Kati Spaniak: "Sell Your Home with Kati Spaniak" YouTube Star

REE #283 Transcript

[00:00:00] Kati Spaniak: You have to be able to be coached in order to be good in this business. And that's another thing is, see, my experience as a top agent is the same as the other agents you're talking to is we sit there and we talk to all these new agents all the time. They've got these big plans, everything they're gonna do, and they demand that they get, you know, a top cut and then they're done because they can't handle the rejection.

[00:00:45] Tracy Hayes: Hey, welcome back to the Real Estate Excellence Podcast, where we bring you the best minds in the business. Today's guest is a powerhouse who has not only dominated the real estate game, but has also cracked a code on YouTube influencing agents and homeowners nationwide with [00:01:00] a YouTube channel, followed by over 64,000 subscribers and viewed more than 3 million times. She's known for delivering straightforward, honest advice that helps homes sell faster and for more, and helps agents up their game. Off camera, she's closed nearly a half a billion dollars in sales, built powerful teams across multiple states, served as president as one of the largest real estate associations in the country, and earned recognition among the top performers at major brokerages like eXp, Keller Williams, and @properties.

So she's also an author of How to Build a Rockstar Real Estate Team Without Going Crazy and a go-to speaker, trainer, and icon instructor at a national level. She's proof that you can scale without losing authenticity and build influence that lasts. Let's welcome Miss Katie Spank to the show.

[00:01:49] Kati Spaniak: Thanks for having me. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate it. I'm—

[00:01:51] Tracy Hayes: I'm glad, I'm really excited, the fact that I have a national presence—'cause your channel, I don't know if you see [00:02:00] yourself as that, but to have, and have you right here in Jacksonville and bringing you into the show—'cause a lot of times I bring in some of the bigger influencers occasionally through a Zoom type call or whatever, but I'm glad you're here.

[00:02:12] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:02:12] Tracy Hayes: Right here in front of me today. So, kick us off, give us a little bit of background up until you get to real estate. Like, what's young Katie thinking about doing as for a career, going to college? And then obviously you didn't jump into real estate right away—it was a few years before, was it about 2003 before you ended up getting into real estate?

Yeah. Tell us what you're doing there.

[00:02:31] Kati Spaniak: So, I grew up born and bred in the Chicagoland area. Lived there my whole life. I went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and decided I got a photography degree. And literally, I think the week I had graduation, I decided I didn't wanna be a photographer—much to my parents' dismay. Because I realized you had to work on Christmas and you had to work, you know, on holidays and you didn't—

[00:02:58] Tracy Hayes: Probably some Saturday weddings and—

[00:03:00] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, and you didn't make a lot of money.

[00:03:02] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:03:02] Kati Spaniak: And so I thought, well, I'm gonna do something else. And I literally had no idea. So I went and I took a couple graphic design classes and ended up getting into graphic design, where I worked for a few years in—actually it was a real estate graphic design company, so it was in real estate. And after a few years, I decided, well, I can run this business better than anybody else, so I'm going to start my own business, which was very naive. And I went and I started my own graphic design marketing firm. I was probably 27 or so, and did that very, very successfully for a few years, and realized I had an entrepreneurial knack.

[00:03:38] Tracy Hayes: What kind of work were you doing, just across—

[00:03:42] Kati Spaniak: Logos, brochures. We had start on websites. I actually did the annual report for National Association of Realtors for a few years, so this would've been in late nineties. Yeah. So I mean, a lot of high-profile graphic design jobs, all things—

[00:03:56] Tracy Hayes: Needed for real estate marketing.

[00:03:57] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. Yeah. So it was kind of a [00:04:00] weird connection. But then, I had my first baby, and then I had—actually then, after I had my first baby, we had 9/11.

Mm-hmm. And at that time, I couldn't pay anybody to use us for marketing or design. I mean, the whole business collapsed. And by this point, by the time the business was collapsing, I had two babies—so two babies under two. And it was a horrible time in my life and I felt like I shut down my business, which was my first child.

It was—for anybody who's an entrepreneur, you know what I'm talking about. And—but I had two little babies at home and then my mom had been a real estate agent for many years when I was growing up in high school.

[00:04:42] Tracy Hayes: Did you pay attention to what she was doing?

[00:04:44] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:04:45] Tracy Hayes: Okay.

[00:04:45] Kati Spaniak: I did. And I was like, you know, I could probably do this, but I had another company. Mm-hmm. So, it was the week before Christmas and I had to lay off everybody at my business. It was very painful. Mm. And the week after Christmas, my mom was diagnosed with colon [00:05:00] cancer.

[00:05:00] Tracy Hayes: Oh my goodness.

[00:05:01] Kati Spaniak: And so she said, well, now that you don't have a company, maybe you could get your real estate license. And I was like, oh. So now I have two kids at home, get my real estate license, and I start helping her.

So that's how I got into it. I kind of view those days back early 2000s as—I was just like every other real estate agent, you know, I was expecting my friends and my family to use me to sell real estate. I didn't understand the significance of what I was doing. I didn't understand that my guidance could make or break people financially—tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I was just your typical agent, you know, doing some things here, being with the kids, running around.

[00:05:36] Tracy Hayes: Well, it's interesting you say that because you are talking early 2000s.

Mm-hmm.

And we both know people who—you got greedy, if you want to say, in real estate, maybe bought too many properties.

Right.

And then lost their tail in 2007, eight, or 09. Yeah.

In that period of time, is that kind of why you make that statement—that we could affect them by tens of thousands of dollars—because it's, [00:06:00] that's… although we didn't actually force them to buy the house—

Yeah.

Yeah. We were guiding, but we didn't know. I mean, I was in lending at the time—I mean, 2005 is when I started in mortgages—so I mean, the crazy loans that were going out there, the NINAs, the SISA's, or whatever type of—I mean, no one predicted that, at least at our level.

[00:06:18] Kati Spaniak: You know, it was really interesting. I'm glad you—

[00:06:18] Kati Spaniak: You know, it was really interesting. I'm glad you kind of brought that up because at the time—so I'm very analytical and I dig in a lot and I do my research—and at the time I thought that things were gonna crash. Now, not because I was some financial guru, but because I could see the way that people were buying homes—not with the financial crisis, but I could see the way inventory was working. And I was like, I just don't see how all of these new homes can be built. I don't see how all these people can be moving into these new—there wasn't enough people moving for all this inventory that was being bought and sold. It just didn't feel right to me.

[00:07:00] And so I ended up actually getting out of the industry right before the full crash.

Mm-hmm.

So it was like 2007. And I got out then and I said, you know what, by this point I had three little kids under three. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna be a stay-at-home mom. And so I did that until 2002.

[00:07:19] Tracy Hayes: Well, what I thought was interesting—people thought it was funny—you know, I had gone to Michigan at the time following my now wife, and Quicken Loans, that's where I spent my first eight and a half years. And so here's this guy who's been living the whatever amount of years in Florida, and now I'm in Detroit, Michigan.

[00:07:36] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:07:36] Tracy Hayes: Right. Wow. And my parents would—I asked 'em, I said, send me up these—because what blew my mind was the price point of the homes that were going up so quickly. I'm like, mm-hmm, people are not—it’s not like our wages are going up, right, to match this run-up that's going on. Not knowing enough about the industry at that time—hadn't even owned a house myself at [00:08:00] that time—to have a realization of what would happen. But it just was—I was like, where's this going? I mean, right. You got these condos that are going up in Naples and they're multi-millions of dollars and so forth, and how—

You know, of course Naples is totally different today. I mean, what has happened in 20 years there—

Yeah.

—is quite amazing. What’s happened in 20 years here in northeast Florida is a whole ’nother thing. But yeah, that kind of gave me the same eebie-jeebies.

[00:08:26] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. You knew something wasn't quite right.

[00:08:27] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:08:28] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. So that's pretty much what happened is I said, you know what? I've got too much going on.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know where this market's going. I'm just gonna stay at home. So I stayed home until—well, 2012—when I went back to real estate. I ended up getting divorced.

[00:08:42] Tracy Hayes: I was gonna say, the kids are older, a little bit older now.

They weren't much older—

Mm-hmm.

—they weren't—

[00:08:46] Kati Spaniak: They weren't much older. So I was not working and I was going through a divorce—very, very difficult time. And I thought, well, you know what? I know real estate. I think, you know, I have my marketing background, I'm gonna get back into real estate. And so [00:09:00] I basically started when I was 40, back in the industry. And it really was like brand new, because I didn't really view the time I had worked before as really being—it was more dabbling in it.

Mm-hmm.

And so I said to myself, I am going to be the number one agent in my town, because previously I would run everywhere, right?

[00:09:23] Kati Spaniak: I’d do everything. I’d go anywhere, I’d—anybody call me, I’d say, sure, I can do that. Whatever—

[00:09:23] Tracy Hayes: Business took you.

[00:09:24] Kati Spaniak: Well, now I had three little kids and I said, I’m going to be the best agent in my town because I don’t want to leave this town. I want to be able to be here for my kids. I want to go to events, things like that. So I was very highly focused, and I’ve taught a lot of agents about this—how to really dig in—because what I did is I ran the numbers in my town and I realized that there were 750 transactions, 750 homes sold, which is a buy and a sell for each one every year. So that’s 1,500 transactions.

And I thought, wow, okay, well how much does the top agent sell in our town? It was [00:10:00] only like 30 deals in our town.

Yeah.

And so I thought, wow, well that’s really sustainable. Like I could do that—like if you 30 out of 1,500. And so that was my goal and that is what I focused on and that’s where I did all my advertising. I was very, very highly targeted and I grew my business basically to be number two within the first three years. So I sold $3 million my first year, $11 million my second—

[00:10:26] Tracy Hayes: And this is 2012, 13, 14-ish.

[00:10:28] Kati Spaniak: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Time period. My third year was $24 million.

[00:10:30] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:10:31] Kati Spaniak: So it was, you know, pretty fast trajectory. Let’s just say I knew how to market.

[00:10:37] Tracy Hayes: Well, that brings up—yeah, from your previous career—you mentioned mom in there. Is mom outta the business by this time?

[00:10:44] Kati Spaniak: She was still sort of in it, but she was part-time.

[00:10:47] Tracy Hayes: Okay.

[00:10:47] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. And I was leaning more towards brokerages that were a little more interdependent. She was more at your traditional brokerage. I was Keller Williams, eXp, which I call an interdependent model, which gives you a little [00:11:00] more entrepreneurial flexibility than some of the big-box brokerages—

Right.

—that are out there. And I gravitated towards that.

[00:11:08] Tracy Hayes: So you didn’t follow—you didn’t get on her coattails, so to speak?

No.

Not at all.

Yeah, not at all.

Not at all. Yeah, not at all. So—’cause I’m sure many of your listeners are like, well, you probably just rode your mother’s coattails ’cause she had all this business and she was fading out and slowing down. And you—

[00:11:24] Kati Spaniak: We weren’t at the same brokerage.

[00:11:25] Tracy Hayes: Weren’t even at the same brokerage.

[00:11:26] Kati Spaniak: No.

Mm-hmm.

[00:11:27] Tracy Hayes: So I think a lot of the agents listening here—this, I think, is really important. Christa Maho—

Mm-hmm.

—she talks—I—what you were just saying resonates. I’ve had her on the show. Of course that had to be Zoom, ’cause she’s halfway across—all the way across the country actually.

[00:11:40] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:11:40] Tracy Hayes: But really focusing on several neighborhoods, at least—that’s what she—

[00:11:46] Tracy Hayes: …claims that she does. I think her brother runs her actual real estate business now. But focusing on that—

[00:11:50] Kati Spaniak: Very tight.

[00:11:51] Tracy Hayes: If you—you’re sitting here and you’re talking to agents here in northeast Florida with all our, you know, PUDs, our planned urban developments—

Yeah.

—you’re in Nocatee. You know, [00:12:00] obviously, I don’t know how many tens of thousands of homes are in there, but obviously there’s even, you know, the little subdivisions within Nocatee. Nocatee is an actually larger area now—to really focus in and really become a specialist in just that immediate area around you.

[00:12:14] Yes. Because I think the thing that you brought up is like, look at the numbers. How many—just look at the numbers.

[00:12:22] Kati Spaniak: I mean, if you could get 5%—I mean, if I could get 10% of all those homes—I mean, that was 150 transactions. That’s not even possible, right? Like, that’s a lot.

[00:12:33] Tracy Hayes: You—

[00:12:33] Kati Spaniak: You need a team to do that.

[00:12:34] Tracy Hayes: You need a team, yeah.

[00:12:35] Kati Spaniak: As a single agent, how many do you need to make a very—

[00:12:37] Tracy Hayes: Good living?

[00:12:38] Kati Spaniak: —good living? Yeah, not many.

[00:12:39] Tracy Hayes: A hundred—

[00:12:39] Kati Spaniak: A hundred percent.

[00:12:40] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And I think—I’ve had great agents come on and say, “Oh, I changed broker.” “Why’d you change broker?” “Well, I wanted to expand.” I’m like, you’re really good where you’re at. Why are you trying—you know, I can understand, yeah, if you want to add agents on to do that and get ’em out there. But you know, you own the backyard that you’re in now, right? You’re full and still growing within your own [00:13:00] backyard. Why go and be worried about what’s going on in Fernandina Beach and drive the hour up there, an hour back and—

[00:13:06] Kati Spaniak: And as an agent, for me personally, I don’t feel comfortable in areas I don’t know.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that’s important—to have knowledge of the local areas. Not just somewhat knowledge, but deep knowledge. And that’s when I think you can become a much better agent, is when you really know it inside and out.

[00:13:24] Tracy Hayes: I was listening to one of the recent—I think it was the most recent—YouTube videos you had with you and your daughter talking.

[00:13:29] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:13:30] Tracy Hayes: And I was kind of doing some other work—sorry—but I was hearing it over here, and you guys were going back and forth on—maybe you were kind of recommending of, you know, if you were choosing a listing agent, you were talking to consumers, “Hey, you know, you should look for someone that has, you know, done so many transactions—”

Yeah.

—and so forth. I don’t know, I mean, that would eliminate—I think your daughter said at one time, like if they hadn’t had 20 listings in the last year—

Yeah.

—I think it’s something like, a number she used [00:14:00]. And I’m thinking, well, here in northeast Florida, there’s a very fine-line number of people who have had 20 listings. Now there’s people—some of ’em have 40 or 50 listings, but—

Right.

—but there’s a very fine line there. You’re talking a very small percentage—

Yes.

—of agents that actually fall in there.

[00:14:16] Kati Spaniak: Yes. So, you know, I refer a lot of agents through my YouTube channel—

Mm-hmm.

—thousands. I mean, I talk to—thousands and thousands of referral agreements out there for the sellers from my YouTube channel. And what I’m looking for is—when I’m referring isn’t—and I hate to say this when I’m talking to agents, because they’re like, “Well, I’m never gonna get there.” Well, you may not, because you may not be focused, you may not be good, you may not care, you may be part-time. So—

[00:14:16] Kati Spaniak: When I’m talking to sellers, I want them to get somebody who has—I'm saying 150 transactions in the last five years. So that’s about 30 deals. Now, if it’s a higher price point market, then it’s less—

Right.

—because they’re not doing as many. Yeah. But somebody who has about 20 [00:15:00] listings the previous year is a full-time agent.

Yeah.

And so that’s the key—is that somebody who, like, I can see this person’s full-time. If I see somebody who has two listings and five buys, I don’t know if they’re a full-time agent.

Right.

If I see somebody who has, you know, 150 deals in the last five years and only 10 last year, I know they’re on the way out too. So it’s important for sellers to use people who are experienced. And then the agents say, “Well, how am I supposed to get business, you know, if you’re telling them not to use me?” And I say, you really need to partner up. You really need to be able to—well, not—

[00:15:31] Tracy Hayes: Not everyone’s listening to your YouTube channel either.

[00:15:33] Kati Spaniak: Well, that’s true. That’s true. That is true. Yeah. You know—but they’re like, “Why? How can I get into your referral—”

You wish they were, right.

Right. That’s true. You know. And I—you know—they’re like, “How can I get into your referral network?” And I’m like, you can’t.

Right.

Literally, you can’t. And the only people who get into my network are people who I track down—who I find are the best agents out there.

[00:15:53] Tracy Hayes: So I imagine probably on a regular basis you do get some sort of message from someone who’s in an area you don’t have—

[00:15:59] Kati Spaniak: Oh, every—[00:16:00] every day we’re talking to people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:16:02] Tracy Hayes: So what are some of the things that you’re looking for—should someone have that question, “I’d like to get in your referral network”? Well, this is what Katie’s looking for.

[00:16:09] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. So first of all, the seller who comes in, who wants a referral, tells us what area they’re in—

Mm-hmm.

—and then I’m looking to see who are the top agents in that area. But it doesn’t just mean I go with the top agent.

Yeah.

[00:16:23] Tracy Hayes: Because some of these teams can fudge the numbers a little bit. It doesn’t look like who’s actually doing the business.

[00:16:28] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. But because I’ve sold so much and I wrote a book about real estate teams, and I had a team with lots and lots of people on it, and I’ve had a team with almost nobody on it, I understand the differences. I understand how team leaders work. I’ve been coached—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on my own coaching—so I’m very aware of how it works.

So I can go and look at a team and look at their structure, and just from their website I can pretty much tell how they’re run.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I can pretty much see. So if somebody [00:17:00] says, “I have a referral in, you know, Jacksonville,” I’m looking at the specific zip code, not just Jacksonville as a whole. And then I’m looking to see, okay, you know, how many sales has this person done—their buys versus sells? You know, if it’s a team and they’ve got a lot of buys, most likely those are all their buyer agents, but then most likely that team leader is handling those listings.

Right.

But we’ll check, you know. So I look at their website, I look at their team, I look at their professionalism. I look at their listing photos—it’s a big deal. If one of their listing photo packages is bad, we will not refer them.

[00:17:36] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:17:36] Kati Spaniak: We just don’t.

[00:17:37] Tracy Hayes: No, we can definitely go into a whole ’nother thing about—

Yeah.

—some of these agents and—and well, you—I know when there was one of the videos you were talking about, the contracts and so forth—I think it was the one where you were talking about the dual agent—

Yeah.

—you were getting into the contracts. But the contracts here in Florida—now everybody’s using the FAR/BAR contract.

Right.

I guess, well, when you started down here, you saw [00:18:00] the NEFAR contract—

[00:18:00] Tracy Hayes: …right, type of thing. And how some agents, like you said, you immediately realize they’re part-time.

Yeah.

My wife’s an agent, so I hear this conversation going on—

Exactly.

—they don’t know how, they’re not filling it out, or they send it over and it’s not filled out correctly.

Correct.

And obviously now with the whole buyer–seller compensation—

Yeah.

—you know, how that’s coming across and so forth. I guess if they asked you to come down to NEFAR and talk to a bunch of new agents—

Mm-hmm.

—what are two or three things that you’re telling ’em, like, you gotta get this stuff, like, this has gotta be your foundation?

Yeah.

[00:18:30] Kati Spaniak: So, to become a great real estate agent, you have to do two things. One is the activities, and the other is the education. The activities are what most people kind of focus on, which is, you know, making your phone calls, dialing, dialing, keeping your database—all these activities. The education, I think, is where a lot of agents fall down, is they don’t understand the education of what they’re doing.

They don’t understand how to fill out a contract. They don’t understand how to consult with their clients. They don’t know how to [00:19:00] do a market—And so that is a really important thing that they need to understand. But most coaches are coaching for the activities; they’re not coaching for the education.

[00:19:10] Tracy Hayes: Do you believe it’s because, as you know, every transaction you have is different—

[00:19:15] Kati Spaniak: Right?

[00:19:15] Tracy Hayes: Every customer, seller—they all have whatever different hair to them. It’s that new agent doesn’t know where to stick that information they’re pulling in. They go sit at NEFAR and sit for a classroom, and they’ve only had two deals—

Right.

—they don’t know what library shelf to put that in, in their brain.

[00:19:31] Kati Spaniak: They don’t have context because they haven’t been in the business.

[00:19:34] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:19:34] Kati Spaniak: So that’s what’s really hard about our industry. And I say this in video—I talk about, I say I learn something new on every transaction. There is something that I take from every transaction that I put in there, but if I hadn’t had those transactions, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Which is why I’m referring our sellers to agents who are successful and have done a lot of transactions—because they’ve seen a lot of different things. And so, as a new [00:20:00] agent, they’re so concerned about the split. Like, they’re so concerned, “Well, I don’t wanna partner with somebody because I’m only gonna get, you know, 50%.”

Well, 50% is better than nothing.

Exactly.

You know, and you’re going to learn. And so the agents—there’s this growth period in the first couple of years where they’re in business—where they’re so focused on the split rather than focused on the whole of what they’re getting.

And tag along. Offer to sit open houses for the most successful agent in your brokerage. Like, partner up, team up. Do whatever you can for those agents. And those agents who are successful are then gonna be like, “You know, that’s a pretty good agent. I’m going to refer business when I’m too busy, too.”

Exactly.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:20:43] Tracy Hayes: I think you lead into something, but I wanna step back so we can lead back into this—you know, your original choices of brokerages, and then obviously for you personally—obviously you’ve been at eXp, I think, a little over eight years—

Yeah.

—if I saw that correctly.

[00:21:00] Tracy Hayes: You know, why the cloud brokerages, right?

It was cloud—the cloud brokerages.

Cloud—

That’s what you—okay, cloud, everyone’s online using technology.

Right.

Or we’ll call ’em cloud broker—but yeah. Why that track? ’Cause obviously, you know, you’ve been in the business long enough—some agents thrive, your mom thrived in a more—

Yeah.

—traditional—

[00:21:13] Kati Spaniak: Office setting.

[00:21:14] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Some people, like, they need to go into the office—

Yeah.

—to feel, you know, get the synergy going, whatever going, and they thrive in that thing. But the importance, and how you made your choices—but also, I assume you found that many agents fail because they make that wrong choice of—

Yeah.

—whether it’s this particular—name, I don’t think the name is really—but really it’s actually the broker or the top agents that are in there running that—

[00:21:38] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:21:39] Tracy Hayes: —organization that you’re tapping into, you know, for your business. Right. So, how did you make your decisions and, you know, what do you recommend—a new agent comes to you today and says, “I’m looking at, you know, getting in there.” What are some of the things you’re gonna educate them on—that choice?

[00:21:52] Kati Spaniak: So that’s a really big question. And I’m pretty honest in all my conversations [00:22:00] on my YouTube channel and when I talk about things. And what I’ll tell any agent is—your business is because of you. It’s not because of your brokerage.

And that’s one thing that bothers me—is when these big-box brokerages say, “Oh, you’re getting your business because of our name.” And that’s completely not true.

[00:22:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Not today.

[00:22:20] Kati Spaniak: No. And so it really bothers me that agents think that’s true.

Mm-hmm.

And so for me, I just kind of got into this mode where I wanted to be my own entrepreneur. And in the beginning, of course, it was about, you know, the name, the brand, and then I moved to Keller Williams. And Keller Williams was more about the education, and that was more about becoming a great agent.

The other big box—I didn’t feel like it was becoming a great agent. I felt like it was “How much business can you bring in? You know, how much can you sell?” Whereas at Keller Williams, I felt like it was just more about—you’re gonna be a great agent, and the reason you’re gonna be a great agent is because we’re gonna talk about all these things that you need to [00:23:00] know. You’re gonna put your education first.

And then I moved to eXp, which I feel, for me, is a great brokerage just in the way it’s set up. If somebody says to me, “I want to, you know, come to eXp,” I’ll say, well, let’s talk—because it’s not for everyone. Each brokerage is not for everyone. You can’t just say any agent should go into, you know, Compass or Real or eXp.

It’s a very personalized discussion about what is best for you. And just because it’s best for me doesn’t mean it’s best for somebody else.

Right.

That’s really what it’s about. So I would say, you know, as a new agent, you have to look at what you’re good at and what you’re not good at. And what you’re good at is—let’s say, you know, working on your own, being self-accountable—well, then you can go with an eXp or a Real. You know, if you’re not good at being accountable to yourself, you probably need to be in an office—maybe you’re looking at another in-office brokerage.

So I also say that selling real estate made a [00:24:00] better person. And this is something that I will—I will always say, and I don’t know if I would’ve known this when I started—it made me a better person. Because—

[00:24:00] Kati Spaniak: …how many times—and you probably get a little bit of this too—is how many times can you be rejected, like, and then pick yourself back up and then do it all over again? And you can’t help but feel that personally inside of you.

[00:24:24] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:24:25] Kati Spaniak: Like, you can’t help feeling—

[00:24:26] Tracy Hayes: What did I do wrong?

[00:24:27] Kati Spaniak: What did I do wrong?

[00:24:28] Tracy Hayes: Right. Yeah.

[00:24:29] Kati Spaniak: And as a person, as somebody going through a divorce in a very traumatic time, having three little kids and being told no—you have to say, “Okay, I’ve gotta do this,” and you’ve gotta pick yourself back up. So, you know, I’ve sold 600 homes, I’ve been rejected thousands—I mean, thousands and thousands—of times.

How many deals did not go through? How many times did people say no? How many listings did I lose? Thousands. And a new agent has to understand that that is what [00:25:00] they’re going to have to get through in order to be a great agent.

And that’s why I know, when I refer to an agent who has hundreds of transactions, I know they’ve been rejected thousands of times. And that’s how you become a better person. And that’s how you learn. And that’s why real estate—selling real estate—changed my life.

[00:25:16] Tracy Hayes: Well, one of the things you mentioned earlier—and I’ve been kind of pushing this out here recently, not that it’s any—you probably have done it several times over the last four years of doing the show—but the importance of collaborating, getting with a mentor, someone—

Yes.

—you can shadow—all these, these words—

Yeah.

—how important it is. And then, if you’re an agent, maybe you’ve been doing this two or three years and you’re kind of trudging along and, you know, you still—you haven’t done a dozen deals in an entire year and you’re like, “Why am I not growing?” The importance of linking up with three or four, or at least a mentor or somebody, and shadowing, getting some at-bats, and bringing up your education game.

[00:25:51] Kati Spaniak: Absolutely. So, when I was in Chicago, there was this agent who had been in business before, he was in his mid-fifties, and he had moved back to Chicago [00:26:00] and he knew I had a lot of business. And he said, “Katie, I wanna sit four open houses for you a weekend.”

Four.

He wasn’t on my team—he was just in my brokerage.

Right.

He went and he found out who are the top agents, called me up, and I knew I could count on him. I knew that he would sit four open houses for me a weekend. So we’d schedule him in three weeks out—he sold $12 million his first year.

Twelve million.

Yeah. But that’s because he sought me out. I didn’t seek him out.

Right.

And that’s the thing—a new agent will reach out once to a big agent and be like, “Oh, that agent didn’t get back to me, you know, they must not like me, they must—” No. You have to be on top of that agent every week. If you want something, you have to be the one to say, “Hey, do you have an open house I can sit? Hey, do you have any rentals I can run?” And at some point, that big agent is going to have that deal that she’s like—he’s like—

“I can’t deal with this. You know what? I’m gonna help you, young person.”

[00:26:56] Tracy Hayes: You’ve been banging my door.

Yep.

You’ve been great.

[00:26:58] Kati Spaniak: You’re gonna give me [00:27:00] 10%, and I’m gonna help you. You take this, you know, hundred-thousand-dollar lead.

[00:27:00] Kati Spaniak: Whatever it is.

[00:27:04] Tracy Hayes: Right? Well, you made a good point—they only call out one time.

Yeah.

And that experienced agent has had a lot of people already probably have called them. And so, ’cause when they start ramping up and they start getting some accolades in the office, they start getting calls or people come by—

“Hey, what, you know, what can you do? Can you teach me this or teach me that? I wanna—”

[00:27:24] Kati Spaniak: “Be on your team. I wanna be on your leads.”

[00:27:26] Tracy Hayes: Or, you know, I’ve had top agents tell me, you know, they sit down and have coffee and they say, “Hey, what can you—” You give them some advice—

Yep.

—“Hey, based on what you told me, I’d say, I’d do this, do that, and the other.” And they don’t even take it.

[00:27:37] Kati Spaniak: They don’t take it. They don’t follow up. They don’t take it.

[00:27:39] Tracy Hayes: That’s why so many fail out of the business.

[00:27:41] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. ’Cause they’re completely uncoachable.

[00:27:44] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:27:45] Kati Spaniak: You have to be able to be coached in order to be good in this business. And that’s another thing—see, my experience as a top agent is the same as the other agents you’re talking to, is we sit there and we talk to all these new agents all the time.

They’ve got these big plans, everything they’re gonna do, and they demand that they get, you know, a top [00:28:00] cut—and then they’re done because they can’t handle the rejection.

Right.

Now, there are some who can, but I push this because this is a hard business to be in. And it looks easy—you know, it looks easy for somebody to come in and get, you know, $10,000 for just selling one home. But there’s so much more to it. And it’s—we’ve talked to a lot of agents—

Mm-hmm.

—you know, teams talk to a lot of agents who do not make it because they’re concerned, like I said in the beginning, about the split.

[00:28:30] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. So I want to—I’m working back to—so at what point, we talked a little about the brokers and stuff, at what point did you get in your business where you start going, “Hey, I wanna expand a little bit,” and you start growing your team, which then leads you to your book. So you can jump into that pretty early.

Yeah.

[00:28:44] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. Because, you know, I’d already had this entrepreneurial experience—

Mm-hmm.

—I’d been coached quite a bit. I knew that, you know, there were some things I was good at, some things I wasn’t. I’m very big on the DISC profile, so very in tune to that—

Mm-hmm.

—and so I knew pretty early on that [00:29:00] I was—I hated showing homes. I mean, I hate—I hate showing homes. I mean, I say I hate it—I mean, I do it, and I’m great when I do it, but like, I get there and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, it’s a bathroom. Like, what do you want me to say about this bathroom?”

[00:29:17] Tracy Hayes: Right, you know, it’s like you start putting it on yourself, and I’m really—it’s the house, it’s not you.

Right.

[00:29:20] Kati Spaniak: And so the patience that you need to have and the high “I” in the DISC profile that you need to have in order to be a great buyer’s agent—I’m a high “D,” if—

[00:29:23] Kati Spaniak: …any—if you guys don’t know the DISC profile, highly recommend you look into it. Yeah. But I’m a super, super high D, so I’m like 110% high D. I don’t have time to show homes. I would need to be back on my computer doing my marketing, doing—you know—trying to get a deal together.

So I knew early on that I was not the best to be a buyer’s agent. So I started kind of working that way. And I failed many, many, many times building my team. Many times. Yeah. And it’s because I put my faith and—

[00:30:00] Tracy Hayes: Were you in on the DISC from the get-go, or is that something you learned to start using as you failed forward?

[00:30:08] Kati Spaniak: It’s interesting. So I used a company called WiseHire—

[00:30:11] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:11] Kati Spaniak: —and they would give you the profiles of people. And then I started getting really interested, and I could see when I was talking to somebody, it was matching up with their profile. And I was like, “Oh, huh—well that’s why this person is a high D or a high C.”

And then I realized that people with a high S/C were the ones who were—the ones that were different than me.

Mm-hmm.

That I thought, “Oh, this could be a good person. They’re a little bit different than me to complement me,” but they don’t have the go-out-and-get-it attitude because they’re a high S/C. So I was very clear in seeing this in real time.

Mm-hmm.

And I failed. I failed a lot. A lot. And I give people—I’ll say—the benefit of the doubt. Because I was very much—I’m a do-what-I-say type of person, you know? If I say I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. And so I just believed [00:31:00] everybody else was like that. And it turned out that they weren’t.

And, you know, they said, “Oh, I’m gonna lead generate every day, I’m gonna come in every day, I’m gonna do this.” I was like, “That’s fantastic, this is great—we’re gonna be a huge team.” And then they give up once they get rejected a few times.

Yeah.

So, building a team—I wrote the book because…I wrote the book, and it’s not this literary masterpiece or anything, but I wrote the book because I felt like I hadn’t been told what I put in the book.

And what I put in the book was that you don’t need this massive team. You don’t need to spend—you know, give all these splits and do all these things. You need to give people one simple task at a time. And you pay them specifically for that task.

You don’t say, “I’m gonna give you 25% of my buyer,” and then they just completely fail. You say, “I’m gonna pay you $25 to go open this door for my buyer.” And so you bring them in slowly to see what they can do, [00:32:00] and then they have to earn it before you start paying out your commission.

Because what I didn’t realize when I started bringing in a team is—I was thinking, if I can do $25 million on my own, well if I can bring in a team member, they can at least do three or four million on their own—

[00:32:40] Kati Spaniak: But what I didn’t realize is I was taking away my commission to give to them. So when I said $25 million, I now was giving it to them. They were blowing it, and I was losing commissions because I was giving them deals that I would’ve closed.

And so when you start a team, you have to realize that you’re probably gonna lose money. And a team is a losing proposition.

Yeah.

Unless—I mean, there’s some great team leaders out there who I’m very impressed with—but—

[00:32:43] Tracy Hayes: It’s a lot tougher, and I see some people jump into it at a very, very—yes—to me, uh, young stage. And, and I, you know, brag about seeing, you know, Christina Welch here in town’s the first person she’s—Christina [00:33:00] was lucky—and not luck, you know, she’s fortunate to eventually get two or three core people that bought into what they were doing.

Now, I don’t know how they were doing their splits or whatever and how she was keeping ’em happy, but I know there were periods where people were rolling—you know, agents were coming on, they’re coming in and working the structure, but then they were going off on their own.

’Cause they’re like, “Well, you know—” ’cause obviously they were giving these splits, and eventually—

Split.

[00:33:27] Kati Spaniak: “I can go do it on my own.”

[00:33:27] Tracy Hayes: “I can go do it on my own,” yeah, exactly, type thing. And until it finally—it took her years—

Mm-hmm.

—years of working through the system to find—and then all of a sudden, then all of a sudden she started to multiply.

Right. Yeah.

[00:33:39] Kati Spaniak: You know, it’s hard. And my daughter is an agent with me now, and you know, I give her a percentage—it’s so funny. So I gave—I started her with a small percentage, and she’s like, “Wow, this is—” she’s young—“Wow, this is awesome, this is great. All I have to do is go, like, sit a couple open houses and do the—you know—whatever simple stuff.”

I said, [00:34:00] “Okay, Lisa, this is where it goes wrong.” I said, “I’m giving you this opportunity and basically giving you this money, okay? And basically, because her compensation is not really tied to her experience, I’m giving this to you. I said, in one year you’re going to come to me and you’re gonna say, ‘Well, that buyer took me 25 showings, I should be getting a higher split.’”

And this is where it always falls apart.

Yeah.

And I said, “It’s not about the split, because if I was showing that person, I would not show them 25 homes. I would show them five. I said, so once you figure out how to show them less homes, then that’s when we can talk about a higher split.”

You know, she hasn’t gotten there yet—she’s still like loving what she’s doing.

Right.

But that’s where it falls apart, is the team leaders give all of this support and guidance and leads and everything—full, all-in. Like, and I did this—I gave it all: my love, my attention, my everything. And then they’re like, “Yeah, well, I want a higher split.”

I’m like, “You have to work [00:35:00] for a year before you can get, like, a higher split, and you have to sell more on your own. Like, you’re being fed leads.”

And so I’m not bashing people—I…maybe a little bit—it’s a very…as a team leader, it’s very painful to bring on new agents—

[00:35:17] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:35:17] Kati Spaniak: —and then they leave.

[00:35:18] Tracy Hayes: Well, I think—this is just a perception from my side, you know better than I do—I know Christina, when I asked her what play is she running, she’s running Keller Williams’ book—

[00:35:28] Kati Spaniak: Right?

[00:35:28] Tracy Hayes: Yes. She’s staying within that structure and she’s running that play.

[00:35:31] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:35:32] Tracy Hayes: And I think a lot of people go out there and have this dream that, “Hey, I do $25 million. I can go hire or bring on five more agents, they’re all gonna do three to five million. I’m gonna be doing—we will be doing—over $50 million—”

Exactly.

“—overnight. And, uh—”

Exactly.

“—be rolling.” And A) it doesn’t happen that fast. B) they have no structure to actually get it there, like a—you know—

[00:35:57] Kati Spaniak: Correct.

[00:35:58] Tracy Hayes: —they don’t have that business plan—

[00:36:00] —or blueprint, as Keller Williams does, to execute on. And it falls apart very quickly.

[00:36:05] Kati Spaniak: And the other thing is that it’s very expensive to run a team, because you’ve gotta feed your team. So how do you feed your team? Either you’re giving them your own personal sphere—which means you’re taking away business from you—

Mm-hmm.

—or you’re paying for leads. And I remember at a point I was like, “I can’t do this anymore.” Like, it was so, so stressful.

The other thing—you know, the Keller Williams model is what I was trying to do in my area—that I realized is that people who wanna start a team…it is location dependent. It is location dependent. You cannot start a team in different areas of the country if you don’t have either an influx of buyers, or high turnover.

So in my area it was very sphere-based—in where I was.

Mm-hmm.

It was the North Shore, Chicago—very, very sphere-based. And so you had a reputation in there. I couldn’t hand off my sphere [00:37:00] buyers to somebody on my team who was 20, 25 years old.

[00:37:04] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:37:05] Kati Spaniak: So you have to understand that your location may not allow you to have a team the way some of these other teams do.

[00:37:12] Tracy Hayes: You might pull in a bad apple and all of a sudden the—

[00:37:15] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. Yeah. You can do it in the city of Chicago—that’s not a sphere-based business. You can churn, you can have $200,000 condos that you can let these agents go work on. And if they lose it, it’s not a big deal.

Right.

But when you’re working with million, million-and-a-half dollar buyers or sellers, it’s a big deal.

[00:37:31] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. When does the YouTube channel come to your vision?

[00:37:36] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, so the YouTube channel started in 2017. I used a company called Viral Marketing—

You heard of Viral?

They do videos. I signed up, and I would record a video, I’d send it to them, and they’d edit it and send it back, and then they’d put it on my YouTube channel. And it did nothing. I love Viral, but I didn’t understand YouTube at all.

Right.

YouTube is very, very confusing.

Yeah.

[00:37:59] Tracy Hayes: And they’re always [00:38:00] changing. I think all the social media—they’re always tweaking it in the backside. Like you think you got it—

Yeah.

—and then you don’t.

[00:38:06] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. And so—

[00:38:06] Kati Spaniak: …in about 2022, 2023, I’d actually hired somebody—came on my team—and I hired him to help me with my YouTube channel. And basically, he gave me the information on how to get it online, like more on understanding how to upload the videos. But there was a point—

All of a sudden I was doing it wrong still.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, people weren’t watching, and I was like, “This is a waste of time.” But I committed to it. I was doing it like once a week.

[00:38:33] Tracy Hayes: So you have a pile of content sitting there, right? It’s already there, because you had been doing it for roughly five or six years at this point.

[00:38:40] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. And it was there. So then I was doing more videos. I also got involved with a group called Brand Builders, which kind of helps you build who you are as your brand. And I started thinking more about what content I was gonna put out there and who I was talking to.

And all of a sudden—and this comes [00:39:00] from years and years of marketing and coaching and everything that I’ve done—

Mm-hmm.

—I was like, “I think I got it. I think I got it.” And I said, “I am only going to speak to sellers.” ’Cause that’s where my passion is. I feel very passionate about the fact that if sellers choose the wrong agent or they make the wrong decisions, they will lose tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve seen it.

And so I felt very passionate about educating sellers. And so I decided, “Okay, my channel is only going to speak to sellers of real estate.” And I was like, I’m not gonna talk to agents, I’m not gonna talk to buyers—they may watch my YouTube, but I’m not talking to them anymore.

So I very much created—

[00:39:37] Tracy Hayes: Because before that you were just shotgunning.

Yeah.

“What’s the market—”

[00:39:41] Kati Spaniak: “—like on the North Shore of Chicago?” Right. “Should you build a team?” Like, the thing about YouTube is you can only speak to one single person. That’s it—like one, one person.

So you can only speak to sellers or buyers.

Interesting.

You can only speak to national sellers or national buyers, or local sellers or local buyers.

And this is where I [00:40:00] screwed up—

Mm-hmm.

—is that I thought by building my YouTube channel, I was gonna build my local business. But YouTube is so—once you go national on YouTube, you’re stuck. You’re stuck because you’re a national audience. So let’s say I went national, which I did with my seller videos, and then I posted, “What’s the real estate market doing on the North Shore of Chicago?”—they wouldn’t watch.

And then YouTube dings you.

Ah, interesting.

So once YouTube dings you, it’s very hard to get back in their good graces. So you have to work—you have to work with their whole algorithm. So if I have this whole big audience of national sellers, and then I post a buyer “How to do a VA loan,” they’re like, “I’m not watching it.” And then YouTube notices that they’re not watching your video.

[00:40:46] Tracy Hayes: So one out of 10 drops, and they really kick you outta line.

Oh.

It’s very hard to get back—

[00:40:50] Kati Spaniak: —up. Yeah. So, it was about December of 2023, I highly, highly focused on sellers, but I didn’t realize that it was national versus local.

Mm-hmm.

And so I was just doing sellers. I was like, “Wow, this is going great.” But then I was realizing I wasn’t getting any local business.

So this is the one thing I wanna say to anybody doing YouTube—a real estate agent doing YouTube, okay—is that, first of all, you have to be like all in on YouTube. You have to be completely mentally committed to it.

[00:41:00] Kati Spaniak: But you also can only speak to one person. And if you are doing a channel that is all about the town and buying these homes, you’re only gonna get buyers in that town. That’s it. That will be your business for eternity.

Mm-hmm.

Because you cannot switch your buyers who are looking to buy in, you know, in St. Augustine—

Yeah.

—you can’t look at that, and then all of a sudden you’re talking about selling a home. They’re not gonna watch it. So you have to be very, very focused. So for example, my—I mean—

[00:41:48] Tracy Hayes: Could you talk about buying and selling in St. Augustine?

No, not even that?

No, you wouldn’t.

Okay.

[00:41:53] Kati Spaniak: I mean, you can, but you have to figure out—you’re not gonna get sellers on your channel. You’re going to get buyers on your channel, [00:42:00] okay?

Mm-hmm.

But most agents want sellers. So what I’ve actually done is I’ve created a new channel, which I should have done in the beginning. That’s how I should have done it in the beginning.

Mm-hmm.

Not that I’m—I mean, this has been a long time—

You had to fail forward.

Yeah, I did.

So I built a new channel for just Valencia—

Mm-hmm.

—which is the subdivision I live in. Yeah. So it’s got, you know, 2,500 homes—if I get, you know, a couple—

Yeah.

—I’m doing great. So my channel only has, I think, 27 subscribers. And that’s awesome because they all are Valencia people.

Right, right.

Local real estate. So everything that’s hyperlocal—hyper, hyperlocal.

Right?

Yeah. St. Augustine is huge. Jacksonville is huge. I want to work only in Valencia, and in Chicago where I sell my team. But that’s my thing.

So YouTube—I started getting into this and realized that my content was good for sellers, like they liked it.

Mm-hmm.

And then I started promoting that I’d find you a real estate agent if you were looking. And I built this [00:43:00] big community of sellers across the country who are like family now to me.

[00:43:04] Tracy Hayes: I was watching a little bit of one, I think you did not too long ago—might have been weeks, I don’t know, maybe a month ago—where you…I think the sellers were in Virginia—

Yeah.

—and you were doing a Zoom call, you were basically doing a seller’s consultation with them.

Yeah.

And the husband said, you know, “Sell it for $800,000.” It was really like…I don’t know what—I didn’t watch the whole thing, so I don’t know where it actually is valued at—but it was much lower than where he thought. But his mindset, if I recall correctly, was to, “Hey, post it really high, and then see where someone will come in, and obviously they’re gonna try to get as close to what you want, but, you know, as you’ll fall a little short of that, you still made a lot—good money on it.”

[00:43:45] Kati Spaniak: Right.

[00:43:45] Tracy Hayes: Type of thing, even though the house was worth less than that.

[00:43:47] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. So, I’m very supportive of people’s local real estate agents that know more than I do in their community. Like, I don’t know people’s businesses, I don’t know the teams, I don’t know the [00:44:00] structure, I don’t know what their market is.

But I can do enough on, like, Zillow and Homes to know a range of a price. And so I got this couple on my channel to do a live listing presentation and did not prepare for it—like, I did not really kind of talk to them ahead of time. And—yeah—his price was too high. And this is exactly what happens in real listing presentations.

Mm-hmm.

So that was hard because I had to bring him off of his price while making him still feel okay.

[00:44:33] Tracy Hayes: Right. Without insulting him.

[00:44:34] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s what we have to do. And that’s why my channel, while it’s for sellers, this is the type of education I think agents need—but I don’t want anyone listening…I don’t want you to subscribe to my channel if you’re not gonna watch my video. Don’t do it, because that hurts the algorithm.

[00:44:55] Tracy Hayes: Right. If you get people who are subscribing, who don’t watch, it hurts the algorithm.

Interesting. Okay.

[00:44:56] Kati Spaniak: It’s a very, very—like—go ahead, watch the videos, I’m fine. If you’re gonna watch the videos—

[00:45:01] Tracy Hayes: Does it care whether you watch long form or the short form?

[00:45:04] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, totally different.

[00:45:05] Tracy Hayes: Okay, so it’s totally different. It’s even putting those people—because obviously there’s some people who just like shorts—

[00:45:10] Kati Spaniak: Well, they don’t even want—there’s people who like shorts. So my avatar for my audience is women over the age of, like, 60…55…who want to be educated. And they’re not gonna be educated by looking at shorts. Looking at shorts is about entertainment.

Mm-hmm.

Not about education.

[00:45:25] Tracy Hayes: Well, no—I mean, I’ve watched a few of your shorts. They were good—

Yeah.

—I mean, a handful. But you know—

[00:45:29] Kati Spaniak: They don’t get people to trust me the way that my long form does. Because YouTube is about trust, and it’s that relationship.

[00:45:36] Tracy Hayes: Well, what is your attitude—is the short form a way to obviously intrigue them to watch the long form? Isn’t that the goal?

[00:45:45] Kati Spaniak: That’s the goal.

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

[00:45:47] Kati Spaniak: That’s the goal. But you can’t—like, shorts on YouTube—that’s ultimately their goal. It’s not like Instagram or TikTok or something like that, to be entertained. That’s entertained.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I do shorts on YouTube as well.

[00:45:59] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm. Well, it’s—you know, when I talk to agents, whether they’re doing their little things on Instagram, it’s like, why are you not dropping all these things into YouTube? Now, you’re on a higher-level game—you’re really, like, hyperfocused—

Mm-hmm.

—on what you’re doing, and you’ve figured out—obviously that’s been an accelerator to your channel. But they’re creating this content, which you did for years—which, would you agree, the fact that you had this foundation of content out there—

Mm-hmm.

—helped you when you finally hyperfocused—helped you accelerate faster?

[00:46:35] Kati Spaniak: Correct.

[00:46:35] Tracy Hayes: Versus just starting at zero, going, “Oh, if you knew all the answers from zero, you wouldn’t have advanced as fast as you did if you didn’t win ‘em.”

I wouldn’t be where I am. Yeah.

[00:46:44] Kati Spaniak: So when somebody says they’re gonna start YouTube, I say, “Great. I love what YouTube gives you as the opportunity to get people to know you. I love it.”

Mm-hmm.

I did 200 videos before one of them—of them, I’m not even gonna say “went viral”—before one of them got [00:47:00] over 500 views. So you have to practice. You just have to keep doing it. So even if you’re not, you know—even if you’re not getting traction—YouTube, I think, is very much about you’re gonna practice until you do it right.

And you just have to put it out there. Like, my daughter’s focused on TikTok right now, and she said she’s stuck at a thousand, you know, followers. I said, “Well, TikTok is testing you. They’re testing to make sure you’re in this for the long game.” You know, that—you just have to keep posting even though you’re not getting any followers.

And it’s so funny because I had a video—my very, very first, like, holy-crazy-viral video—was a video called Don’t Get Sued. And this was a story about sellers that I had that got sued by their buyers. And the buyers walked away at the closing table, and my sellers had to pay the buyers $10,000.

Crazy, crazy story. Okay? So I posted this early on, and it was like 250,000 views in like a week.

[00:47:59] Tracy Hayes: Wow.

Wow.

[00:48:00] Kati Spaniak: Up until this point, I’d had like a thousand views. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this is crazy. This is—you hit—”

[00:48:03] Tracy Hayes: A nerve somewhere.

Yeah, right.

[00:48:05] Kati Spaniak: It was this crazy story. Other YouTubers who are in the same space as me actually told my story—like, it’s a really crazy story.

[00:48:14] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I’ll have to look this video up now.

Then it died.

[00:48:16] Kati Spaniak: The video died. Well, it died because the next video I posted was How to Hire a Real Estate Agent.

And so the people who watched my Don’t Get Sued video—when I looked, you can tell on YouTube—they were mostly men who loved this crazy story, and they were younger. My avatar was really 55-and-up women. But these men were watching, they were sharing it—“You gotta hear this story.”

So then the next video that comes up on their feed—because they subscribed—is How to Hire a Real Estate Agent.

[00:48:46] Tracy Hayes: Boring.

[00:48:48] Kati Spaniak: And they’re like…

And so that’s what I’m saying—that’s how I knew I did it wrong. Right. And then it died. Everything died. And I was like, oh my gosh. And it took us months to get back into, like, equilibrium.

But you know what’s so funny is that video has taken off in the last three weeks—taken off. For some weird reason, all of a sudden YouTube is pushing it again, pushing it out there. And I’ve had, like, I don’t know—30,000 views in the last three days or something on it. On that one video.

[00:49:14] Tracy Hayes: And that video’s older—a couple years old?

[00:49:16] Kati Spaniak: It’s old. That video is over a year old.

Right. So that’s what YouTube does—sometimes you can have this video and be like, “This is a great video, I know it’s a great video,” and YouTube will push it at some point again.

And for some reason right now, YouTube is pushing a lot of my videos. I’m getting a lot of traction. That could be because I’ve done a couple of live sessions recently—which also, you throw into the mix—but I’m not real sure.

Right. All I know is that they’re pushing my videos out right now and I’m getting a lot of traction.

[00:49:47] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. When did you start getting those—you obviously started realizing you’re going national, ’cause you don’t get 250,000 in your backyard—but people started to ask you, “Hey, do you know a real estate agent?”

Was that something you were thinking of trying to get to, or something that all of a sudden started to come at you, and you’re like, “Oh man, I can make something of this”?

[00:50:07] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. I realized kind of early on that I wasn’t getting these people in my backyard talking to me. And so I started saying, “Oh, if you want me to set you up on a market search, let me know.” And then I thought I’d just find an agent in the local area.

And then I started saying, “Oh, you know, if you need an agent, let me know.” And so then it started on this process. And the referral game is very difficult. It’s very difficult because—it’s, you know—so I find an agent in California, let’s say. If I find the bad agent, I lose the income and I don’t even know this person.

Right. And so it’s been almost a year and a half of testing, creating a backend system for tracking—

[00:50:52] Tracy Hayes: And knowing how—and you’re doing your due diligence to hopefully find the right agent.

Yeah, because you know—

[00:50:56] Kati Spaniak: At first I was only referring one agent, and then I found that agents didn’t respond sometimes to the sellers. They would not call them back.

And so then I was like, oh—because now I’m saying you need to talk to a couple agents. And they’re like, “Well, Kati only gave me one, so I’m gonna go talk to two other people.” And then I’d lose that.

Ah.

And then I was referring only to eXp agents, and you know, the best agent in every town is not an eXp agent.

[00:51:28] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:51:29] Kati Spaniak: So I got to the point where I was broker-agnostic. I’ll refer to the best agents in the town now. Yeah—I refer two to three.

And our system is much, much better. My daughter Lisa helps—very solid, very good right now. A lot of good follow-up, but it’s also a long tail. You might have a year to two and then you’re getting, like—you know, yesterday I got a check for like $900. I mean, it’s not going to replace selling a $500,000 home.

[00:51:50] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:51:51] Kati Spaniak: So if anybody’s watching, they’re like, “Oh, I wanna do what Kati does,” I will just tell you—if you are selling real estate in your local community, you can’t do what I do. You can’t go national. You will destroy your local business—which is really kind of what happened to me a little bit.

[00:52:15] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:15] Kati Spaniak: It really hurt my local business because I was focused on national.

[00:52:15] Tracy Hayes: Your content that you’re putting out was more for a national thing than being local.

[00:52:20] Kati Spaniak: Right.

[00:52:23] Tracy Hayes: But now you’re running this new channel—you’re giving it the dual…

[00:52:23] Kati Spaniak: I am, yeah. And now I know what to do. And now what I’m using YouTube for with my local market is I’m using it as social proof in my local market—in my North Shore Chicago market, in my Valencia market. Now it’s social proof.

So now if I do an ad in Valencia, I can say, “As seen on YouTube—over 60,000 subscribers.” So that’s my social proof.

[00:52:46] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm. So are you back-linking or whatever the two? Does that work?

[00:52:51] Kati Spaniak: No.

[00:52:52] Tracy Hayes: Not in this case—in this particular…

[00:52:53] Kati Spaniak: No. I mean—no, and here’s the thing: I only want people following my Valencia channel who live in Valencia or are looking to buy in Valencia. Really. And I might get a few people from that, but it’s a seller channel.

So anybody who’s gonna go look at my phone and see a channel—don’t subscribe. Don’t subscribe.

[00:53:11] Tracy Hayes: Well, so let’s take it down to educating some of the listeners—the agents that are on. You know, ’cause there’s a lot of ’em that want to—I comb everybody’s social media.

[00:53:21] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:53:21] Tracy Hayes: So I’m gonna tell you—a lot of people do not have a decent LinkedIn. Let’s go through that actually, because you are working nationally.

[00:53:33] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:53:36] Tracy Hayes: And I think here in northeast Florida, we have a lot of buyers that come from outside the area. Should you not have a tight LinkedIn?

[00:53:39] Kati Spaniak: You should. Which I don’t.

[00:53:40] Tracy Hayes: Yeah—no, your LinkedIn tells me enough about you.

[00:53:43] Kati Spaniak: Okay. Yeah—yes, for sure. LinkedIn is the least used by real estate agents.

[00:53:49] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I don’t—I’m stalking… uh, you know, looking up people, I’m going into—well, ’cause I mean, it’s the way I do my show. I go in there, I’m looking for an outline. I could see where you went to college—

[00:54:00] Kati Spaniak: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:00] Tracy Hayes: —which generally relates to, you probably grew up in this certain area or whatever. Or, you know, your first jobs—generally in your hometown, whatever—if you’ve got everything on. But it tells me a little bit about you. And maybe we resonate, maybe we’ve crossed paths and, you know, gone to the same places or whatever type of thing.

But I see a lot of you just—it’s their LinkedIn, if they have a LinkedIn. Now there’s some agents—obviously it is decent enough. I think it’s very easy to post it. Maybe you update the bio every so often.

[00:54:30] Kati Spaniak: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:31] Tracy Hayes: Because as you’ve got more and more subscribers, you gotta go—64, 65—right, you gotta change that number. But that’s very easy to do. But someone’s stalking you and they go, “Well, who’s this woman referring?” I can go on LinkedIn, I know something a little bit about you. You’ve been in the business 22 years—

[00:54:42] Kati Spaniak: Interesting, because I don’t—so I don’t think the regular consumers look at LinkedIn a lot. You’re in business.

[00:54:49] Tracy Hayes: Mm.

[00:54:49] Kati Spaniak: And so I don’t see a lot of my sellers looking at LinkedIn. I see them looking at Facebook, I see them looking at Instagram. I see them looking at their websites. So that’s super important—is the websites that they have.

[00:55:04] Tracy Hayes: Let’s touch a little bit on that. ’Cause next week I have a gentleman I just happened to go to high school with—or grew up with, really—who is from California. He’s been doing websites for about as long as you’ve been in real estate. And he’s really good at it, and I’m gonna have him on the show. And that’s one of the topics we’re gonna talk about.

The importance, especially now—and I don’t know how far you’ve gone into the AI thing—but as our search goes from the Google to, now, the younger people going right to the natural language, going right in ChatGPT and starting to talk about, “Hey, I wanna buy real estate,” and stuff—how’s the website going to play in, and how…

[00:55:42] Kati Spaniak: It’s a really big deal. So, I mean, we are referring thousands of agents. Like, I look—I stalk agents. Like, if you’re a big agent out there, I probably stalk you—like, seriously.

And when we go, we start looking at all their social media. So if they don’t have a website—like a true team or personal website—it’s a major issue. Because if they only have, like—we see a lot more with RE/MAX, like remax.com/agentname—that is not impressive to send to our sellers.

Our sellers do not like to see that all they have is an “About Me” page on the RE/MAX site.

[00:56:27] Tracy Hayes: …times it’s not even up to date.

[00:56:28] Kati Spaniak: Right.

[00:56:29] Tracy Hayes: It just—it looks like there’s stuff missing already in that.

[00:56:32] Kati Spaniak: Totally, yeah. And you know, it’s interesting—I referred a couple agents in Canada last week, and Canada… I mean, they are really good at their presentation. And you know, I talked to one of the agents out there and he said, “Our sellers here are very educated and they expect a lot.” And I could tell just based upon the presentation—beautiful websites, beautiful photography, and the way it looks.

And so I will not refer out an agent who might have good sales but doesn’t have a good presentation, because if they don’t understand the significance of marketing themselves, how can they understand the significance of marketing their homes?

[00:57:09] Tracy Hayes: You’re being measured somehow, and that’s the way—yeah, not saying that’s necessarily always true, but again, you’re looking from the outside in. And I think, like you said, when the natural language progression happens, you’re gonna have to—your website is where the AI is going to be looking.

[00:57:27] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[00:57:27] Tracy Hayes: And you should be using AI to help you create it, because AI is looking for AI. I’ve been told that by experts. And utilizing that… what I wanted to get to is, you have agents that are listening and they see what you’re doing and think, “Oh, I can’t do that.” I mean, I’m sure you’ve—well, it would depend…

[00:57:41] Kati Spaniak: On what.

[00:57:42] Tracy Hayes: Well, yeah. Could they do it? Yeah, it’s gonna take time and energy. Some just don’t have—you have the natural building and the passion, I think. Just watching you on camera—obviously you’re locked and loaded, you’ve got your knowledge right there, and it’s rolling on out. Not a lot of people can just throw it out there like you do.

Do you even have any sort of script or outline that you’re working off of? I mean, a lot of times are you actually… yeah, you do—or you have something like, “Lisa, oh, I gotta remember to bring up that or that”? But I imagine you’re not scripted word for word.

[00:58:10] Kati Spaniak: No, I’m really bad—I can’t memorize a single sentence. So that’s the problem with me, is I can’t work off a script or memorize it. So in the beginning, I just talked.

[00:58:18] Kati Spaniak: Okay—so I would just talk about a topic, and then I realized I needed a hook in the beginning. So, again, this is all progression.

So for people who say they can’t do it—no, you can’t do what I’m doing right now on your first video. But after 400, you should be able to do what I’m doing.

[00:58:38] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm. Well, they can learn from you and shorten the learning curve that you’ve already experienced.

[00:58:41] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. And in YouTube you have to be mentally all in, like I said. Mm-hmm. You know, so right now I’m thinking about my next video that I’m gonna record, and I do an outline. I’ll pick a title first, then create an outline, and then I’ll record it.

I have a good editor—he understands real estate, and he understands me—so he’s pretty good at cutting me, bringing in the B-roll…

[00:59:07] Tracy Hayes: And I saw sometimes, like whatever the topic is, sometimes that will flash across the screen in text.

[00:59:14] Kati Spaniak: Yeah. Mm-hmm. You can’t be me right now, but you could be me if you put in the time, the commitment, and the money that I have.

[00:59:20] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:59:21] Kati Spaniak: I mean, it’s all about your desire and passion for it.

[00:59:27] Tracy Hayes: Right. For the—lack of better terms—standard, “normal” agent… I think you’ve gotten to a point where you’ve realized you’ve made it. Now you’re using it to obviously get these national referrals, and that’s become part of your business.

For the agent who’s just selling here in Northeast Florida, how should they be using YouTube?

[00:59:47] Kati Spaniak: Okay. That’s a great question. So—it depends on the age of the agent in the business. Not their personal age, but how long they’ve been in real estate.

If they’re looking to start and grow their business, the easiest way is through buyers. That’s where the “Living In…” model works well. Those models are great for teams because they bring in buyer leads.

But in a place like the North Shore of Chicago, you don’t get a lot of buyer leads coming in that way. That’s why you have to understand your market—are you getting an influx of people moving in? If you’re not, that model’s probably not going to work, and you’ll need to do something different.

And remember—you have to pick one: buyers or sellers. You can’t do both on the same channel because the topics are different.

If you’re a newer agent, I highly recommend doing a “Living In…” channel for your area. You will get buyer leads. At some point, you might want to transition to sellers, but that usually means starting a new channel.

If you’re a more experienced agent—like I was—who wants to get into YouTube, and you don’t want all buyers, then do something highly targeted. For example, you can make videos specifically about selling your home in a certain neighborhood or subdivision.

One of my top videos is about “magic colors” you should paint your house. But if I had titled it “Magic Colors to Paint Your House in [Specific Neighborhood],” that’s way more targeted. A national audience might not click that, but people in that neighborhood would—and those are sellers.

With seller-focused videos, they have to be hyper-specific to your local market. And yes, you might only get a hundred views—but they’ll be from a hundred people who could actually hire you.

[01:02:04] Tracy Hayes: The buyers want to be focused on the community?

[01:02:07] Kati Spaniak: Buyers need to understand the community.

[01:02:09] Tracy Hayes: I was trying to really take in what you were saying there.

[01:02:14] Kati Spaniak: Buyers need to understand the community, right? They want to know there are waterparks, local attractions…

[01:02:14] Tracy Hayes: They want to see the video before they get there.

[01:02:16] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. Sellers in that community already know all that. They don’t need to see the waterpark—they live there. They need to know what’s going on in their neighborhood in order to sell their home. That’s the difference. That’s why you can’t talk to two different audiences on the same channel and just make a general real estate channel.

[01:02:33] Tracy Hayes: Really focus in on one side or the other. Maybe if you like to, create two channels.

[01:02:40] Kati Spaniak: And that’s even harder to do.

[01:02:41] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, I imagine.

[01:02:42] Kati Spaniak: But yes. I give a word of caution for anybody who says, “I want to do what Kati does and get referrals.” Your local business will go down.

[01:02:53] Tracy Hayes: What if someone is just… because I can imagine there are a lot of them out there—and maybe you can tell me why it works or doesn’t—what if they’re just going out to open houses and doing walkthrough videos? I’ve heard of a guy on TikTok who does that and people are chasing him.

[01:03:16] Kati Spaniak: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:17] Tracy Hayes: If you’re a local agent who doesn’t want to sit in front of the camera like you do, maybe you’re new to the business, it’s easy to just walk through a bunch of houses and talk about them.

[01:03:30] Kati Spaniak: And those are buyer leads.

[01:03:31] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[01:03:32] Kati Spaniak: That’s what I’m saying. But as an experienced agent, with or without a team, you want more listings. That’s how you sustain your business—you can’t rely only on a constant stream of new buyers. You have to build your listing business.

So for an experienced agent who wants to do YouTube, you’ve got to be super careful. YouTube is all-encompassing, and my own business went down because of YouTube. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t get local business, and it hurt.

[01:04:06] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, financially it makes total sense. And you’ve experienced it, so you can share it—you took the bullet for it.

[01:04:29] Kati Spaniak: I’ll tell you a story. About six to eight months ago, a woman reached out to me. She signed up for my stuff and sent me a note: “I just found out you live down the street from me. I’ve been watching you for a year, and I just listed my house. I can’t believe I’ve been watching you for a year and didn’t know you were here.”

[01:05:03] Kati Spaniak: She saw my picture in a magazine, then saw my YouTube, and put the two together.

[01:05:04] Tracy Hayes: And she’s like, oh my gosh.

[01:05:04] Kati Spaniak: And she became a massive fan of mine—even though she was currently listed with someone else. She was like, “Can we go to lunch?” Like, crazy. And I’m thinking, I could just kick myself because she didn’t know I was literally half a block away from her. That is the problem agents will run into if they follow my path. If you want to follow my path, go ahead—but you’re going to lose local business.

[01:05:29] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, you really have to focus. You should be sitting down, doing some strategery—talking, watching something like this, or consulting with you to say, “This is what I want to do,” and you could probably save them a lot.

One thing I talk about on my show is the grit real estate agents have to have.

[01:05:50] Kati Spaniak: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[01:05:51] Tracy Hayes: I bring up Angela Duckworth’s book Grit all the time. If you haven’t read it, you should—or listen to it like I did. But I broke it down into what I call the LLC: Love, Laughter, and Consistency. Those are three things you need to have in life, in whatever you’re doing. If you don’t have grit, it’ll knock you off.

So the first thing is love. Why do you love real estate?

[01:06:15] Kati Spaniak: I know it sounds so weird—like, I’m just a real estate agent—but I change people’s lives. I love giving people advice and help, knowing it will change their life.

I have a private Facebook group for sellers. Yesterday, I was having kind of a tough day, and someone posted in the group about how amazed they were with the agent referrals I gave and the help my daughter and I provided. Then someone else followed it up with, “Not to be religious, but I feel like this is your calling.”

So for me, yeah, I’m a real estate agent, but I know what I’m doing matters. I’m accountable to myself and to the people I help. I know I’m changing lives.

[01:07:08] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, the knowledge you’re sharing has made differences—that’s a real high.

The “laughter” part is because I think, looking back, those tough situations—deals going sideways, thousands of people saying “no” to you—today you laugh about them at a cocktail party.

Tell us a story about a time you really questioned why you were in this business, but you got through it.

[01:07:49] Kati Spaniak: Oh gosh, that’s good. There are a lot of stories. I have a lot of stories that I—

[01:05:00] Kati Spaniak: And the reason she even knew me was because I advertised in the local magazine.

I had the worst client ever. She was just brutal to me. She actually found me on YouTube very early on, and I think she thought she was hiring “Katie, the YouTube star.” But she didn’t do a single thing I told her.

It was really difficult.

[01:08:12] Tracy Hayes: Was that like hiring Ryan Serhant and then not doing anything he tells you to do?

[01:08:15] Kati Spaniak: Exactly, exactly. She wouldn’t price it correctly, listed on the coldest day of the year in Chicago, put it into the MLS on a Saturday morning—which I told her was a bad idea because no one would see it. I told her the price was wrong, that it wouldn’t appraise, that she needed to fix the house up. She ignored all of it.

So we listed at her price—which was down-market—and, unbelievably, on that freezing day we got one offer. But it was $25,000 higher than her high price.

I had priced it $50,000 less than that offer, so I thought, “Oh my God, I was totally wrong. I’m an idiot.” But in reality, the buyer wanted the house so badly they didn’t want anyone else to have a shot. They saw we had 20 showings and assumed there was a bidding war.

Then the inspection happened… and it was terrible. The buyers and the inspector literally walked out in the middle of it. I’ve never had that happen before. I knew there was a lot of deferred maintenance, but I didn’t anticipate that reaction.

Because the buyer’s mom was their agent, I was able to get them to reconsider. The mom said, “There’s a foundational problem.” I asked why, and she said, “The doors aren’t aligned with the frames.”

I told her, “Your inspector says that’s a foundation problem? My handyman probably just installed them wrong. Bring in a structural engineer.” She agreed.

Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., she had a structural engineer ready to come. I called the seller and said, “We can save this deal—you just have to let him in. I’m confident there’s no structural issue, just some other repairs needed.”

Her response? “No. If they don’t think our house is perfect, we’re not going to do it.”

[01:10:12] Tracy Hayes: Emotions…

[01:10:14] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. The deal fell through. Two more offers fell through after that. I finally fired her.

[01:10:21] Tracy Hayes: Did anyone ever check the structure?

[01:10:24] Kati Spaniak: Yeah—it was fine.

[01:10:25] Tracy Hayes: So the structural issue turned out fine?

[01:10:27] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, it was fine. I finally fired her. I told her, “I can’t handle this.” She still demanded to work with me afterward. My husband—who’s an attorney—actually had to write her a cease-and-desist letter.

And I just thought, Why am I dealing with this? Why am I in this business?

It’s one of those experiences that shows you how important it is to be able to separate yourself emotionally from a situation. If you don’t, you’ll get dragged right into the chaos.

Craziest client I’ve ever had—and yes, that story is going in my book.

[01:10:53] Tracy Hayes: Sounds like you’ve got more than one book’s worth of stories.

[01:11:00] Kati Spaniak: Oh, for sure. Every agent who’s been in the business long enough has them.

[01:11:27] Tracy Hayes: Let’s talk about consistency—what you’re doing today that actually moves the needle in your business. How has that evolved?

[01:11:27] Kati Spaniak: Well, I’m a high D on the DISC profile, which means I have a lot of ideas and tend to chase them. In the early years, I spent a lot of money trying everything—lead gen services, ads, coaching—you name it. The only thing I’ve never tried is billboards.

Back then, I was constantly running toward the “next great idea.” Now, my consistency is about staying laser-focused on what my actual job is day-to-day. I don’t chase squirrels anymore.

Even doing this interview with you is a little outside my consistent routine. Because I know—if I spend too much time on side projects like training, recruiting, or coaching—it takes away from the activities that actually bring in my income.

[01:12:31] Tracy Hayes: Which is selling real estate.

[01:12:33] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. Right now, I focus on three things: my YouTube channel, working with sellers, and my local business. That’s it.

[01:13:04] Tracy Hayes: Do you have a set recording schedule for YouTube?

[01:13:10] Kati Spaniak: In the beginning, I posted once a week, then tried twice, even three times a week—but I burned out fast. Now, my goal is one video a week. If I’m not feeling it, I don’t force it.

The other thing I’ve learned is—if you have a video that’s performing really well, let it ride. Don’t post another one too quickly, because YouTube won’t know which one to push. Right now, I’m averaging a new video every two weeks, and that works for me.

[01:13:58] Kati Spaniak: I posted a video a week ago—completely stopped getting views, like nothing. But all these other videos from a year ago have suddenly taken off. So now I’m kind of thinking, I’m supposed to post on Sunday… should I? Or should I wait? Because what’s happening right now with the older videos feels right.

So, my consistency isn’t necessarily about posting every week—it’s about recording every week. With YouTube, you have to be all-in. There’s a real thought process: planning the idea, structuring the content, then actually recording.

Another thing I do for consistency is protect my mornings. I try not to meet people early. If I have a listing presentation at 9:00 a.m., my whole day is off. I’ve learned I’m much better if I start the day cleaning out my email and getting organized. That way I’m not distracted thinking about what’s waiting for me. So, for example, our 11:00 a.m. interview today was perfect.

[01:15:00] Tracy Hayes: I’ve been using ChatGPT—like for my show intro. Let’s touch on that. Are you dabbling in AI? Some people might call you “techy” just because you’re into YouTube, but how do you see AI for real estate agents?

[01:15:13] Kati Spaniak: I love it as a tool. It makes life a lot easier. But here’s the thing—people who watch and subscribe to my channel resonate with me. They’re not going to connect with someone reading a script straight from ChatGPT.

So, I use it for outlines or idea generation. For example, my next video is called What Not to Say to Real Estate Agents. I already had my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT for suggestions. Most of them weren’t great, but a couple were solid. That’s how I use it—more for inspiration than writing.

I don’t particularly like the way it writes for me—it’s just not my voice. But I was on a panel two years ago, and someone said, “I’ll never use ChatGPT. It’s cheating.”

[01:16:13] Tracy Hayes: Funny you say that—I told my son, who’s a sophomore at Beachside, “Let’s start an AI club.” He’s already dabbling in it, like a lot of kids. They use it for all sorts of things—finding where to go to dinner, planning stuff. Schools have to start grasping this.

[01:16:45] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, they do—they have to get with it. By the time my son graduates in three years, there should be a college major in AI.

[01:16:47] Kati Spaniak: Oh yeah.

[01:16:48] Tracy Hayes: And I believe it could speed up learning so much.

[01:16:52] Kati Spaniak: Yeah.

[01:16:52] Tracy Hayes: I heard there was an Ivy League school where students sued a professor for using AI.

[01:17:01] Kati Spaniak: Right.

[01:17:01] Tracy Hayes: But in reality, teachers are facilitators. They have knowledge, sure—maybe years of it—but especially in elementary and high school, they’re really there to guide. If they can keep a kid engaged enough to stay tuned in to the material, that’s their job.

[01:17:29] Kati Spaniak: Right.

[01:17:30] Tracy Hayes: And AI speeds things up—it’s faster than Google. Like, I’m a history guy, World War II especially. If I went into ChatGPT and asked, “Give me five people I can write a bio on that most people don’t realize had a huge impact in WWII,” I bet four of those five names would be ones I didn’t even know.

[01:17:56] Kati Spaniak: Exactly.

[01:17:58] Tracy Hayes: And that sparks learning. It’s not always about the well-known figures—it’s about discovering someone new. That’s how AI can help: speeding up research, writing, and ideas. To me, it’s not cheating. I saw someone say it was “dumbing you down,” but I think it’s like having a conversation with a friend who says, “Hey, have you thought about this?” And you go, “No, I haven’t.”

[01:18:20] Kati Spaniak: Exactly.

[01:18:21] Tracy Hayes: That’s AI to me.

[01:18:28] Kati Spaniak: Exactly. That’s how I use it too. I can see other agents—maybe less experienced—writing entire scripts with AI and reading them on camera. But on YouTube, your audience will know.

[01:18:46] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[01:18:46] Kati Spaniak: You lose that authentic connection.

[01:18:48] Tracy Hayes: And if you’re using an AI avatar and feeding it a script, that dies quickly.

[01:18:54] Kati Spaniak: Oh yeah. It’s not authentic, and YouTube is all about authenticity and connecting with people. My audience feels like I’m talking directly to them. Fun fact—on my channel, about 50% of viewers watch on their TVs.

[01:19:12] Tracy Hayes: Same here. I watch a lot of podcasts and YouTube shows on my TV.

[01:19:19] Kati Spaniak: Right. So it’s just like TV, and you have to be authentic.

[01:19:23] Tracy Hayes: A hundred percent. I’m gonna finish with this—because we were talking about AI—and mention that I had it create an intro after feeding it your bio.

[01:19:55] Tracy Hayes: Right. And something I’ve been doing recently—you’re the third person I’ve tried this with—is asking ChatGPT, “Give me five things that make [guest’s name] unique and exceptional.”

[01:20:00] Tracy Hayes: So here’s what it came up with for you:

1. Massive YouTube influence with precision content.
   —Interesting wording—precision content. I’m not sure if I even picked that up from your bio.
2. Author and educator.
   —Obviously, you’ve written your book. If someone wanted to get it, is that on Amazon?

[01:20:04] Kati Spaniak: Yes—Dual Market Team Leadership.

[01:20:06] Tracy Hayes: I imagine a lot of agents dream about that, but don’t realize what it actually takes.

[01:20:07] Kati Spaniak: That’s a whole other podcast.

1. Respected industry leader.
   —From being an eXp ICON Instructor of the Year to leading one of the largest associations in the country, Katie’s influence spans all levels of the industry.
2. Authentic, no-nonsense voice.
   —Your direct, honest, and easy-to-understand content has made you a weekly staple for both consumers and agents alike. No fluff, just real talk.

[01:20:34] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, that is true. That is true.

[01:20:36] Tracy Hayes: See, that’s why I love doing this—if I didn’t tell you that was AI, you’d think I was smart.

[01:20:43] Kati Spaniak: No, that’s great. That’s interesting.

[01:20:45] Tracy Hayes: Well, I appreciate you coming on today.

[01:20:48] Kati Spaniak: Yeah, no—it’s been a great conversation. I really appreciate it.