Julia Almstead: The Julia Almstead Team

Julia Almstead  0:00  
Hey. This is Julia Olmstead of Keller Williams, Atlantic partners. If you are looking to improve your real estate business, you need to be listening to the real estate excellence podcast with my good friend Tracy Hayes. 

Podcast Intro/Outro  0:12  
Welcome to Real Estate excellence making lasting connections to the best of the best in today's industry, elite. We'll help you expand your circle of influence by introducing you to the leaders in the real estate industry, whether it's top agents who execute at a high level every day, or the many support services working behind the scenes. We'll share their stories, ideologies and the inner workings of how they run a truly successful business, and show you how to add their tools to your belt now, please welcome the host with the most Tracy Hayes,

Tracy Hayes  0:46  
today, I have another Jax, real producer on the show. She is one of the top 500 agents in Northeast Florida. Recently, she became the secretary on the board at the St Augustine St John's border realtor. So we're going to find out what her goals are there and what she wants to accomplish, her team was number one at the Kellen Williams Atlantic partners in December, with over three and a half million in volume. Let's welcome the leader of the Julia Olmstead team. Julia Olmsted, to the show. 

Julia Almstead  1:11  
Okay, thank you. Thank you for having me. Tracy. I'm glad we finally got on and got our my little snafu and scheduling squared away there.

Julia Almstead  1:21  
That's the first time I've ever it's ever happened. Actually, the other thing I worry about is sometimes someone going to the wrong location, not where we're going. That's just kind of my my pre show leg jitters, making sure everyone shows up. But you were actually here in early, and we're actually kicking off the show pretty much on time, which is rare. We're 1015, minutes late. But as always, just want to kick off the show tell, you know, to get everyone get a little bit to know about you, you know, where you grew up. And then, you know, eventually we're working just, you know, what are some of the first jobs you had after because you did list a college there. Is that actually Westchester Community College? Is that actually what it was originally named, uh huh, and that's why I attended West Chester Community College. I don't think we've ever talked about I was born in Peekskill. Oh, no way. My dad was born and raised in Peekskill, and actually attended Westchester Community College back in the 70s.

Julia Almstead  2:48  
He drove, yeah, he would drive every day from Jersey into Co Op city when Co Op city was being built back in the 70s. And then he realized that he could do this better and more in Greenwich, Connecticut. So he moved us to Westchester, to New Rochelle, so he can develop his business, where he worked for, gosh, maybe 3540 years cool in Greenwich, anywho. So I grew up in an apartment building, and we actually never lived in an actual home, like single family residence, interesting. And in 2001 10 days before 911 I actually moved to Tucson, Arizona with my ex husband and my four children, and that is where I discovered my first home ownership experience. So I was able to afford our first home and build a pool and give that and afford that lifestyle for my children, and it was great. And through that process, and building new construction with one of the national builders at that time was a phenomenal experience. And so that actually, I was a stay at home mom for a few years, and then I went to work part time at one of the big box stores, and I was working there doing custom blinds and window coverings, and a lady walked in, and she ordered all of her plantation shutters, and when she was done, she said, you're one of the best salespeople I've ever worked with. And I was like, Wow, thank you. And she said, Would you like a job working on this new construction development community? It's an over 55 luxury oh, we're still in Arizona, right? We're still in Arizona. And how I got into working new construction, so I became their design coordinator. So I worked on 245

Tracy Hayes  2:10  
So when I saw that on your LinkedIn, yeah. So tell us where you grew up. And you know, how'd you end up at Westchester?

Julia Almstead  2:16  
So I ended up growing up in New Rochelle, New York. We were originally from Jersey City New Jersey. And my dad was a painter contractor in the union in New York City and was working in the Bronx in Co Op city, and discovered New Rochelle, and it's a beautiful beach town, and said, Hey, we're moving into Rochelle, and that's where I grew up. I moved there when I was three. That's my hometown, and I consider that my hometown, actually. And then I went. He would

Tracy Hayes  2:44  
get up every day and get on the subway.

Julia Almstead  4:31  
brand new homes. So you would come to the design center right with me, and I would do all of the upgrade options for you, and I went through that process for them, and then I became an owner's rep for them, which meant that I would actually do the punch list for the builder. So I would go by myself, blue tape everything, inspect every single unit.

Tracy Hayes  4:55  
Isn't it just interesting how I mean, I mean, I think you're a believer. I think that he sets us down these paths to prepare us for future things in our lives. And obviously this, this experience that we'll dig in a little bit deeper, how you took that experience and how you obviously implement it, and kind of are ahead of the ball, and a lot in a lot of the new construction things that are going on here, obviously, right?

Julia Almstead  5:18  
And that was during the craze in the early 2000s so I worked during that new construction period that had a lot of the same challenges that we do today in this crazy market, lack of supplies, not enough homes, more buyers than there are homes, and all that good stuff. Yeah. So it prepared me for this market, you know, 20 years later or 15 years later. So I did get to experience all that, and then live through the crash of the market. And then that job dried up. And in 2007 we moved to Florida, and I knew one day I would become a realtor. It was just the next step in my, you know, progression for real estate. So in 2011 I became licensed,

Tracy Hayes  6:00  
because Arizona, really, I think Arizona, if I recall Arizona and Nevada during the, you know, the 2000 time period, I mean, they really took a serious hit. I mean, I remember at that time, I was still only three years in the industry, from the mortgage side, and dealing with these people that were $150,000 upside down in their home,

Julia Almstead  6:24  
and I was one of them, yeah, because actually we moved here and couldn't sell our house in Arizona, so we lived here for the first three years and owned a home in Tucson, and ended up having the short sale. So I personally experienced what a short sale was like. You probably didn't think we're gonna

Tracy Hayes  6:40  
go down this. No, that's cool. No, that's cool. Addressing it

Julia Almstead  6:44  
gave me firsthand experience. You know, as

Tracy Hayes  6:47  
Richard mentioned, we're gonna have a conversation, and it just goes. It'll take us down from rabbit holes, which all of its well, tell us about you. And now, obviously anyone listening out there that you know again, just how your past have led like you said you felt that, well, the progression is going to be real estate. Did you actually really even think about that? In 2007 oh, I want to become a realtor. Because if I looked at your your LinkedIn, it wasn't till like 13 or so, right? You started working with REMAX. So what

Julia Almstead  7:14  
for when I was actually a Berkshire prior to that? Okay, that was opposed to my fundamental training from Anne King, okay, I love and adore and I think she's amazing, and she runs all the Berkshire offices here in Northeast. So when did you when did you join Berkshire? So I believe it was in 2011 or 12. Okay, so my first year and a half in the industry, I hung my license originally with my neighbor, who is a broker, John Martin Realty and then, and I'm not sure if he's still a broker, but that was only for a couple months while I tried to figure out where I was gonna put my license and where I was gonna get training. And I remember actually calling different brokerages, and some of them wouldn't even call me back. It wasn't

Tracy Hayes  7:59  
this is in 2010 to 2000 2011 Yeah.

Julia Almstead  8:03  
And then I got a call from Anne, and she was like, Yeah, let's meet. And she was like, a godsend to me, because she taught me all the fundamentals of real estate.

Tracy Hayes  8:12  
So just, I want to tip on that, because one of the things I always like to talk about on every show is how someone selects their brokerage, good, bad, indifferent, and would they do it differently? Or if they were recommending to someone today how they should do because I really believe in talking to all the great agents that you know. All you know. Well, I haven't talked to 500 Jack's real producers yet, but I'm over, well over 115 or so. And you know, some of them started off with the right people, right, mentors, right, training, right, all that. So others, you know, did have some side steps and had to go and kind of find some of the things. And just their own personality and drive brought them to the surface where a lot of agents would have fallen out already, right, you know. So they, they rose to the top. The cream rise to the surface. So, so, you know, looking back at that initial thing, it was more of a friend, right? Martin was more of a

Julia Almstead  9:05  
yes, yes. He was the one who told me how to get into the business. I remember asking him, I was like, John, how do I even get my license? And he laid it out for me and said, that's what you have to do.

Tracy Hayes  9:14  
So you just didn't think much of it and signed up under it.

Julia Almstead  9:18  
Didn't think anything of it. But then I realized that I wanted to take it on as a serious career. At that point, I had left the big box store and went to work in commission sales back then, when it was hh Greg, which is no longer in existence in Jacksonville, office outside, and I was one of their top producing appliance sales people. And so I took that experience and realized, and I got my I was licensed at that point, so I was working full time during the day or during the night, mostly at HH Greg, trying to learn real estate during the day. And then eventually realized that I needed to take it more seriously, so I signed up with Anne's office. Yes. And she said, you know, if you can come in for the training, you know, we'll get you there. And I remember, six months into the business, I hadn't done any deals yet, and and called me one day and said, You know, I started to, like, teeter off and like not show up to the trainings or go to the weekly meetings. And she called me up and she said, going on, you know, I haven't seen you around the office, and I'm like, I don't know. I'm just like, scared. And she's like, scared. What are you scared of? And I'm like, Oh, I just feel like I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm like, scared to take the next step into actually getting a customer and getting a contract, like, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do when I get the contract, and she goes, That's ridiculous. I'm here for you go get a sale, and then you call me, and I was like, okay, and I just needed that little push into the industry. And I like, right away, right after that, I got my first contract.

Tracy Hayes  10:57  
So you know, at this time, you have over a decade of sales experience, right? And the different things that you were doing and in that time, maybe you might reflect now, because you know, myself being in sales for pretty much my entire adult life, having and when you do change industries, so it's, you know, obviously, you know, selling the appliance at the at the store versus, you know, you're out here, You are the store, right?

Julia Almstead  11:21  
Yeah, no one's coming into me to see, like, even selling a model home is easier than actually doing, you know, the product there for people to walk into and see. So when you're just in general sales,

Tracy Hayes  11:32  
yeah, you got a warranty, and it's all shiny and everything looks like that's easy thing to do. But when you look back at that, that manager, her stepping up and saying, hey, you know I've got your back, right? I mean, do you think back to your previous sales? And then when you're, I know, you interact with a lot of newbies today and do trainings and so forth, and think about giving them then that same confidence, yeah.

Julia Almstead  11:54  
And I do, you know, encourage like the newbies to do all of the training that they possibly can when people first get into the business, I always advise them. Most of you know your first six months is going to be heavy training. Learn everything you can. But also at some point you have to pull yourself out of the training and actually implement the training. Some people get stuck in a rabbit hole and all they want to do is train, train, train, train, train, train. And I'm like, Okay, now you have to actually implement it, and that was my

Tracy Hayes  12:23  
problem, or

Julia Almstead  12:26  
you're gonna quit the business, you know. And that's why I think a lot of realtors end up quitting, because they just don't, because they don't know yet, and they haven't actually been through their first, you know, contractor experience from all the way, from showing the properties. I mean, I just remember, like, having to go show my first condo. My first call I got was on doing floor duty, and I answered the call, and I remember showing up, and I was thinking, Oh, my goodness, I haven't done the lock box thing yet. You know, they're super us, like, how do I do it? I didn't know I didn't know I had to push the little thing underneath, you know,

Tracy Hayes  13:05  
the little things that could hold us back. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna circle back a little, because I got kind of do this preliminary thing to kind of build every your background up a little bit. But So in those initial How long were you with Martin, I guess, Oh, just a few months, just a few months

Julia Almstead  13:20  
a year and a half with Berkshire, and then I had an opportunity to go to the Milano beach REMAX unlimited office. They were just opening up. And mortgage broker I used to work with just me to them, he said, hey, they're looking for new agents. I should introduce you. It was a great opportunity to work floor duty, where we had a lot of walk ins,

Tracy Hayes  13:40  
okay, had their retail like, like they do out at knockoutee,

Julia Almstead  13:43  
yeah, right, exactly. So I sat floor duty every Tuesday and Thursday, religiously, and my first few years, and I remember just getting tons and tons of walk ins. And I got several sales through

Tracy Hayes  13:56  
that, going back to the Berkshire Hathaway, because the first three months, I mean, we'll go back to that conversation you had where you told her you were you were scared six months you were about six months into the business, probably ready to throw in the towel, right? So at that point, what changes? She gives you this confidence. I've got your back. Just go out and get a contract, and then you and I will take it from there. Well, she, she'll walk you through the next step, which, yo, you've got to get at bats, right? You've got to, you know, how many cut you got to get out there and talk to customers, because you got to, I think in every business, in sales, the great thing about working, especially in like a call center, as I did originally, was the at bats, right? I can make a lot of mistakes. They didn't. They expect us to be perfect, where sometimes you get out there and you want to be perfect, and it's but you now are afraid to go out the front door because you're not right.

Julia Almstead  14:49  
And I didn't know, yeah, I felt like I didn't know enough. But you're never going to know it all, or any of it, actually, until you go through your first you know, experience of showing property, right? You know, making the appointments, learning how our systems work. You know, we have universal systems where everyone uses showing time. And, you know, everyone, you learn the MLS, and you learn how to get in there and look up properties and look up where information is. And it takes time, you know, but through training, good training, you learn these things. And then when you do talk to people, you can't be a secret agent, and that's what I tell everyone. And so I think it's a mindset thing as well. Once I was ready to take on my first customer, like immediately after having that conversation with her, it just happened I was on floor duty. That's when I got the first call over in St Augustine beach to go show a condo, and the lady said, I don't use computers. I have the newspaper, and I'm standing at the condo. I can't get a hold of anyone in the paper. And I got you answered the phone. So will you come show me this condo? And I said, Yes, and she bought it, and she was a cash buyer, and that was and it was a short sale on top of that. So now I had my first sale, which was a short sale, so I got to learn everything, which I had already experienced myself personally because of the market crash, right? And I came here in 2007 anticipating getting my license early on, but with the market crashing, it didn't seem like a good time at that point. But then by 2011 I was like, Okay, I'm ready to jump in and do this, right? So that's how I did it.

Tracy Hayes  16:22  
So what do you start doing now? So now you've got, you got your first one under your belt. So now you got a little different confidence in yourself, a little different pep in your step. What do you start doing the next six, maybe, maybe six to 12 months of now working, it sounds like you've got a mentor. Now you just, you know, she takes you under I assume she took you under her wing, so to speak, amazing train. How important just that is, just to match up with someone, a little senior with some experience under their belt, right, to match up and collaborate and express, be able to express them. You know what? I'm scared to go out there because I don't know what I'm doing after they say I want to buy I don't know what to do next, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. How important is that, especially for someone new, right?

Julia Almstead  17:10  
It's super important to not listen to those fears that we all face. You have to be uncomfortable to grow, and if you're not feeling uncomfortable, then you're not growing. I'm a firm believer in

Tracy Hayes  17:22  
so I'm gonna give you that book that's sitting over there says, overcome your villains. Yeah, you know, I don't know if you've listened to my podcast that I had either saw that she was on. Yeah, you need to listen to that. And she talked to fear is a liar. That's she didn't actually make that phrase she stole from somewhere else. But yeah, fear is a liar. But the other, the second thing you just said, I mean, you said it just like her,

Julia Almstead  17:43  
yeah, if you're feeling comfortable, you're not growing. Well, yeah, to be uncomfortable, to grow.

Tracy Hayes  17:47  
She dives into that. She talks about, if you feel uncomfortable, that's a green light to move forward.

Julia Almstead  17:54  
That's right. And I die now, coach, yeah, I don't really coach people. I mean, I do, but I don't, not professionally, you know, but people agents come to me all the time asking me for advice. I've just had a friend drive up from Orlando over the weekend, and she's struggling at her brokerage in Orlando. And, you know, wanted to talk to me about, you know, how am I doing my business? What? How did I get there? And I told her the same exact story. I remember having that little I think, what is it called the drunk monkey on your shoulder, and that, that little drunk monkey will constantly tell you, you can't do this, you can't move forward, you can't achieve it's a mindset you have to believe in yourself, and you have to come from a place of service as well. You know, it's developing relationships after I gained my confidence once she gave me that push, you know, she taught me to buy my own name online, my domain name. So Julia olmsted.com came alive, you know. And then next thing I know, I'm advertising. I'm pushing my name out there. I'm on social media, and I have other brokerages trying to recruit me, and they all think, I'm in the business, like, several years, and I'm in my first year. And they're like, how long have you been? Like, three, three years, five years? And I'm like, No, this is my first year. And they're like, I hear your name everywhere. And I'm like, Yeah, because I wanted my name to resonate with people. I don't want them to forget me, right? I didn't want it to be like Julia sells homes, or Julia sells st, Augustine, or, you know it? Well, I wanted it to be Julia Olmstead. I wanted my name to stick in people's minds, and I didn't want them to forget about it.

Tracy Hayes  19:31  
And well, because you know that the cells, thing and stuff I see a lot of them do, can be confusing, because there are so many differentiations of it, right? Jack st, Augustine sells or I see that all because I have to, you know what? If I'm emailing somebody, what's their email? You have to go back and reference it where, if it's just your name.com, which can be hard. I they want me to pay money for mine. I tried to get it when I started. That's why it's Tracy Hayes podcast, somebody else. Tracy. So, but some, some guy in China bought it, and I had him search it down. I paid the GoDaddy to try it again. Guy would never respond. Some, some dude in China buys up these, yeah, whatever.

Julia Almstead  20:10  
So that's one of the things I've learned over the years, is protect your own name, like, own your own name, you know, go out there and register, you know, buy the domain name. It's cheap. With few bucks, own your own.com name, you know, protected. I even have my maiden name, Julia galette.com, I don't use it, but I own it. I don't ever want someone else to take my name and do something with it. I don't know what they would do, but, you know, well,

Tracy Hayes  20:33  
I mean, unless there's some other professional out there, same name, but, yeah, everyone should go on and because, like you said, you could pay a lot of times. It's just $1 whatever, for a year, it could you reserve it and go, daddy, go. And then, you know, for 10 years, cost you 1020 bucks, and it's reserved, right? So that, what are some of the things you start doing again, going back that six or 12 months, you've got the mentor now you, she's coaching you on basically, branding yourself, correct?

Julia Almstead  21:00  
Totally, she was a big brand yourself person, because she had her own branding when she was in production. And really taught us every single week how to run a CRM, follow up with customers, add customers in and then their CRM. She really heavily taught us on how that CRM works, which provided us a website, and then everything we needed to follow up, leverage the tools level, leverage all the tools, which I still am a firm believer in CRMs today, and using one and using it religiously, and that has kept me in business, literally all these years, has been my CRM

Tracy Hayes  21:38  
I think I know one of the downfalls at my side, and Not in the mortgage business, but I can only imagine it's out there for some real estate agents as well, is like, you know, they go to these brokerages like a Keller Williams or a REMAX, and they've got, you know, they're all selling that. They've got the technology, they've got this fancy CRM, but no one's actually there. Explaining to them how to go from A to B to C in that CRM, and that tool just sits there, because a lot of

Julia Almstead  22:09  
times you find that correct. So I ended up landing in REMAX, which had the same CRM, but they weren't really using it at that particular office. And when Brenda, who owns a REMAX Unlimited, who I also love, in Adora, I always end up loving all my brokers. But anyway, she said, Oh, if you know how to use it. And so we worked it out where I ended up teaching all the agents in all of our offices how to use that CRM at that time when REMAX was using it. And so it was funny that I kind of just went, I transitioned from one brokerage to the other, and then CRM really became an intricate part of my business. And it always has been, and it still has been to this day. I will say that, you know, then eventually coming over to Keller Williams, their training, I think, has far exceeded any other training I've ever received, although I will say that I think Berkshire, it doesn't, I don't know their training today, but I think they do also a phenomenal job, very equal and equivalent to Keller Williams. It was different at that time. I didn't stick around long enough to get all of it.

Tracy Hayes  23:14  
I think they've recharged really good. The last few months, I've seen some people go over there, some top notch people go to Berkshire. So I think they've been, you know, recharged going in the, you know, whether 2023 was something that they were, you know, to attract the agents back over. You know, there's always this migration. Had a really good train. Yeah, I think the reputation has been consistent, right? Yeah, they're doing something now, at least I've never, just because I've seen a couple top agents go over there.

Julia Almstead  23:43  
For me, I love Keller, though now, like now that I'm here, I in retrospect, a lot of times, I always say, I wish I had started here sooner, just because their training is so intense and it's really good. It's very useful, helpful, and we are, our company is building their own CRM right now, and Gary Keller, as you know, is one of the biggest real estate gurus in the world, and so to follow him and learn from him and mastermind is pretty incredible.

Tracy Hayes  24:13  
Let's, you know, let's educate because you're passionate about the CRM and use and really leveraging it as a tool, where I don't think enough agents, they could move their game a little bit if they took some a little bit of time. Here I had Markie lemons, who was at the rebar camp when she was on the show. She she was actually listening to her podcast the other day. She said eight by eight. So by eight o'clock in the morning, she tries to contact eight people. Now, obviously she's probably not calling them, right, but she's sending some sort of message to them one way or another, right? And then she's, I forget what the number was, six or eight people a day she wants to add to her CRM, or she's getting there. Her goal is to add a number of people. People every day, correct? And obviously over the course of the year, that that adds up to these people that you're communicating, and we'll get into staying top of mind in a little bit. But how important is to have, or, you know, do you have some sort of regimented system that you have to make sure everyone that you're contacting is getting in there? Yes, yeah.

Julia Almstead  25:20  
So that's the number. That's the the easiest part to fail at with the CRM is not putting everyone in. And if you're a high D on the desk profile like I am, yeah, it's really hard. Well, actually, my daughter works on she likes that. Just graduated college and in a with a degree in journalism and realized that that's not really her passion anymore. And she is going for her real estate license next month, and right now she's the behind the scenes handling the CRM on the way here this morning, I got a call from someone who found me on Google, on my Google business page. And I said, How did you find me? And she said, Google. They're in town. They want to find a property. I said, be happy to help you. We hung up. They texted me all their information before I even stepped in this office. I texted it all to my daughter. I gave her a little snippet of who they are, what they're looking for, and I'm actually showing them a property at one of my listings tonight at 530 Excellent. But yeah, I, you know, said, Hey, put them in. Let's get them in. And she now handles all of that. For me, I'm teaching her the CRM so that she knows how to maximize on it. For us, it does everything. So I can do my postcards, which I always mail out after I have a just sold. I don't typically do just listed, because by the time those goes, you know, go out in this market, yeah, possible that the house just sold, although we're seeing the market kind of in a little wonky place right now, some homes and properties are getting multiple offers, and others are not. So it just depends on, you know, pricing and and, you know,

Tracy Hayes  26:57  
desirability, but the importance of the importance of the CRM, and you're getting your daughter started off correctly, right, and she still is young enough and has a soft brain and can absorb all that, yeah, information and but even us older peeps that you know have you know, high DS to understand, set that regimen of making sure those people, whether it's you or your assistant, that that information is getting in there every day, right, and adding to it. And I think, obviously, I think you would agree, just something's probably already gone out to them, right, right, via email, through your CRM, or your daughter sent something out to them. So where they're driving around, they've been probably playing on the internet, because they found you on Google, obviously. So they've may have gone on some other sites, and now people are starting to call them, but because you you've talked to them on the phone, and now something already has already gone out an email to them in less than the last hour, hour and a half, correct? They now feel that you're already responding. Okay, Julia's good. She's responding to us. She answered her phone, and she's already sent us an email. Us an email, so she's not ignoring us, right?

Julia Almstead  28:05  
And that's one of the biggest secrets in this business. Just answer your phone. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten new customers, sellers, listings, whatever, just from answering the phone. Like I get, wow, you answered your phone. And I'm like, Yeah, I always answer isn't it amazing, as much as possible, yeah, unless I'm in, you know, out showing a property or in a listing appointment, I'm trying to answer my phone as much as possible,

Tracy Hayes  28:28  
yeah, yeah. I love it now, at least mine comes up says, potential spam, right? And we do get a lot of those, yeah,

Julia Almstead  28:39  
spam text messages. Now you have the Report Spam button, like, through horizon, yeah, stop giving me health insurance quotes.

Tracy Hayes  28:48  
So what do you feel right now is, you know, and know this is constantly evolving, so you kind of have to, like, Take this, you know, 27th of February, and stop time for a moment. What do you think is been your one of your reasons for your continued consistent success? And it seems like, it seems like you're, you're continuing to grow every every month, at a nice pace, right? You didn't do it overnight, right? But you just constantly got this upward.

Julia Almstead  29:21  
So like in any business, there's an 8020 rule, and 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers who gives you most of your business. It's going to be your sphere of influence. And I stay in touch with all of my past customers on a regular basis. This year, we're trying to roll out, because I haven't been good about it the last few years, but I wanted, and I've done customer events in the past. I really, really want to focus on quarterly customer appreciation events to keep our customers coming in our particular office also provides us that ability. They do events for our customers as well. So we have the ability to do like a pie. Party, or we did a barbecue party around Fourth of July last year. It was a huge success. And so I think staying in touch with your former customers gives you more repeat business than you realize. I think that's going to drive your business more for newer agents, there's a really cool little exercise that you can do. We just trained with the president of Keller Williams, Realty international Mark King, couple weeks ago down in Orlando, and he made everyone in the audience take their phone. Do you have an Apple phone?

Tracy Hayes  30:29  
Yes, you do. There's an app. It'll pull off every one of those people on there.

Julia Almstead  30:33  
Yeah. So if you go into your Apple phone, right, go to contact, okay, if you go to contacts and you hit the the the button in the corner, it says list. You click that. How many contacts does it say? I have 30 433 3433 people in my phone. That's a hefty database right there,

Tracy Hayes  30:55  
when you don't want anyone contacting you. And used to be just going on there I click instead of, you know, all right, so it wasn't take a block. Yeah, I forget what the terminology. Someone's probably laughing and watching us, but they wouldn't change it. So now you're like, it's asking you three different things, and do you want to set a schedule and all this other thing. So yeah, that's that I usually, that's what I do. And because about a month or so ago, I was like, Why is this not? You know, you updated the software, right? They probably actually, there's an update out there right now, which will probably change it back, because everybody probably complains, yeah, well,

Julia Almstead  31:30  
for the newer agent who says they don't have a database, that's not true, all they have to do is go into Contacts, hit that little button in the corner that says lists, and check out and see how many people you have in your phone. That's your sphere of influence right there. I mean, it could be your doctor, it could be your dentist, it could be your attorney, it could be anyone. So taking

Tracy Hayes  31:51  
that, and I was jumped you a little bit there. There is actually an app too that will download all into an Excel spreadsheet for you too, as well. So you can actually look through there and, you know, find out. You know, there's some people, right? You know, of course, you never know who's going to give you a sale. I mean, it just doesn't know. So, but how would tell someone that you got 3400 names on there? What did he tell you to do next? How did he tell you to reach out to those 3400

Julia Almstead  32:16  
so, 3400 people we could download, like you said, and then upload it into our CRM. So then you start calling people. Dial people, you know they say, statistically, it takes 17 phone calls, 17 dials to reach one person, live and speak to them. And if you use what we call the Ford mess method, which is Family, Occupation, Recreation and dreams, all you have to do is call people and ask them those four questions you never, ever speak about real estate

Tracy Hayes  32:46  
in of those 3400 names, some of them you probably have forgotten. You're probably like that. I have

Julia Almstead  32:53  
over 8000 people in my CRM. That's just something.

Tracy Hayes  32:56  
Yeah, so we'll just say that agent to download that Yo, you put in your, you know, you put in your sale, you start looking that, and, you know, that name comes up like, because obviously they were in your phone, so you don't want to call them. And they go, Oh, hey, Julia. And you're like, who this is, you know, so, but the great thing is, we have social media. So look them up on social media might remind you of how you interacted with

Julia Almstead  33:18  
that person. I actually leave labels on anyone who's in my phone. So if it's a seller, I will put seller, or, like a potential seller, I'll put seller, and actually the address when I save them in my phone, so that when it pops I'm like, oh, okay, if it's a buyer, I say buyer, you know. And so if I search the word buyer under my contacts right now, there's probably, you know, tons of them in there, or sellers in there, and so I do label everything very carefully in my phone when I go to save them. But, yeah, your CRM will save your business. Just start. Sorry.

Tracy Hayes  33:52  
Just so being a slightly detailed not, we're not, we're talking about an address and a phone number, really, the more information you can get. Obviously, you could put that in that CRM, because maybe you will do a mailing or something. So, you know, there's the more information you can get, but just taking a few minutes at the beginning, or when you take that person's information in to, you know, put those little extra details in there, obviously will save you time on the back end when you're trying to recall it later. You know, things slip our mind, or how do we ever interact with that person? But again, going back to the CRM, like I said, think it's underutilized in our industry, as much as every all the experts

Julia Almstead  34:29  
for them. You know, because I know it does keep you in business. This is one of my rules. No sticky pads. We're not allowed to use sticky

Tracy Hayes  34:37  
those are those are good when you're on like a zoom call and I

Julia Almstead  34:44  
No, those are not good ever. So let me just say this. This is sales 101, from 20 years ago. Okay, use a notepad. This notepad will stay with me all year until I fill it up and finish using it. And. Then I'll buy another one. I probably go through two or three the whole entire year. And so when I start my day,

Tracy Hayes  35:07  
you don't misplace it or leave it somewhere, because that's what I do. Nope, I don't.

Julia Almstead  35:11  
It stays with me all the time. And I forgot to date paid this page. So this was the phone call I got, and the car on the way here, right? Luckily for me, Rich was driving, so I was able to take notes and take the call and be able to speak with them, you know, in full, and then even actually book an appointment for them this afternoon, which is great on a one of my listings, right? So maybe I'll get to sell it today. But even

Tracy Hayes  35:34  
even, like you said, even rich wasn't driving, you just take the two minutes to pull over side of the road, sure, because you know you're showing up late to this, yeah, showed up 1015, minutes late because of that. That's more important than I was early. Yeah, you were early. You were early because Rich was driving, right? That's changed. The importance

Julia Almstead  35:54  
are never on time. I

Tracy Hayes  35:56  
mean, the importance of taking that phone, that first phone call in full, man, yo, you're working with a lot of new agents. I would imagine that's something you probably coach them on. Yeah.

Julia Almstead  36:06  
So I definitely, you know, this is, I mean, I'm not doing as much teaching this year. I step back this year so that I can focus on our team and growing our team. And I'm heavily focused on my education in real estate and teaching her, because I'd love to see her, you know, get into a more permanent role with us. I don't know if she'll end up in sales, but definitely as, like, maybe a Director of Operations event eventually. She's very bright girl, very organized, and so I do, yeah, she's my child, so that's in her. Why not? Right? So I kind of stepped back in terms of developing a team. I love it.

Tracy Hayes  36:43  
My next question is, tell me, tell me about, tell me about the team currently, and then what are your goals? So that's actually my next question.

Julia Almstead  36:49  
So so we scaled back a bit, because I generally love to help everyone, and I'm one. I come from, you know, very positive place, and my company does a personality test. For everyone who joins our brokerage, we have what we call a kPa. It's Keller Williams personality assessment. And on mine, it says that I'm so positive almost can't see a problem when it's happening.

Tracy Hayes  37:14  
So because you see everything as an opportunity,

Julia Almstead  37:17  
I see everything as an opportunity, where rich is my we're in being in the Yang. So he helps balance that out, because he's a little bit the opposite of me. And so I will love to take on every agent who wants to come work with us, right? So success attracts talent. So whenever you start becoming successful in a business, people call, Hey, what are you doing? I want to be a realtor. I want to do this. I want to do that. And so in the beginning, I was, you know, taking on some agents, but I didn't have a system in place, really, for them, to be honest, right? And some of these successful teams, yeah, they're doing it, right? You know, they have the training, they have the systems. They know exactly what they expect from their people. I just wanted to help everybody. So then I realized that was actually hurting me. So I had to scale back, and we had to part ways. And so now I'm just hyper focused on us. You know, just rich and I are in the sales and are in production, but I'm more heavily in production than he is. He does work a lot of appointments with me, but he's the behind the scenes for everything, all of our listings, anything happening. And then we have my daughter, and then we have one other person who does mailers for us.

Tracy Hayes  38:25  
Well, I mean, just you and Rich's relationship, and how he takes that off of is one of the, one of the, I think the number one challenge for growing agents is that first assistant, whatever they may be doing. I think, obviously, when you're small, you're always, you know, you're everyone wears multiple hats, right? Right? Number one thing for the newcomer group, Sadie and Luke was they felt they should have made their first hire a year previously, right? They wasted, not that they wasted a year, but they could have done that much better the year before, if they haven't at what point or just how important is him taking a lot of that load off. You're like, you know, putting a listing in the right he's done a lot of that for me, following up on a lot of stuff. Just you having that now open mind to have conversations with people this, this, to take the more detailed notes you're not being distracted by other things that you need to do, because you're again wearing all these hats. You're now kind of getting to one hand, right? That's the production side.

Julia Almstead  39:29  
Yeah, and I'd love to you know my long term goal is to be a coach for other agents, but not right now, although I feel like I do have a lot of agents who call me constantly for help. I've had to step down

Tracy Hayes  39:43  
because you answer your phone right.

Julia Almstead  39:46  
So I used to be on the Leadership Council at Keller Williams, but I've actually stepped down this year just so that we can focus on our team. And so if you ever and I encourage and I wish that I had read this book when I first started. Said was the Millionaire Real Estate Agent the mrea book. That's the Gary Keller book he wrote, you know, it's the Bible on real estate and how to grow a team. And so if you are interested in growing a team, I highly encourage that people read the mrea book. The very first hire is an assistant. So never try to do it's

Tracy Hayes  40:19  
not that I've heard this before. It's not, not a transaction coordinator, but an actual assistant.

Julia Almstead  40:24  
Definitely not a transaction coordinator, definitely an assistant first, and then a TC, and then, you know, you grow from there, you can get your buyer's agent, really your assistant should be helping you do that first hire as a buyer's agent, and then eventually you get that lead buyer's agent, or lead listing agent, if they eventually grow into that position, and then from there, they actually hire on the rest of the people coming on. So it's a process. It's a long process. It takes a while to get there, but you really have to have a great admin. So that's our focus this year. Is to get my daughter fully, fully trained on just doing the administrative part, be able to run the team, and we're creating the systems now that we feel would be great for us.

Tracy Hayes  41:11  
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. Streamlined 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 streamline media link in the show notes, and discover how partnering up can supercharge your path to real estate excellence. Now just, you know, Gary, if Gary says something about about this or or not, because I think a lot of agents are like, well, you know, I had a I've had, you know, good last 10 months, but I bring on this person, and next couple months, you know, go south, or, you know, hey, it's December. So, you know, January and February could be slow, whatever their excuse, whatever the reasoning, is, because that's their fear, right? What if I don't really sell another home, right? And I got, I've hired this person. Does Gary talk about, you know, finding that assistant, or probably sharing an assistant with, you know, one or two other agents to actually give that assistant a full day work?

Julia Almstead  42:32  
I mean, you definitely can, but you should be hiring a rock star agent that's bringing you 10% more business. So you're not, you shouldn't have to worry about their salary if they're actually helping you grow your business, right? That's the whole purpose of the admin. Yes, definitely you can share. And there are some people, even in our office, who share a marketing person. I know a couple of agents share one person, but I definitely think ultimately you have to work as a solo agent, don't? You shouldn't even be thinking about a team if you're not, you know, productive and doing at least 36 to 40 deals a year. Once you hit that level, you're going to need to recruit some help, right? Which is, you know, not manageable, but you can, yeah, you can grow the team. You don't have to be a giant team. And you can remain a solo agent. We have very successful, successful Keller Williams agents who are still solo agents, doing 100 deals a year, you know, nationally, all over the place. And they have three assistants, you know, so they still want to stay in production, but they're not really into managing other agents, you know, or training them, or bringing them up to speed. And that's fine too. There's, there's all these formulas.

Tracy Hayes  43:42  
Well, you know, I obviously had Christina Welch on, you know, that's the one thing about Keller. I look up to her, yeah. And I've seen her grow over the, you know, through her entire growth process of having her team, even when she was with Keller Williams, Jacksonville, over here at the Halcyon office, I remember going over there. So I've seen her grow, and we talked about it, because it was the second time on the show when we really talked more business than just, you know, Hey, where'd you grow up? That type of thing. And we dug in. And running a team is not, you know, running a real estate sales team where people are 1099 is a little different than, say, running a mortgage team here with loan depot, where, you know, they're, you're kind of 1099 because you already, you only get already only get paid for what you do. But it's a little different, because they can come and go when they want, and you've, you don't really have that say you've got to set some boundaries. This is how our team's going to work and

Julia Almstead  44:35  
go, not on expectations with the culture of your team, right? Right? This is how we're gonna how we this is how we do it. And every team functions different, right? But you have to have those systems and expectations early on. I know some teams out there, if you don't get your first contract in 30 days, you're off the team. It's that simple, and some of them are more difficult if you don't enter your first 200 contacts in their database in the first. Week, you're off the team, you know. So there's all of those standards, and that sounds and a lot of people, you know, think, Oh, well, I'm going to join a team because I'm going to get leads, but you should also be bringing business to that team. The whole idea is that you're a team, right? So it's a team effort. They give you business, you know. You all help each other out, and you bring some business to the team.

Tracy Hayes  45:22  
So well, as you know, you talked about like you didn't have the processes really in place. You step took a step back from the team, and you're going to evolve these processes. And again, bring you got rich already as a solid figure on your team, as Christina has a handful of solid people in her interior circle, right? Yeah. And that's Kelly, yeah, and that's, and that's how she go with George in that's how she's been able to grow. You have to build that foundation, because you, yourself, unfortunately, don't have enough time

Julia Almstead  45:53  
in the day. The Hayes do never put the systems in place, right? We just, we don't function that way, no. So if you don't know what the just personality is, find out what you are, yeah, because that's going to really make a difference. So I've never been able to slow down and stop long enough to write out those processes. I'm incredibly impatient.

Tracy Hayes  46:13  
I'm the same way. But where I was going with that point is, if you want to develop a team, you have to go, I would, I would suggest to someone said today, I want to do too. I say, Well, you need to go talk to Christina Welch, right? If you can get in with DJ and Lindsay, I'd talk to them. I go talk to Luke And Sadie. Newcomer Sarah Rocco, every one of them, yeah, they're all very successful teams, successful and run everyone. They're all running it differently, I'm sure, right? But they're committed to that way. They're doing it, yes. And if you're not committed to running that, the people following you are not committed either, correct? And therefore you don't in developing the process, like you said, getting those attention to detail people, right?

Julia Almstead  46:54  
So it's my it will ultimately be, before the end of this year, my daughter's job to implement those you know, to get the systems and processes literally spelled out. I when I first joined Keller, one of the first people I wanted to meet was Christina Welsh. I remember saying to mark Solano, who says, Christina Walsh. I see her name everywhere, but I don't know who she is. I'm dying to meet this woman. And he goes, Oh, do you want to meet Christina? She owns part of the St Augustine office. She's one of the investors. Would you like to meet her next week? And I said, Yeah, you could set that up. She would meet with me. And he's like, Yeah, because I thought, you know, she's like, this, God, I'm like, so he's like, text me, like, an hour later, hey, Christina's gonna be at the meeting next week on Tuesday morning. Are you available at nine for one hour to meet with her? And I remember thinking, Oh, my God, this is this great opportunity. And I had two pages of notes and questions I wanted to ask her, and she sat there and told me everything. And the first thing she said is, have you read the MRA book yet? And I said, No, I don't even know what that is, and so I'm taking all these notes. And then that was my first step. And she was told me her backstory, as she had been another brokerage, came to Keller, read the MRA book, and then implemented all the systems for that book. And that's how she got started. And she I look up to her even though I'm 10 years older than her, yeah. Oh, and I was like, you're doing it right, you know, and but you also have to gage like it's not all about being a Team. If you don't want that in your life, it's perfectly fine being a solo agent. We also follow Ricky Carruth, who's the number one Alabama, you know, was for years, ReMax agent. We personally met him recently and drove out to Alabama and spent the day with him, and he's been someone that we followed for last five years, and we really look up to him, and his style of real estate and selling and building relationships is very similar to who I am, and so that's how I've always treated my business. Just don't be a secret agent. You have to let everyone know that you're in real estate, you can help them, and don't be insulted if your friends or family don't use you, because sometimes they, you know, hold their cards close to their chest and they don't want to share their information with you, necessarily, or do a deal with you because it's personal for them and they don't want to share their finances or whatever. But always take the high road and stay super professional, is what I tell everyone. Don't get angry or upset about losing deals. Just remember that if you lose a deal, it's an opportunity to work on the next one. They just freed you up. You know, use the next method. Move on next. Let's go next. And that's what Ricky Caruth teaches, and we love and adore him as well.

Tracy Hayes  49:36  
Yo, that that right there is a great reel, just that last 30 seconds that that you went off on there. And because we can get faster, especially when, when times are slow, or you're just getting started. And you know, you can, you could, you know, sometimes you can hold on to that egg a little too tight and cracks in your hand. And you're like, yeah, if you're worried about rip the bat too tight, that's the terminology, right, correct? You. So I

Julia Almstead  50:00  
think you focus on service. Always come from a place of service and how you can help someone. Never think about the money at the end of the day. It shouldn't matter. The money will come later on if you're providing a good service. And everyone the way they provide service, that's up to them. You know, whatever their business practices are, we can't judge each other, and we shouldn't judge each other, you know, some people like to go to, you know, or do open houses. Some people don't. Some people like to go to the inspection. Some people, you know, some agents may may not, want to go to the inspections. Everyone has their own business practices, and I know I do things a little bit old school. I feel like I have fiduciary responsibility to, you know, see everything all the way through, from contract to close. I like to be involved. I like to meet the inspector. I like to be present if something comes up. I'd like to have a better understanding of why they said, what they said, or what they found, or how can we resolve it, you know, and that sort of thing. If I'm mostly, if I'm on the buyer's side, I like to to show up at the inspections. But I'm noticing in today's, you know, practices, not everybody's, you know, always necessarily showing up. But you know, that's okay, too.

Tracy Hayes  51:14  
I'm trying to remember who I saw recently talking about, why, why are you at the inspection? What do you what do you that that was their turn.

Julia Almstead  51:21  
They were questioning, why? Yeah, I'm trying to remember who

Tracy Hayes  51:25  
it was. I might have was someone the top agent on YouTube or something. I forget where I saw this teaching. But again, again, what works for you? What works if that's your if that's you building you're working on actually, yeah, you're going to the inspection, but you're actually working on your relationship, right? Because that could be your next referral. It could be, you know, the next 10 referrals over the next few years that these people know, you know, refer you, because you actually did, and you you made that

Julia Almstead  51:53  
something comes up in the house and you're not present. How do you know exactly what went on, if you don't have that one on one with the inspector, right, you know. So you're reading a report. Are you, you know? Are you an inspection professional? Now, are you going to know exactly what they meant when they were there? Now, you have to go back to the house, look at the report, figure out what they were talking about. If something big comes up, I want to know about it at the time it's happening, you know. So I think that if you can come from a place of solution, everyone can move forward, and that comes with a team effort. You know, who's your team? If you're a solo agent, your team's going to be your mortgage broker. It's going to be your title company, Inspector, your inspector. That's actually your team. So that's another way you can promote yourself as a solo agent. Well, my team is comprised of, you know, all of these people, my brokerage, you know, and that's another great way to market yourself.

Tracy Hayes  52:46  
Yeah, I don't, I, you know, I'm mixed. I mean, the team takes a lot of work. I think, I think, you know, again, go going back to Christina, because I just seen her team come, you know, the people that have come and gone through her team as she's now, she's gotten better at retention. And I think it's why she, you know again, is you know, he's always moved forward. But obviously the heartbreak when someone you know, you pour into somebody and they leave, if you don't want the heartbreak of

Julia Almstead  53:12  
or sometimes you have to make them leave, right, right?

Tracy Hayes  53:15  
Because it doesn't, yeah, you suggest, yeah. Mastering the tiring process.

Julia Almstead  53:21  
Mastering is the hiring process. At Keller Williams, we do have a class on hiring. It's Career Visioning. And then they have another class on 3060, 90. There should be a 90 day plan, so the first 30 days, the next 60, and then the last 90. And if you pass that and graduate that, then you get to stay on the team, but those first 90 days are kind of iffy. You may or may not make it, you know, depending on if you follow all of the systems that are in place and the expectations.

Tracy Hayes  53:50  
So I gotta the office. I'm gonna the questions. I actually have it down here, sure, but I want to go back to Ricky Carruth, okay, how long did it you said you've been basically following about five years.

Julia Almstead  54:01  
Yeah, rich actually introduced me to him. He found him on YouTube and said, oh, you should really like what he was talking about, like what he's talking about.

Tracy Hayes  54:07  
Yeah, to find someone like that. And here again, with a different brokerage, totally different state. But obviously, luckily, Ricky pours into YouTube so others can share his, his success and his, his vision and ideology of the business, how important for you on a daily basis, and know that there's this, you know, ultraly successful real estate agent that you align with a lot in your your vision and ideology and how you how you do it,

Julia Almstead  54:41  
all right, so I can tell you someone locally who I also connect with, who reminds me of a Ricky Carruth, and that would be Bill Miller in St Augustine Beach, another great realtor. I texted him last year I saw him listing all these properties, and I'm like, What is he doing? He's amazing. I. So I texted him. I'm like, Hey, Bill. I'm like, What's going on, you know? And I've developed a great all

Tracy Hayes  55:04  
my friends decided to sell their homes. Yeah,

Julia Almstead  55:06  
no. So he was the one. He said to me, I've literally gone back and called every single person I ever did a deal with. And I was like, that's it. And he goes, literally, that's it. That's all I'm doing. And from there, I was like, Okay, we're gonna be calling every single person we've ever done a deal with, and that's all we've been doing all year, last year, this year so far. I mean, and I haven't even gotten through the list yet. I'm not even done well.

Tracy Hayes  55:33  
How do you I mean? Because I think that you have, like, you had 3400 names in there, someone's, oh, that's how overwhelming. What would I mean? They just made 10 or 15 calls. Took the first hour a day. Yeah, yeah.

Julia Almstead  55:49  
You can do 10 calls a day, and that could be enough, and just chip and just keep chipping away. Yeah. The difference is your mindset. Are you showing up at nine o'clock or eight o'clock? Are you starting your day in real estate? Are you treating it like a business? Are you going to the gym at nine in the morning? You should be done with that, or you should be hitting the gym at the end of the day? Or maybe not. Maybe that's when you do work out, but at some point you have to wake up and show up. And I do have a saying, but I don't want to curse on this job, but I do always say show up and happens. And so that's what I usually tell people, yeah, it's a mindset, but if you don't treat it like a business, nothing's gonna happen. But you have to create that momentum just by your mindset. Every morning, I definitely, you know, have a moment of gratitude. I think about my goals, I think about the things I want, and then I'm always thinking about the people I want to talk to the next day. You know, who are the 10 people I'm going to call, or 20 people I'm going to call? Some days I don't get to it, because when you do get to be productive and busier, people start calling you more than you have a chance to call them. But one of the rules that we implemented is the 1357, rule, which is, after we have a closing with someone, we do, I try my hardest to call them week one after closing, week three, Week Five and week seven, just to make sure how they're doing in the new home, you know, wherever they've moved to, and how they're doing. And then having those 36 touches is what Keller Williams believes in at a minimum. Now, with the internet and social media, you can end up staying in touch with someone 72 times within a year, you know, and easily, that's how people remember you. So little, little takeaways, little nuggets.

Tracy Hayes  57:35  
So the question I held in reserve that the office I know, the office down there. Are you in from a there's larger teams down there, like Noah Bailey and so Noah just moved. Oh, did he?

Julia Almstead  57:49  
He did because they got so big, they were busting at the seams. So they needed a larger space. So they're in the old Debbie day spa across from Osprey taco area.

Tracy Hayes  57:58  
Okay, I'm not familiar. Yeah. So they had opened his own, yeah? He opened up

Julia Almstead  58:03  
his own business, what we call a business center,

Tracy Hayes  58:05  
right, yeah. But the coming in the office versus, you know, obviously, we've got a lot of virtual, you know, whether it's exp or Florida homes, you know, this, those companies promote that they don't, you know, they have some small little offices, but they're not like, you know, the large offices that you guys have down there, or even Christina Welch's office, you know, she's expanding.

Julia Almstead  58:29  
She's renovating the,

Tracy Hayes  58:30  
yeah, the indifference of working in the office versus virtually, in your opinion, especially again, looking at that first year or two that someone's where, you know, someone's, someone's doing the business, and they can go work from home, and you know they're doing the business. They've got enough bats at, you know, they've done 100 plus transactions. They they made enough contacts with other agents that they can call the broker and they're going to get attention. But for that first person that has, doesn't even have that, you know, I would say 100 transactions or less, or first couple of years. How important is, in your opinion, to come in the office and get the synergy that's there?

Julia Almstead  59:08  
I think it's very important, because you're not going to learn if you're just sitting isolated at home trying to do this job. I think you come into the office, if you have some top producing agents in the office, you want to kind of hang around them. You want to hear what they're doing. You want to you want to learn from them. You want to have a conversation with them, if they give you the time, because they're super duper busy. You usually don't see the top producing agents in the office because they're out there selling. They're too busy to be in the office. But if there's training, you know, get your office training calendar. Attend all the training you can get network if you see events, if you're getting email invitations to brokers opens by golly, if you're new in this off in this industry, and you don't know any of their agents in town, you should attend their brokers. Opens, build relationships with other agents. If you don't know anything about. New construction, which I sell a lot of, walk into a model home, introduce yourself to those sales people, develop relationships with those people. So your office is important. Going to other brokers. Opens around town from other brokerages is very important, because later on, when you have to do a deal with a person, isn't it so much easier. It flows better if you guys, even if you

Tracy Hayes  1:00:23  
just shook their hand for a few minutes, said hi, and then, you know, exchange business cards or whatever.

Julia Almstead  1:00:27  
Yeah, right. You know, if I get an offer from someone, I know it's just that much easier. It's like, oh, you know, that's so much easier, because I know them, and I know their personality, and I know that they're professional. You know, when you don't know someone and you hope it's going to go smooth, because that's really what we want at the end of the day. We want everyone to behave in a professional manner, and, you know, and respond in a timely manner.

Tracy Hayes  1:00:51  
My question I've been asking lately, because it's actually one of those YouTube real things I've been picking up from some of the some of the agents that are bigger YouTubers, is like, I just felt, what is your what is your pet peeve when you're especially when you're working with with one of these agents on the other end of a deal, obviously, someone you don't know, but you're like, Man, you just want to reach through the phone and like, let me tell you what you need to do. What are some of your pet peeves that you run across?

Julia Almstead  1:01:19  
So I've matured as the years have gone over. I've tried to be very professional all the time, but, you know, it is a tough emotional business. I think one of the things that people need to remember that the transaction is not theirs, it's the customers. So keep your emotions out of it. That was one of the things Ann King told me, Don't get emotional. It's not your transaction. You are not buying or selling that house. That is Christina

Tracy Hayes  1:01:48  
Welch. Christina Welch's houses. Don't cry.

Julia Almstead  1:01:52  
Oh, I know Christina. I love Christina. She's like, so tired of everyone crying. It's so true. So, you know, keep it on a professional level. The transaction is not yours, really. It's it's the customers. One of my pet peeves is, if I feel like I want to just have that conversation with the person on the other end of the transaction, because sometimes things get lost in translation through text or email. It's great to document everything. It's great to email everything, yes, to keep a record of everything, absolutely. But at some point, some of the time, it's just easier if you talk it through, because there's too many details that might get missed. And that's my only pet peeve. Is if I've called you and you're like, what do you need? You know, are you text back? Or at least give me the opportunity like say, Hey, I'm in something. I'll call you later. If I feel like I need to talk it through, I'll call you and it's as simple as that. I think sometimes things get lost in translation, and some people aren't talkers on the phone.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:58  
That's Hayes on a text message to me, because I could tell what? Sometimes, sometimes, occasionally, someone will respond to me. I'm like, oh, shoot, Did I upset them? Right? I mean, because

Julia Almstead  1:03:10  
you're so short and to the point, yeah, like, and you shouldn't be no one. And that's the other thing, if you haven't done a desk profile, I highly, highly encourage it, because then you learn what the different personalities are. Now I can tell a D and i and s to see right away, and it helps. Even just working with my customers, you know, to know what they are. So I highly encourage people to learn more about the disc and then, if you don't, if you've never done a personality test for yourself, you should learn who you are. Had I read my personality test when Keller Williams first brought me on years ago, I would, but I took the test and I never bothered to read it, so that doesn't really help, right? So then I go back, like, two years later, and I'm like, Oh, wow, that says that I'm really positive, and I can't really see a problem when it's coming, like, because I think there's a solution to everything, right? And I love solutions. I love to come from a place of solution, right, you know. And so anyway, I do encourage people to do a personality test on themselves and a desk learn the DISC profile. And Tony Robbins teaches it. We have Angie Bell, who is, yes, you know, Angie. And so Angie actually teaches the disc.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:20  
She was one of my early podcasts. I think it's somewhere in the 20s. Me and Angie spent a nice long weekend with John Maxwell back in was 2000

Julia Almstead  1:04:29  
John Maxwell certified trainer. Yeah, she's amazing. She owns part of the St Augustine office. Yep, she's one of the investors, and so she comes in and she does some great, great classes, but she's also a life coach and a business coach, so people can hire outside, you know, from other brokerages, and she has tons of clients all over the place.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:50  
All right, I'm gonna, we're these are kind of just rapid answer questions, sort of rapid answer, okay, what do you think are give me two or three? Characteristics of a successful real estate agent. You're around some down there you cruth, you mentioned, what do you think are some of the characteristics of those people?

Julia Almstead  1:05:10  
I would say consistency, dedication and patience.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:14  
Patience, patience. I'd have to work on that one, consistency. I'm good at I'm good at that one, three must do's for a new agent, especially real early in the first six months. So again, you know you'd have to restart your career. But what are three things that, yes, that that new person that walks in that Atlantic wants to sit down with you, pick your brain. What would you say? Hey, you need to do A, B and

Julia Almstead  1:05:39  
C, right? So first thing you should really do is let every single person know that you are a realtor or licensed sales person in real estate, and you also need to make sure that you have yourself up on every single possible social media platform, whether that be Zillow or realtor.com or a home light, or Facebook, Facebook, personal, Facebook business, a LinkedIn, Instagram, you know, put yourself out there, everywhere possible come and then, you know, put some content out there, and your content should be a value. What's your value proposition? So if you're not bringing any value to people. They're not going to stop to read what you have to say. But if you bring value, then it shows that you're learning. Or, you know, the business, or you know, you don't want to put just junk out there. You want to make sure

Tracy Hayes  1:06:33  
it could be content. Is what you're learning in the new hire training class, which I imagine you guys have down there, what they taught you. You can go out and create a create some content, or now, with the artificial intelligence out there, go in there and you tell it to hey, I want to write an article explaining the differences of this, this and this, and I'll write you a nice article. You can then proof it, change a few lines, stick

Julia Almstead  1:06:54  
it up, but yeah, I've heard about it. Yeah. So you can do any and all the above, but you cannot be a secret agent. The number one thing is you have to let everyone know that you are now a licensed real estate professional. And the other thing you know, you should read the MRA book, and then you should go through your phone and go to contacts, hit the word list and see how many contacts you're you have in there. And then, if you don't know what the Ford method is, learn what that is. It's just four very simple steps, Family, Occupation, Recreation and dreams and call people and don't even talk about real estate, right? They probably already know your realtor because you've now posted it everywhere. But if you're literally not posting anything anywhere, no one's gonna even know you got licensed. I think

Tracy Hayes  1:07:35  
you know, obviously people change jobs. LinkedIn is generally the one that tells us if you have LinkedIn. But what I've obviously find every, everyone that comes on, I go on their LinkedIn because I get, kind of gets, gives me a good timeline of, you know, where they went to school, where some other jobs that they've had, and other types of things to create a conversation. But I find there's a good number, too many, I think, that are not going in and and using using LinkedIn. Heather Monahan, like I said, I'm gonna give you a copy of her book there to head on. She's all LinkedIn because she's a keynote speaker, and the obviously, that's where she's picking up. You know, corporate people who have money are generally interacting on LinkedIn, right? You know, these CEOs, or whatever, not all CEOs are upper management type people, and they go on LinkedIn, and you change jobs, if you're got your LinkedIn, it's gonna tell everybody there. And of course, the first people, someone's gonna say, congrats. That should be the first person you call.

Julia Almstead  1:08:30  
So many tricks to the, you know, social media platforms and interacting like on Google, if you put 150 pictures up, they'll actually put your, you know, ranking up higher on their pages.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:42  
150, on your business, 50 on your business. I have to start adding some stuff

Julia Almstead  1:08:46  
photos, and your rank will jump up, you know. So it's little tricks like that that are

Tracy Hayes  1:08:52  
for free. Which reminds me, rich if you got your phone, get up. So we can post it on Instagram. Get up, get an action shot of Julia. Oh, I'll give you guys a recording. You'll have the recording. So those are the must use that's I wanted to make sure we got that as we go back in time.

Julia Almstead  1:09:07  
And the last thing is just educate yourself as well. When you're in the beginning of the business, take as many classes at the board and or at your brokerage as much as possible. And really

Tracy Hayes  1:09:18  
not just the minimum. See that you need to go. You just keep going every time.

Julia Almstead  1:09:22  
Keep going every single time as much as you can, because you don't know, you probably don't know what FERPA is. You probably don't know what a 1031 exchange is. Educate yourself as much as possible,

Tracy Hayes  1:09:33  
at least enough to know that when someone hits you with a question, you're you're like, hey, you know what? I've had a little bit of training on that, but I, you know, I know someone's smarter than me. Give me your detailed question. Let me follow back up with you with a more detail. But if you look at them with a blank stare on your face, like, what's a 1031 you really can lose some credibility there. So totally, totally agree with that. We you just brought up social movement. Can. Actually bringing up social media. How important I know, I imagine, you know, Keller Williams is telling you guys, video, video, video, because that's what they're all telling you. But we have, there's this huge crowd, and I would say it's probably the majority that are still very scared whether to shoot a video, let alone just do a, you know, just a post, not even a video, just picture, or, you know, create some graphic. Or have, you know, there's a lot of graphics out there, yeah, you can grab from other places and make something. How important is it to be consistent on your social media platforms?

Julia Almstead  1:10:37  
I think it's very important. Because some people start to people are watching more than you realize. And everyone's on social media, every single person like it used to be, I think like 75% people shop for homes online. Now it's like 95% like some crazy number.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:57  
Well, you're of your new customers that you're getting non refer. You know, non local referrals. I mean, they're coming from out of state.

Julia Almstead  1:11:05  
Oh, yeah. And, I mean, Keller Williams is the largest company agent, count wise, worldwide. So we our team, we do get a lot, a lot of referrals. And we have two agents in our office who are 100% referral based, like all of their business. So they work an entirely different system. Well, I'm just referring the

Tracy Hayes  1:11:25  
more like, because we're in Florida, you know, yeah, it's, you know, great that you get, you know, the someone who sold recently. But even that person, if someone moved down here from New York, you got them, you sold them, and then they referred you to someone their friend who's wants to move down, I guarantee their friends going online, right?

Julia Almstead  1:11:43  
Absolutely. I'm checking out my customers. When someone calls me before I even go to meet them, I'm looking them up. You know, there's other way, there's there's other ways to do it. You're looking up their LinkedIn, for sure. And I went years without using LinkedIn, like, I just built up my LinkedIn, like people would want to connect, and I'd say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The whole time I had like 2000 people on LinkedIn, but never posted on there. And then a few years ago, about, well, maybe four years ago, we started consistently posting on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, and I saw my traffic and connections really, just, you know, not plateau, but, like, really increased, right? And I was like, wow, this is, like, really, much better than I thought it would be. I don't know why I thought LinkedIn was kind of like,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:31  
well, it's not the algorithm, like YouTube, or, you know, Facebook, where, obviously they're and I do know you Instagram, like, really, Instagram doesn't measure, I mean, on LinkedIn. LinkedIn doesn't measure, like, how long you were on LinkedIn, right? You know, it's from what I understand. It likes the long form content article. So to have chat GPT help you with, you know, putting something up once a week on that. But it's, you know, where YouTube and Facebook, they just want to keep you on their page right the time and so they can run the advertisements, right? But, yeah, it's so it's, it's actually, yeah, that thing, you don't have to go in there every day, but once or twice a week, post an article or like you say, put your listing up, whatever there is a whole they're linked to you, whether it's my alumni group that I'm active in, right you know those guys

Julia Almstead  1:13:18  
High School back in New York, where I saw lots of my friends from high school. One of my, one of my really good friends, just moved here from high school. I hadn't seen her in like 20 years. Called you Yeah, she's here, and harge, for a guy, helped her move down. Yeah, you know. So I'm also Croatian, which a lot of people don't know, and my parents, I'm the first American born in my family. My parents came here from Croatia, and my brother and I had a good friend from Croatia watch me on Facebook for two years, and she's like, I don't know what this place is. St, Augustine, it looks really cool. So she called me one day and was like, I'm flying into Jacksonville. I want to check out. St Augustine, we're thinking about moving back to the state. Oh, that's cool. And she has been here now, and is a licensed Realtor. She moved up off the 210 area, and I sold them their townhouse, yeah, and her husband retired, and they moved back. We grew up together in New York. There was a big Croatian Catholic Church in Manhattan, and that's where I was baptized. And my parents made me go to church every Sunday, which is great. It's a great community. But I still try and keep in contact on Facebook with all of those people that I knew, that I grew up with. You don't know who's watching, don't know who's watching,

Tracy Hayes  1:14:32  
don't know who's watching, so you have to consistently. It's kind of like, you know, it's, you see, you know, there are some agents that put up some billboards around town. That's cool, because, I mean, some whatever their thing is that the billboard puts them on some sort of things, branding. Yeah, I know why people are doing you don't know who's driving by. I'm in CVS now, little bored, and I think I saw, I think I saw you post that, you know, the people driving by on the highway. You don't know who's gonna see that and who's gonna. Call, right? So it's so social media. It's free. You sit down and you could do it at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, you know, go make your posts, or I try to do in the morning. I come in and I'll put a couple Instagram reels up. I'll put up, you know, a couple Facebook reels each day, and, you know, and try to just, you know, be consistent. YouTube. I can schedule out. You can do it on AOL, but it's not as friendly as YouTube. My YouTube shorts, I have scheduled out for like, a week, or,

Julia Almstead  1:15:24  
yeah, no, that's awesome, if you the other thing is, like, some people have a niche for marketing or social media. Don't get too lost in that, because that'll suck up your time. Yes, and then you won't be selling, and then you'll be like, oh, you know some I have friends who are like, website designers. Oh, I've been signing this website. I'm like, that's not going to get you the business. You know, having relationships and talking to people is what gets you

Tracy Hayes  1:15:48  
the business. You have to get to a point to where you farm that out as quickly, correct,

Julia Almstead  1:15:52  
as quickly as possible. God, will drain you very quickly.

Tracy Hayes  1:15:55  
So talk about marketing. I'll finish up kind of with this question here. What is your what is your go to marking you probably doing several things. But what do you think is the one thing that is giving you the most return on investment?

Julia Almstead  1:16:08  
For me right now, believe it or not, I am running a lot of Facebook ads, especially like on our listings through my CRM, we use bribery, which was a competitor, very, very, very similar to Boomtown, which I know Boomtown just got bought out by KV core, but I like bribery, because he's owned, he owns, like a bunch of Keller Williams age offices. Ben Kenny is who owns property. And so they have a whole marketing platform, and I run all of my

Tracy Hayes  1:16:37  
so they targeted Facebook. So they Yeah, so they're going in

Julia Almstead  1:16:42  
there, telling I go in there, I do Facebook. And then what happens is, when the leads come in to my CRM, it sets them up automatically as a customer, and then they get listing alerts based on what they just looked at. So if they looked at a house that's $550,000 and panavira and or Panavia might not be fine. Maybe some of it be but, oh, or higher, it will set them up automatically on what they just viewed. So it helps to all the automation for me automatically. So all I have to do is touch base with that customer once they come in from

Tracy Hayes  1:17:18  
the Facebook end end point, what so that it's reading them, it's adding them to your targeted Facebook thing. So your stuff is popping up.

Julia Almstead  1:17:27  
And I'm getting leads every single day. I get a ton of online leads. And I have to get better. I do admit I have to get better at handling that. But my daughter right now has a little bit of a system, so she has auto plans in place.

Tracy Hayes  1:17:40  
Simplify that down for me a little bit, though, sure, for someone who may not understand how Facebook, because Facebook, if I can go into Facebook and tell it that I want every Citadel alumni to get my thing, they'll cross reference and have whatever 1000s of people that have themselves, you know, that identifies them As an alumni, right? And it will target them. So you can, you can actually narrow it down to like even neighborhoods with Facebook, right?

Julia Almstead  1:18:08  
You can do a bunch of different things. And actually at Keller Williams with their free CRM that they just built, it's a proprietary software program called command. You can run Facebook ads and Instagram ads through there as well. What's nice about our system is it actually shows you where people are moving from. So you can look they have a map of the United States, and it will show the percentages of people right now, the number one area that, like our agents, are referring business to, is Orlando. So from Orlando to St Augustine is a big transition right now. Oh, interesting. What I've been doing is I've been running my ads targeting people in Orlando for properties here.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:53  
You're narrowing that target down, though, I guess it's not. You're not farming the all of Orlando.

Julia Almstead  1:18:58  
No, I just have a new listing. I'm advertising it to people in Orlando

Tracy Hayes  1:19:03  
that are that have been clicking on St Augustine, right? They're looking for properties here. They have been looking at other things in St Augustine. So it's finding those people out and then sending your information right in

Julia Almstead  1:19:13  
front of them, right? And my listings in front of that, yeah, there's another way that you can go into realtor.com I'd have to send you the link, but they're another really good platform if you want to know where people are moving to your area from, if you go to the bottom of their page, I can't remember exactly what it's called. I have it saved as a bookmark on my laptop, but you can actually search to see where people are moving to this Northeast Florida region, from what states and so I know, like New York was a big one, Chicago, Washington, DC was actually high on the list as well. A lot of remote workers there, right? And so those are areas that you might want to target when you have listings, or you just targeting, you know, just promote yourself as a realtor.

Tracy Hayes  1:19:59  
But I. Think you summed it up. Great. This information is priceless, but again, it can overwhelm you right where you're sitting there all day long, studying, where are they coming from? But it's not so you've got to graduate to that level, you know, even if it's baby steps, but you have to to where you can find someone like your your daughter, who has that time, who's young and is learning the business, right? Because they can sit there and find that information out for you. You know you, you knowing it is, yeah, okay, I know that. But them actually going, yes, they're moving from Orlando. We need to redirect our Facebook ads to people are looking that have been clicking on

Julia Almstead  1:20:36  
city or that state or wherever they're coming from. And you know, Gary Keller makes it very simple for us. They did a study, and they interviewed all the top agents nationally with our company. And he said, you know, describe like, what? What are top agents doing? It's a very simple, simple formula. In this business, there's two parts to your day. The first part is prospecting, the second part is service. That's all it should be. You shouldn't have any confusion. Don't let distractions come into your business day. That's what will make you fail. If you keep the prospecting in the morning, then you know you have to do service in the afternoon. If you do service in the morning, then you know you have to prospect in the afternoon. There's two parts to a day. That's it. That's the whole formula. Very, very simple. And you know, Gary Keller says that all the time we went back to all the top producing agents. Top Producing agents in our company today are still prospect prospecting, booking appointments or doing some sort of service in the afternoon, which could be inspections. It could be email responses, setting up, you know, whatever it could showing else or whatever. Yeah, but if you're not prospecting, your business is never going to grow, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:21:51  
I have my last semi informal question. Do you have anything you want to add to this conversation that we want anyone out there who may be listening to this far into I just want

Julia Almstead  1:22:00  
to add that there's a home for every agent, and not every brokerage is going to be right for everyone, so don't judge how other brokerages are doing it, you know, I started in one place, and I grew, and then I grew again, you know? And so for me, Keller is really wrote the book on team, and so I felt like, one day I'm going to do a team. And actually, rich pushed us to go to Keller because he didn't feel like he was getting some of the training that he wanted for himself as a solo agent. When he first joined me, he's like, I just need to learn more. Because I was a high D, I wasn't training him the way I should have, right? Even though I like to train people, I wasn't slowing down enough to be like, Okay, this is how I'm doing this. This is why this is happening, right? Here's the contract, you know, I just could not slow myself down enough so he needed to go to a place that really, really offered all of that training, and they have a phenomenal training program there.

Tracy Hayes  1:23:01  
We didn't dig very deep into it. Generally, conversation does come up that I well, I come we got off on some other different things. But no, yeah, the interviewing the broker. You know, if you're a new agent, don't, don't just sign up on there, even though they may be your friend. I mean, I've had several agents on here to win over talk, can that? Can that told them to go talk to other people, and they end up

Julia Almstead  1:23:23  
going with a very successful I tell people, you know, I think you'd be better suited over at this brokerage or that, yeah, because you just never know. And and some people come and then they leave and they go, you know, everybody has a home, and everyone's business motto the way they do it, not for everyone. Everyone's a little different. So don't, you know, Judge, just find your place,

Tracy Hayes  1:23:44  
and you will. In some places are really good at brand new agents, right?

Julia Almstead  1:23:49  
Others don't even want them, no, yeah, because they don't have the training, and they're like, you know,

Tracy Hayes  1:23:53  
you'll reach a value when there's no longer a value, which seemed like you guys were getting there, the value wasn't there, and you moved on to somewhere else. And it may happen, happen again. You don't foresee it right now, but every day, everyone needs to be comfortable enough to realize, you know, leadership changes, and then the trainings aren't there, or they're not as good anymore. They're keep talking about the same thing. They're not moving forward. Well, then you're gonna need to go, you know, over there, and find someone who's gonna add that value. I always take that word from Sarah Rocco. She was the one who said, when you stop adding value, then they start looking

Julia Almstead  1:24:25  
at other places. That's absolutely 100% right? And she's a rock star, right? Sarah Rocco, rock star. She's another one to be, you know, look at her and learn from her and see how she did it. She's only been in the business six years, exactly the business that long, and she's absolutely killing it. But she's taken the time to to study it and go through it and figure it out and write it out, you know, so they have their systems in place. She's really perfected it. And actually, Russell, who runs our Office in St Augustine, Russell Nicholson, he's phenomenal, by the way, I he's actually helped our. Business grow just because he actually started with Sarah

Tracy Hayes  1:25:04  
Rocco, yes, take care of her debt. Yeah, yeah.

Julia Almstead  1:25:06  
And when her team was first taking off, he was helping her, you know, implement some of the systems and hiring and all of that good stuff. And now he's doing our hiring, which he's done a great

Tracy Hayes  1:25:16  
job at last. Last question, is it more important who you know or what you know and why?

Julia Almstead  1:25:22  
I definitely think it's, geez, I feel like it's a combination. To be honest, I don't think one is more important than the other. I think it is. You know, the more people you know, the more you talk to, the more your business is going to grow. But if you don't know how to do the business, then that doesn't matter either.

Tracy Hayes  1:25:40  
If you find out another as you found a who helped you with that, right?

Julia Almstead  1:25:45  
You've got to find you have to, it's a delicate balance. I mean, you have to kind of be a pro at everything you know. You have to know a little bit about everything. But also the continuing education is important, because a lot of us who have been in the business a long time, we get so busy, we forget to go back to classes and just refresh ourselves. So it's important to constantly be learning, because you're never going to know it all and things are always changing.

Tracy Hayes  1:26:09  
Excellent. I appreciate you coming on today. Hey, my pleasure. I hope you're so much. Hope your audience, your daughter, she's still watching, but I'll send you the whole video so she can she can cut it up. Obviously, it's already out on Facebook. It'll be out on somebody watching Apple Spotify, etc, next Tuesday. It'll go out there, and I appreciate it. And you'll obviously start seeing the reels here, probably beginning of next week, as I start putting them up from the show. But Awesome. Thanks for coming on my first podcast. Yeah, awesome. Did also thanks for the invite. No problem at all. Give a pan out shot, but I'm going to go ahead and sign off here. All right, thanks for watching.

Podcast Intro/Outro  1:26:45  
This may be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here, to connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com you.