Virginia Toussaint: What is YOUR Superpower

Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast. Today's guest is ranked as one of the top 50 real estate agents in Northeast Florida, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal. She has been in the real estate industry for 20 years. She has consistently been a top producer. Today, she is the broker, owner of Toussaint Group Realty. She has a passion of working with buyers and sellers. Let's welcome this superstar, Virginia Toussaint to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. And as many of my guests that I have on, this is the first time we've met this morning, so we're going to get get to know you. And I'm really interested in that, because as I've gone through as I do, I go through everyone's social media and consistently at your different brokerages, and obviously, you know your real producers recently here for 2024 I know why they say 2024 because it's really your 2023

Tracy Hayes  2:29  
numbers. But yeah, recognized by the Jacksonville, real producers, but Virginia, I really appreciate you coming on and y'all, I kick off the show with the easiest question of all, so that everyone can get a little bit to know you. A little bit, where are you from? Oh, well,

Virginia Toussaint  2:44  
I grew up in Keystone heights, Florida, so very, very small town. Moved to Gainesville, Florida. My junior year of high school, that was the big city for me. And early 20s, I moved to Jacksonville. Just better job market, more opportunities, all of those things, and I've been here for goodness over 20 years now,

Tracy Hayes  3:03  
yeah, well, you spent four years at the University of Florida, right?

Virginia Toussaint  3:07  
Yes, I was in Jacksonville when I went to the University of Florida. But, yes,

Tracy Hayes  3:11  
okay, what time you is, you know, 1819, 21 years old. I mean, what kind of career were you thinking? I mean, you were a business major, if I read that correctly, so what were you thinking about doing at that time? Oh, well,

Virginia Toussaint  3:25  
goodness. So I don't have the traditional story. I was a young mom, and I had my first child when I was 18, another one when I was 20, and the third one when I was 23 so I was just trying to figure out life and provide for my family. And around the time I had taken after high school, I took a break. I didn't go straight into college, and then I started college, and stopped for a while. And by the time I had gotten to so I wasn't the 18 year old in college I was in, I would say, mid 20s. Okay, I had gotten a job at what was Washington Mutual. Now it's JP, Morgan Chase, and I was climbing the corporate ladder, and a business degree just seemed to make sense, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  4:08  
and the banking and that corporate structure, yeah, that was, that's like, the ticket, like, oh, you can't take that job unless you have a degree. It could be an underwater basket weaving, but, right, yeah.

Virginia Toussaint  4:19  
So that's exactly it. I was just trying to secure my future and make sure that I had room for growth. Then just was a natural

Tracy Hayes  4:25  
fit, right? So you spent basically a dozen years. Were you always in the the mortgage department, or is that somewhere where you kind of migrated to?

Virginia Toussaint  4:35  
I was always in the mortgage division, but I was in different areas of the mortgage division. So I'm a Constant Learner. I'm very curious. By nature. I like to master something and figure out the next thing. So I started out in the phones and customer service. Went to the Lina release department, the cash operations department. I got my real first taste of real estate as a manager in the real estate. State owned department. So all of the houses that were foreclosed on,

Tracy Hayes  5:03  
I was gonna ask you lost mitigation, right? No, no,

Virginia Toussaint  5:07  
I went to loss mitigation after that. Reo is like, and I know, you know, but for the listeners, it once a house is foreclosed, it's selling the houses on the open market. So at the burst of the bubble, that's what I was doing. And we used to joke in that department and say, Oh, when I leave here, I'm going to go into real estate. And then from there, everything kind of switched to loss mitigation, short sales, deed and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. And I went to that department as a job coach manager. Then I went on to be a training manager. And then there was a reorg, and I was offered a lateral position doing something completely new, or by HR guidelines, because they were changing so much of my position, I was given the option to take a package, and within about 10 minutes, I was like, Do you mean the standard package I could just willingly take right now. And they said yes. So I was like, well, then I'm going into real estate. We've joked I've joked about it for a long period of time. So I had about a two month window before my last day at Chase, and in that window I took real estate classes on the weekends. I got fully licensed. I left Chase, and I never looked back.

Tracy Hayes  6:23  
Wow, so you just opened this huge Pandora's box for me. Oh, no questions, because obviously I've never had anybody on or at least let me know that they were in doing that kind of work. Because in 2008 my wife and I, we bought our house here in St Augustine. It was Thanksgiving of 2008 the rates just started to go down at the time. And we were fortunate enough, at least, we were led to believe that the agent we were working with, I don't even know what bank it was that owned the property, but he had a direct connection, which, because I think there was a lot of you know, brother in law deals, you at the bank. Hey, buddy, mine's in real estate. I'm going to let him go and list these properties, you know, you kind of had, you can probably do more detail on that, on how that was controlled, to a standpoint, but in some places that were, and he had a direct connection within 24 hours, we hadn't, you know, they accepted our offer on the foreclosure where, obviously, I'm sure you could tell stories where somebody's house has sat for years, unfortunately, before a bank made a decision on it. But tell us, tell us a little bit about what goes on. And obviously during that time, obviously, you know, as they sold off their properties, they started cutting the department down, because they needed as many people as they did, and eight, 910, 11, I'm sure, where they had a number of properties and needed a staff to manage them. Or look over how deep when you say you were in the reo department, what exactly were you doing there? So

Virginia Toussaint  7:52  
I had several different roles. So when I initially went to the reo department, I was already a manager of employees. I took a lateral move as an asset manager. So as an asset manager, I manage. So the way that it works with the big banks is they're not personally selling the properties. Obviously, there has to be an arm's length transaction. So banks hire asset management companies who then contract out to brokers across the nation, and we as asset managers managed the portfolio of assets. What's going on with these? What are we doing to sell them? How do we sell them? We're managing the asset management company, who's then managing the broker. So I started doing that, and very quickly I got promoted to an asset specialist manager. So the asset specialists were in charge of getting a home, not personally themselves, but managing the asset management companies, getting a home prepared from the time that the house was foreclosed upon to it being actually marketed. So there's a whole process in there with evicting someone Cash for Keys. Is there a tenant? What are the investor guidelines, the regulatory guidelines, all of those things to make sure we can actually sell it. I managed it at that team, or one of those teams, for a while, and then I went on. I was promoted to manage the asset managers, which was the position I initially started on. And by the time the reo wave was starting to go away, I went on to the job coach management position in the loss mitigation department. So I was never there for I was there at the height of the market for a couple of years, right? And then I was out to the next apartment.

Tracy Hayes  9:30  
Because some of these, I don't people realize. I mean, I remember the house next door to us, that couple actually got divorced. She was living there. She ended up meeting someone else, and she literally walked away from the house. The yard completely died out because no one was taking care of it, watering it, fertilizing that sort of thing. And she left all the belongings in, including her wedding dress in the closet, because the bank had to send out a team or the Asset Management. Company had to send out a team to clean out the house. Yeah, that's very usual. Now, luckily, that has, I would imagine some of these places in trying to get them up to speed to sell. You know, some are easy. They're still, still in good shape. Others, people ripped out cabinets. Some of them, I, you know, turned the water faucet on and left that kind of stuff, trying to destroy the house. Yeah, how does it, you know, what? What's kind of the mindset from the bank to initially, like, you know, all right, what is this, I assume? And you, you correct me and guide me here, because my assumptions, you obviously, they want to, they got to contact someone say, Hey, what is this house? Could this house sell for today, right? What do we need to listen? What do we need to get it? And then they're also looking at what kind of loan they have on it, which a lot of these are probably upside down, type of thing. What is their mindset or their thought process, and is it is, is it different in every banking institution or lending institution that's holding these assets?

Virginia Toussaint  10:57  
Yeah, well, I would say it's different now than I when I was doing this, when I was doing this, I mean, it was such there was just a fire sale going on because there were so many homes in foreclosure, and never experienced anything like that before, correct? And so a lot of it was just like, get it off the books, get it moving forward. Every institution is different. I think with the big banks, they're, they're very similar in how they do things. When you get into some of the government agencies and how they do it, it gets a little different, but it's very number one. It depends on the investor, it depends on the loan type, it depends on the regulatory requirements behind it. But there's

Tracy Hayes  11:38  
a lot more to it than just, yeah, you can get X amount of dollars for this house. Let's go and sell it. Just cut. There's a lot of red tape, it sounds like behind

Virginia Toussaint  11:45  
the scenes. Yes, and every state, every county, has different guidelines. You have different even, even, I mean, there's some states, for an example, that if a house is foreclosed on, you still can't touch it for six months. I mean, it just the rabbit hole goes so deep, and so far, there's a lot behind it. So really it's, it's managing an asset specialist, and then an asset manager has a portfolio of loans, and they're making sure those loans are going through, or those houses are going through the process and getting to where they want to they need to go. And of course, that's going to depend on the strength of that individual, in addition to the project manager and the absolutely, yeah, and the broker that's boots on the ground doing things as well.

Tracy Hayes  12:32  
I think people don't realize the all those things you mentioned, the county, the state, the regulatory that costs money. You have to hire people that specialize in those areas. It's not, you know, obviously some people are better than others, but you know, the whole thing to make it go through, you not only have, hey, I'm upside down in the loan versus what it's worth by X amount of dollars I got to pay a real estate agent the house may well a lot of situations, I know the bank was just like, hey, you take it as it is. They didn't want to put any money into it. Some might have done some little bit of things. But then all all this extra time that you're talking about from lawyers being involved, the asset manager being involved, the compliance person to make sure they're because they obviously want to make sure the titles leans cleared for the for the person who ends up buying it. You know how many 10s of 1000s of 1000s of dollars more above and beyond the loan that it takes just to get rid of the house? Absolutely? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Interesting. So the obvious question you're now in the real estate what? How is, how do you rely on that experience your whole time in the the mortgage side, in the back, you know, knowing those back off how those things work. How has that helped you in your real estate career and actually going out by helping buyers and sellers? Yeah,

Virginia Toussaint  13:48  
well, I feel very blessed for the background that I have. It wasn't an intentional background. You know, I kind of wandered my way through all of these things,

Tracy Hayes  13:57  
but mysterious ways.

Virginia Toussaint  14:01  
No like God has directed my path the entire time. But I think I have an unnatural advantage when it comes, especially when I was getting started, right? Because I like to kind of think of it as with Chase, especially the positions I held in that department. Number one, I had to manage their portfolio. So I had to manage a pipeline and understand that the time that it takes, what it takes to get a house sold, the mortgage implications behind it, all of those things, and then beyond that, anything that came to me when I was a manager of asset managers was really the exceptions. Why are these houses not being sold? Why are these loans not closing on these houses? And so I had access to not even access. I managed the portfolios from properties from $30,000 up to $30 million so I came in with the knowledge of, this is what sells a house. This is what sells this house in this area. For this reasons. This is why this isn't selling. This is what's going to make it sell. This is where you need to price it at. And so I think coming in, I had all of that. I had the banking background, I had the mortgage lending background. I can explain to a customer what's going to happen after they close on their home and what to expect with escrow, and what to expect

Tracy Hayes  15:19  
with all of why loans are sold off in the secondary market, and their servicer might change. That's most likely going to change, and and why there's, there's been benefits in that. It's interesting because it sounds like you were dealing with, imagine multiple states. Oh, all 50, all 50 you were dealing Oh, wow. So they didn't even regionalize you. You were just whatever came up on the screen. That was your deal, yes, and then you're working from, from Jacksonville, and then your your interaction, so when you looking, you know, property out in California, Colorado, or something like that, where you don't, you've never even been there, and be talking with the real estate agent. How? You know, again, I think every banking institution had a different attitude than others. Others were like, Let's get these offer. We'll take our losses, just get get these off our books. Yes, type of thing where others were like, Oh, that's too much of a loss. We got to hold on to it. Let's see if the market improved, whatever their situation is. But for you in communicating with that. Were you? Let me ask you this, were you talking directly with the real estate? Were you more with the asset manager who was then talking to the agents?

Virginia Toussaint  16:30  
Well, I was talking to both. So the first line of contact is the asset management company. But if, if there's a house sitting there in the middle of Utah, and I'm looking at that. And I'm like, why is this house not selling, right? I'm picking up the phone and I'm calling because I need that off. I need that off the books, right? I need that to be sold. It's sitting there. It's aging inventory. So a little bit of both, and just with my curious nature, I'm going to find out, right? We talked about your curious nature. We're kind of wired the same in that way of like, wait a minute, why isn't it selling? What will make this sell right? And in those conversations, collecting and knowingly collecting all of the expertise of all of these different agents and brokerages of, oh, well, this is what you need to do in this situation. And this is why

Tracy Hayes  17:13  
give us a, if you can remember, just a brief story of, like, an interaction you had, like what they needed, and then obviously what you know, whether it was, hey, I need some money to fix it up a little bit. What kind of interaction, if you could give us an experience of what that was like? Yeah,

Virginia Toussaint  17:29  
well, initially, when I first started speaking to the agents and brokerages directly, when I just got to a point like, I'm just going to pick up the phone, because there was too much there's there were too many lags in communication of what's really going on. So initially it was kind of the basic stuff of, you know, paint the walls, replace the carpet. And then I started realizing, oh, there's intangible things we can't see on a screen, like, how does it smell? Like what's going on in the neighborhood? And then it became very localized to different areas. So an example in California that time, houses were just sitting. They had so many options. Everything was in foreclosure. California was such a hot spot foreclosures. So what worked a lot of times, beyond all of those things, beyond just take a price reduction, paint the walls, replace the carpet was in that market. Give us a give a selling agent bonus, like give a bonus to the agent, incentivize the agent to sell this property, which now we're getting into. But that was a different time,

Tracy Hayes  18:32  
because economics telling you, you obviously, if there's jobs, people move in, right? And you know, our area is blessed. We have a lot of white collar, financial type jobs here in Jacksonville, and obviously the climate and everything. So we know why people are over here, but someone in Florida not understand, while someone in some town that we don't even know California or Colorado or middle Utah, what? What's going on there from jobs? There's no jobs. People aren't buying houses, right? Or, you know, unemployment is going up, and there's just not that. Or, like you said, the neighborhood was just a new neighborhood, and they all got the houses at the same time, and now they're all upside down, and now you got half the homes are in foreclosure.

Virginia Toussaint  19:17  
Yes, you know. And that macro level goes super micro level when you're doing it as an individual agent. Now, like in the in the general real estate market, because there are factions of that in across Northeast Florida, right there might be certain areas like St Johns County hot spot, it's not going to be like a house isn't going to be on the market, as long as you're sitting on the very far west side in the middle of the country and you've got a house well above the median price point, what do you have to do to sell that house versus this house? There's not a just a one. It almost drives me crazy. I'm a huge believer in systems, but it almost drives me crazy. See if, if brokerages and coaches and when, the main model is just build a system and do it, because every house is very unique. Every customer is very unique, and there are certain things that have to be adjusted. So for me, it's more of it's more of an analysis of what's going on with this person, with this community, with this house, what needs to be done to sell this house for the most money in the least amount of time, because that's, that's what I did at Chase, right, right. So and to prepare it ahead of time, so you're not taking the losses later on down the line. How do we get this right? Right out, right out. Get

Tracy Hayes  20:32  
it out the door. I imagine you, you communicate with these agents, the asset manager, and they tell you, hey, we need to do this. You have to take it to somebody for approval, or were you given the license to

Virginia Toussaint  20:46  
there were approval levels. So if up to a certain dollar amount, an asset specialist would have this much approval, an asset manager, a manager of asset managers, the Vice President, would be next, and it would go on from there, but you had a pretty good amount of approval is, it's just, if you had a unique situation, like, I'll, I'll give an example of there was a multi million dollar, I mean, we're probably talking the 20s and millions home, and

Tracy Hayes  21:17  
fluctuate millions of dollars overnight In

Virginia Toussaint  21:19  
value, correct? And they had a roof built into the pool that was leaking, so that was an extensive repair. It had to be done for anyone to buy that house. Just people did not want to take that on, because there were too many unknowns, right? And so that the cost to remediate that was, I mean, in the hundreds of 1000s of dollars, but you're talking about a $20 million property, it made sense. But something like that, we we wouldn't have the ability just to approve, oh, here's $200,000 knock the pool out. So things like that would be exceptions and would go up the chain.

Tracy Hayes  21:57  
Was there a lot of trial and error in this as you, as you work through these departments and from their reota loss mitigation, because obviously was unknown territory for the banks like in to dig as deep as you are, like, hey, this community here, there's all this other stuff going on, and this is why we need to do it where, obviously the bank is looking from a 30,000 foot level, but they got you inside asking those right questions. But they had to kind of understand that, because I don't think the average person, if they sit down and think about it's common sense, right? But they're not thinking about it and understand that. I mean, so was there? Did they kind of work through it and start developing and obviously giving you, hey, here's your window. Here's your window of approval. If you can get it done within that, go ahead and sign off. Yeah,

Virginia Toussaint  22:46  
well, we had really great leadership in that department. So shout out. Shout out to Renee Johnson, who really set up the structure very, very well where we were given the ability to approve what made sense. I mean, she had just, just such a strong leadership background. One, pro and con. This is something the government stepped in and changed. We we were, we were stack ranked against each other as an asset manager, you were bonused based on, if there's 100 asset managers, where you fall on that scale, number one to 100 that's that's where you bonus. So you could bonus exponentially more if you were exponentially better at your

Tracy Hayes  23:29  
job, then saving the bank money, right? Recovery, recovering and taking the least amount of loss

Virginia Toussaint  23:33  
Absolutely. Now the government did step in, and that was the same for the managers if their team was ranked highly. So, I mean, I loved, I thrived in that department. My teams were always consistently number one, because it was like, I would

Tracy Hayes  23:45  
have loved to be in that department. To be honest with you, that would have been fun. It was fun. It was a great department. That total inquisitive thing you were talking about, like you're saying, digging, calling that agent said, Hey, man, what's it going to take to get to someone? What do I need? What's going on there? And asking those questions, and digging deep and and then if you had to go to upper management to obviously sell that, yeah, to the mayor say, hey, we need, this is the deal we need to do, because all these things, and I've done my research and talked to these people, and wow, that's just, that's really interesting. All right, so they give you a package. All right, you've got your real estate license where this is a question, and I, we talked about a preacher this question, I'll ask everyone what you got to put your hat, hang your hats with somebody, what guides you to that first brokerage?

Virginia Toussaint  24:28  
Well, unbeknownst to me, my mother in law at the time, which I'm remarried at this point, so but at that time, she was a broker at Keller Williams, and I did not even know that's what I knew she was associated with real estate. I didn't know what she did. And so when she heard I was getting a real estate license, she was like, well, we've got to sit down and talk. So thankfully, it was a great brokerage. I wouldn't have known better or worse either way, but that was Keller Williams Mandarin, and they. At that time, they had Halcyon lane, Jen Henry, who is phenomenal. She was my productivity coach at the time. Everyone that she coached is now doing extremely well, for the most part, anybody who stayed in real estate because she was such a phenomenal coach and really gave us a really strong foundation. So I got again. God led my path. There was no more thought behind that. Well,

Tracy Hayes  25:24  
I mentioned over the years, in probably almost, if not daily, weekly or monthly. You're asked by people about the industry, should they get in it? You know, they, you know, obviously, between HGTV, bravo, whatever, puts a lifestyle out there. But, I mean, it's a business, you can make really good money and change your lifestyle. There's been many people on this show that have started with zero, yeah, like negative bank accounts, and now are doing so well on investment properties, etc, etc, yes. How important when you when you have that conversation with them, that they make a choice. In your case, Keller Williams is, like, almost, I wouldn't say this is what they focus on, but they definitely have training departments is part of their structure. And having a Jen Henry level person in there is important to them, yeah. And in having those market centers and so forth that we that we know, so obviously, you know, I think a lot of people would say, yeah, if you're new and you don't know where to go, Keller's one, you know, Watson may be another. A lot of people started at Watson here, obviously, you know, Caldera, some, some are better than others, yeah, what? What do you recommend? How do you when someone want has that asked you that question about real estate and getting into it you're where should they go first, and what's the important things they should know?

Virginia Toussaint  26:45  
Well, with my background, I'm obviously going to say you've got to analyze your own situation, right? I personally didn't need a Watson. I knew the intricacies of real estate transactions. I had a lot to learn on the ground, but there were certain basics, foundational things that I didn't need to learn. Right? I probably could have honestly taught the class on some of it, yeah, with the background that I had, thank God. So for me, it was again, just being blessed with being in the right place at the right time. But it looking back and for other agents, I would say, know what you need, and don't just listen to what's being said, because everybody in real estate is a salesperson.

Tracy Hayes  27:32  
It's a sales even though they're not necessarily trying to sell you something, they are selling you

Virginia Toussaint  27:36  
correct and the person that's interviewing you. It's their job to recruit. That is, that is their main job to recruit. And so there are going to be aspects that they're going to highlight the positives. They're never going to highlight the negatives. It's just not going to happen. And every brokerage has its positive the negative. So interview multiple brokerages know exactly what's important, what are your areas that you have to grow in to do well in this business? And what are they doing to support that? Be really careful in asking agents that work for that brokerage. How do they like it? What do they not like? Have candid conversations. Call people you've never talked to before, but make, make the best decision that you can. Don't just talk to somebody and join like I did, which was a good decision for me, but,

Tracy Hayes  28:29  
well, you were one of those fortunate ones that that you landed in a place that was, you know, great, but it doesn't always happen, right? Yeah, what you because obviously the you said, you know, what you need, or, you know, learn what you need. But most of them don't. They don't know what they need. Now you You came from a background you've already had, technically been in the real estate industry. You've seen contracts, you you know, no other this thing's going on, the questions you're talking to real estate agents, and understanding the mindset and so forth that's going back and forth. So when you enter you kind of have this, you know, you're halfway around the track already. Where someone, you know, somebody's we're seeing some people coming out of college, yeah, you know, you're getting into real estate. Others are changing from corporate America and had nothing to do with real estate. In looking back and what you know now, because the need question, you probably weren't even thinking about that when you walked into Keller Williams, now you're looking back and go, that's what I needed. And then we just connected. How do you find out what you need? What are some ways you think and it's not again, there's no, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer this question. But if you were to analyzing, knowing what you know coming from corporate America to being self employed to 99 what how do you how can someone start to discover what they need to enter the real estate industry, a real estate as a real estate agent anyway?

Virginia Toussaint  29:47  
Well, we all have it. I mean, I had a large number of needs going in. I think that here goes my corporate background. Do a SWOT analysis. What are your strengths? Weaknesses? Opportunities and threats. Your Strengths are always going to be your strengths you don't need. If your strength is, you come from a sales background. You're you're great with converting people and closing deals and doing all of those things. You need a brokerage that's very strong in the transaction piece of training. If you're a person that is not very structured, right, like you're kind of ADHD, as a lot of people, myself included, then you need a place that gives you a lot of structure. If, for me, I needed a place I didn't have a sales background. So that was scary for me, jumping out and say, I'm used to a nice salary and a very stable salary and very, you know, and going out and say, I had

Tracy Hayes  30:46  
your big benefits package, yeah, health and all that, all of that stuff. And

Virginia Toussaint  30:51  
then I'm like, wait a minute, I could work and never get paid. How do I talk to people and get them to buy or sell a house? What is so I needed a lot of help with. How do I figure out how to navigate the sales portion, right? And so for me, I mean, Keller Williams was a good fit for that reason, right?

Tracy Hayes  31:08  
So actually, so you got a buyer, seller, obviously, a lot of times you always start with buyers, a typical new agent. How do you transact them into say, Let's make an offer. I mean, is that getting you, getting down to that kind of detail, how you how you transition to showing the house, to getting them to say, Yo, let's move on this. Yeah, is that? Is that? Was that kind of one of the things you were concerned about that wasn't

Virginia Toussaint  31:32  
a concern to me. My concern. I'm not by nature. I'm a people person. I love people. I had a lot of great contacts, but I'm not a salesy person. I'm still not. I never will be. I always kind of rejected that mentality of have this perfect script and just say it over and over again. Like, who do you know that wants to buy, sell or invest in real estate? Like, that's that's not me. For me, I was like, Okay, I have a lot of great people in my circle. I've been here for a long time, and I think I have people who trust me. I feel like I've always tried to do the right thing. I feel like I always try to do it with excellence. So I think there's people who would use me, but how, how do I get them to consider me with I was worried about being and that's a fear, like, how do you how do you not sound over, overly salesy, because on one hand, you need the business right, especially starting out, you need to be able to say, Hey, can I do this where we've got to get into a conversation of you need a house, or you need to sell a house, and then I've got to get you to say, you're going to use me to me, the rest is okay. You're serving, serving that with excellence. And you're you're setting up the process and making sure all that's handled well. But that piece of lead generation was very that was unnerving for me. So

Tracy Hayes  32:51  
taking your circle, because you knew a lot of people, to actually contacting you and saying, I want to transact. Yeah, so to me, now I'm gonna give my analysis that I want to know what you what, how, now you're eight, nine years into being a real estate agent today, and how, just like mortgages, to me, I think you know they need to know what you do, just like if you're, you know if you're, if you're. I got an alumni brother who does orthopedics, and I think he works on hips or knees or something like that. And the fact that people know that that's what he does, you know, not everyone needs a hip or knee every day, right? But when they have a family member or whatever that does, that's when they're going to say, you know, call, right? Call, call Virginia, because she's in real estate. So now you know, eight, nine years into it, you have great success. What are you doing now that that crosses that and now you are, you are being in contact, being top of mind is the word, right, yeah, or phrase that of all your fear, because you aren't calling him going, Hey, you're just calling him saying, Hey, what's going on? What are you guys doing this? Guys doing this weekend? Or whatever? Hey, I saw Facebook. You Happy Birthday or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So what's the question? Yeah, good point. So the question is, now, after eight or nine years, yes, that initial fear that you had or hesitancy, how are you handling that today? That's now, it's not even you probably don't even think about

Virginia Toussaint  34:22  
it, yeah. Well, can I back up the beginning? So, because I think explains what I do today, yeah? So in the beginning, I mean, I had kids, I had a household, I was like, I can't make less than what I made it Chase like that would defeat the whole purpose. So I've got to make more. And that's a really my first year in real estate. I did 8 million in sales. That was, yeah, but that was just, that was

Tracy Hayes  34:51  
eight years ago. That's 2016 just like a $220,000

Virginia Toussaint  34:56  
obedient price point, right? But that came from a lot of hard work. And that came from a lot of fear. I was like, I've got to replace my income. And I more than did that, right, thank God. But I was sitting there like everybody saying, what are you going to do to lead gen? What are you going to focus on? Who's your target audience? And I'm like, I don't know. How does anyone know that? Getting into real estate. And so I made a list of all the, all of the different lead gen strategies. And this is how I start with a new agent in my own brokerage. This is the list. Pick two or three things, right? That's, that's what I was told. So at bare minimum, do that. But for me, I was like, I still don't know. So I'm going to do it all. I'm going to touch every single piece of lead gen, and I'm going to do it at least once, even if I hate it, even if I'm scared to death, to do it. And I'm going to figure out what works, and that's what I'm going to go with. So I did expires, and I did cold calls, and I did circle prospecting, and I did door knocking, and I did open houses, correct, yeah. And then as this continued, and I had some sales under my belt, I was able to see, okay, this is where my main sales are being driven from. And for me, my first year, I think about 40% came from sphere, because in the beginning, there were people that I'm sure were hesitant because they didn't know if I knew what I was doing or not in real estate, they didn't

Tracy Hayes  36:24  
really know what you were doing at Chase or anything, right? I mean, they, they mean people know you, but sometimes they don't actually know what actually you're dealing with, because they don't understand what you're doing anyway, right? Yeah, and whether or not you knew what you were doing as a real estate agent, yeah, yeah.

Virginia Toussaint  36:40  
So about 40% came from sphere, and I would say maybe 50% came from open houses. So converting buyers, mostly buyers there, and then the remaining 10% were expired, or a little bit of this, or a little bit of that. And so then I focused primarily, I let go of the expires, and all of those things. Because I'm like, Okay, I'm just, I'm putting a lot of effort in. I'm getting some results, but I'm not the person that's going to remember to follow up tomorrow at 8am so if I didn't convert them on the first call, I probably wasn't going to convert them, because honestly, for me, circle back. I didn't circle back. And that's that's not my superpower. So I would just struggle in that arena if I tried to use that as my main lead gen source. After I did open houses at sphere for a while, I realized how much I enjoy working with sphere, and then I got it became a natural thing of I'm getting more and more business and referrals from my sphere. They know me. They trust me. They know I'm going to do the right thing. They know they're going to have a good experience. And now I'm, I mean, other than a signed call here, something like that. I mean, of course, leads can come from different areas, but I'm, I'm pretty much referral based only from my sphere, right? And people that they know, and even referrals that are coming from agents from out of town. Normally, they're still referring me from my sphere. They're like my cousin works in Jackson, or is in Jacksonville, and she knows you, and said to call you. So even agent referrals are still coming from sphere. And so over a period of time, as I started realizing that and saying, Okay, this this is working, and this feels good to me, like I get to help people I know through this really big transaction and make a difference in their life. And I have this wonderful ability to be in their family for this period of time, right? And so it brought me a lot of personal joy and a lot of personal purpose, and then it also, it just kind of went into itself. So now, what am I doing now? Of, I mean, I do a lot

Tracy Hayes  38:51  
of 10 Xing. You're 10x ing, your circle of influence right now. What are you doing now? Or, what have, how has your, how has your contact with your circle of influence evolved in the last eight years as because obviously you've had a lot of success with

Virginia Toussaint  39:04  
it. Yeah, well, I'm kind of the unagent. I do life with people, and I genuinely love people. So if I see you, and I've been seeing you in a while. How are you doing? How's your family? All of those types of things I'm sending out, like past customers, certain members of my sphere, sending out mailers every month. So what can I do to add value? And I don't just send a mailer that's like, who do you know that wants to buy, sell or invest in real estate. It's, hey, here's a checklist to do in your house. Here's, here's how to preserve your house. Here's one for fall. Here's one for spring. That I curated handwrite my I mean, it's, it's tight, but, you know, I'm doing that, I and I give them a monthly email that talks about fun things to do in the. Community each month, and I'm personally pulling all of those things. I'm not leaving it up to a third party source to give something

Tracy Hayes  40:06  
drives me nuts.

Virginia Toussaint  40:08  
Yeah, it has to be personal. And then from that point, I mean, I think I'm always on a quest of because I'm not the consistent I'm gonna at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, that's that's never going to be me. I'm not wired that way of I'm going to time block two hours tomorrow morning to call 30 people, and then I'm going, I just, I call the people that I can. Of course, I have a database, but I call the people I can. I try to make every moment genuine. I try to give value through auto flow, so that they know, they know, like, this is the value of my house. This is what's going on in in the neighborhood. I do it through email. I do it through snail mail so that even if they're not checking one, they're getting another.

Tracy Hayes  40:53  
What would you say? Because I think a lot of agents start and I know, well, I can. George over Keller Williams said when I had him on the show he regrets not actually tapping into his circle of influence earlier in his career. What would you say to someone who's a little hesitant of tapping into it, knowing what you know now and how much that has just changed your life?

Virginia Toussaint  41:16  
Yeah, well, I don't think it's for everyone, I do still think, I think you should try everything once and see where that gets you, and see where, see where your super power lies, right? But I think for some people, it's not a good fit. I hear some agents say, I don't, I don't like working with my sphere, because it creates animosity, and it creates all of those things, and maybe that that's not a good fit for them, and maybe they are wired to get up and cold call expires and will be very successful. Yeah. So I think the first question is, is it a fear that you need to overcome, or is it your gut? I would say, Holy Spirit telling you this is not, this is not the lane that I should be in. So I don't hold back because you're afraid of something. But if you feel like that's not your good fit, just find your good fit. What is your lead gen source? And that that might not be sphere, and it

Tracy Hayes  42:21  
might be, I agree it may not be for everyone, but I think people are putting some things out there that aren't there, you know, like you said, animosity, and I know I live in a neighborhood, like a lot of the top agents that live in St John's County, especially, you know, the ones I've been doing it for 1015, years have lived in St John's Golf and Country Club at one time or another. Club at one time or another. Oh, I used to live there. Yeah, yeah. So where they're like, Oh, well, there's so many agents in the neighborhood. Well, that neighborhood is turned over. There is a core group of people who you end up knowing because you've been there as long as they have. But for majority of those 799 homeowners in that community, a good bit of them have overturned and they don't know anyone else and the agent they dealt with when they bought the house. Who knows if they're still in the business, or if they're not doing their follow up with them, or whatever to you'll reach out, because it's like, oh well, they probably know another agent, so I'm not going to reach out to them, or, or, you know, any or farm that neighborhood, right? Because, oh, there's a bunch of agents that live in that neighborhood, so I'm not going to farm that neighborhood type of thing, even though you live in that neighborhood. But I think we, we often think, and we're all guilty of it, including myself, we often think, well, you know, do they like me? Right? It's like dating. Does she like me? Does he like me? You know, you know, type of thing goes on in reality, just reaching out to them on a regular basis and providing value, you said that word, which we get into the value of the real estate agent here in a minute. But providing value, I mean, you you might get a call from someone you did not expect. Yeah. Now, how you do it is different. I think, you know, there's different people who can walk into a room and they're, you know, they just, they glow, and everyone connects with them, and they're just the life of the party type of person, where there's others who, you know, they're, they're just, they're not, that's not the how they work, yeah, but doesn't mean they can't let their sphere know that they're doing real estate. Yeah, and get something out of it. Some people, I think, are going to obviously leverage it for more because the warm gift of gab person, someone who can, you know, could talk to anyone walk into a neighborhood party and just start, hey, what's going on? Yeah, they're probably going to get more business than the guy who's just standing over by the keg having a few drinks type of thing. But I So, but you mentioned something early. You want to say

Virginia Toussaint  44:46  
something? Yeah, I think, I think an example of this is, I mean, there are people you think of real estate as a very extroverted career, right? And but there are people who are not ex. Reverted that do very well in real estate, because they get on a system of their their cold calling expireds, or they are doing FSBOs, or they're doing something that they're very methodical and and that is, I keep saying, superpower, but that's what it is like. That's their strength. And so that person, it may burn them completely out to work with sphere, to have to be on all the time to have whereas a true extrovert, which I'm very extroverted, right? So I get all of my energy from people. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm so excited

Tracy Hayes  45:33  
to see you're the type to have the past client party or something like that. I need to do better with that. Yeah, there's agents that do that where there are other agents who, you know, they're still reaching out to their circle, but just their their knowledge and presence, people have a respect for them from a professional standpoint. Others do well, you know, being more the social butterfly,

Virginia Toussaint  45:56  
yeah, type person, for sure, yeah. And so if it may not, I guess that's what I mean. Like, if it's build a career that you love, like, that's one of the beautiful things about real estate is I love people. I love doing life with people. I love being there in those moments. Fear is a great fit for me, right? If somebody's like, I like to come home and close my door and have peace and not have to deal with things, like people all day and all night, and that kind of drains me. Then there's a different lead gen source that would work for them. So I think it really has a lot to do with how, well, how self aware are you? What is your emotional intelligence level to know who you are, what you bring to a room, your social awareness of those things around you. And again, if you don't know, then learn, like, get the knowledge on that. Like, those are the missing pieces in there. Of it's going to be very some

Tracy Hayes  46:51  
of your friends can tell you a lot of reasons why they like you. Yeah, have a conversation with you and say, you know, this is where I'm trying to find what I need. You know, we're going back to that and we're going to park What do I mean? What is it that that that you like the most about me and what I do? Or, you know, could be your integrity, it could be your faith. Or, you know, there's 1000s of things of why people you know bond to each other, usually like minds. That's one of the things you said something earlier, and it clicked with me. It is because it's often talked about in when I was telling you I was telling you I was getting prepared for, you know, the podcast, they're like, what's your avatar, right? Who's this target market that you're after? You got to really pin it down. Like, well, I'm, I'm focusing on 30 to 40 year old females that are, you know, would have been in real estate for three years, or something, whatever, you know, they kind of in reality. In your case is, I think, a perfect example your circle of influence. I'm sure you have people from all economic scales in there, every walk of life that you can imagine in that scale. And if you are just pinning it down, like, Well, I really like first time home buyers? Well, you're, I think you're limiting yourself. Yeah, I think 36% of the home sold last year, if I saw the statistic, yes, I'm one of the nor lawsuit guys are flashing things. We're first time home buyers, right? So a third of the market. So what are you doing with the other two thirds? Why? You know, because if I just went to my sphere and said, Hey guys, I'm a first time home buyer specialist. I'm well, does that mean the guy who sold four homes in 60 years old that I officiate with might look at me and say, well, he likes dealing with first time home buyers, the young guys. He wouldn't want to work with me. I'm just looking to downsize and buy a condo. Right? Right? You know, to let them know that you that circle of influence. You handle it all. I mean, you, you, you know, I love first time home buyers. I love helping people, you know, I think when they ask that question, I think it's just a textbook, yeah, that they've read or something, and then they have to ask that question, what's your avatar? My avatar is, people buy in homes, right? Yeah, pretty much every human across the world right now. I don't want to chase people all the way over to Gainesville, and should be showing houses over in Gainesville, but you might do that for your first house sale. Who knows, you get going and you're busy enough to, I mean, obviously we'd love to, I'd love to just, you know, if every every deal, or, you know, my wife, and every deal she did was, you know, in the on long 210 Yeah, yeah, great, yeah. Then she's 10 minutes from home all the time. So I always thought that was a silly question. All right, so we talked about pre show, and I told you, brace first, because I think this is so important right now to and I think most agents have undersold themselves. We've gone through a period of time super low interest rates for what 1415, years, until they started going up. So, you know, we didn't really have to work as hard, in the sense of, I think right now, the joke in the mortgage side of the business is. Every deal, for the most part, is a puzzle. And we're having, we're having to work really hard just, you know, getting getting deals put together, what will fit in, because they're trying to find someone's maximum buying power to help you out, finding them the right home. And then, from the agent side, a lot of lot of your deals, you know, these cash buyers flaking out. You know, they're, they're still bouncing around. They're not, it's not a slam Oh, I got a cash buyer. Slam Dunk. No, it ain't that. You know, get a backup offer. I've got numerous stories on that myself. But the value that we that the human and the agent brings, obviously, you're building relationships. You've built relationships with your eight years. You know, in the real estate industry, you realize that that's, that's your superpower, give us a situation, a story that we could cut out here of a, you know, one of these deals that went crazy. And if it wasn't for your experience and your knowledge, or the able to get the knowledge to get that deal of closing and get those people in the home they they desired.

Virginia Toussaint  51:03  
Yeah, and I'll say, if I back up a second, I don't think my super power is people like, oh, people love me. That I think I love people, but I think the superpower is doing your job with excellence. Because at the end of the day, if you're not, if you're not wowing them with their experience and everything else, why are they referring you to your like? There's only so much like and love in the world, right? If you're going to give me a horrible real estate estate transaction, I might love you. We might go to dinner on Friday, but I'm not necessarily using you as an agent. So I think the superpower, if like I hope that my superpower, is that I treat every deal personally and with excellence, and I do my best to wow a person and give them the most seamless process they could possibly have.

Tracy Hayes  51:53  
If you had no marketing budget, couldn't buy leads or anything, the only only marketing you have is the person you're working with right in front of you, and then telling someone else, yeah, and if you and you're right, a lot of the top agents talking about and then obviously we're accenting it, you know, here with you and your your exchange, that 3040, days, or whatever you're spending with them to make sure that when they leave that closing table, you're wowing them because you you got the deal. You are, you got, you're, you're, you've got the they asked you to help them out, buying or selling, and then you're under contracts, and now you're married to each other to get this thing closed. And you have 30 to 40 days, and a lot of it, it's not actually money out of your pocket. It's not, did you wine and dine them during that 30 or 40 days, the things that you do and the value you bring,

Virginia Toussaint  52:41  
yeah, and I'm not, I didn't even have a marketing budget until a couple of years ago, because everything really was just, I'm focused on process, right? Like, I'm a people person, but I'm, like, it would drive me crazy any stone left unturned not to give the best process possible. And that's, that's how I'm wired, so that very much, is how I grew my business. And I would say, Gosh, what was the question?

Tracy Hayes  53:09  
Well, we're going back to tell give us a story, because we want, we're talking about the NAR law said, I really want to get a clip of you in anyone listening? Yes, the value of a real estate agent. And, you know, a real situation that you have, you don't have to mention names, but a situation that that went off the tracks, and it's because of your experience and the value you bring into it, you were able to bring it back. Because, I mean, how many of these people, they find the home they they want? They're showing the kids, they're picking out the bedrooms. They're there. They are, as I had one person, George Guerrera, from my down in Miami, with R, E, S, F, really, that. He's the broker owner there himself. He told you, when they they're putting their head down during this whole process, and they're dreaming about swimming in that pool or sitting out, you know, being in that home, and when stuff goes off the tracks, it's really could be devastating. Yeah, yeah.

Virginia Toussaint  54:01  
So I'll give you two answers, because I think the answer that I'm going that I want to share, is probably not specifically the answer that you you necessary.

Tracy Hayes  54:14  
What is the value in Virginia? That's what I want. That's my question. It's like an interview question, you know, they say, Oh yeah, I'm really valuable. I'm really good. Okay, well, tell me when you were really good. Tell me about that.

Virginia Toussaint  54:27  
Yeah, the the value of of me or a good real estate agent, a great real estate agent, is the proactivity involved to not have those, oh my gosh, this, this thing is blowing up. Situation I have, of course, there are things that are going to happen, but my conversion rate and my closing rate is extremely high when I hear people in the industry say, Oh. Just plan on a certain number to fall through. That's not acceptable to me, because that is a person's life, and that's time and energy.

Tracy Hayes  55:09  
Someone's getting devastated, the buyer, seller, someone in there. Yeah, right. It's,

Virginia Toussaint  55:12  
it's not as simple. Okay, well, you know X percentage is going to fall through, so it starts from the very beginning. So being a proactive agent, when, when I bring someone in, though, if we're talking about the buyers, are such a big thing with NAR right now. So if I'm bringing if I have somebody that says I'm interested in buying a house, right, or I've considered it, my first thing is, hey, do you have a mortgage pre approval? It's not that. It's come into the office. Let's sit down. Let's talk about this. What are your concerns? Do you have concerns with credit Do you have concerns with what you can afford? Do you have concerns with the process itself? Let's start with where you stand, right? What are your concerns? And that varies. That's going to be very specific to the individual. So one person might have a 580 credit score, and they're trying to figure out, what do I need to do? And another person might have an 800 credit score, make $500,000 a year, and they're going to have no problem qualifying, so starting with where they are and working through those. And fortunately, I have a banking background, so I say, if you have a concern with credit, bring in your credit report. I can't pull it for you, but we will go through it. I'm going to set you up on a plan so that you're ready to buy in this amount of time. What's your time frame or you want to lease? Do you have to be out of where you are by a certain point of time? And I'm not trying to push them into, oh, doing a buyer's consultation today. Let me try to get them to buy a house today. It's okay. If your goal is you're moving in December, I'm thankful. I'm going to have a customer in December. I'll have a closing then, right? So let's go through everything you're going to know by the time you leave. If you have any credit concerns, what is your specific plan to get your credit to where it needs to be so that you qualify for a mortgage? If down payment is a concern, I'm going to get you with the specific lender that's going to get you the very best down payment program. I'm also going to set up the strategy in advance of, okay, not every home is going to have a seller attached to it that wants to pay your closing costs. So we need to know in advance. I'm telling you in advance that we're going to have to be really creative in this process. Know that up front, if it's I don't know what I'm going to qualify for, or what kind of house can I buy if I only want to pay X amount of dollars a month, and really exploring that and saying, Okay, this is really like, I'm setting up the search on the MLS in front of them. This is their criteria that you have. These are the areas of towns that you want to be in. This is the price range. Does the houses that are returning here? Does this match what you want? And if it's a no, we're we're readjusting at that moment in time and saying, Okay, what's your give and take until we get to by the time they leave, I don't want stones unturned, right? They might have takeaways, they might have homework, but they're set up to buy a house in the timeframe they're they're set up to buy that house in and from there, it's okay. I'm waiting for their timeframe. I've given them all of the instructions, whether it's you have very little to do, or you've got a whole lot of things to do. I've emailed you the specific plan you're getting the email drip of these are the houses that meet my precise criteria. I'm very big about setting up the perfect query and filters on the MLS. It's so detailed.

Tracy Hayes  58:31  
Let me ask you this, because someone watching this may say, Well, you should be doing that absolutely, but you should, there's no doubt. But you and I know majority of the agents don't right. Only 25% of the agents nationally sold six homes or more. So there's a huge percentage that are not doing and initially, if someone ran into you in the elevator out here and you gave them the 92nd or whatever. It's 930, seconds, whatever the elevators pitch time is, of what you do in or you know why they should work with you, and you say, hey, well, I'm gonna have a next we're gonna sit down. We're gonna have an excess. Initially, they don't see the value in that, right? They but after they sit down and actually talk with you and go, Oh, wow. You know, I have a client right now. I'm, you know, again, foreshadowing. Okay, this is going to happen. Then this is going to happen. You need to be prepared for this. Here's how insurance first time homebuyer, here's how insurance is going to work. You know, who do you have your auto with? Now, start with them, right? And how insurance works in Florida, and passing that knowledge on. But initially, right? That person would say, Well, I want to work with her. So I guess I got to sit down with her. But after this initial consultation, which may, may take, you know, go on, but the initial consultation, what it what, how? Because I know it's positive, the person you're working. With what is the reaction back to you have? Because I imagine you gain even they already feel you're credible, but now you're taking another step, and the credibility step with them, yeah, yeah. Well,

Virginia Toussaint  1:00:12  
I'm referral based only, so a lot of my buyers consultations and my listing consultations, I get a call and somebody says, such and such said, I need to call you, and I need to do whatever you say, and I'm gonna come in, and when can you meet with me? That's the greatest compliment, and that's such a wonderful compliment. And it happens over time. That didn't happen day one in real estate, but over time, if you truly serve and do it for them individually, not for like, oh, I have this widespread plan that this person sitting in front of me, how do I give them the best experience possible? What are their needs? How do I proactively solve for them? How do I give them a seamless process? Then that's going to sell itself, and they're going to say to their friend who then wants to buy. Because everyone, I don't, I think everyone has when they're getting ready to buy, they have a problem. It might be, I don't know what it might be, as simple as, I don't know what house I want to buy. I know the neighborhood, I know the price point, I know how am I going to figure out what's the right house? Or it might be my credit is tanked and, oh, sorry, my credit is tanked, and I need to figure this out. But everyone has a need, and it might

Tracy Hayes  1:01:24  
just navigating the process, yeah,

Virginia Toussaint  1:01:26  
and it's different for every person of what they feel their need is, but that's in real estate. That's called tapping into their motivation, right? And I don't like looking at it as their motivation. It's too salesy for me, but it's what is your need, and we're going to solve for that, right? And if it's just some people, it's just like, hey, I'm going to be, I'm going to be buying a house, and I don't have much time, and they might be a very successful executive, and they're they don't have the time to like they want a seamless process. They want it to be efficient.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:01  
I'm only going to be here for a year or two, or I might be here for 20 years, right? All of

Virginia Toussaint  1:02:04  
those things. Then, okay, well, let's sit down and talk. To make this the most efficient process. Let's set up that plan so I'm not setting up. I'm not doing the same buyer's consultation for every single person, nor am I doing the same listing consultation for every single person. If you've bought and sold multiple houses, you don't need me to walk you through insurance. You get a packet of information where you have that, and I make sure we, at a high level, go through it, but I tap into what it is that you need and set up that plan. And

Tracy Hayes  1:02:33  
I was watching this agent did this role play, you know, joking, obviously after Friday's announcement of the proposed NAR and obviously, everything's going to devastate buyer's agents. And he made it. He made a he did a role play between a buyer and them, just using an attorney. And he did the, you know, knowing what to offer, knowing the inspection, how to work, how to obviously, you know, I'm sure you have a list of preferred people you work with that you've worked with through numerous transactions make you look good, because that's what their their goal is. But obviously, serve just like you're serving and so forth. But the importance of the agent coming in and bringing that knowledge in, would you agree? I think right now, when you, when you read some of these headlines on the no, they're, it's really, actually sad. I have to say it's kind of sad, because you have people who have no idea what they're talking about. You know, they're, they're working at some news agency, making three, four or 500 maybe a million dollars a year as a whatever position or more. And a lot of times they just walk through and they have a total third person handling with that real estate agent that handles their assistant right, handling me, all that paperwork and that needs to be in things that need to be go on in the inspections and sort of thing where you and I are dealing on the ground with real people who have real money, who may be working paycheck to paycheck, or trying to buy their first home, or even their third or fourth home, and we know that they've your life has its things, kids, and all these things that go on in our lives, and the value that that the agent brings to make because we know every transaction different, every house is different. The you know, there's only that one house that's sitting on that golf course with that pool view, or whatever it is. There's only one like it, and and they set their dreams on it, and they're putting a lot of other hard earned money is focused on their home and the value of the agent to make all of this mud come together and mold it into a nice statue. Yeah, right, yeah. I didn't ask a question. But my question is this, when the seeing, seeing what's seeing of these little headlines, and a lot of it's clickbait, it's social media. People are just trying to get people to click, but there are some fear mongering people out there who love. Of just stirring it up. I mean, I had some comments yesterday on one of the posts from somebody was saying something, and they're in there. They're making comments. But how important you think it is going to be because of this bringing to the headlines that we need to do more of like what we're doing and expressing and letting people know this is the value of a real estate agent, because there's a lot of stuff, like an iceberg under the water that they don't see, that we're doing?

Virginia Toussaint  1:05:25  
Yeah? Well, I think that with these changes, first of all, we don't even know exactly how everything's going to play out, right? Like we have certain criteria that we know is going to happen. We don't know what all of the buyers are going to do. We don't know what all of the sellers if they're even paying attention, if they're even paying attention, we don't know what any of all of the agents are going to do, what every brokerage is going to do. So a lot of it is just conjecture at this point. So a lot of it tune out the noise. Yes, right. That's number one. But in this new era of real estate the most important thing, going back to every single time, are you? Are you the expert in your field, if not become one? And that takes time, that takes effort, that takes training,

Tracy Hayes  1:06:10  
that when you say field, explain what you mean, are you like be an expert in St John's County or st August? Or when you say field, what in as a real estate agent? Because we're just talking about the avatar, right? We we want first time homebuyers, and we want the retirees as well, and everyone in between. But when you say, be an expert in your field, what? How would you describe that to someone being

Virginia Toussaint  1:06:34  
an expert in whatever you choose to specialize in? If that's a very broad everything and every

Tracy Hayes  1:06:40  
veterans, or, you know, our military like thing that knows a lot of people specialize obviously, or like to focus on that group.

Virginia Toussaint  1:06:46  
Yeah. So, I mean, it's a step by step process, so obviously you've got to figure out what that is, but whatever it is that you choose to do, you better be the expert in that field, because you, you have got to show your value, right? I personally, I'm not afraid of this if, as soon as all of this came out, like the agents in my very small boutique brokerage, the first thing that I said is, from from today, a buyer's brokerage agreement is required if you're with this brokerage, and that's not to put unnecessary rules, but that's so that we're not behind the eight ball come July, like you're going to be an expert in this by the time we get to July, it's going to feel weird at first, but you're going to learn how to do this, and we're going to walk through this. And so if you choose to be the general agent residential Northeast Florida, then in whatever you do, be the expert. If you're like, I'm only doing military households in nakati, then be that expert. It's up to you what you choose to focus on. But if gone, I think that our industry, we a lot of people, have talked about this, the requirements to get into it, not necessarily the highest of requirements. You can go take a course, pass the state test, and even if you've never sold or bought a home, you can go help somebody do that. That doesn't make you an expert. That doesn't make you a great real estate agent. I feel that buyers will be more hesitant to sign with that agent going forward, because it becomes more of what's the process, the thought process of sellers now so sellers, everybody says, oh, newer agents, a lot of times focus on buyers. That's because, in the past, buyers didn't see even though they were paying for the representation in the purchase price of the house, they didn't necessarily see or feel that, oh, this is coming out of my pocket. Now they're going to see this might be a direct pull from my pocket. Are you the best agent for me? And why should I do this? And when you are an expert, and I'll give, I'll give an example of a recent transaction, and this was a first time home buyer. It was a lower value townhouse, less than $200,000 almost impossible to find in this

Tracy Hayes  1:09:00  
market, 1000 offers.

Virginia Toussaint  1:09:03  
And I was like, and they wanted everything lined up. It was not the easiest of fines, right? But when we found first, I helped to curate that. How do we find this house? And then once we did in the transaction. He had a brand new HVAC system installed. He had a brand new hot water heater installed, the HOA pays for the roof. He's within his budget, which was a very small budget per month. He got less than the purchase price with the sales agreement. And he got some closing costs paid if an average buyer out there, think is they can go navigate themselves through that. Go for it. Go for

Tracy Hayes  1:09:45  
it. I sat through and I don't want to, you know, go on. I mean, I won't watch my wife this weekend on a very desirable home in St John's golf have multiple offers on it. And, you know, every. Buyer was different, coming with one straight with cash, but the but the buyers truly weren't. There was the daughters who were showing the home, and they were like, Okay, let's make an offer. You had other people who were in other areas, like nakati, wanting to get out of nakati, yep, for whatever reason, but they had to sell their home to do it and so, and then you had another one was the current owner is a veteran, and they, you know, basically half the value of the home is in a loan. They have a lot of equity. Is at two and a half percent. And there was a couple people who actually had the ability to put down almost $400,000 to get down to the loan amount, and then try to assume that. So we had all these things going on in in the ability to take all that and then translate it to your buyer and say, here's the best off, here, here's your here's your offers. Here are the possible pitfalls, because it goes beyond the offer. Am I right? People will flake out just because they're a cash buyer doesn't mean they might not even make earnest money three days later, which I had recently happened, and luckily, my buyer, who needs financing, was the backup offer, yeah? So we got, we got it back, and they were so set on this one. Was like, Oh, this is perfect, yeah. And then the cash buyer slips in three days, 72 hours later, cash buyers out. They don't even make the earnest money. Yeah, you know. But you know how important the agent in be engaged with the other agent right in negotiating this? And you know, this is what we got, and this is why we're going this way. Can you match this other offer type of thing, you know, to be the backup. And I think, I think one of the things is probably not happening a lot on what you guys do is ask to be the backup offer. Because not all these and it's not because they're getting out because of the inspection, right? It's, it's like some of these people aren't even really looking at the house, because there's such a demand, they're going to put an offer on a house they think they like, and then they sit on it for a couple days and they go, Oh, no, we don't like it. Yeah,

Virginia Toussaint  1:11:58  
yeah, yeah. And how do you become the first offer, not the backup offer? Yeah, that's when the market we've got a slow market right now. Not slow. We have a normal market. I take that, but we have a normal market right now. It takes a inventory is rising a little bit, right? If we ever get back to a market that's close to a seller's market, like we've seen the amount of expertise, like, it's one thing to Oh, to say, I want this house and I want the best deal possible. It's, it's a whole other strategy to say there's 50 people that want this one house, and it's got to be mine. And if, if you're an agent that can do that, and that's because you're strategic, you're analytical, you are first communicator. That could happen. You're a communicator. You're all of these things. There's value in that, that you can use me as a real estate agent and get the house you want, or you can settle for the house down the street that you're not going to be happy in and move from in two years. So that's when I say the agents, I think in this new era, the cream is going to rise to the top. Yes, the agents that are in this for because they truly have a passion for this field, for doing the right thing, for making sure that customers get what they want at the end of the day, and they can navigate through all that and follow through on that promise that is going to be indispensable, just like it always has been, the ones that have gotten by with I'll do a deal here. I'll do a deal there. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'll get lucky and I'll stumble onto this. It's probably not going to work for them. So I think people in the in the real estate industry, they just need to make the decision, are you in or is this season out for you? Because it's going to be a little bit more hard. But the people who are in, they're going to do really well, and what's going to happen is, if it this becomes more challenging, we don't know what's going to happen, but we can kind of project there's some changes coming. What we'll see, in my opinion, is that agents that have just kind of been floating along, they'll fall out of the real estate industry, and they'll go find a career that

Tracy Hayes  1:14:10  
works change or foreshadowing of there's going to be change, and they're going to use that as the excuse of getting out. I mean, we all done that somewhere in our life. I don't want, I don't want to do with the change, so I'm going to go do something else which is

Virginia Toussaint  1:14:22  
legitimate. Yeah, yeah, it's legitimate. If it's not, if it's not, for somebody go find the next thing to do. The people that stay there will be more deals for them, more transactions for them, because there's going to be less agents, and

Tracy Hayes  1:14:37  
the number of sales is not going to change, right? You know, the only is, unless we didn't have any houses to sell. But I think would you agree inventory is going to be low for a while. The demand for housing nationally is out of control. We're in Florida, which is,

Virginia Toussaint  1:14:51  
I mean, double the lottery,

Tracy Hayes  1:14:55  
but I think you did so well today, explaining a lot. Of different things, but just really narrowing it down. I mean, your passion for the, as you said, the process, that was the word use process. And I had Caitlin Doherty on the other day, and she was, you know, she likes, actually, the longer transaction. She likes working with people. And when you take that mindset and know that, you know, hey, I'm working with these people, whether you're working for six months or, as you know, I'm sure you've had a lot of people say, call you and say, Hey, I'd really I want to make an offer on this house. My friend told me you're the best agent. Can you make an offer on that house? And you sold that house in 30 days later, the transactions over. But when you're focused on the process, and like you said earlier, wowing them, so at the end of the transaction, they're like, Well, I didn't even expect that the winning combination, if you talk about, be an expert in your field, be an expert in that in that process. Now, the word process would you, you agree, is broad in this case, before, I'm sure you do a lot of foreshadowing your customers, we're going to do this home inspection. If this comes back or this, you know, hey, the hot water heater may be changed out. This is how we're going to handle it. You know, you're talking with the seller's agent. You know, how much toleration are they going to have to fix some of these things? You know, you're, you're smoothing the path. You're three steps ahead, like in a chess game. You want to be three steps ahead, absolutely. But by showing your value. You're foreshadowing. Hey, this could happen. Just be prepared. But I'm on it. I'm working I'm already working on it, in case it does and we're and when, so if it we get that call, we already know what to do. Yeah, and that that right there. If there's anything someone wants to be like you said, be a expert in their field, would you agree that's kind of like the that would be like the foundation, yeah, definitely, to bring Is there anything else you want to add? Did we not talk

Virginia Toussaint  1:16:45  
about, I don't know. I don't even this has been a great

Tracy Hayes  1:16:49  
conversation. We've been going for an hour 18 minutes. Yeah, but there's a huge amount of content. There's gonna be a lot of great reels here, because what came across is you and your customers are going to see that the other agents are going to see that. May even hopefully give you a call and say, Hey, what's going on at Tucson group, right? What are you guys doing over there? And hopefully want to, you know, pick your brain, that sort of thing, if not, you know, bond with you and in the mold what you've got going on. The only other question I had for you from this, we talked a little bit about marketing, and you know, you're working your warm circle. What is your mindset? Because everywhere you guys go, trainings all over the place, social media. Social media got to do video, got to do video. Got to do video. What? What are you What are you doing in that area? Do you feel it's important? Not important? Is important for you because of the way you are doing your relationship building. But obviously new agents need to get in, in leverage social media to get known. What is your attitude towards it?

Virginia Toussaint  1:17:51  
My attitude with that is the same with everything else. It depends on the person I'm I'm not. I have social media profiles. I'm not as active as I could be on them, but for me, I'd rather be having genuine conversations. And it it. For me, it gets to a point there's a certain aspect of social media where it becomes like me, me, me, me, me. That kind of cringes me out, right? Because I like for things to be you, you, you. And then when it's like, oh, this was, I sold 100,000 homes this year. It's needed. It's necessary. I think some people float better in that space. And it comes back down to, what is your superpower? Like? What is it that you're going to it can't be the same across the board. If every single we

Tracy Hayes  1:18:45  
title this, what is your superpower? Should we title this? Sure, yeah, we'll title this podcast. What is your Yeah, what is your superpower? I think that should be great title. Okay, go ahead.

Virginia Toussaint  1:18:56  
So if social media is your superpower, then leverage that 10x and if it is not, but you feel it's necessary, be okay with I put out a few posts a month, and I get something out there, and I'm intentional with it. And if you're just like, I only, I only cater to my expireds, and that's all I do. And you're winning at that. Go win at that, but find your lane.

Tracy Hayes  1:19:26  
No, I think you get you hit on something the stress so Sophia Gordon, she's a little bit younger than you and I. She's She is 20, yes, but she feels Instagram's her thing, and that's how she stays top of mind. Local has already, you know, has friends, so she stays top of mind, because that's where her audience is. And we go back to that avatar. Her avatar is her circle. And so she feels, obviously, Instagram is getting to a lot of them, and that's. She stays top of mind. Your social media avatar may be different. Thing on your the your circle. What is your circle made up of? Right? You know, I'm sure that we have some people that are you know, that you know are 20 years old. You know people that are 80 years old. But really, if we narrow down, what is the bread and butter of your circle, it's probably a little bit closer to somewhere your age, give or take, and that, you know, socio economic makeup, right, like mines and get together, and that, you know, what is the social media platform they're on, or do they like the email? Do they like to say, Hey, this is going on in St Augustine this weekend. You should go down there that, you know that may be their thing. And then 10x that, find out what that group likes, and 10 exit, because that's your bread and butter. Yeah, yeah. I love it absolutely. 100% anything you want to add, I don't think so. I appreciate you coming on. It was a great show. Lot of information. Anyone listening this, I mean, to really get, not only to go as our theme this week is the NAR lawsuit, the value of an agent. You really showed it today on the show.

Virginia Toussaint  1:21:01  
Thank you so much for having me on here. Thank you.

Podcast Intro  1:21:03  
Great. This may be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here. To connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com

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