. You actually went out and got a coach, which, to me is, you know, yeah, you're reading the books, but then you actually stepped up with your dollars and actually paid for a coach for the the even personal, personal development, how important is for agents to stay regularly working, maybe attending a seminar or reading books or listening to a great podcast. How important is that?

Terry Kelly  38:04  
It's very important if, again, if you take your business serious, you've got to invest back into it. Now, here's one thing. I will say that there's so many shiny objects out there for realtors right now you can throw, you know, tons of money. What I tell not only our agents, but other agents I meet, if you're thinking about doing something, give me a call, because I've probably already wasted money on it. Yeah, tell you what happened. So we try to, we try to prevent people from, you know, chasing the shiny object. But anyway, that's

Tracy Hayes  38:33  
and I'm gonna, might put my two cents in there, because when I started the podcast, and those have been listening to all my shows, I become a podcast junkie. Now I've listened to a couple podcasts. I'm like, Yeah, this isn't really that great, but that's maybe 80% of them. There's something in there. And one thing is, you are actually talking to real people, versus someone trying to sell you something, not trying to sell you a course. Now, some people have their courses and so forth. But if you actually listen to their interviews, like you and I, and we're learning about you today, you'll learn the struggles that these people went through, and they are accessible. They do give their email. You can email them and say, Hey, I heard on the podcast you did this, or, Hey, I'm doing this right now. What do you think I should do based on your experiences? And it's free. Yeah, it is free. It just takes the time to listen to the podcast. But there's a tremendous amount of knowledge out there. It's unbelievable. And

Terry Kelly  39:28  
that's what I try to we try to do is say, let's, let's use what's available to you now for the newer agents, let's use what's available to you now and build on it, and then as soon as you get where you you're financially stable and starting to grow, then reinvest some of that back into the platforms, or whatever it is you need to do.

Tracy Hayes  39:46  
Or, as the coaches a lot of times, say, you reach a certain point and you just can't seem to you go on next. You're doing well, but, you know, you can do a little bit more, maybe hiring that coach, which is an expense, but you're already you're investing the money you're. Making here, because you feel you can bump it another 10, 20% or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, huge. We covered. A lot of the questions that I have is that we always do, what are the what are the challenges, the for you in the Florida coastal team on a daily basis, we know there's the success stories, and you're welcome to throw those, some of those in there, but on a daily basis, your position is solving problems. What are, what are some of the things the agents are calling you about on a regular basis that you know and that challenge you every day to do what you do? Well,

Terry Kelly  40:35  
the biggest thing is contract negotiation. There's a lot of with what's going on now is, you know, you're getting, you're getting offers over the list price you're getting. They're including statements that, you know, we'll pay. We don't care if the appraisal comes in low, we'll pay what we're saying, you know. So those are escalation clauses. And, yeah, there's all kinds. Well, yeah, the escalation cause that was, I remember when we first started doing it years ago. I actually had agents call me say, this is, this is illegal. You can't, but it's a way. It's a way of life, yeah. But so we, we try to work with those kind of contractual issues. Hopefully it's not once it's under contract. We're fighting them, but occasionally that comes up as well. But you know, we always try to do the right thing and teach them to do the right thing. The training, we've we've made a good shift in the training within the team. Have a high percentage of agents actually coming in for the sales training. It's very interactive, and we start off by going around by beginning gratitude. Tell me something's good that's happened in your life, because we're all so negative right now, it's so many, right? So many

Tracy Hayes  41:44  
I've shut it off. Yeah? I keep telling my parents and my in laws shut that TV off. Yeah.

Terry Kelly  41:49  
So we try to begin in gratitude, and then we go, what was your biggest challenge this week? So as you go around 20 agents and going like, well, I put an offer in, and this is what happened, and then we just literally stop and look around the room say, what do you what have any of y'all experienced that? And then they start sharing. And I can sit and tell them something, and they'll listen and go, Well, that's Terry telling me something that's experienced in a certain level. But when it's another player on the same level, they are communicating back across the table. It hits home. You know, they take it.

Tracy Hayes  42:18  
You know, it's a common theme right now. And everyone I'm talking to that has especially, I mean, I've talked to agents a couple of weeks ago, and she's she's doing very well, so we've been in the business a couple of years, but she's following that mentor. She knows when she's got that negotiation. She doesn't know everything, but she's got a terry to go to and work through it, especially, like you said, right now, you got multiple offers, you've got to put your best foot forward to hopefully be maybe the final two or three that they're going to decide from from that standpoint,

Terry Kelly  42:51  
yeah, one of the things that we do, that I find, is like, when we bring a new agent in, you know, I want you to find me a four bedroom, three bath house in Arlington, 250 you know. And they search, and they send me what they find, and then we look at it and go, like, all right. Now I want to put an offer, and I want to offer 265 on it, and I want to pay, you know. And then they actually generate a contract and send it over to me for signature. So then we we can now go back and go look, you missed this. You left this is wide open. Your buyer or your seller is at risk here. And you go through all that with them multiple times before they ever get to the contract too many times. And this has been, you know, my experience as well. I'll hire a new agent. And you know that weekend they're calling me up at 11 o'clock at night going like, I got to write an offer. And they don't have a clue, right? The courses that we get through the local boards. They're, they teach you the contract, but they don't teach you negotiations. So we try to, we try to let them do multiple before they ever get to the real deal, so that when it happens, there's

Tracy Hayes  43:50  
not enough time in the classroom with all the different types of negotiations you could possibly come across.

Terry Kelly  43:56  
Yeah, that's not a that's not a negative toward, you know what the boards provide. They can only do so surface level. It's up to us, then out in the community that has been through this to try to develop,

Tracy Hayes  44:05  
well, that's that's why they come over to a Florida coastal team for your for your knowledge. All right, we're going to swing this around. I'm going to go into my two minute warning questions. As a football official, I call them two minute warning. Some call it speed round or whatever, just some basic questions. Terry, we were talking about it earlier. Is it more important? Who you know or what you know?

Terry Kelly  44:26  
Yeah, good question. Well, I stress on what you know. The who you know is part of our business. Though, if you don't, if you don't know, if you don't know other people, and your name is not getting out there, it's going to you have a very limited pool to draw from. So who you know is important, but what you know is real important?

Tracy Hayes  44:45  
Well, I would think so at your experience, you're giving out the what you know, someone who's new in the business, becoming a new real estate agent, knowing you is important, because you have the know, yeah. So who. You know, who's your who's your mentor, who's your broker, who's your your resources that for the knowledge, because you don't have the experience in steal from them. For those are obviously a lot of people like yourself who are willing to give it. I like that. I'll probably use that. You don't mind. No problem at all. Shamelessly steal that. That's fine. I do it all time. If you had one hour to sit with someone past or present in whatever go back in history, just to sit down and talk to and squeeze some of that knowledge out of them, who would that be? Anyone in the world, any that ever existed, that in history, that you could think of, Genghis Khan? I don't know.

Terry Kelly  45:41  
It's funny. I got asked this when I was in a mortgage broker class, and I said, Newt Gingrich, and they all went new ginger. What the war? I said. I've seen that guy a lot on TV. I never met him, but he just seems to be the smartest man I've ever known and how he presents himself. Yeah, I would just love to be around that, whether whether you politically align with them or not, there's, there's on both sides of the, you know, the spectrum political side. You know there are, but there are. He's just one of those guys that I would love to be able to sit in a room with him for just a couple minutes and listen to him talk, right? So I don't know if that's as deep as you wanted

Tracy Hayes  46:16  
to go. No, that's cool. That's cool. So if you're going out on the town watch a sporting event. Was it jumbo shrimp or the Jaguars?

Terry Kelly  46:23  
I prefer jumbo shrimp. Actually, yes, it's an experience where the Jaguars, I mean, I'm supportive of jaguars, but the jumbo shrimp thing is just, you know, you just, it's fine. We're actually doing a we're doing a Customer Appreciation Day, cool there where we invite all of our past clients to come down and

Tracy Hayes  46:43  
cut it with some hot dogs and beer in section. All together. Great. So great. What's on your travel bucket list

Terry Kelly  46:49  
right now? I'm going to Dallas for a Tony Robbins event in August. I'll go to Vegas for a exp event in November.

Tracy Hayes  46:58  
But those aren't your bucket list. I mean, where do you really want to go?

Terry Kelly  47:02  
My next my next big trip probably going to be Ireland. Just my wife wants to go to China. She's half Chinese, and I really have no desire to go to China right now, but we're probably going

Tracy Hayes  47:15  
to settle on go to Ireland first anyway, at least let the let things settle down. So Terry, for those who are watching the Facebook and please like and share the podcast as well when it goes out on audio here shortly. But Terry, what's the best way someone can contact you? They've been watching you here or hear the podcast say, hey, I need to talk to Terry at exp, what's the best way

Terry Kelly  47:35  
to reach you? The cell phone. I mean, I don't mind giving my number out. It's 9044. 65, 11880465. 1880, I'm good about answering if I don't, though I will call you back

Tracy Hayes  47:49  
and we're going to put the Terry kelly.com in the show notes. That's very so you have your own and obviously Florida coastal team exp, you can just Google it, and their site will come up as well with Terry's information there. Please like and share. Make your comments. I appreciate it. Have you read big money energy with Ryan? You have not well? Here is your copy. I give it out every I love Ryan Sirhan. Love his show. But this is a second book. I've got to order some more copies. This first one selling like Sirhan is really great as well. But if you like a really nice, easy read and you laugh a little bit, and there's some really good tips and stories in there that I really enjoy. And this is your copy here. So awesome. No problem. So Terry, welcome. Thank you for being on the show today.

Terry Kelly  48:36  
I appreciate, I appreciate the opportunity.