Brook Hewitt & Tammy Baranowski: JAX Listing Sisters

Tracy Hayes  1:05  
come back to the real estate excellence podcast with your host. Tracy Hayes, today I have another team in the house. The difference here is they are not married to each other. They appear to be best friends, but the foundation of their relationship is they are sisters. They have named their team Jack's listing sisters accordingly. Today, we will dig deep into what makes this sister team work and how they consistently are top producers. Let's welcome the jack's listing Sisters of Brooke Hewitt and Tammy Baranowski to the show. Yeah. Thank you, ladies. I'm glad to finally get you guys scheduled up and on. I know you had some personal things going and hopefully the smoke is cleared on those things. If you guys want to talk about it, you're welcome to share that with everyone. But as I start off every show, tell us a little about where are you from. We're from here. We're from Northeast Florida. So thank you also for having us both on the show and exactly so we're from Northeast Florida. Lived here most of our lives, both of us. Brooke had a few years in Georgia, her in her late teens, and I went with my husband to St Louis for a few years well, and I had a couple years in Georgia. But for you know, 40 years on average, if you average, been here in Northeast Florida. Grew up around Clay County. Brooke still lives in Clay County and Fleming Island. I live in the Oak Leaf Area, Middleburg, high did I see that correctly on your LinkedIn? I think it was tammy's LinkedIn you had. Is that correct? Yeah, Middleburg High School, and then two degrees from University of North Florida, bachelor's and master's in nutrition science. Because I was a dietitian in a previous life, also was a massage therapist in a previous life. So it's there. So I've done a lot of nurturing, people, centric service things in my careers and background, and so real estate was a nice transition there. Okay, we don't want to tell the whole story up from the first couple of minutes, though.

Tracy Hayes  2:51  
Brooke Tell me a little bit. Yo, and then Tammy chime in. You know, having grown up in the area, I mean, I think there's a lot of agents, or a lot of people that move here that have become agents and become successful. But one of the hesitances of a lot of people is they didn't grow up here. You guys did. How are you guys taking advantage of those type of relationships, the fact that you've spent most of your life in in the area?

Brooke Hewitt  3:15  
Well, we we just, I think we have an advantage that we know each of the areas very well having here our whole lives. You know, we're very well connected with people within the community, because we've been here our whole lives, mostly anyway. And I just think that advantage for folks that lives Okay,

Tammy Baranowski  3:33  
for sure, I would agree. And I would just say too, you know, when we're when we're traveling around with people I know, last year in particular, relocation was a big part of my business. A lot of people are moving to Florida for great reasons. I mean, I certainly love it here, weather, just everything. So particularly when they didn't know much about the area, we were able to tell deep historical stories and anecdotal stories. Hey, this, you know, we were growing up, this was a dirt road, or this wasn't even here. Middleburg didn't even have a Walmart and so on and so forth. Or, you know, this family owned all this land before it was Oakley, for whatever it is, right? Those are cool tidbits.

Tracy Hayes  4:10  
I think people do like to know that little bit of history. They may not ask it up front, because they don't. May not know, you know, that type of thing. I always tell the story about green Cove springs from somebody that's lived there for, I don't know, 30 some years. And they, you know, people don't realize green Cove has had a couple Hayes post World War Two. But even if you go back before Flagler built the railroad, that's where steam ship stop was in green Cove springs and and, you know, and it's little, and people don't know that little bit of history about it, as we're on the subject, are kind of going off tangent. But I think this is important to some of the things that I like to get across on the podcast, is the between lifestyle always like, I think when people move here and, you know, buy in particular communities because of lifestyle has a lot of influence in it, but strength that you guys have is being local, that the someone who's wasn't born here, even you guys. Is in your in your marketing and so forth. Are there things that you do to kind of highlight the area? Are you guys doing social media, videos and so forth to say, Hey, this is, well, there's a great restaurant. Or, Hey, did you know there's six marinas here and on this side of the river to jump into the, you know, St John's River? Do you guys

Tammy Baranowski  5:16  
do stuff like that? That is actually one of our goals for this year is to because we just recently kind of teamed up and became a team to get all that out there as a team, and we haven't done that yet, is one of our goals this year, right, not on social media or out there for the public, but on our individual interactions. You know, just a story of yesterday, we had somebody find us on social media, relocating here from Canada. And you know, when you're scrolling through the 8000 agents in Northeast Florida, and they can all start to look the same, you know, we they said that we stood out to them. You know, obviously they are going to look up your numbers and things like that, if they can. But they could just tell, you know, from the from the areas that we were selling in the price points. But also, when we met with them, we were like, Hey, we're not just here to help you find a house, we're here. They were saying, where should we stay? We don't want to stay at a chain hotel. We want to eat at the foodie places. We want to check out all the golf courses. So we got them a list of all the best golf courses. We reached out to friends and stuff.

Tracy Hayes  6:17  
They tell you which social media they was a Facebook, Instagram, what are you guys? Where they came across

Brooke Hewitt  6:22  
you? It was Google.

Tammy Baranowski  6:24  
That's on Google. So agents, if you're not working on your

Tracy Hayes  6:28  
there's no doubt 100% and then I, and I'm Google, can be really hard to change the, you know, the business address and so forth. They want to verify, and then they want to send you a postcard, and it's like, okay, where's that postcard gonna go? Who's gonna get it? And they're just gonna see this little gonna see this little, yeah, it's Google, whatever, throw it in the garbage. So I'm having a little challenge with that, with my moves recently, but it is, I think, for an agent and especially as a team and what you guys are producing, because the Google search is so important. And then right behind it is gonna be YouTube, which, you know, the whole the reels and obviously this full length video, this the whole will be, you know, someone should be able to Google. It should pop up for you guys as well to direct them to it. But people from a distance are looking and looking for, you know, who are they going to

Brooke Hewitt  7:14  
meet, right? You know, who are they going to that's what they said. They they read our reviews, and they just spoke to them. So that's why they decided us over they happen to see right on No, but like I said, that's one of our goals out there.

Tracy Hayes  7:32  
And I really want to you know the many things, the visions, I'm a visionary, so things flash through my head of all the all the needs that I want. And one is a YouTube channel. I think, I think Josh Rogers is doing a really good job of that. I know his apprentice, Andrew Michael. He's good friend of mine. He's going around and shooting a lot of going around the different neighborhoods. And obviously, all these, all these exp agents. We're gonna talk about exp in a minute. But off rec, you know his, his keeps telling the agents master your neighborhood, right? He's over there beacon Lake, and he's Mr. Beacon Lake because he does the Market Report. And everyone in Beacon Lake knows him. He doesn't know everybody in Beacon lake, but they know him because of the of the YouTube and I, I think it's such a after doing really getting my YouTube channels not even a couple of months now going and if you go on there, of course, there's all the reels from the shows, and then in the full length videos, and then I'm adding educational videos in there too about mortgages and stuff like that, or even just investing in property. But now there's a whole platform on there, and the more you put on there, the more searchable you're going to move up in that.

Tammy Baranowski  8:35  
Oh for sure. You know that's one thing we learned about at momentum. So shout out to John and Brittany Brooks momentum for teaching us that is that you have to be findable on the internet. So they've put together classes by some other agents, price and powers for one, on how to do these YouTube videos. And also, you know, being a real estate agent is like five full time jobs because you're your own marketing person, your own finance person. You're your own boots on the ground and stuff, and so you can leverage part of it. But I do think what I've learned is that the the social presence is something that you shouldn't outsource, because, you know, nobody's going to put yourself across like, Well, you

Tracy Hayes  9:14  
do you what part you could outsource. And I will brag about who I go to. I use streamline media. There's other companies, but streamline media isn't they actually, tell me they they work with agents, but they're, they have to actually have fired agents, because they're like, Okay, you got to, like, send us some content. We're not going to, you know, you could pay us or pay someone and follow you with a camera, but you got to, actually, if you're not doing that, you got to video yourself and then send us the content. Then we'll make it look good, you know, and that's that. It's that little piece of of adding the content in here. We'll dig a little little deeper. I want to get a little more, a little bit more about you guys. So both of you have had previous careers prior to real estate. Tammy, you if I saw your LinkedIn the way you described it, you were the nutrition but you were in massage therapy for quite a quite a long. Time, sure, yeah.

Tammy Baranowski  10:01  
So a lot of, lot of service. You know, when you do these personality tests to find out what your personality is suited to, it's always service based, nurturing type stuff, which is, I think, a similarity that I have with Brooke, but we also have a lot of big differences. And I always say she's the end of my Yang. I'm the fire and she's the water, and, you know, I am the visionary, and she's the executor, but I'm also the like, the squirrel all over the place, and she's the grounding voice of reason. So that's why we make such a wonderful because I could just go off, especially when the market's a little slower, and I'm getting into all these things, and I'm building the YouTube and I'm researching stuff, and I'm just shooting all these ideas at her, and she's just like, Whoa, how about, how about we just start by doing one thing. Okay, let's do the one thing. But yeah, so I did massage therapy.

Tracy Hayes  10:48  
And was that a, was that something you just, you know, just learned to, like, I mean, going to college? Like, yeah. I mean, this is, like an area I want to go to, or was it something that you sort of fell into a friend recruited Junior like, Oh no, this is an area. Maybe I should follow, continue follow up. Well, you know, was your vision or some or I it took me a

Tammy Baranowski  11:06  
long time to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wasn't late. I was a late bloomer, to say the least. So I always knew that I loved learning. I loved school. I mean, I had credits almost halfway to an associate's degree. By the time I got out of high school, I wanted to to be a pharmacist at one point, and then I just like the sciences and things like that. And so really, massage therapy led me into nutrition, that holistic lifestyle. But then before that, though, I was studying chemistry, and it just didn't it wasn't clicking people. It wasn't people centric enough. I went on a field trip with my chemistry cohort to Research and Development Center, and they had these people with PhD degrees in a basement just doing the same test over and over. It was the biggest nightmare I'd ever seen. I was like, exit Check, please. Like, so I took a hiatus, and while I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, it seemed like an easy, achievable, cool thing to have, and it has been. I mean, it's just because I don't practice anymore on a professional level, it's still nice to be able to treat friends and family, and it's a fun hobby. Everybody loves to know someone that knows how to do that. So I don't regret that at all. But then, yeah, so that into the nutrition thing. And again, it's a great career, and it's great to not super interesting the science, but it's not one of those great return on investments where you get out of it what you put into it, like real estate is, which is ultimately, you know, part of like, let me do something where I have flexibility and autonomy and I can get out of what I put into and then Brooke and I have always had a dream of working together. At one point, we were going to open up a day spa, which went hand in hand in hand with, like the nutrition and massage.

Tracy Hayes  12:42  
She's definitely the visionary. Brooke. Tell us a little bit. What was your, you know, your your graduating high school. You're 1820, years old. I mean, what were, what were your initial visions of a career? What were you, you thinking about?

Brooke Hewitt  12:57  
Well, I So, I actually, I was an early blower. I actually have my first child, 18. So, you know, I had, I had things I didn't want to do, but you know, God had other plans for me. So had my daughter, and ended up moving back here to Florida because I was just there for a short time for school and back to Florida. And I, actually, I met my husband, and together, we have five girls. So that's a lot of children, five girls, yeah, so actually, I was blessed to stay home for many years. Farm. I managed the farm. We had over 30 animals at one time, so five children, 30 animals. So I managed that which was no easy task at all. Like I said, I was blessed to be able to stay at home for a little bit, and then I did transition into a couple of sales, different sales, which was great, because I love people. I love working with people I'm not, I guess, a super salesy person. I feel like it like most genuine, and I wasn't trying to ever be into any

Tracy Hayes  14:05  
longer need. So each of you, if you can answer this question, whoever wants to go first on it from your previous careers, what are some of the things that you've learned that you've moved forward and intrinsically have put into your real estate business?

Tammy Baranowski  14:22  
Yeah, well, there's just so much right all along life, whether it's a professional experience, it's a personal experience, you're putting tools in your tool bag, and for me, you know, going to different colleges, having getting the opportunity to travel abroad in grad school, getting the opportunity to do like some research, and working in all those different things. Ultimately, it's dealing with people. When you get it down to the base level, I learned a lot about like, your credit, red tape and corporations and things, which is not something I wanted to learn, but something that you know proves helpful. I guess that I know the way the structured hierarchy of things, so that as we build our business and do start to leverage things, you know, I. Know some things about that, but also just service, you know? And that's what, that's what our product is, right? Service being there, not just being like, oh, once the transaction is done, we're done, because we're always playing the long game So, and that's why we get so much repeat and referral business, especially Brooke, she's the queen of that, because those genuine connections that she makes is being a family person and a nurturing person really comes through in her business. There's so much blend of it. So they feel that they're her genuine friend, and they are and so do I past clients. I'm this Friday, I'm going to a concert with one of my past clients, and you know, she literally will when they're having a hard time. She cries with them when they're having great time. She celebrates with them. And so I think that's ultimately the thing that comes through for for me, is that we, we've gotten those things in previous careers about how to deal with people and build relationships, but, you know, anybody can learn about real estate and different types of roofs and different types of siding. And we, of course, we know the location stuff. But the the part that you can't teach is that work ethic and the in this soft skills,

Tracy Hayes  16:05  
Brooke, she puts the word on you nurturing. So I'm going to add to the same question. I'm just going to add so obviously, taking care of five daughters and a farm, there's a lot of nurturing in aspect. So you blend it in. I mean, with your background, how when you approach those, those clients, you know, it's natural for you, but it's because of you. Tell us a little bit. You know, the things in the past that you noticed, if you, if you even notice, you may not even think about them, but yeah, how does that nurturing come out when you're working with another family?

Brooke Hewitt  16:39  
Well, I just honestly, I really, I listen. I just let them do all the talking. Tell me your wants, tell me your needs, and I just feel like treating them like family. You know, really the most to them, because they trust me, because I really have their I have their needs in mind, and I'm looking out for myself. I'm looking out for them. So, yeah, I definitely feel, you know, family life and everything else shines through my customers, because they, they just, they feel the connection there. Because I just like, right, listen, let them talk. I can, I

Tracy Hayes  17:18  
can see, based on what you guys have told me your backgrounds, why she's yet, why the ying and the yang they and the visionary and the integrator, I could see because of your your background, the 1015, years of Oh things, yeah. Oh, 100% Yeah.

Brooke Hewitt  17:32  
That's why we just totally balanced each other out. It works.

Tracy Hayes  17:36  
There is a book Sarah Rocco gave me. It's the name of, it's not coming up rocket fuel. That's the name of it's called Rocket fuel, and it talks about the importance of having one person being a visionary and one person being the integrator. And how corporations will, you know, search for that, that perfect thing. And over, you know, history company has been around for years when they accelerated and when they didn't where the they had the right people had that visionary, and then had the integrator, had, you know, you're going through your mind of all these different ideas, and she's telling you, well, that ain't going to be rubber to the road. That's not going to happen.

Brooke Hewitt  18:12  
I mean, not always, but yeah, lots of times that, I'm like, No, that's not necessary. And, you know, she's 100% right, yeah. We just, that's what's great about working with her, is because we bounce those ideas off each other and

Tracy Hayes  18:27  
we well, I mean, in how much is it? Is it your friend, you know, obviously being sisters, you obviously, you know, probably call each other best friends as well. It's not always like that. In siblings, you have a unique situation where you do have this bond between the between the two of you that you can accept, like I had Heather and Danielle. Obviously, they're not sisters, but where they can accept a little, you know, the other person telling them, oh, or, you know, venting on them when, you know, I just see, do you vent on her? I don't see her being a Venter. She's so good.

Tammy Baranowski  19:03  
She knows me so well, and she's so good at not triggering any defensiveness in my part or whatever, but gently, just helping me ease towards it. And I just was so grateful to her for that. And you're right, a lot of siblings don't have that relationship. But as matter of fact, I talked to Heather and Daniel a lot when we were deciding whether to be a team, because I was a little fearful that my strong personality would steamroll hers, and didn't want that, because obviously we love each other so much, but and so I was fearful that she wasn't going to push back on me when it was something, but she has and she does, yeah, so that's good, but ultimately, you know, since we're kind of that point of us becoming A team. We were always kind of working together, even as independent, but our family is what brought us together. Our mom was really critically ill in September. We spent the whole month in the hospital with her, and it was during that time when we both needed to be there with her around the clock, and I knew we were going to have to stick together on all fronts to make it through, including keeping our business going. And. And that was what ultimately said, Well, if we're going to do this, let's just jump in. And it's been the best decision ever been so well received, you know, from social media, the branding, the sisterhood.

Tracy Hayes  20:10  
So I'm really this is area, because I often say, and I've said it, I've said it my entire life. I said many times about because I should have been a psychology major, because there the egos the sibling rivalry, and not just people were in an area, we're in sales. So there's a little bit of competitiveness in us. We didn't we're not operational people. We're a little competitive and trying to get that next sale, or have someone obviously put out a great social media because someone you know chooses us because of that, and we're flattered by that. That's our competitiveness of us. So when it comes to you guys, and I'm kind of jumping a little bit forward here, because I want to put this thread into our conversation, is when you guys have disagreements, when and now you guys are just starting getting us. So there's going to be more going into the future, and how you're, how you guys are actually going to function with it, or, you know, when you really want to do something, and she's like, No, I don't think we're going to do it. You know, there's, it's a 5050, vote there. There's no third person to break the dot.

Tammy Baranowski  21:14  
I mean, but we do have, you know, board of advisors. We. Brooke's husband is a very successful and businessman and smart man in himself, we kind of trust his judgment on things. John and Brittany, wonderful, you know, do

Tracy Hayes  21:30  
they know they're under the gun when you I'm in here, that they might be breaking a

Tammy Baranowski  21:33  
tie when we ask them? Well, maybe so, because they're always very gentle, like, whatever you guys want to do, yeah, you know, but they can see the vision. They're like, well, who's gonna be, you know, the alpha, or who's gonna do whatever? And we just lean to our natural talents, like, I love you can tell my social media is post, post, post, and hers is, like, I have to make her send me some content, right? Yeah. Or I could

Tracy Hayes  21:56  
tell, just by your Facebook pages, she has very little. You have the whole all the information on how to contact you, and yeah,

Tammy Baranowski  22:02  
and that's just a testament to her humility, because for her self promotion sometimes feels like bragging, and she doesn't really even have to, because the business comes to her without her doing it. So that's been a real lesson for me, too, is that you don't always have to be promote, promote, promote. Sometimes it's just bad.

Tracy Hayes  22:17  
Well, let's, let's jump right into the nitty gritty. Now, Brooke, you get into real estate first, if I read correctly, on LinkedIn. So where were you at in what attracted you to real estate? Did you know somebody and said, Hey, you'd make a great real estate agent. Or you yourself kind of said, you know, I want to be and I'm going to go, Well, we

Brooke Hewitt  22:35  
had as a family, we had gotten to a place where I had, I have was interested in real estate years prior, I even actually got my license. Wasn't the right time for our family, so I ended up not using my license at all. And fast forward a couple years later, and I decided to jump in again. We were in a better place as a family financially. And I was like, Okay, let's I want to do this. And yeah, I had a mentor that kind of took me under wing, and I joined exp, and I learned so much the first year. And now, is

Tracy Hayes  23:07  
this a friend or someone who actually sort of searched out? Did you know

Brooke Hewitt  23:11  
them before? Yeah, the friend, our kids had ball together, okay? And it was a friend, and she and she played, brought me under her wing and mentored me, and I learned a lot, and I'm super grateful for that, because I was kind of like a right place at the right time kind of thing. And that first year, I think I did 27 transactions, and I was just blown away that I that, you know, I didn't really have the confidence. I didn't if I had known.

Tracy Hayes  23:37  
Well, those are exceptional numbers. First year for well above the average, obviously. So anyone listening right now, their first question is, okay, Brooke, either has this like magical talent, or what is it that you did in that and that, that's the question I ask often, especially in those first six months to get you off the ground. So tell, just tell us some things that you remember that this mentor kind of really put your nose to it and made you do well.

Brooke Hewitt  24:08  
I mean, it was really confidence is a big thing. Finding, finding a mentor is a big helped you a lot. Yes, absolutely, you know, helped to build my confidence, helped to just kind of guide me on everything. But I think too, probably whatever brokerage you choose, just make sure that you're going to have somebody that's going to help guide you on the way. That's the biggest thing.

Tracy Hayes  24:27  
But just give us some real nuts and bolts. I mean, war. I mean, I imagine, did they make you go immediately after your your sphere? What are some of those things that Well, what

Brooke Hewitt  24:37  
I did was I followed another agent around. I just read what shadowed with them. I shadowed I followed them around. I watched some open boxes. I listened to the conversations they were having all day long. So I did that every day, like for a couple of weeks. And, you know, the language started becoming familiar to me, and, you know, and it wasn't, I mean, it was really just just listening.

Tracy Hayes  24:59  
So. So if I'm hearing you correctly, your linchpin to getting a really good jumpstart was confidence. By shadowing the other agent gave you confidence.

Brooke Hewitt  25:11  
Mike, absolutely, I don't like to jump into anything that I'm not, not

Tracy Hayes  25:16  
confident in myself. You want to know what's around the corner, right? Exactly?

Brooke Hewitt  25:19  
Oh, I'm not. I'm not, I'm not one of these fake it till you make it kind of people. I'm like, I really want to know what I'm doing before I you know, it's big deal. Someone's buying a house that's like, one of the biggest transactions they'll ever in their life. One thing

Tracy Hayes  25:31  
I think isn't important. Well, again, over listening to 100 plus agents, top producers, what part they're shadowing, so you're taking your that's an education itself. You're, you're, you're educating yourself on, you know the prop, you know the phrases, the questions that could you could get, and how do you answer them? How do you handle this situation? So you're building up that. But when it comes to the the more formal education piece going, whether it's going to nefar and taking, not just taking enough to have your CE credits, but actually, actually going to numerous, you know, contract classes, hearing it from different people. How did you did that play any part in that initial part of your confidence?

Brooke Hewitt  26:13  
Oh, absolutely. It's important to to follow somebody around and hear the everyday conversations, but going to every class you can go to, hop on every or when you're driving around, listening to podcasts, listening to all the different scenarios we'll deal with. So, yeah, the formal education is a big must. Okay, excellent.

Tracy Hayes  26:30  
I think, I think that's one of the things that that is neglected. I think too many agents Well, that's why so many fail out right? Is there are so many classes being education, being offered every day, whether it is at nefar or at the St John's board, or a lender's putting on a class, or a title company's putting on a class. There's something every day going on that if you if you're not doing something, you should be there.

Brooke Hewitt  26:52  
Yeah, and that's not just in the beginning when I started, it's I learned something new every day. And that's where the listening stopping and just listening comes in really handy, because I, I pick up every single

Tracy Hayes  27:05  
All right, so she's in real estate. Now, you were in, you're in real estate. How long before Tammy

Brooke Hewitt  27:10  
almost, was it a year picked up. And really, I had been in for a year, and she was working at the hospital, the dietitian, and she was, she was working at tailwind, crazy hours, and I just, I'm like, You work so hard and you just don't, don't have the return. I mean, I just know that if you applied that, you just jumped into real estate with me, you applied that here, you'll be rewarded for it. Because I just, she just had the personality and I knew, and she loved people. No, she was always nurture, therapeutic

Tracy Hayes  27:43  
the hospital, so sisters knocking on your door, right?

Tammy Baranowski  27:47  
Well, and I was also, it was a pandemic, and I was having a baby, my second baby, and I was ultimately not happy or satisfied with my career, because I wasn't able to love on people the way I wanted to. So that made me frustrated. And then, you know, obviously the financial aspects of and I saw, and knowing what I know of my sister,

Tracy Hayes  28:07  
she racks up 27 the first year, did she show you one of her commission checks she did,

Tammy Baranowski  28:15  
knowing what I knew of her, that she was shy, or, you know, more private and stuff, and that she had had that success really did give me the confidence I wouldn't. I mean, I owe everything to her, because I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew I had to do something. I was ready to be a ship shop or an Uber driver at that point. I was, at that point, of, like, strap that baby in a papoose and what? And so she and the team leader brought me over to EXP and again, so grateful, because I will say, you know, when you're asking about the knowledge and the classes, but ultimately, for a new agent to hop onto a team where the systems and the processes are already in place and there's already a database of leads that you can work and then you've got some accountability as well. Really good recipe for someone to get started, if you're not somebody that's going to be intrinsically motivated to just go out and start door knocking your first day and have that confidence, right? And also just to teach the technicals. How do you even write a contract of someone going to be there to read your contract? I mean, she write every single one of my contracts that I wrote for my first 10 transactions, which I had in the first four months of joining that team. Awesome, because I was hungry, right? But then I realized that I was also bringing a lot of my sphere and generating a lot of my own business, and once I kind of learned it a team environment wasn't the best fit for my personality, so I made the decision. Well, first of all, I started researching right like exp is fantastic brokerage, and there's pockets of great teams and whatever. But when I decided I was going to leave the team, it kind of left me feeling a little lonely, like she was still going to be there, which was fine. I had her, but I wanted a community of real life, people that I could see and touch and sit down and have coffee with, and that's not something that exp is well known for. But so I started asking around to my other agent friends in the community that were at all kinds of brokerages around town. They just happened to be friends, and I. And what I would hear repeatedly was, well, if I wasn't where I am, I'd probably be at momentum, and I'd be like, you know, why don't you come here and like, why don't I go to momentum? Can you join me there when you're ready? And so I sat down with John Brooks, we talked for a long time, and really, my goals weren't even big enough to start off with. And I know he saw that and kind of smiled, because I did shatter those goals that first year sold 35

Tracy Hayes  30:21  
so it made me think of something, because you mentioned your sphere. She had a great start. You had a great start. What happens now? She's in the business for a year, and then her sister comes in the business. And you, I know you have overlapping spheres,

Brooke Hewitt  30:36  
for sure. We a couple times in situations like that, and we just say, hey, we'll split. And that kind of couple that we did up splitting, it was like, why don't we just cut through this whole time? Right? Right? Works out well.

Tammy Baranowski  30:53  
And we've always just been I mean, ultimately, if I was homeless on the street, I could go live on her couch, right? And the same goes. And so there's that

Tracy Hayes  30:59  
for a couple days. Anyway,

Tammy Baranowski  31:02  
I wear out my mobile. There's like a love and a humility that goes I want this as much for you as I want it for me and really you. We would never take food out of each other's mouth, so to speak, or whatever. So my success is her success anyway, and but yeah. So there were times when it would be like, Yeah, somebody mutually knew would be like, I don't know who to reach out to. I do, or even we've, you know, people in the business that have that are other people in our family that are in the business, and be like, Oh, this is so awkward. I don't know what to do. Hey, let us both help you.

Tracy Hayes  31:34  
Well, you know, I think it's great that you guys well, I mean, the fact that the big part is that you guys do seem to fit together your personalities in that niche, and you're, you're you want both best for both of you. Now that you've actually, you know, listed yourself as a team, they don't feel, I would imagine now, they don't feel so bad to call because they figure it's going to both of you anyway as a team. Yeah, absolutely All right, so we're both at exp. If I saw correct was about like, five months or so you were at exp, okay, before now, when you talk about the team, want to break a team, because I've my vision of EXP is, you know, as real estate is, in general, it is a big multi level marketing type thing. Exp doesn't hide that part of it. When they go out and you're sponsoring people and recruiting because obviously, hopefully you have the intentions to help them get their business going to benefit you. That's why you recruited them in not just to have another real estate agent on the list, right? So, but the whether you you do, you're part of the team because you feed from it. But if you were recruited by the same person who runs a team like structure, does that person still, even though you want to be a solo and you can kind of give color to this, how that actually works, because you I just kind of agents out there thinking or jumping brokerages or which ones fits for them, is a solo agent exp, kind of less. You know, do you feel like you're just not being given any attention? Or, you know, is it more you're better off being a team, in your opinion, at exp, what's your I mean,

Brooke Hewitt  33:11  
I don't think so, not necessarily. I mean, exp, I had no problem with being really, just that. I don't know. You just get more of a local feel the local brokerage. You know, they get together frequently, so I don't think there was a I don't think either being on a team or an individual with that brokerage was I think either way.

Tracy Hayes  33:30  
Well, I asked, you know, I'm listening to Dustin Brome, who's a big exp agent, massive agent podcast, and I sent him a message, I want to try to get him on the show so, but He even talks about when he left his brokerage and went to exp him and his broker broke on good terms, and they actually refer each other agents seeing who could fit it. You know that it's not a good exp structure. He refers them over and say, you should probably work with this local brokerage over here. He's a really great person, so not everyone fits in everything, and I and if you guys want to expand on or overlapping the question here, but how important it is to find the right broker, especially when you're new, or if you're struggling to step back and take some time to find that right broker who's going to fit with you. Brooke, I think you got lucky, right? You matched up with this great mentor, right? They're not a great mentor. Where would, would you have been out of real estate within a few months? Who knows? Right?

Brooke Hewitt  34:27  
Absolutely. I mean, I owe, yeah, I have that whole right.

Tracy Hayes  34:32  
So that person is really good at working with people who are new, sure,

Brooke Hewitt  34:36  
absolutely not. You know, that's the great thing about real estate is no not every there's not just one broker, if like, can choose what your personality best, right? There's, there's so many to choose from. There's not one.

Tracy Hayes  34:49  
So a common question I ask, and each of you give me, give me one, one question, if you were new or maybe not getting the attention. Question that you need at the brokerage. You got the mentorship and so forth, and you were going around and talking to brokers. Maybe you asked John this question, I don't know what, what would be a question as a real estate agent that you want to ask that broker when you're sitting down there, you know, talking about possibly coming on their

Tammy Baranowski  35:17  
team, right? And, you know, it's funny because, um, is not known for being a brokerage for new agents. Because, you know, it's for people that are trying to get in the next level. Their whole thing is teaching you about building a life of financial freedom and investment. And you know, he always says, you get into real estate so you can get out of real estate. And while we have a passion for it, we love it. I think when I'm 60 years old, I'm going to be tired and not wanting to work from the time my eyeballs open till they close, and you know, some of the luster might wear off. So I've got to be thinking big picture. And a lot of agents fail to plan or even think about how they're going to pay their taxes at the end of the year, much less what they're going to do for a retirement plan. And for me, what it appears to me is exp says, Oh, we've got this stock or whatever that may be up or down. But they're, they're, they're dependent on building a big team and recruiting, which also, you know, sometimes puts a taint on their you know, people go,

Tracy Hayes  36:11  
Well, there's certain people for that, right? Not everyone's a recruiter.

Tammy Baranowski  36:15  
But the thing that you know, so I follow a lot of big exp people, and I think that those people have built their own little mini brokerage within exp. There's Daniel beer, there's there's Ricky Carus, you know, and so they've built a big social media presence, and they attract a lot of people. And I know from someone that's at exp that with the Ricky crew, that they have a personal connection. He flies over and he meets with them. Ricky calls them during the day, like real, real connections. So no shape to that whatsoever. But for for somebody asking a brokerage, where should I go? Like momentum created a send for, just for those agents, so you get that mentorship, so you get that's a little more hand holding by top producing agents that are incentivized by ownership of ascend to help create it. So it's almost like a mini version of that. But ultimately, sometimes agents are just asking the wrong question. There's questions. They're saying, Oh, do you have a CRM? You know, just like, because they don't know what to ask. Nobody. Don't know what you don't do you have?

Tracy Hayes  37:09  
And this is a great, this is a great piece. You know, we were talking earlier about YouTube, and I was going in, and I have someone kind of feeds me some. Hey, these are hot trending titles in your niche, right? And there is a lot of ideas out there, let's say a lot. There's some people talking about whether it's on a reel or a 10 minute video, talking about choosing your brokerage, but you know, to sit there and, you know, create 20 reels on this is a question you need to ask your your brokerage. Those are those over time, are going to get a lot of lot of attention, because I really feel it's like Heather sat here last week and said, you know, yeah, every broker wants you unless you, unless you're like Ingalls and Volcker, who doesn't want, they want you to have certain volume or something like that. Every broker wants you to come on. It's question is, are they the fit for you? And right there? And right there. And I had the John when I had John on, and I had John and Brittany on separately on the show. But their business savvy is so out there. I mean, for 30 year old, I mean, incredible. They are amazing people. And I talked to John occasionally, but, yeah, they're, they're business savvy, like you're talking about at 60. What do I want to be doing, you know, you know, or even you're young, even at 50, what are you going to be doing? Right? Do you want a team? Or, you know, are you going to function? I think real estate, something you can do to the day you die, if you want to, but you want to start tapering it off at some point where you're only dealing with certain clients, right? And then you hand it off to another agent, or maybe someone on your team to those, to those other ones, but, but yeah, having that plan, and it's as John talks about, going to all these award ceremonies where they're awarding these people with all these numbers. But when he did, dug into it, a lot of these people were broke. They are living one house to the next house, you know, one month to the next month, hoping to get their closings, even though they've got so many, and it's great to get those pats on the back. But as you get older, you realize you cannot, like, eat that trophy. You can't melt it down. It's not worth anything. It's, yeah, it's what you actually got in your bank account.

Tammy Baranowski  39:14  
We love, you know, we just found out yesterday that Brooke and I are in the top 10 of all momentum agents for all 2022 and so does that make us feel great? We also found we're in the top 500 agents for all of Northeast Florida in the past week. So those feel really good. Of course, it's really good to market those things because it helps build confidence for our customers and what we do. But John's also on the backside teaching us, how do we do an escort for our taxes, so that we can figure out how to do some write offs, and how are we going to save a bigger percentage of the money that we make, and then with that money, how are we going to live a lifestyle of delayed gratification so that later we have investments that are path the passive income that's paying for the lifestyle we want to

Tracy Hayes  39:54  
100% I love that you mentioned the taxes, because our keynote speaker assume you're going. You re bar camp on Friday. All right, we'll see you there, and our keynote speaker talks about the marquee lemons right Hall. When I had her on the podcast a few weeks ago, you know, one of the biggest killers of agents is when they get that IRS, yeah, and they didn't save it up, and now they owe the IRS all this money, and so now there's there's certain ways to recover from that. The IRS is not, you know, they'll give you time to pay it back, but it could put you in a psychological situation where you can't function anymore. And to have that guidance up front, not just a class, the class is important. You should sit down, because now you know that you need to find out more information and then actually sit down with somebody who's actually going to dig in knows your business and can really simplify it for you so you can get back out prospecting again, because doing taxes is not making you any money.

Tammy Baranowski  40:52  
Well, it's not a favorite thing of any of us. We wouldn't be in real estate, the people business, if we like, sitting behind a spreadsheet. But the the crazy thing about what a savant John is is that spreadsheets are his jam, and he loves looking at it. As a matter of fact, he was kind enough to say, anybody that wants to send me your PNL, I'll go through it with you and help you get a game plan of how to where to where focus on shiny objects and where the where, where to run lean. So I think that's a huge benefit, and something that more agents should focus on. We're gonna

Tracy Hayes  41:19  
give Brooke a chance to talk here, because I you answered the question. You know you well, you kind of give a story behind some of the things that were important to you. You're sitting in front of a prospective broker. You're trying to find out whether or not you want to work with that person. What is something that you a device, a question or two, that you would give a new agent or an agent looking to move or these are certain things you want to know

Brooke Hewitt  41:41  
well, one is where, where are you going to be when I need you? Well, when you sit down with I have lunch with you and we have a conversation, I think that's important now, to have a relationship with your broker and only get that where we're at. But also, I think what the brokerage teaches is important too, like how often you bring a speaker and how often added value absolutely, yeah, so and, I mean, I think definitely found that it's been great.

Tracy Hayes  42:08  
I'm gonna go on my little my I'm gonna keep this short, because you guys have better information there, but my little soapbox on the I'm seeing a lot going on recently. I talked about this a few weeks ago. It tapered down over the holidays. But like bringing in these panels, right? They're not prepared to talk about anything. I mean, they're given maybe a subject, maybe, but it's so general, it's they're not prepared. And you guys have so much time in your day, you've got kids, you're dealing with this, you're dealing with that. You got to be prospecting primarily. That's our number one job, right? And they're bringing in a panel who doesn't actually have prepared material. And when it comes to added value, except bringing in that speaker, that's actually you're going to leave with something. And when the the event planner needs to think about that, when they're planning that person to come in, or don't have someone come in, make it an event. Make sure that every person that's in that room leaves with something. It may be different from that speaker, that everyone gets something different from everybody else, but they're going to leave with something of value. And I think too often it's just a routine thing they did. Oh, I got a speaker coming in. Okay. Well, what is he going to speak about? Why don't he just No, we need, like, zero this, in zero, this. They always tell us to stay a stay focused. Stay focused, right? Stay focused on the prospecting, and that'll make up. Well, stay focused on what you're going to deliver to us, because we don't have a lot of time. There's other things I'd rather be doing. That's my little soapbox.

Tammy Baranowski  43:32  
Well, I would say the thing to wrap that up is, when you go to those panels, or whatever it is, the value you're going to get, if you have a brokerage or mentor, that's going to circle back and have some accountability about implementation. Now, what action are you going to take? Whatever nugget you take away, if you don't do any action after you leave that, you might as well have just watched a movie on Netflix and gone about your day, right? Like it's not well, why did you even come to the thing if you weren't going to take action? You know, when they had Elizabeth curry, one of the big real estate coaches, come a lot of our agents, you know, bought into her mentoring. And they've had huge they've done, they're doing big talks. Chris Moore's doing a big talk, because he started getting with this coach. I mean, really, when Brittany did the be the buffalo thing, that was at, you know, some prodding by her coach. And so for me, the speakers are important. But somebody like she said, I mean, I know, I don't even, I couldn't tell you what my broker at exp looked like what his face like, because I didn't even see a picture, you know. And I text with Brittany just about every

Brooke Hewitt  44:28  
day, right?

Tracy Hayes  44:29  
And as big as, how many agents now they got over there about 200 Well, yeah, that's, yeah, it's, it's amazing, yeah, well, the two of them are amazing. We could talk about that forever. We'll make that a real John, right? So you, you let me get so were you looking? Because who goes over to you go over to momentum first. So you were sort of looking. And you, you ran the John. So What? What? So again, we'll cut this out for a real for John and Brittany, right here. So you went over, you sit down. And just you, right, she wasn't with you. You've talked, you talked to both of them together, or just John. I think Brittany was on maternity leave. Okay, so you sit down with John, who's the first person you call when you Okay, tell me what you told her.

Tammy Baranowski  45:14  
Yeah, I was told her, I'm gonna do this. I'm so excited. You know, at the time, before they had a sin, they had a mentorship program. Because, you know, even though I was having success at exp, I was still a new agent, only five months in, and I was a little nervous, and so I was knew that I wanted to be independent, but was some way out of like, I didn't want to join a team and be stuck in a team. And also, I wanted to build my own database, because your database is ultimately the only thing you own in real estate, right? So if you're going to be on a team that makes you close out every transaction in their name and they retain all the database, then you're not building a business for the future. So that was one thing I liked, but

Tracy Hayes  45:48  
momentum, okay, so that was happening in the EXP. It was actually that all your production was technically going under one person's Okay, all right, yeah.

Tammy Baranowski  45:57  
And then, and then I've, you know, had to start from ground zero when I left that team, because all you know, anybody I had working with, I had to cease and desist, and then you start new. So then that's just how teams go, because they invest so much money into their systems and processes. So it makes sense, right? They have to protect themselves, but so anyway, owning your database. So, you know, he had talked about all that, and I was excited about having the mentorship program. I was excited about the transparency. He gave me the number of like, phone numbers about six of their top agents didn't prep them that I was calling. Said, just call them and see what they say of their own volition, right? Had some great conversations. I got paired with Shauna Clark, who's a Top Producing agent at momentum.

Tracy Hayes  46:34  
Should I have Sean on the show? Oh, she, I think she's come across that name's come across my radar one time. I have to, I have to disclose to everyone last week I Toby and Jenna were on. They had just moved to momentum, and I had already booked him to come on before they made that move. So I try not to have two brokerages, the same broker, John Weeks, or, you know, real close together, but it happened. So, yeah. So anyway, so, so you pump her up, all right, how long is it before you you start

Brooke Hewitt  47:06  
checking this out, or what it wasn't, it wasn't very long. I, you know, I knew that she had done the research. And, you know, I trust her. I trust her with my life. So I knew that if she felt that was the place to go, that it was a good place

Tracy Hayes  47:20  
to go. Okay, so you but so that means you kind of had some thoughts in your head.

Brooke Hewitt  47:24  
No, I had no intention. Doctor's gonna stick. I was, No,

Tracy Hayes  47:27  
I'm well, you're not, you're not the trailblazer. Yeah, I don't want to

Brooke Hewitt  47:31  
go out of my comfort zone. I know this. I know the processes.

Tracy Hayes  47:34  
I'm just gonna stick right. How many brokerages Did you did you talk to before coming to John?

Tammy Baranowski  47:39  
Or I recently, unofficially, I researched four or five just talking word of mouth to people that were at those brokerages. All right,

Tracy Hayes  47:48  
how important is it for that agent? And we're talking about that researching brokerages new or want to move to call some of the agents that actually are part of that brokerage. How important is that?

Tammy Baranowski  48:02  
I think it's more important than talking to the broker. The most important thing for sure, what would

Tracy Hayes  48:07  
you Brooke? What would you ask, trying to give her some airtime? What's question as an agent, agent that you would want to dig into?

Brooke Hewitt  48:14  
Are you happy? There are the things about your broker, right? Did your brokerage? You know? Are you able to broker? Would question, what kind of, just like the questions I would ask the broker, but I feel like you get more of an honest response, bro, yeah, their agent,

Tracy Hayes  48:28  
because they might be thinking themselves. They might be, you know, if someone called Tammy four months into exp, she probably would have said, I'm not really 100% on sure ground here. I'm not confident. Yeah, what's

Brooke Hewitt  48:41  
going love about your your brokerage, and what, what value they bring? So that would be my, my question. And that's probably a lot of the things you asked the the broker, or the folks from the brokerages you were looking at, yeah, when she called me, and, you know, this is face and, okay, well, you know, good luck. I think you're gonna have great success. I know you will. And didn't take long before I, you know, she hit the ground running. And I was like, you know, be really nice to be able to do this together.

Tracy Hayes  49:14  
John and Brittany take an angle on the financials, right? The business, running it as a business. How did that resonate with you? Obviously resonated with Tammy. She immediately clicked. Like, yeah, that's what I'm looking for when she's talking about that with you. Did it? Did a light bulb go off?

Brooke Hewitt  49:30  
Oh, absolutely it wouldn't have down in my comfort zone and not so. I had a couple conversations with John, and the first couple times I was like, just happy for a man, but then after having a couple of conversations with him and the meeting with Brittany, and you know, I really felt like it was the best, best week for me. And if I really wanted to grow, then it that's where I needed it.

Tammy Baranowski  49:54  
Well, in that in that community, because there was times, because she was, she left the team at EXP and was independent. But then she'd be like, Hey, do you know someone that could be a showing assistant? Do you know someone over there that'd be willing to hold up now? So you know someone that knows how to deal with this particular situation that came up, you know, prior to closing? And so I was, you know, sharing some of those resources with her across the line, so to speak. And so she saw that value too. And it was like, Wow. You know,

Brooke Hewitt  50:21  
we're really helpful over there. I said that, well, this would be a lot easier if we were just at the same brokerage and working together.

Tracy Hayes  50:31  
Hey, folks. This episode was produced by streamline media, the number one media company for helping brands generate content that converts I knew I wanted to start a podcast to reach more people and bring value to the world, but I did not have the time or the knowledge. Streamline media became my secret weapon to building my show. They handle all my back end work, production and strategies to keep my show going strong. If you're in the real estate business and looking to make content that generates more leads and brings in more revenue, check out the streamlined media link in the show notes and discover how partnering up can supercharge your path to real estate excellence. When you look at all the different things that an agent does right prospecting and marketing, you know, you obviously have the nuts and bolts of working through a listing or working with a buyer's agent, showing houses, doing the contract, you know, if the listing, if you're doing a listing, pricing the home out correctly, helping them get the home ready, and all that type of stuff. And then you have the thing we don't talk about a lot, which John, what I think John does more than anyone else, is the business aspect of what you do. So you are financially confident is to use your word that you've used several times, like the confidence in that that he's brought that light upon. And when you look at like if you were breaking this pie down, breaking this pie down, of the what you do every day. How important is having that block of time, whether it's monthly or we that you're actually sitting down and doing your business, part of it to make sure you guys do have money for marketing. If this is going to that you're paying yourselves enough money to do and invest and that sort of thing now is that probably was, was it really part of your game plan at exp, and what percentage you think that should be of a real estate agent to really be successful? Well, I mean, we're at exp because I was on a team at first that that was, you know, there's accountability being on a team, so you kind of just told what to do, to do it. Once a, once a transitioned over to, I mean, that's a big part of business. You do have to work on your business, or, yeah, on your business, not just in your business, right? They, and they taught us how to do that effectively, and so, I mean, part of it, yeah, just so now that you guys are a team Jack's listing sisters, and it's only, it's only been a short period of time, so you can't say, hey, what do you guys been doing? Do you guys been doing all last year? But now that you time, are you setting aside time to have that company meeting? You know, is this something as a real estate agent? Do you need to do that weekly? Or maybe, just like, you know, a few hours a month that you need to sit down, get your financials in line. Here's, here's our commissions for the month. We need to put so much over here and that sort of thing. How much time do you think you actually will spend on it, on a weekly, monthly basis that you need to really focus on that?

Tammy Baranowski  53:29  
Well, we are only in our second quarter of being a team, so we're obviously still working through logistics to be transparent. We don't have it all figured out. And, you know, we certainly have our ideas of how things should go, and we have conversations every day. But because in the past few years, the business was the market was so booming, people agents barely had time to take a breath. It was just keep Yeah, moving, keep moving.

Tracy Hayes  53:52  
Keep moving. Feast or famine. I call it in this business, there's feasting time, so you just go out and grab as much, right?

Tammy Baranowski  53:57  
So it was busy, and then, so it's only been relatively recently, when things slowed down, that we were able to start, and I did a of course, again, you know, she focused on helping our mom rehabilitate after her illness, and a lot of family stuff, and then she was also a lot of boots and integrator stuff. And I took that time when it was a little slower, to build our branding, to build our social media websites, to start figuring out our processes, where we, you know, and some wrong terms, wrong turns, also, like shiny objects, trying this out. Are we going to do, you know, all the things we're going to do, the bomb, bomb, and the white Lopo and this and then that? Are we going to buy Zillow? We're not going to buy Zillow. We're going to be our lead generation pillars, and she's pretty easy going with most the decisions. Do we like this logo, you know, or not, but then, you know, do we have it set as a defined time? No, I would say that John and Britta a good job of setting up like momentum champions, which is their top producers. Time to sit down and to do that, to go over the numbers, and so you can participate in that. Or you could go.

Tracy Hayes  55:00  
So do they, you know, you guys may participate longer. Do they actually, like want you want everyone to bring in their number, bring in their computer, and even though they may be talking to the group that everyone's working on their individual things, where their leads came from, how much do they spend on marketing, or lead bys, or whatever it is, type of thing?

Brooke Hewitt  55:18  
Yeah, they stress the importance of that. Yeah, it is.

Tracy Hayes  55:21  
It's a frequent, frequent class that they put on.

Tammy Baranowski  55:23  
So they said it as a zoom appointment. You know, you get your stuff ahead of time. You don't have to share your stuff with everybody, but at least they're there at a certain set time to ask a question of, you know, who are you for your accounting and or did I fill out this form, right? Or whatever it is, and so, and the good thing is that a lot of people are really willing to share and be transparent with what they are using.

Tracy Hayes  55:45  
That I love about John and Bri they really, they you say that, you know, keep doing the right things and doing it. To me, I think that I feel they do the right things. Obviously you guys do too. They're doing the right things. They want. You guys, when you're successful, they will become successful and have that simple mindset. And they, but they, but they're, obviously, they're very focused individuals and very good at, I can't say much more about All right, from where we're at, I'm going to so the chat G P T, I've been talking about the last few episodes. I had to create some questions for us artificial intelligence. I said, I've got, I got Tammy. Here's what I here's what I asked chat. GBT, Tammy and Brooke are two sisters who have formed a real estate team. Create 10 questions that would be unique, interesting and something not often asked top real estate teams. Okay, so here's what it is. Question number one, we'll kind of go, kind of do as much rapid fire as we can. What is the most unusual property you have ever sold, and how did you go about marketing it?

Brooke Hewitt  56:44  
Oh, gosh, I think the jet set. Oh yeah, I was kind of thinking opposite, like the worst property, or,

Tracy Hayes  56:53  
yeah, unusual, unusual, most unusual. That's what it says.

Brooke Hewitt  56:58  
So, yeah, there's a Ridgewood lane. It was a home that had become very popular on social media. They are family members of ours, but so it, I guess it's an Instagram famous house. So she became very popular on Instagram. It's right in St John's County

Tracy Hayes  57:12  
for what, like, what for? What

Brooke Hewitt  57:14  
reason? How did this? So they started an Instagram page just to kind of document their building of their dream home. Okay, it was a farmhouse, a modern farmhouse,

Tammy Baranowski  57:22  
yeah, the jet set farmhouse. So they built it themselves, like, literally, cut the wood on their land and make a lot of the planks and things like that. And then, as they built this influencer page, they also were able to get some sponsorship, some things towards their home. And they built just really incredible

Brooke Hewitt  57:37  
home, right, right? And so it's become, I mean, she's become even. But then they decided to sell it, yes. So that wasn't that was the plan, just the market was where the market was, and that, you know, they had intended for that either permanent home forever, and because the market was so great, and they were like, and they loved the process of, yeah, they said, Well, I don't want to do again. Let's just sell it and do it again. So, yeah, to sell that one, and it was last on the market, very long.

Tracy Hayes  58:03  
I can imagine, well, the market being so hot and just being a brand new, unique and I imagine, like you said, they put the the carpentry and everything else in it high above your, you know, run of the mill builder out here.

Brooke Hewitt  58:15  
So it was very custom. And it was just funny, because the person that who ended up buying it was someone who had followed along on the process the whole the whole way, oh, cool. And knew the house and came on the market. They were like, we want that house.

Tracy Hayes  58:28  
They already knew what it. Knew what was inside. They

Brooke Hewitt  58:31  
saw the whole process,

Tammy Baranowski  58:33  
$1.5 million so it wasn't like, it was just a, yeah, easy house to buy, right? They ended up actually writing a book about that process. Noel jet, did the wife?

Tracy Hayes  58:44  
So did they? Did they start? Did they started another one?

Brooke Hewitt  58:47  
Or they bought the property and they're starting it cool. Cool, very cool. How do you

Tracy Hayes  58:52  
handle difficult clients or difficult situations that may arise during a real estate transaction? I like to say this is answered best by a story. But go ahead.

Tammy Baranowski  59:02  
Oh, well, I would say, if it's me,

Tracy Hayes  59:04  
I before I you hand them off. The brook

Tammy Baranowski  59:07  
before I say or do anything I regret, I call Brooke and see the Escalades. And then she steps in and she becomes the point man on that. But you know, different people are suited to different things. But I think one of one of my other talents is playing the long game and seeing the long game. So when you you know I had these client I don't, probably fired two customers in my career, which is hard for me, because I give people so I go, but I'd had these particular buyers that had backed out of four contracts when it was really hard, multiple offers and really

Tracy Hayes  59:40  
competitive got them accepted, and then they backed out

Tammy Baranowski  59:43  
over what I would consider maybe minor stuff, but they just weren't maybe ready, willing and able, or understanding the market. So it was frustrating, because it felt like it was just I didn't see the end of it, and at one point I actually did fire them. And then they came back to be a while back, and they're like, look, you know, you put some. Into this. We're what we are, ready, willing and able. We want you to try one more time with this one property. And I said, Okay, let's do it. And we got it under contract

Tracy Hayes  1:00:07  
and got Okay, here's the here's the, how did you have that conversation? Tell me how you prepped yourself to fire them. Because I imagine you just say, Hey, I don't want to deal with you anymore. You actually

Tammy Baranowski  1:00:18  
told them why? No, probably not. So when I stop

Tracy Hayes  1:00:21  
calling them back, I mean, what? How do you

Tammy Baranowski  1:00:23  
I have a lot of my epiphanies when I'm running. I run about 30 miles a week, and that's about the only time I am not talking to somebody or having one of my small children or whatever. So it clears my mind and I can get some clarity. And I was literally about two and a half miles into a run, just kind of playing it through my head, and I just stopped right where I was at running pause, my my running app. Boop. Boop, hey guys, you know what? I just don't think we're a good fit, you know, I'm gonna, if you're okay, I'm gonna refer you to somebody that's out in that area. And they read the writing, they're like, oh, you know, we understand it was so they, they actually came to our we had a client appreciation event over the holidays, and they were some of the people that showed up, cool, you know, they and I consider us friends. We're going to watch the Bama game, you know, whenever, when Alabama plays, we're going to watch a game together and stuff. So, so, which is to say, sometimes, when you think it's not going to work out, or people say, Oh, protect your time in real estate. Sometimes, if you just keep at it, it does pan out.

Tracy Hayes  1:01:16  
So in you've at this point there, what you guys weren't clicking whatever, the whatever it was obviously pulling out of four offers that you got accepted. That's, you know, one that rips your heart out, but it was taking too much of your thoughts, taking too much of your time, was being drawn to this negative situation. Is that kind of where you kind of came

Tammy Baranowski  1:01:39  
to that conclusion when you were running it did. It was weighing a lot on my psyche, and then also, just from a purely financial standpoint, when you start doing the math, where's the price point, what's the potential income and how much actual money? I don't think people really realize that real estate agents spend so much money before they ever get paid. Right? We're paying showing agents. We're spending gas, which is not cheap. We're paying all this time. We're paying someone, you know, watch our kids or do other admin stuff so that we can be out showing them properties. We're paying for all the fees and all the subscriptions. And at some point, when you start to add up the money that you've put into it, either on a listing side or a buyer's side, and it doesn't seem like it's ever going to pan out, or that you might be upside down financially. We just can't afford to work for free, upside down. So I was starting to kind of get to that point, and that's what made me do it.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:28  
All right, Miss nurture. How do you you've had, have you had a difficult client? Have you fired one? I don't. I knew the answer is good.

Brooke Hewitt  1:02:34  
I don't think I have an inmate to fire anyone. I don't know that I ever have, and I have probably, I mean, I yeah, I've suffered a few, but yeah, I mean, I just, you

Tracy Hayes  1:02:48  
have some. I mean, you must be having, at some point where they've reached your boiling point, right where, how do you, how do you, what are some of the things that you kind of said to like, simmer them down.

Brooke Hewitt  1:03:00  
I mean, I have had to have several of those conversations where you just have to, you have to sit them down and tell them, Okay, you're you're just not being realistic. And this is you can if you decide you want to go talk to another agent, absolutely, because I just know that I feel very strongly about this is the way it should be. You just need to follow, trust my advice and you can't, you know the

Tracy Hayes  1:03:23  
confidence is coming out in her there. Yeah, sure, she

Tammy Baranowski  1:03:26  
gently lets them off. You want to fire me? I'm okay with I'm not firing you. And so that lets them know in a roundabout way,

Tracy Hayes  1:03:34  
takeaway, the takeaway, okay, can you share a success story of a particular challenging sale that you were able to close, one

Brooke Hewitt  1:03:47  
that come top of mind. I mean, I think, Gosh,

Tracy Hayes  1:03:52  
I'll change the question up maybe. I mean, did you have someone call you up, say for a listing appointment, and you walked into this house and like, whoa, this house is not ready to sell, not the clientele that I'm used to working with. And I mean, we're able to turn it around and get it done. Have you had anything?

Tammy Baranowski  1:04:11  
Oh, for sure. I think what a lot of agents are experiencing right now is maybe a little less so right now, but particularly right when the market shifted, was that the sellers were still in the mindset of the strong sellers, Mark buyers, when the interest rates went up, were in the mindset. And so we were seeing so many extended days on Mark, back on markets, and they're asking for repairs, drawn, you know, all those things. And it was all indicative to us when we were looking at the data of exactly what was happening, was that a lot sometimes agents were, and I've been guilty of it, of accepting a listing where the seller was not realistic with their price point, it was overpriced, and you're gonna have to do price drops, even though you go through the oval, you know, explanation of why that would harm them in the long run. And so we've gotten a little better at, like, really holding strong about where we need to start and why, why it's a bad idea to start high. But even in the heat of the market, I know I had one in particular that was really hesitant to do a price drop or to nudge, and was just even making it difficult for me to show the property.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:12  
So you know, again, you've a little over a quarter you guys been working, working more together, but you've always been sat you spinning off each other. We wanna call it the clients that you're talking about. We're seeing a lot of it where these houses that are sitting for 6090, days because they most of them is because they're not priced right to begin with. They're and so they're, they're caught in this thing, whereas if you price it right, you may even get multiple offers and get more than what you're asking for, which may take you to where they're at. But because, so how do you between the two of you and your Ying and your Yang situation? Have you guys had that situation yet, as sisters, to kind of, you know, you're telling them, Hey, you needed the prices at 400,000 they're saying, no, we want 425 we got to have 425 and then spin it over the brook, or vice versa, to have the other person come in and be the, you know, the good pet, good bad, good cop, bad cop situation, yeah, oh,

Brooke Hewitt  1:06:06  
I think we, we, we always try to, I'm as a united front. So, you know, discuss it between us before we even bring, bring up a price point to, you know, what, what we that it should be for. I don't think we ever try to come say that.

Tammy Baranowski  1:06:25  
Oh, I, I actually jokingly call us good cop, bad cop, sometimes in our personal life, because even when we're trying to, like, encourage our mother or advocating her for the hospital, Brook would go in all honey. And then when things, you know, really hit the thing, I'd come in. Oh, okay, let's you know, and then she'd have to do damage control behind me. But at the end of the day, we we got the thing done. But also we tend whoever kind of bonds with the primary point of contact in the transaction. We don't overstep bounds a whole lot. I mean, we're supportive. We go to listing appointments together. We do buyer consults together, but, but one person usually naturally matches with the customer the best, or is more connected to them, and then we just kind of let, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:07:11  
that was it's a question I've asked a lot of the especially a lot of the couples that have come on, whether it's the male and female and they want to go to her because it's the mom thing, or maybe they feel they can be more straight with him and don't want to upset her. Where you're probably going to notice this year as you guys do more and more transactions together, yeah, who they? Who they call when there is those questions, you know, after that, no matter, no matter, you could have talked the whole time and Brooke sat there and smiled, they're calling Brooke, totally fine by me. Yes, exactly. Okay, gonna skip down here. Oh, is it? Do you hear? Okay, this is we're talking about the market, and the market changing here a little bit. Can you share a unique strategy or tactic that you've used successfully, market, market a property or, you know, I would actually just change the end of it, whether it's you, what we saw last summer at the many, multiple offers. I think we're starting to see that happen occasionally now where, especially in the right hot price point, you are getting two or three offers, type of thing. But what are some tactics that you guys use, maybe, to get your your buyer's offer accepted,

Tammy Baranowski  1:08:22  
you know, and as we're seeing so many agents, they're going back to their nine to fives, because they got into the business when it was booming, and they were able to get some low hanging fruit and get a market share of business. But they never really learned how to actively market property. And we know that a property only doesn't sell because it's either, you know, overpriced or under market. So now that the market's shifting, you'll see some of the more experienced agents kind of a little smug, because they see now that it's their time to shine, because they they remember the times when it was the crash and the weight and things like that, of what you really had to do to get a property sold. And so we're paying attention, and we know that too. So we go in right off the bat. We we have two listings right now that were with other agents that basically didn't do a great service to their sellers, and it sat through the market shift. And now we're coming in and got them under contract. So the thing is, is that we talk about how we we do go hard and actively market on all fronts. We, we pay real money for ads. We we get it up on social media. We share it, you know, we blast it out to all the seven, seven or 8000 agents via email blasts and to all our database. We do postcard, mailer campaign.

Tracy Hayes  1:09:39  
Well, things in each of you make comment on, I mean, how important is it? Even though, when, you know, like last summer, when it was hot and you really, you mean, you would have offers before you can put the sign in the yard

Brooke Hewitt  1:09:49  
to still go through the

Tracy Hayes  1:09:52  
standard procedures of the things that you're talking about, you know, things out, having an open house, you. Are taking the right pictures. How important is that for your brand that you're wearing there on your T shirts? How important is that to do that every time with every single customer? Because whether it's really hot and you like, well, you know, I spent that extra $500 whatever to do all that, but now you're like, do I need to spend $1,000 to move that house, right? So how important is like when you're creating that brand, to do those regimented and do things of high quality to create that reputation?

Brooke Hewitt  1:10:28  
I mean, I feel like we we stay consistent, we just do the same thing every time. I mean, obviously, if something's not working, we will find other tweak it, other things. Every one of our customers the same love, and, you know, promote their

Tammy Baranowski  1:10:44  
and and the fact is, is that for such a large community of Jacksonville, the real estate communities, you know, Jackson was a small town, agents, no other agents. And you do build that reputation of being easy to work with, friendly kind, or you burn some bridges, and then it comes back when your your buyers up against multiple offers, and if you've, you know, not built that reputation as somebody that's likable and easy to work with, the listing agent has more power than I think a lot of people realize in helping guiding their sellers. Of you know, this, this, this offer might have a certain price point, but did we vet the the buyer's lender? Did we, you know, is it something online that's gonna that was just cranking out pre approvals. Did we vet that the agents got a history of being like a sneaky snake in the past and that they're gonna pull something or they're not gonna get it across the finish line or even show up until closing? So that's why our customers trust us, because we we know we pay attention of giving them that extra guidance, of like, let's look at the whole package, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:11:42  
So you mentioned something there, and I like to get you again, get your guys comment on it. You mentioned, you know, these listing agent obviously, knowing your reputation, how important is it that you you can't make all of these social events? There's, again, like educational events all around, all over the place. There's one every day. If you wanted to find one, there is one. Just go to landmark title. They probably have three this week. But how important is to show up at some of those, and actually, you know, mix and mingle or or meet some of the other agents. So now they have actually met you face to face, and they know a little bit about either. So you one, you're you're not shy, or they're not shy calling you because they actually they met you at one time and and shook your hand or in exchange business cards away. How important is showing up, you know, to some of these social events and making meeting the other agents?

Brooke Hewitt  1:12:38  
Well, definitely a good thing to do. I haven't been able to do it as much as I would have liked, especially over the last couple of months with everything going on with mom, but, but I do think it is important to get out and network with other title companies and just everyone. At some point you will run across them, and it would be nice to have a relationship. Definitely makes things go smoother if they trust. You know, you

Tammy Baranowski  1:13:01  
think Brooke doesn't give herself enough credit that while she may not be showing up at the public events a lot behind the scenes, she freely gives of herself to mentor other agents all over the place. And so she has spent hours at 10pm at night with a new agent, helping them figure out how to write a vacant land contract of her own time. And we both have, and so, you know, I always kind of say, like, how does Melissa Ricks? Like, how is she at every event? Like, that woman is super nasty, and, you know, sell more houses than any of us. Like, what is, you know, is she human? But, but she was she, I look up to her a lot, and she showed me the value of of putting out value, and then it just the universe sends it back to you. I would say that's the same with client base, and that's a big part of getting on social media. I mean, obviously part of what you're doing here, right? Give us value, and then in the end, the return, we built this connection and this friendship. But so, you know, part of our social media strategy is free to not what is it gatekeeping knowledge that we've had, and just say, hey, here's a task you use because people, it's collaborative over competitive, and it still

Tracy Hayes  1:14:06  
serves you best. Our speaker, if you listen to her podcast that I had on, she talks about her father taught in her to give because she's at re bar camp, Markie lemons. She has over 100 some courses that she's written and so forth. That's why she was on the chat GPT, because how it could cut her time down and creating, you know, the technical parts of the courses. You know, can do a lot of the writing for you. But anyway, but she talks about her father being a competitive, the first black owned barbecue restaurant in Chicago, and how he had this long, long reputation there, and how he he helped mentor other restaurant owners and so forth, and he told her, competition is healthy. That's you know, it creates attention back to you so you're continuing, and makes you drive to be the best that you can be. I think Melissa Ricks takes that whole heart. Heartedly. She Yeah, there was one week I talked to her, and she's like, Yeah, I'm on three panels this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. She was on a panel somewhere. She's taking time out of her day to sit there. And there's nobody in that room that is doing business with her. You know, there are other real estate agents, you know, the loan officers of vitamin she might be giving them business, but there was only benefit to her was was showing up in and continuing to be that presence. And again, I think the social media, we didn't really haven't dabbled into that, and we're going a long time, but social media aspect of being seen as the the expert, you know, again, if you haven't listened to Melissa Rick's original podcast, because I did have her on, like, Episode 30 something, and then had our team on on episode 50, but listen to her original one. I won't give out the secret, but you will find out why that woman has the energy behind her. Listen to that one. That's a really fun one. So all right, I'm gonna, well, I'm gonna go with one last formal question here. I'm gonna see which one. Well, actually, yeah, let's, let's. I want to just expand a little bit on what you know, at least right now, you guys have only you've truly been the team, right for some just a few months. You know, how do you guys what's your organization? The question is, how do you stay organized and manage your workload effectively while working as a team? So do you have some roles that one is doing versus the other right now, have you like your Brooks handling back in like you said, you do go on listing appointments as much as you can together, sort of thing. But do you have individual roles because you are ying and yang, that one person is doing better than the other, and so you

Brooke Hewitt  1:16:36  
just let that other Well, I'm sure the social media part, she's definitely that's all her. I try, but I'm not. I'm not the greatest at it, so I do let her have that part what to do, and I'll do it. But I think, I don't think we've rolls for each other yet, other than the social media piece. But, I mean, yeah,

Tammy Baranowski  1:16:57  
so we're still working through that, and I think the end of this first year will really tell us where, where the dust settles and where the gaps are. Yes, the while we have different strengths, and then we have some common strengths, we also have some common weaknesses that maybe one or the other can't fill and so that's where we will fill that in, right when we look back and run the numbers, and what would

Tracy Hayes  1:17:19  
you say the biggest weakness is between the two of you. Where are you? What's the, what's the one piece in the real estate puzzle that that neither of you feel are confident or strong in getting organized

Tammy Baranowski  1:17:32  
and the systems and processes, but, you know, and being the visionary I do believe huge in, like the touch program and investing back in that i She's the super frugal person, and I'm the super not frugal person, and so we're coming together on that, and that's been just the biggest, one of the biggest gifts of us, but figuring out where to be really fiscally responsible with how much we reinvest back in the business and where we reinvest it back in that so that it's a good ROI, but then just getting super organized. And then the other piece, which, as you knew, trying to get us on here, was like, Yeah, trying to give a cat a bath or something, but is just taking that leap of faith and putting ourselves out there. You know, it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to the authenticity and the vulnerability is what attracts people.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:18  
What do you feel like maybe having that, you know, it's a big talk, the virtual assistants, or in your case, I think, you know, between the two of you, I just see your volumes, you know, blowing up in the same way having, you know, if you need a full time person, really, to handle that administrative stuff, like making sure your CRM is tight, making sure, you know, those, those top Of Mind emails and that sort of stuff is trickling out, kind of this, lot of behind the scenes stuff that I think a lot of agents do in the late hours of the evening, early morning, when their kids are asleep, or, you know, that type of thing, where they just sit down and go, I gotta get this done. But it's never being done consistently, to really accelerate, to have that, that one person, kind of fill that, that piece.

Tammy Baranowski  1:19:03  
So we've experimented with a couple different options of leverage over even before we were truly a team, but together, you know, I've hired a virtual assistant, I've hired in person assistants. I've used a lot of showing agents, and so we found where some of that works. And, you know, I've gone through different transaction coordinators right now. I think even though business is booming, our take on it right now is to run a lean business and really just get, get our systems in place that we want first, and then when, when it's already operational, then you start plugging people into place and be quick to hire, but also quick to fire. And that's something that's hard, because we love people. We can't fire clients, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:19:42  
Well, that's like, well, there's a lot of contractors out there. There's a lot of people are earning, you know, if you only need them for 10 hours a week or something, that they're there, there's a lot of that out there. Luke And Sadie, newcomer said the one of the biggest regrets they ever had was not hiring that first trans, that first, you know, if they call it something else, I'm gonna say transaction coordinator. But. Getting that first hire, not recruiting other agents, but actually for them as a as a couple, and as their real estate team was hiring that first person to handle those things that were non income producing things, and behind the scenes, to let them go out and income produce and Sadie's really an operational person. Luke's the one you see on Instagram all the time. Sadie's making sure the home office is working great, but they had to get that transaction quartering, and they said they waited up about a year too long for that. So that's just undistorting that.

Brooke Hewitt  1:20:30  
I mean, I think that's important, yeah. I mean, we we have used transaction coordinators and showing assistance, really is, you know why I think my volume, or our volume is where it is because we did have that support.

Tracy Hayes  1:20:43  
Yeah, 100% I have my last informal question. Do you guys have anything you want to add? I always like to throw in. We can get a clip out of this, or someone's listening at this point. Why should someone use the Jax listing system?

Tammy Baranowski  1:20:59  
Well, I think you know, to have that wide variety of of strengths that we bring and that the it's a two for one situation in our breadth of experience, you know, having sold over 50 million in volume in 150 transactions, we know we're doing, which is not to say that there's not still so much to learn, but that also just knowing that you know We're going to be with you long after the transaction closes. So if you're down here for six months a year, and then you're going back up to your other home, wherever it is, as snowbirds, there's a package on the you know, on the front door stoop, and you text us, because we're your Florida friends, you know we're going to run over there, take the package inside the house or check on things. And people know that about us, and they feel comfortable reaching out to us. We do stuff like that all the time for our the time for our folks, just we love on our people, and it comes back to us. Yeah, it may absolutely become like family. I mean, I've made some, you know, friends that I've long friends during during this whole last couple of years. So yeah, I'm gonna

Tracy Hayes  1:21:57  
ask this question, because that's that's often said by the top producers, yeah, what both of you are saying and creating that relationship afterwards to know that, that you are a friend, that, yeah, if they get a flat tire in the middle of the night, you're, you know, you're someone that they should call, hopefully they don't, but that they can call you, that they can rely on you, that you'll get up and go, or go help them, or whatever That is, what are. Just give me a couple things that you, I think you mentioned earlier, you do have a customer appreciation event that you, that you do is that something you do quarterly or yearly.

Tammy Baranowski  1:22:31  
We just did our first event together at the holidays, and then we got together for our touch program. And I think this year we've decided, you know, everyone does like the pop buys for certain holidays, but we definitely want to do our holiday one. Again, we're holiday one again. We're going to do something this summer, whether it be running out of movie theater, you know, or doing a jump house or something, something really family, because we tend to, we do work with some investors and things like that, but we do, you know, being a mom of seven daughters between us, we do have a large client database or client base. So we try to keep it pretty family oriented, but also give

Tracy Hayes  1:23:04  
them no excuses. That's when I when I have event for my alumni, brothers say, Yeah, kids are welcome, because that doesn't give them. Oh, gotta get

Brooke Hewitt  1:23:10  
a babysitter. Yeah. So lots of things that we planned for

Tammy Baranowski  1:23:16  
you, it's gonna be really exciting. Well.

Tracy Hayes  1:23:18  
So for that new agent that's getting out in their first couple of transactions, you said the database is so important that is your business. What if you guys went back to the very first customer? Would you have done something slightly different? You're maybe doing it right now, but what you weren't doing, say in those first six months, right that you're doing now, as far as nurturing those past clients, because that's where a good bit of your referrals, let alone your your warm sphere you guys are. You know, grew up a lot here, but nurturing those past clients, whether it's a quarterly phone call, I mean, what? What are? What is something that you passed on early, that you're doing now that you tell a new agent they

Brooke Hewitt  1:23:59  
need to implementing a touch program. And you know, once, once you are so many transactions in it's it's hard to remind yourself to make that phone call or just so you know, just ensure that you have it set to where you remember, send out that birthday card or reach out to someone or connect with them, if you see a post on social media that their dog passed or something, right? Just make sure that you connect with them and let them know you're paying attention.

Tracy Hayes  1:24:27  
You bring up an excellent point again, just from an educational standpoint, you've probably have heard this on the podcast or other these years if you're going to do a social media campaign, and to use that as saying, top of mind to your customers, do you have to be interacting with them socially, because if you're interacting with them, there's more Facebook is going to keep feeding you what they're putting out. If you're not interacting over time, they're like, Well, I guess they're not friends anymore, and they don't you don't see all their stuff and but if you're interacting, then they're going to see your stuff as much as you're going to see their stuff. But you actually have to make a meaningful comment, you know, below. Low and and respond to when, when they respond to you, when they say something about your

Brooke Hewitt  1:25:03  
post, right? And it needs to be genuine, yes, and I know I really try to be really good about that, and I wasn't always so making sure that I I reach out, and I always say Brooke is the older people whisperer, you

Tammy Baranowski  1:25:18  
know, the grandmas and the grandpas just eat her up. And it's because she will sit there and hold their hand, and, you know, they're not, I think it

Tracy Hayes  1:25:26  
was the farming thing. I think she's

Tammy Baranowski  1:25:30  
such a pure heart. So, you know, so some of the and they're nervous because they what's the DocuSign? They're not on Facebook. They don't even, literally don't know how to sign, to text or do things like that. So Brooke's driving over there so they can do a wet signature. Wet signature and and helping them figure that stuff out.

Tracy Hayes  1:25:45  
But you and I are our patients, where our patients goes thin real quick.

Tammy Baranowski  1:25:49  
No, I always say I love people from my couch. I love people my couch. So, so I am excited. I want to talk to you, but I'm probably going to talk to you. I'm in the car driving, because that's the only time that I'm having to sit still on the moon, but, but I do the same thing. You know, when we see that they're having a rough time just quickly hopping on Amazon and sending a care package or, you know, some an edible arrangement is so

Tracy Hayes  1:26:12  
untrue, you don't know what's and again, you see some of their bad times, but you don't really know how bad it is, right? And how the fact that you actually made a thoughtful gesture of some way to show that, Hey, I am thinking about you, can make all the

Tammy Baranowski  1:26:30  
difference, yep, and also sharing so much of yourself, because if they don't know anything about you, then how are they going to connect to it? Right? So when I was just heading to the gym one morning, and a guy didn't know that hadn't talked to since high school, and I'd never seen that. He never commented on any of my funny, like, reels that I was doing here for a while with the gangster rap and stuff. And I saw him at 630 in the morning, and I was like, you know, Hey, Joey, how's it going? And he was like, Oh my gosh, I've been loving your reels. They're so funny. I watch them all the time, and it really blew me away. Because I was like, that's cool. Are we even Facebook friends? Because he's because he's just not a common posters. We're like Brooke. And then we just closed on their house. A couple months later, a few months later, they reached out, and we just sold them their dream house. So that was really exciting. But also, you know, instead of just posting it generally on social media, sometimes I'll just text some of my past clients that I've befriended, a little funny clip of my kids, or a little funny selfie where I look like a hot mess or whatever, and not really build, you know, because, yeah, see the real

Tracy Hayes  1:27:29  
100% you don't know who's watching. And I'm gonna leave again those who are listening right now leave this tip right now. I am posting. I take the reels from the show, and you guys generally see after someone's go, you'll see them for the next week, almost every day. But I'm taking that same reel, and I'm putting in a Facebook, putting on YouTube, shorts, tick tock and Instagram, right? Actually, I'm, I'm going to, I have the Instagram I was reserving, you know, I'd show one or two reels. Now, what I'm I'm going to go to do more posting on Instagram. Because I wasn't posting every day on Instagram. I was kind of leaving like, Hey, this is my show piece, and I, you know, but I'm gonna go back, and you might see two reels of the new show, recent show, but then you're gonna see a reel from a show I did six months ago, right? And keep putting this, because a lot of those people weren't on there, because I kind of started late with the video, not late with the video the posting part. But the point is, Facebook reels, I am getting more action off of those. I literally put a post out yesterday of a reel from Stevie Hayes episode, which was the fall of 21 and had nearly 1000 views and two hours of you know, it's just a reel 30 seconds and over two hours of people viewing it, because it will tell you how many people, how many people clicked on it, how many views they did, which is generally a little bit more, because some people watched a couple times, and then how many out how many minutes? Because that's the whole point of the social media is how many minutes they're spending on your you know that that thing Facebook, and then every morning I wake up, there'll be a dozen to 15 things that on reels that I posted a couple weeks ago, people are still watching. They're clicking on and I'm like, Whoa, I haven't posted a reel on on that guest for a couple weeks. And so they're continuing to resurface those reels within Facebook. So it's a great area. If you're not using Facebook reels to use it just as much as you're using Instagram for those. I know a lot of people like to use Instagram. I need to use Instagram. I need to use Instagram some more. So just a little tip there. All right, last inform. Anything else you want to say? Oh no, you know you're good. You're quiet. Okay, the last formal, not that was the last form. The last, this is the informal question, and I have to have an answer from both of you, so we'll see how ying and yang you are. Is it more important who you know, or what you know and why.

Brooke Hewitt  1:29:42  
I mean, gosh, I could see the value in both, you know. Like I said, I always want to make sure I know my stuff, or else I can't, you know, I can't give confidence. Yes, I so that's, I think what you know is, for me is maybe more important. I can see the value in who you

Tracy Hayes  1:30:01  
know, of course, of course. Well, I, and I, it makes total reason. I mean, you, you kind of started when you were explaining your career. You wanted to shadow that person. It was very important who you know, because how you presented yourself, you you needed that internal confidence about a business you hadn't done before. You had an idea but you hadn't done before. You wanted to learn what was going on on the backside, what was around the corner. So that makes sense.

Tammy Baranowski  1:30:24  
I'm gonna do the whole yin and yang thing and go in the opposite direction and say it's who you know and and I say that because I think it goes without saying that you know, Brooke is so relationship based. So I think she doesn't even realize how important it is like who you know, because her relationships are just so automatic. I try to be really intentional about my relationships. But one thing I'm learning from this, you know, artificial intelligence and things in this day and age, is that there, if you don't know the answer, you can find the answer for you. And we're constantly, always striving to improve what we know. So we're not just willy nilly going into this thing who, you know, a lot of times, is more important, because it's, it's a relationship business, and then also who you know. You never know when you're going to need something. And so pouring into those relationships is it like a deposits into a bank account. You never know when you're going to need to take a withdrawal or when you're going to need a resource to be able to our our relationships are what provides so much value to our customers, whether it's agent relationships, whether it's lender relationships, whether it's who we know that's going to fix their do their repairs and the renovations afterwards, you know, just being here our whole lives, we have, I don't know, 500 mutual friends on social media or something like that, but, but for me, it's who you know, because it's, it's again and again been a value to our Yeah, right.

Tracy Hayes  1:31:39  
No, yeah, both, both answers were, were superb, but you, you brought around, and we hadn't even talked about it, which is probably another half hour, is it's a relationship business, and you, if you're, you're new out there, or you're, you're, you hit that lid. I think both of you would recommend yo. How are you doing your relationships? Are you nurturing your past clients, and even though, even though they maybe have come in on a Zillow leak, and you sold it in the house within three days, and then all of a sudden, you're kind of in contract. So you're not showing them houses anymore. You're not really, you're the pre contract relationship building of showing them houses and medium places and so forth. Now that you're under contract, so you're kind of like, you know, okay, you meet him at the inspection, I guess, right? You meet him at the thing. But that it's very important to go back and nurture that, and it's all about the relationship, like you're saying people are going to do business with who they like and trust 100% ladies, I appreciate you coming on. Anyone listening, please make a review if you're listening on the podcast, if you're listening on the YouTube channel, please subscribe for to hear more from these great ladies when we get the video back and so forth, as well as the many other great agents that we have on and thanks for listening.