Bobbi Brennan: Grace and Gratitude

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progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, potential savings will vary, not available in all states. Hey, this is Bobby Brennan of Hubbard girl properties. 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. 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  1:05  

Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast with your host. Tracy Hayes, I have the Crusader as she will never back down from a fight of for a worthy cause. She is recognized by Jack's real producers magazine as a top producer in Northeast Florida. She is a Florida native, but married to a sailor who served for 28 years. She commits herself to helping other military wise and relocation. She not only sells real estate, but she also does property management as well. Let's welcome the grace and gratitude of hover. Girl properties. Miss Bobby Brennan to the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome Bobby. I'm glad you could come on today going through I did like, it's like I messaged you last night. I did go through your article. Jack's real producers that Kristin Lunsford put together. So that gave me kind of a skeleton to talk about with you here today. So as I start off, everyone you are from Florida, but where in Florida? Where'd you grow up? Well, I was born in Milton, Florida because my father was also military, but we moved shortly afterwards to Orange Park, Florida. Grew up in Orange Park. I went to elementary school, middle school and high school in Orange Park, an Orange Park Ian. I'm an Orange Park girl. Now I was reading the bio, or the reading the story, actually in the magazine. There, you did go off to college, but Dad called you back and mom was ill, if my mother was sick. So I was in college, and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my dad and I sat down and had a talk and decided that I could stay home while she was battling cancer. Sadly, her fight with cancer did not last long, and we lost my mom, and at the time, I had two younger brothers and an older brother, and my older brother had just been married, had a baby, and my two younger brothers needed me, and so I chose not to go back to college and just went into the workforce. And we're very, very close family. I've been blessed with amazing brothers and dad, and I just decided to go to work, and I was I've been in sales my entire life. Explain what that's like at 1920 years old, coming back, I mean having that conversation, because I think you said in the article, and lack of better terms, or lack of what the actual term was, You are selfish little brat, basically, is what you described yourself before going but coming back and having this conversation, you had to grow up or mature very quickly well. And I say it this way, most of us in our teenage years are selfish, we and it's not that we purposely mean to be. We just don't think about our parents or anybody else and what their needs are. And I definitely was one of those kids. I was caught up in myself, and you know, my brothers were my brothers, but losing my mother forced me to grow up and realize how important my brothers and my dad and the people friends in my life were, and that became my focus. I've never changed. So how old were your your younger? So one of my brothers this time, he was 15. I had a brother that was just a year younger than me, but he had a lot of struggles, so I just I focus on them. Now. Was your your dad actually still serving at the time he was so he's being deployed. Well, he at that time, he wasn't being deployed. In fact, shortly after probably a year, and I'm sorry, because a lot of this is kind of Yeah, it's been a while convoluted in my brain. But shortly after that, he moved to Texas, and my youngest brother went.

Bobbie Brennan  4:59  

With him. But then my youngest brother came back to Jacksonville and moved in with me, and he stayed with me for years, probably another 1015, years that he's, oh, wow.

Tracy Hayes  5:14  

All right, so you're, we're talking, you're in your young 20s at this time,

Bobbie Brennan  5:18  

young 20s, and I also got married in my young 20s. Oh, wow. Okay, married twice. That my first marriage, I was in my young 20s, and he was an airline pilot. He was military, and then an airline pilot. So he was gone a lot, and my youngest brother moved in with me, and I had a little boy, and we just he stayed with me, and I went through a divorce, and he was with me through the divorce, and he's actually on my real estate team now too.

Tracy Hayes  5:49  

So at that time, I mean, were you just because he was an airline pilot, doing well, that you were just a stay at home mom, or what

Bobbie Brennan  5:55  

were you? No, I was still in sales. I don't know how. I'm sure everybody remembers your

Tracy Hayes  6:01  

LinkedIn wasn't completely filled inside.

Bobbie Brennan  6:05  

And as I said, my 20 year old daughter's giving me grief about that. No, I was, I've always been sales. So back then, I was working at Body Shop in jareds. They were popular stores here in town, and I worked with them forever. In fact, I would say some of the best sales training I received was from a lady named Lena vanoski, Lena headinger. She you know, she communicated to us the importance of sales. But what made you a good sales person is recognizing what your customer needed. And so that's where my sales

Tracy Hayes  6:44  

was that, where was that as what in my 20 or what, what store was that that gave you that we

Bobbie Brennan  6:51  

were at both stores? Oh, both one company and,

Tracy Hayes  6:54  

oh, okay, okay, it that's, it's not, I've had other people come on, and I think that's a very good point to make. There's some of these corporate stores that are out there that do actually have great retail training, and at the first agent that has expressed that and some of those core things, because I think the average person thinks sales comes naturally, personality comes naturally, but understanding some of the basics of the sales process, and then you mold that process to wherever you're working at. There's not a set thing for everybody, but, you know, depending on what you're doing, whether it's real estate or working in a jewelry store or whatever, there's a process to what you're doing. But why is there a process? And then where do you insert your personality. You know, understanding, you know, buying signs, understanding when, like, shut your mouth,

Bobbie Brennan  7:47  

those types of things. Keep your opinions to yourself.

Tracy Hayes  7:50  

Keep your opinions to yourself. Yeah, some of those things that you don't think about yourself, but you have to understand that you're obviously trying to sell a good to make a living to someone else who has different beliefs and different backgrounds, so to speak.

Bobbie Brennan  8:03  

Well, I will say, you know, going working with that company for years, it I have always been honest with any customer I've had. I don't care if you're buying clothes from me or pharmaceutical equipment to houses. I believe in being honest, but I I also genuinely like to talk to people and get to know people. And when you do that, you know how to sell to them, because you know what they want, because you care. And when I left the retail business of clothing, I went to pharmaceutical equipment. And I think the greatest lesson I learned was at that pharmaceutical Equipment Company, and Dr Jerry Hayes said, If you upset one doctor, that one doctor then shares that with 10 other doctors, you focus on the customer that is with you in the moment. And I believe that that's what you

Tracy Hayes  9:04  

need to do. I mean, that's for the one bad apple spoils through, right?

Bobbie Brennan  9:08  

Yeah. And I think too often in the real estate world, in any sales world, everybody gets caught up with volume of customers and forgets to focus on that one customer you're with at that very moment.

Tracy Hayes  9:22  

I agree, obviously, our short term spans, but you can, especially as you get deeper into what you're doing, and you're doing all our last year, when one sale was coming after another, and you just, you just going and running from, you know, one showing to the closing. And, you know, things are, people are calling you, saying, hey, things were easy from the standpoint, you didn't have to do your day to day things. And then what you end up doing is you start neglecting, you do the adding that little touch which makes you, long term successful. I see, I don't say I see too many. I think there's a not only in the real estate world, the mortgage loan officer world, but I think. In in general, if you have a very short term vision of what you're doing, you know, versus the long term, like, hey, I want to do the right thing. I may lose a customer today, but I'm going to gain tune next year, because I'm doing the right thing and saying and that, and I think it touches into your your faith, and that's another question I want to and because I feel the same way, I mean you, you have to stick with it. Keep being consistent, doing the right thing, and it will reap fruit for you. It may not be tomorrow. That guy who cuts the corner may have the fruit today, but the question is, what are they doing next year, five years from now and so forth? Exactly?

Bobbie Brennan  10:39  

Are you paying attention to your customers. I you know, I've thought about what is my business plan well, and I think I started telling you, my business plan is very different in that I didn't get in this for money. I know a lot of people say that's ridiculous. Everybody gets in everything for money. I honestly came into this looking for something to do part time. We had just moved back from Miami. We were stationed at SOUTHCOM, and the article talks about that too. So down in Miami, when we were down there, large military community, we all rented these homes. It was expensive to rent down there. So we all rented these homes, and then we all got foreclosed on. I can't tell you how many families got foreclosed on, and it wasn't just once

Tracy Hayes  11:30  

they're they're renting, and the owners got foreclosed on, the landlords

Bobbie Brennan  11:34  

got foreclosed on, never paid a single mortgage. So there was a huge number of us, and I just started researching and figuring out how we could tell when a home was in foreclosure or going into foreclosure, and then my name got passed on to other people, and they passed on to their friends. So people and I wasn't in real estate, but people would call me, can you check this house out for us? Let us know, because obviously, down there, when you're military, nobody knew to go through a management company or find a real estate agent to represent you. A lot of people were just going straight online, looking on Craigslist or whatever, to find a rental, and without having a legal representative to check for you, they didn't know. So they started calling me and then coming back. I found out I was coming back to Jacksonville. Laura Yale, one of the owners of hypergirl properties, she and I talked and decided, You know what, let's give this a try. I like working with military. I'm from here. I have a lot of family and friends in the area, so it just seemed like a perfect fit.

Tracy Hayes  12:51  

One of the questions I have later, but since we're kind of talking about this right now, can you dabble a little bit on military relocation? You know what you do? Because you guys do focus on that. That's when your your your focus points. And why is it beneficial for someone who's in the military being relocated to Jacksonville or out of Jacksonville, to be connected with someone like yourself that's familiar with the process, familiar of how the military what are some some even, maybe even tell a story, even a horror story, because those always like bring people to realization why it's important that things can be easier when you're working with someone who's experienced in that area.

Bobbie Brennan  13:31  

Well, I would say first, because a lot of our customers are overseas, definitely out of state. Working with us. We're familiar with how your orders can get changed at the last minute. We know how to go through the whole process. We know how it is with the movers. We can help you with every step of your process of moving. But the nice part about us is we're so accustomed to doing everything via FaceTime or Skype or zoom. Yes, people still use Skype, I know, but we can do all of it. And when you are out of state, in your military, you want to know that you have somebody you can trust. Let's say somebody came here bought a house, a military member bought a house, they moved their station somewhere else. They need you to manage the property. They need you to go check things out for them. We do all of it. We do the whole process. We know your time zones, overseas or in the country. We're just very familiar with the process.

Tracy Hayes  14:42  

Do you find? I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask the questions for our audience, your military, these military people who you don't meet face to face a lot of times before closing or so, where they're calling from overseas, you're to align that, or you're taking care of their house, and you they have no. Real relationship with you. They never shook your hand or whatever. But because of your background, you know your husband's service and so forth, you're able to tell, obviously, the story that you know just explained to me being down in Miami, that you treaded some of the same turf that they have. You've dealt with some of the same pains and issues, or whatever, dealing with the military and the orders and so forth, that they bond with you, and there's a trust right away I

Bobbie Brennan  15:27  

do, and actually that's some I should have said too. We're very familiar with VA loans so we can walk them through all that steps. We're also familiar with everything that they're protected with legally. You know, if they're, let's say homestead exemption. Not everybody knows that a military member can move away and their homestead exemption is protected. I did not know that. I just learned that right now. So as long as they don't own other properties, it's protected. So it's little things like that. But also, I think, and you're right, there are a large number of my customers have never met me face to face, but I think they know me, and I think I know them just through our talking and meeting over video, right?

Tracy Hayes  16:14  

We were talking about, you know, my background work from the Citadel and so forth, and every obviously does the Military College of South Carolina. They all of us go in there thinking, and we all take ROTC, and obviously, you know, we're being led by these colonels and lieutenants and so forth. Tack officers and and have a and you create these bonds that whether or not you actually, you know, I went to my reunion here a couple weeks ago, whether or not we actually hung out 30 years ago or not, we still are. We walk in there and we can carry on a conversation, and we immediately bond having that I don't know, there's this intrinsic faith that that person has your back, because, you know, there you have somewhat of their ideology. You've treaded some of the same pains and so forth. And I could see that being one of the benefits there of you bonding with a lot of our military folks. So skipping back about you, you, you're down there in Miami, you're starting to kind of create your own property management, or beating the Guru, the person to go to. What? But what did you have any career aspirations? I mean, what was your Did you, I mean, because you kind of fell into real estate in a way, but did you actually ever have an aspiration to do something else? I mean,

Bobbie Brennan  17:34  

actually real estate was not what I was looking for. My passion. I love working with kids, kids of all ages. So I honestly thought when we got down to Miami, and I was struggling with the sales job down there because I didn't speak Spanish, and I honestly thought, well, it's good time for me to go back to college. And I wanted to go to college for special education. But then, you know, working and doing this and realizing, and as I said, it wasn't a job. I was just doing it working with the military, I realized I really like doing this. I like just working with the military. The military is a community. You know, as you said, you can An example is we went to a party the other night to watch the light parade. We met a Naval Academy graduate from years ago, but when she was sitting and talking to my husband about what her path was, and as I said, she went to the Naval Academy, my husband went to SUNY maritime. They started talking, and he realized that one of his friends that went into the shipping industry had crossed paths with her. Well, when he mentioned his name, you know, yes, she was very close friends with this. Oh, yeah, he's went. So is it? It's a wonderful community that you can reach out all over the country and out of the country, we have a young girl coming in town, one another one of the kids of a graduate, and she's coming in town to work for the shipping industry, and she's going to live with us until we can find a house for her to buy. So it's just that community feeling with the military, right that drew me to real estate.

Tracy Hayes  19:22  

And you know, it is Ken. It's not just, did they ever meet somewhere? The age gap, the generation gaps close very quickly. Oh, yeah, someone may have served at a totally different time. Yes, but hey, I was in Okinawa, or whatever. I was in Pearl Harbor, wherever it may have been, and your husband is treaded through there maybe 10 years difference before or after. They still talk about, oh, they just say, yeah, they do. And trading this, oh, is that bar still there? Or is everyone still like to go to this Hangout or whatever, whatever it is, and it just, it creates that I've been from the same place, you know, we grew up in the same. Same hometown, yeah, sort of the type feeling from that standpoint. All right, so you're in, you're in when you're in Miami, are you actually working with a brokerage, or you don't really start working your

Bobbie Brennan  20:11  

brokerage until you come here to Jacksonville, right? I was not in real estate at all. That was just me being a stay at home wife for the first time in years, and just I had time on my hands, so I started investigating different homes, and actually had a meeting down at SOUTHCOM with all the powers that be on what needed to be done and how it was hurting us, because when you're paying it's very different down south. You don't just pay first month's rent and security deposit you have to pay basically three months. So you're losing all that money, and then you're having to pay for movers come move you. And military families can't afford that,

Tracy Hayes  20:52  

because if they're moving locally, they're not paying for that. Correct. Yeah, correct, right.

Bobbie Brennan  20:56  

So it became very expensive for the military, and then coming back up here. That's where I realized I wanted

Tracy Hayes  21:03  

so did you already know the owners of hover girl when I did?

Bobbie Brennan  21:06  

I've known Laura over 20 years. We had our kids around the same time. We used to walk to try to bring on our pregnancy labor, have them come early. But no, I've known Laura very long time. All right,

Tracy Hayes  21:19  

so you call her up and say, I'm coming to Jacksonville. I did coming back. And that's when you start the conversation about real estate. So you're now stepping in the door your first day at hover girl, you're still, are you still in the part time mentality?

Bobbie Brennan  21:33  

Well, it's funny, when I first started, my husband was deployed to Bahrain for a year, so was going to do it part time, but then I just went full force. I got into it, completely immersed. And I loved it. I mean, I from the start, I loved it. And I started off, this is 2010 if I was in 10, and I started with just the property management, doing rentals. And I think within a couple of years I started, I would do maybe one or two sales a year from friends, and then it just kind of grew and

Tracy Hayes  22:08  

grew, starting a snowball for you. So as you have, you really ever, you never, probably can imagine, never had the door knock. No, I've never. I mean, do you do? Have you ever done any cold calling No.

Bobbie Brennan  22:21  

And I'm probably a little different on how I feel about that. You know, everybody goes after those FSBOs or terminated listings, and I just find that when it's a terminated listing, that owner is getting 80 calls a day. I can sell your house. I can and I just I don't want to be that person. I honestly mean it when I say my plan is so different. Mine is about relationships. Another example that I'll give you. We were flying up to New York to go to my husband's college reunion, and I'm a talker, and I was on a flight, and I'm talking to

Tracy Hayes  23:02  

the lady, how many glasses of wine did you have at this point?

Bobbie Brennan  23:05  

You'd be surprised, because I'm terrified of flying. Married two pilots, but I'm terrified of flying. So I was just talking. I was talking about Italian restaurants to the lady next to me, because she was afraid of flying, and I was trying to calm her down, right? And once we started talking, everybody around us started talking. Then they found out I was a real estate agent, so then they had lots of questions about the market. And here's where I live. What do you think about me buying now? I handed out 13 business cards before we ever landed. And that's that's why, I mean, my plan is not, I'm not great at social media. My social media is typically about kids, family, friends, or if I know somebody that's in need, I'll post about that, and I'll ask for help. You know, can you help me get this person set up? But it's not typically about the business. I will occasionally post it. It's about relationships, and I think relationships are what have made me successful

Tracy Hayes  24:07  

when so let's we talked earlier about one of the goals of the show, and was to inspire a new agent, or maybe an agent who's hit a lid, or maybe now needs to go full time. Maybe they were part time and just figured they were going to tinker with it. But now do need to grow your story mates to them go, Well, I'm not. I'm not, you know, a wife of a naval aviator. I'm not in that whole, that huge community. I can't do what Bobby's done. And I think you can take though some of the, some of the subtle things that you're explaining here about the relationship. I have been spending a lot of time, like I said. I got my YouTube channel up, you know, about a month ago, and now I've learned how to, you know, my media company does create some reels for me, but I'm going back into a lot of the old episodes and cutting out these reels. So I'm listening for some, you know. Some inspirational or educational, you know, sound bites, and I'm going through there, and how many of the agents, and even non agents, that I've had on talking about the relationships and how you you just need to interact with people. You can use social media to do it. If you're on there, there are a lot of people building social media relationships just saying, hi, hey, I saw your kid. Someone I had, I did a real the other day. Someone said something about, you know, mentioned, Hey, I saw your kid. Got straight A's or whatever, because somebody bragged about it online and so forth. Explain, give me your explanation of the relationship building that you're done. Obviously, you handed out all those business cards the first person, which I think is the rudest thing, to ask, how many deals did you get off of you don't even, probably even know how many deals you may have gotten. One direct deal, but how many indirect deals did you get from those 13 people who told all, told three or four people themselves. Hey, I met this great lady on the on the flight up to

Bobbie Brennan  26:01  

well, here's the thing, it may not have worked right away, you know, it was just a month ago, but they have my car and they have my face. Yep, they know our conversations, because we all were looking for Italian restaurants. We all wanted to talk about who they thought had the best Italian restaurant, right? So they know that it's a process. It's building, building that relationship. And I, I feel like I provided them with some trust that they can call me, because I always say and I'm I mean this when I say it, if you have any questions at all, whether you use me or not, if you have questions, call me. I'm happy to help you, right? I'm happy to answer a question. But to your point, yes, I'm in the military community, but I'm also from here. I'm from Clay County. I have a family full of teachers, principals, athletic directors, you name it. But I also I live in Mandarin, so I'm across the river, and I go to a huge church. And what my whole point about this is it's your community. You know, are you a baseball mom or a dad? Are you in CrossFit? Are you, you know, part of it is your daughter, your kids. Part of anything that you're involved with, that's your community, that's who you talk to, that's how you engage with people.

Tracy Hayes  27:26  

You bring up something interesting here, mentioning that you know the different things and including your church and so forth. How important is it for even loan officers? But you know, since real estate agents is the subject here, for real estate agents. One of the key, key things we talk about is showing up. And whether it's showing up to an event that hover girl's involved in, or, you know, a lender's putting on for you to meet other real estate agents, but like being involved in your church and so forth, or, like you said, the ball team actually showing face there. That is actually part of the thing, seeing you show up at the ball game every week, or the practices the other moms are seeing you. How important is showing up?

Bobbie Brennan  28:10  

Showing up is very important. I think when I say showing up is very important to your business, don't make that your reason for showing up. Show up because you care about that community that I'm talking about. Show up for different things. You have to build relationships. I do think it's very tough to be part time in real estate, you know, because you you really have to focus on building your relationships and make them genuine relationships. So yes, showing up is extremely important.

Tracy Hayes  28:44  

And I don't think you're, you know, you said, Be Your reason. But is real estate, is your lifestyle, right? Showing up to these things as part of the lifestyle, being a realtor and part of your marketing is like you said, those people on the plane, they they may not have shook your hand, but they heard you talk. You interacted with them. You had a common subject of the Italian restaurants going on, and that was a way of you bonding. And now they do feel warm that you know, three months from now, they could call you because they actually saw you. You'll saw like you said, saw your face, you you had some sort of interaction where, if you're at the ball field and you're showing up, and they get to know you, hey, you're Johnny's mom, and who knows, it could be a year later, but because you showed up, and maybe there was some small talk or something, but they now have bonded. They know who you are, they know where you live. They know you're a decent person to work with,

Bobbie Brennan  29:41  

and honestly, it's about, don't be afraid to talk. Don't be afraid to talk to people. I mean, my brother, my youngest brother, always teases us about our church goodbyes. I don't know if anybody else has ever heard that term church goodbyes. My youngest brother calls it a church goodbye. He's like, Oh, there she goes. Another church. Goodbye. Which means on my way out of church, I probably stop and talk to 30 different people, and I talk forever. I want to know, how's it going. I To your point. I saw so and so on your social media that this happened. That's so awesome, but it's when I say, don't make it your reason. What I mean, what I'm trying to stress is be genuine. Be genuine. And yes, you have to engage. You have to talk to people.

Tracy Hayes  30:27  

Is to explain someone the business of real estate. And this is not just real estate. You could take this to car sales. You could take any type of sales whatsoever. It could be a doctor trying to build a practice in a community that time that you're spending, yes, you have to genuinely be interested. If you're not interested, then it's probably not your strong point of from a marketing standpoint. But if you actually do care about people, there are some people, yeah, yeah, I would probably be like your brother going, I'm ready. Round the car, let's go, you know? And you're having these conversations because you truly enjoy them. And it's, it's a long term play. You can't be in it for, you know, you're buying the leads, and that sort of thing is a short term play. Hopefully you can turn that one, the lead you get, that actually becomes a transaction into a long term play. In other words, you create a relationship with them, and they become a referral source for you, you know, for a lifetime. You know, become their you know, obviously we'd all like to be someone's lifetime lender or lifetime real estate agent and who they refer everybody out to, because you never know who you're who you're meeting, but you have to, would you agree as a real estate you have to be thinking beyond just tomorrow. You have to be thinking, what am I doing in 2023 could that person give me a referral in 2024

Bobbie Brennan  31:51  

you do need to be thinking ahead. You need to, you need to be touching your customers that and what I mean by that is, don't ignore them. You know, don't get that commission. Check and walk away. I highly encourage I become Facebook friends with most of my customers, because I want to know what's going on in their life and and I think where I say I don't do much social media business wise, in a way I do and that I want people to know who I am. I want them to know my family. I want them to know my faith. Those things are important to me. Say, Yes. You know, staying in touch with those customers is how you're going to build your business.

Tracy Hayes  32:36  

All right, you just mentioned faith. So that's going to transition me to the next question here. And I wrote this out because this is right in your article, if you didn't cheat on my notes over here. Oh, I didn't. All right, this is right

Bobbie Brennan  32:46  

from your glasses on it.

Tracy Hayes  32:50  

All right, I have a strong faith, my faith in God tells me there is a purpose for everything. There is a reason everything happens. And God calls on us to be there, to love people, to be kind and to be thoughtful. How much does your faith play into your your daily thoughts and your in your marketing, or just your your overall attitude every day and getting up and getting

Bobbie Brennan  33:15  

out, I would say my faith plays into 100% of my life, when I write down to when I get upset, I will question myself that night and think, why did I do that? You know, I feel like we have had a lot of tragedy in my family, and I'll never forget when I lost my younger brother, somebody came up to me at the funeral and said, You all have gone through so much. How do you get through it? And how do you feel about it? And I talk about this to a lot of people. After those losses, I can look back and see where God was in my life and how God showed me that it's okay, and there was a reason this happened, and and because of that, I am content in my heart. I am happy, I am comfortable with most everybody I meet. And I truly believe that if we could all be just a little bit kinder and more thoughtful towards everybody, we all have people that are going to do things that hurt us, or people that have made mistakes that have caused us pain, and if we're not forgiving and moving on from that, it's gonna it just consumes you, and I'm old enough to know these things. If you let all that into your life, it consumes everything you do. It hurts your business. It hurts your family life. So if you can just every day decide I'm going to make it a better day, and for me, I make it a better day with God in my life and holding on to my faith and knowing that being kind to somebody. Being considerate and forgiving is something that God would want me to do. It makes my life a lot easier.

Tracy Hayes  35:09  

All that you just said, and I was given a book back in the spring by Marissa Scott called Bait of Satan, if you've seen that book, but everything, the how you just what you just said, is everything, at least the first couple chapters that I've read so far, because I just started reading it this weekend, is what the book is talking about, and it's and it's and it's touching on those things that you know, where we think someone did us wrong, and how we hold that, and it's just poison, but it's what Satan wants us to carry with us. And I think of different people when you were mentioning your brother. I lost my brother when I was only 10 years old. He was 16. I was kid. I mean, I was in shock. I was like, he went over his friend's house and he still hasn't come back. That's, that's basically what, you know, the last time I saw him, last time I talked to him on the phone. So with that said, is, your people can get bitter, because that love you lost a loved one, right, someone close to you. Why did you take Why did you take him away from me? Why'd you take her away from me? And really this in the cycle, if you are involved in your faith, he's telling you, and then you can clarify, because I think you're deeper into the book than I am. But I tell him there's a reason why he was taken early, whether God felt he was an angel already and made him an angel right then and there. That's, I mean, that's how I appease my thing, but for me to carry with him, be bitter with the people who may have been involved in driving the car and, you know, all that type of stuff. Where is that going to get me?

Bobbie Brennan  36:45  

It's not going to get to anywhere in here. When I lost my brother, he what he had served as a corpsman with a group of Marines. And after I lost him, that group of Marines, well, first of all, when I lost him, we had umpteen million baseball players and softball players reaching out to all of us to tell us how he had affected their life, how they changed. He was a coach. He was coach. He was a single guy, but he coached kids for years and in Clay County, everybody knew and the church was full of nothing but kids from younger ages on up, adults and and then the Marines were reaching out to us, and I gained a family of Marines when I lost him, a group of amazing Marines that loved him dearly and shared with guys. He served with guys, and they shared with us, things he had done for them. All of us learned a great lesson after his loss. We knew it about him, but we learned for sure after we lost him, and that is, he didn't have a whole lot. You know, he owned a very small house, lived off very little, but what he had was the gift of time for everybody. He reached out to all those Marines all the time. He reached out to those athletes that he had coached through the years. He reached out to co workers. He was there for everybody. He never missed a beat because he gave the gift of time he saw what was important in real life. He wasn't looking for that financial gain at the end. He was looking for what he felt like God wanted him to do, and because he naturally was that person he loved everybody.

Tracy Hayes  38:41  

Hey, folks, this episode was produced by streamline media, the number one media company for helping brands generate content that converts I knew I wanted to start a podcast to reach more people and bring value to the world, but I did not have the time or the knowledge. Streamline media became my secret weapon to building my show. They handle all my back end work, production and strategies to keep my show going strong. If you're in the real estate business and looking to make content that generates more leads and brings in more revenue, check out the streamlined media link in the show notes and discover how partnering up can supercharge your path to real estate excellence. Well, I and I think you know what. And obviously what you're alluding to, he had his vision was, how can I make their lives better? That's what he was whether, whether it was on the softball field and making him a better softball player, baseball player, playing a better game, just being better, being better people all around was his his touch. And so, yeah, I mean to go back. Circle back. On, on, on the faith part. I see you're too many people in the book, they use this analogy. I was explaining this to some to my trainer this morning as we were working out. Was basically talking about how you want pure gold, you want God's pure gold, right? And because gold itself is impure, it's got a lot of. Impurities in it. So when you actually have real gold, it's malleable, it's soft, you know, it takes hits basically, you know, that's why I visualize from a military you're taking hits, but you're keep moving forward, right as Rocky talks about. And you have to take gold and you have to heat it up to burn off the impurities. And a lot of lot of us are not boiling off those impurities. We're holding on to those impurities. And the impurities are those the people that we feel have wronged us right. We've been misjudged. We right, they were wrong. And you hold on to that, our politics is the poison right?

Bobbie Brennan  40:38  

Now, I completely agree with that, and I think it's funny, I teach a not teach. I don't want to say teach. I lead a women's group on Thursday nights. And one of the things we talk about is, yes, this world's crazy right now. Everybody seems to be angry with everybody, but if we buy into that, how can we change anything? But if we are out there every single day sharing grace and sharing love and sharing kindness, can't we change somebody in some form or fashion? I believe we can. I think if every single day you're walking out there, you're in the grocery store. This is a funnier story. My daughter makes fun of me all the time about the way I drive when, when somebody upsets me. You know, Dad has one way of the way he yells or says something when somebody cuts him off, but when they cut me off, the first thing I always say, buddy, you should not have done that, and it's become a joke in the family, but it's controlling your temper and anger, because if everybody held on to anger, hatred, or whatever you think, has wronged you, what has that accomplished for you? How is that major job better? How has that made your life better? Your family life better? Another way would be if we were talking about coaching, one of the things I've always told all the kids, I coached my son in baseball when he was young, and then my daughter played volleyball, and I didn't coach her because I didn't know the game, but the whole team would come to my house all the time before games and practice. And one things I always said to kids, when you're out there on the court or the field, do you think when you scream and yell at your teammate, does that make them play better? Do they do a whole lot better, because she just screamed and yelled them. No, they don't. But if you turned around, slapped them on the back and said, It's okay, it's okay, we got this. We're going to get them on the next one, they're going to do their best to not let you down, because you're not yelling and screaming at them, and that's what I'm talking about. Don't hold on. We've got to stop the cycle that we're creating in our country, in our world.

Tracy Hayes  43:09  

Stop. Yeah, no, I obviously totally agree with that mindset. That's why I started reading this book. And I'm like, Why didn't I start reading the six months ago? And she gave it to me and but it's funny, I just started it this weekend.

Bobbie Brennan  43:21  

Well, Marissa, she's a wise woman. She sings at my church.

Tracy Hayes  43:25  

Okay, so, yeah, I don't know wherever she got the book, but she brought it to me for the podcast. And, you know, because I, I always, I had, at that point, I was always had Ryan sir Hance book or whatever. But now I've got these two other books here, Billy Wagner, who's local, and obviously my boss, John Adams's book, here on renovation loans, putting those out. But I always had the book, and I was, I was giving out the sirhant books to everyone that was coming. So she knew that, and brought me that book, and it sat on my desk for that long. And finally, when I went on that we went out on a cruise for Thanksgiving, and I took Billy's book because I hadn't read it yet. I took one other book. It was a investment book that John Brooks from momentum Realty had given me, and then that was the third one. So I read the other two already. So I'm like, Well, I gotta start, you know, getting into this one. And it's just ironic. And then you obviously coming on the show and saying what you said is exactly what I'm reading in this book. You know,

Bobbie Brennan  44:21  

hearing is, I need to write a book. Oh,

Tracy Hayes  44:23  

yeah, so you pretty well. I I think, you know, I think a lot of people need to write a book. There's, there's, there's stories out there. And it's one of the inspirations of the podcast, is everyone has a story and in it's in its in its unique and it's in its own way. It might be a short read, might be an easy read, might be a little more more difficult depending on the things that detailed and the things that you've done, but I think everyone has a story. So whether, yeah, it's, it's going on a few podcasts to get your word out, or or writing a book, for sure. I mean, you're, I think, I think your experience in what you're just learning from you here in this, you know, 40 minutes we've been talking so far. You know, your start, you kind of just like fumbled into real estate and realized, oh yeah, this is not too bad. I like helping people, which is a common theme. Everyone has come. I won't say everyone has, but they've mentioned, a lot of people mentioned coming on the show is you got to just have that. People. I want to help people attitude, and I think obviously you've always had that from the start, and that's why you're successful today,

Bobbie Brennan  45:22  

we have a I was raised by parents that instilled that in all of us. You know, my brothers are are out there just doing so much in the community and involved with everybody and helping. And my oldest brother was a high school baseball coach for years and loved in Clay County. In fact, I keep telling him he needs to run for office because he's so popular. But our parents instilled that, aren't, you know, my mom took in kids all the time before she passed away, and then my dad had such a humble upbringing with nothing he, you know, he lived in a very, very small shack with he lost his father early on. The only book they had was a Bible, and quit school in seventh grade, but joined the military. Went on to retire as commander and and then worked for several defense contractors, writing their contracts. So when people think because they came from such poor life, they can never succeed. I watched my father come from nothing, yeah, and go on to do great things. Still that he

Tracy Hayes  46:35  

was one of those. He obviously, without an education, enlisted in the name he did eventually become an officer. And there, there are not many left that have done that through time. Now, the services will you reach a point and they feel you're good enough, they'll they'll put you through college right to then make it, because they wanted to make you an officer. Kennedy, where I had a great uncle, same way from World War Two through Korea to become a retired well, when they retired him, I guess they promoted him as he retired to a major, but he was just simply a private, you know, and so forth. And went through, and I still, I have a card, I know in one of those boxes that I saved where he wrote me a note, and obviously his handwriting. But I don't think he I don't know. I don't think he was much beyond a middle school education either.

Bobbie Brennan  47:29  

I think the biggest thing my dad taught us is it doesn't matter what you came from. You can be anything you want if you want it bad enough. And don't let anybody tell you can't fulfill your dreams. You can do it. You know, we've got it's funny, the things that affect me that really sink in my heart is hearing about that young kid killed off of Moncrief on the north side, the 13 year old little football player. And that stays in my heart and mind, because I keep thinking, What can we as a community do to help these kids over there? There's so many shootings over there. What can we do to start helping these kids? And it's things like that that I would like to see us all getting involved in. You know, let's start meeting with people to figure things out.

Tracy Hayes  48:23  

Yeah, yep, there's more than just you know what's going on at the moment. To actually walk away for that moment and reflect on what before you

Bobbie Brennan  48:32  

act, we need to give kids hope. All right,

Tracy Hayes  48:35  

back to real estate. You're you're with hover. Girl, talk to you. You've been there 12 years now, you start off with property management, and then you started just slowly doing some sales. I imagine some of the newer agents with your experience you're working

Bobbie Brennan  48:50  

with them, I am within our company, within Yeah, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  48:55  

So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing with the new agents that you're working with? And then hopefully your experience guides them in a better direction.

Bobbie Brennan  49:03  

I think first, they're younger, so I think that's probably coming into the business, and they're most of them are military too. They're not from the area, so they have to get to know the area. They know I'm available 24/7 to answer the phone or text or email, and I'm going to pick up the phone and talk to them, but they need to learn how to network with their communities. You know, within the military, you have different communities knowing how to network that and just it's the day to day things. You know, with rentals, there's a lot of things that come up with rentals, and it's how to work through some of the stresses of rentals without letting it consume your life.

Tracy Hayes  49:51  

So at hover girl, do you guys promote being kind of dual purpose? I know some people like, oh, rentals, I don't even want to deal with it. Where. I know my wife does very well because we are involved in a in a condo complex where we own some units that do short term rentals, and people call all the time for rentals, and if our units are filled up, she's the other homeowners, the other landlords have gotten know her, and, you know, they give her the commission for setting, you know, sending that renter to them, and then those renters build a relationship that, of course, a lot of them are actually renting because they're looking to where to buy, right, you know? And that sort of thing is that something kind of an attitude, or culture thing that at hover girl, that everyone is, you know, is has an attitude, positive attitude towards doing rentals. Don't just throw them to the side.

Bobbie Brennan  50:39  

Oh no. I think everybody in our company has a positive attitude on doing a rental, because first and foremost, it's about serving the military community. So if they need a rental, we're going to help them. If they need us to manage their rental, we're going to help them. But then if they need the sales side of it, we make it known that we do all three. You know that we can help you find one. We can manage one for you. But if you need us to find a house or sell your house, we can do all of those. And you're right. A lot of agents out there say, No, I am not going to do rentals, which is kind of crazy to me, because those tenants can become buyers, or down the road that owner of that rental may want to sell their house. Any of that

Tracy Hayes  51:25  

well, especially in the current market. Now it's just you might as well buy because of the rental prices going up, the demand for rentals are so high. So if you have been building this database for 12 years, like you have, these people are now calling, I'm seeing a lot of applications right now for those, for people who are renting and being first time home buyers, because they're being basically pushed out, the rents going up. So like, hey, we might as well look to buy now they're actually being

Bobbie Brennan  51:49  

well, rental prices have gone up significantly. And actually, that brings me to another thing that I've been trying to address, and trying to get our military to talk about this more too. You know, I can campaign all. I want to try and get this change, but we need our military service members to do this, and that is bah. Which bah is your housing allowance. It needs to be increased. We are so low compared to what the rental prices are now. It's not affordable for our military anymore.

Tracy Hayes  52:24  

Do we still start with our local congressman? I've

Bobbie Brennan  52:27  

gone to everybody so there are like at Rutherford, I went to earn Bean, and they're all very eager to help. The CEOs of the bases are trying to help and do this right. But we, we all need to be more vocal about it, because it's making Jacksonville a tough area to live in for the military, if they can only rent. So in a lot of cases, we do encourage buying, because you're not going to pay as much in a mortgage payment as you are on the rental side,

Tracy Hayes  52:58  

since we're on that subject, on heroes, since that program went out, when, basically, like, I guess in the spring, roughly, spring, summer. Yes, have you seen? Has that helped?

Bobbie Brennan  53:09  

No. I mean, I really haven't seen. And here's, I think real estate agents need to quit communicating the wrong message, which is, now is not a good time to buy. Now is a great time to buy. You know, we I was in a class the other day, and there are a bunch of new agents saying, how do we get a buyer to buy now? And and what I said was, if they were buying six months ago, quite likely they were going to be paying 50,000 over what the asking price was, and that's if you get that offer. So then you're going to have to, if you did not plan on spending that much, and you're getting a loan, you're going to have to cover that gap with cash. That's cash that you could have invested somewhere if you're covering a gap, if they have the cash correct. And then on top of that, most sellers were not doing repairs. Roofs weren't being replaced, so the buyer was having to do all of that. When you look at the difference in what your mortgage payment would be now with the rates and what your mortgage payment could have been back then, they could be very close to the same, but you're not competing with umpteen million buyers and and you're getting your repairs done or possibly getting the seller to pay your closing cost, right. And so I think it's a great time to buy

Tracy Hayes  54:34  

you bring up an interesting point there something I've been dwelling upon, because obviously I'm out on social media a lot with the podcast and promoting you guys as real estate agents, the great ones that are out there, and all the things are saying. And I said, you know, I'm seeing a huge gap. There's a few mortgage people putting out some information that you know as best as way they can present it. But what I'm not seeing is. And I've been doing this 17 years, I'm not seeing a lot of agents calling us directly and saying, Hey, how would I position this? I need your math. Because if they're going to unless they're paying cash, then you don't need to talk to me. But if they're financing, how is a way I need to structure this. We're talking about the two, one buy down, and now we're coming out with it. Here at loan depot, some of the other lenders are coming out a three to one buy down. I haven't seen the pricing on it. My guess is the reason why there isn't a three to one buy down is the lenders don't like the fact that, yeah, even in three years that the payment is going to increase that much, even though they're getting that interest difference up front. They don't see that as a great loan to have. I'm really, I'm interested to see how the pricing, because ours hasn't actually launched just yet, but hopefully here by the end of the month, well, is there? However, they figure it out. They got to get investors to invest in it, right type thing, but to actually call and strategize with the loan officer on how am I going to list this house. Now, there's some in my my wife did one in my neighborhood. My neighbor, you know, St John's, Golf Country. It's high demand. She priced it right. Had multiple offers sold at $20,000 over the the original asking price. And I think she had four different offers on it with escalation clauses, high demand area, but she priced it right. There's other areas there. They're not pricing it right, and they're they're out there, and they're going, well, we can we get let's encourage them with the two. One buy down. You should have already had that conversation with your seller. You should have already been educated with your lender, and all been in the circle before you actually put the house on the market. Don't, don't wait for the buyer to come in. But you have to have that. You have to have that gun loaded basically and ready to launch, that

Bobbie Brennan  56:42  

you're absolutely right. You have to know you do need to talk to the seller ahead of time, because the seller side of the market is different, so you do need to be talking to them about the different things that could come up. But you also really should be communicating to your buyers that it is a good time to buy. I think if everybody's pushing them now till the end of next year or after March, I keep hearing that over and over, after March, after March, well, guess what? If everybody's waiting until after March, then we're going to have a whole flock of people again trying to get the same house. Plus it's a much more active market then anyway, so you're going to have an influx of people. So I say, if you see a house now that you like, now's the time to buy it.

Tracy Hayes  57:28  

Yeah, I agree. I'm going to put myself on the camera here, because I'm going to probably reel this one. The rates right now are extremely familiar to the rates in October of 2008 and 2008 2008 the 30 year fix was six and a quarter. We're very close to that right now. If you could get 5.875 at that time you You snatched it up quickly. So they're right where they were before the rates dropped in the government started getting involved with their quantitative easing, and which pushed the rates down below they were. So you're right where the market was really between 2005 in September, 2005 when I started in the business, to October of 2008 so basically, three years, this is the range that we're in. You know, 5.875 was like, Oh my God. And then I did loans as high as, you know, SEVEN, SEVEN and an eighth on a 30 year fix. All during those three year period. We're back in that situation again. And I How many times have we said, you know, I saw that property four years ago. I wish I paid 150,000 for it now. It's worth 300 you got to get in the game. Get in the game if you could afford the home. Obviously, we don't want someone to buy a home that can't afford. We're not promoting that. But if you can afford the home, it's time to buy and again, yes, as rates drop, you can refinance. There's no doubt about it. Put yourself in a better save some money, whatever it is. But the value of that home is not going down, and with the inflationary pushes. Right now the value of homes are going to be pushed up with with the inflation. Yeah. All right, so that was my little piss box there. Let's dig in as well. I want to round down here, as we're pushing a little over an hour, how important Have you seen in your 12 year career is education from you know, whether it's a sales education that you mentioned you were learning early in your retail career before getting into real estate, but just going and staying abreast, knowing the contract, going to the to the classes. And obviously you guys are big on VA loans. And if there's one loan, I love the VA loans, the best loan. But if there's one one loan that has a lot of little like fine print and sidebars and little things that little tricks that you could know to get someone approved. It's the VA loan.

Bobbie Brennan  59:47  

It is. Education is very important. Just recently, I sent out a thing to all our agents saying, you may know VA loans, but every time you see a class taught on it that you can make it to. To go, because we never know what's going to change on something that's the same with the contracts. We need to know everything that happens when a contracts change. And I think the only way you can do that is by going and attending the class. I mean, I went to last week, I went to a class on called the Home Loan toolkit. It was, it was great. The things I learned, I already knew a lot of it, but there were little tips that I wasn't thinking about. And honestly, I'd like to see more lenders teaching classes. You know, I think if we can get a lot of our new real estate agents, you know, what, even agents that have been in the business. If we can get into more classes with lenders during the slow times that we all come across, get in there with the lenders. No, learn everything like you just talked about the two, one, the 321, arm loans. Now you know people when they hear adjustable rates, yeah, they go back to what it was back in 2006 Yes, and they think it. They don't realize those were predatory loans and that the adjustable rates are very different that we're talking about today.

Tracy Hayes  1:01:11  

Yep, yeah, very much more protective. I will, I will say something, just to put it out there on the public record. The one thing that really bothers me. And I've had lenders on the show. I've often thought to have more on on the podcast to hear their stories, because there are some people been there, but there's, there's this thing in our industry. And I did a training on October 21 back over at Landmark. It was marking my 100th episode. I invited a couple agents, actually, well, Aaron Salem is the marketing director at roundtable Realty to come and be part of it, because I knew they would draw a crowd in as well. I went as real estate excellence. If I went in there as loan depot, your lines are drawn in the sand. I do not understand that. Why you know you may have a lender. I understand if you have a lender, you're working with all the time, you have a relationship. It doesn't mean you can't go to another lender's class and pick a nugget out. Now, if you think the nuggets really worth it, I would highly suggest maybe throwing him a referral, because I'm going to tell you what, your lender does not do everything, and when you find that loan he can't do maybe they can't do down payment assistance or something, or they don't do the Hometown Heroes or whatever, whatever it might be some or VA renovation, you know, that's, you know, something that just specifically talking about you you there are other lenders that do. So you need to have that lender in your pocket. I don't expect to get all your business, you know, but you but don't draw the line the sand, because you may pick up that one nugget of education, and that's more important than all that I just talked

Bobbie Brennan  1:02:41  

about, I will tell you one thing this teach the teacher of the class I was just talking about brought up is something I do, and I I tell a lot of the new agents the same thing when you're first communicating with the buyer. I don't give just one lender. I think we're making a mistake if we only give one lender, and here's why it's the same with everything in our business, don't just recommend one, because if something goes wrong with that one person that you referred, then it comes back on me. I want my buyers to make a choice. So they taught in the class refer three lenders. And I, I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:28  

Well, I would, I would say my my account from my side of that, although I would love, you know, I'd love a real estate agent to just recommend me. That would be great. But you need to build relationships with those. I know some top agents that actually have three lenders, and knows the personalities of the three lenders, and they match up the personality of their buyer with and try to direct them, you know, encourage that particular person to be their go to. But they have these tools that they're consistently working with and they know are good, versus just giving three names of three lender, build those relationships. Go have coffee, sit down. Ideology, what are they good at? What are they, you know, not good at? I always preach to especially my the new agents that I meet. I worked in a call center for 12 years. If you're you could be standing in a house right now. I'll give an example. The other day he called. He called me, said, Hey, I gave my your name to some buyers. They called on my one of my listings, and I ran over and met him, and we showed the house, and I gave him your name, I said, next time, put them on the phone right call me why they're standing in front of you and say, Hey, I got Mr. Mrs. Smith here, and here they're looking at and put me out, because you're going to find out right away when they start talking about finances, of how, how actually interested they are, versus you going home, going, are they going home, going, are they gonna make an offer? They gonna make an offer. They gonna call me back, just because I'm that type of person. I an experience. Not everyone's like me. They're not. You know, can go cold on the phone with someone and actually handle the conversation and and obviously take that step towards closing, but just a little brag about myself.

Bobbie Brennan  1:04:58  

But no, you. You're right there. It does need to be lenders that you trust. You do have to have relationships. So I think you're absolutely right.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:07  

What is one thing? And it might be, it could be something you started recently, or something you've been doing for 12 years. But what do you do consistently in your business? Do you think that moves the needle?

Bobbie Brennan  1:05:18  

I would say talking, just having real conversations with my potential customers, or customers I've had in the past talking. I think it's kind of what I said to you before. The social media is not going to sell me. Only I can do that, it's picking up the phone when your phone rings and talking to that customer. It's picking up the phone and calling them. It's meeting them in person. I think that's been it's the only way that I think I've sold myself to people is I've got to sell myself, not necessarily the product.

Tracy Hayes  1:06:00  

So you're in it, you're in a you could be in a line at the grocery store. You could be in an elevator, there's other people, or you're standing in line to go into a restaurant or something, waiting for your table or something. What is one way your your talker? So this kind of comes naturally. You pick up. But do you have a couple of icebreakers that kind of can get a conversation going for that person who might be a little shy, what? Because after you do it, you find it's easy, but what is a step that someone who to try to be more like you and have just open conversations with, really anyone, and in the handout your business card, what's a way to kind of break the ice?

Bobbie Brennan  1:06:39  

Well, for me and I if I were going to explain, if I'm standing in a place, you can call me either nosey or curious. I like the word curious better. It sounds nice. But when there's people around me, I just naturally listen in on their conversations, or I pay attention to them, and I think about this too, going years, years. Back when I first worked at Navy, Federal Credit Union, we were trained to know when someone walked in the door, what their height was, what colors, yes. So because of that, I pay attention to people. I look if they have kids, you know, I'm going to comment about their children, or I'm going to cut up and tease with their kids. If I overhear something in their conversation that I think they wouldn't mind me making a comment, then I'll just comment, always in a positive way, just little things. You know, I like your outfit. That's great. Where'd you get that? Or, as I said, kids are a big icebreaker, and usually it's when a kid's acting up that I'll say something, but not in a negative way, right? Start playing with the child and get the child laughing. But also, I mean, here's the thing, too. Like senior citizens, you know what? They like for you to talk to them. Talk to them. They may not be your customer, because kids might be. They have kids. Yeah, it's just talking and not standing there with the mind frame of I came in to do one thing and one thing only, or, you know, standing at a ball game, I stand way down here. I don't want to talk to the other parents. That's not going to get you anywhere in this business. And honestly, if you're that person, you may not be in the right business. Anyway, you got to, like,

Tracy Hayes  1:08:36  

people just make a subtle comment. Like, there's often times where I've actually might be talking to my wife or something, but I actually raised my voice a little bit so others can hear so hopefully someone like you jumps in. It is

Bobbie Brennan  1:08:48  

true. Italian restaurants. How

Tracy Hayes  1:08:51  

important again in your career Have you found like you said, you just you do some things a little differently the modern age, you know, digging deep into social media. You say you subtly do it, but when it comes to surrounding yourself by successful people, you are a top producer. Now you're recognized by Jack's real producer magazine and so forth. How important is it for you to mix and mingle with other top producers to because I believe you're a sponge. You want to steal positively, you know, steal tips and tricks from some other people that are might be even doing

Bobbie Brennan  1:09:27  

better than you. Oh, I definitely think so. I mean, obviously, joy and Laura have done very well in the business. There are a lot of people in this area. I grew up with Cindy Gavin. So once a while, call Cindy Gavin and ask her, what do you think about this? I've called Mario Gonzalez and run things by him. Kim Knapp, yeah, I love she'll be on the show on the 12th. She's amazing. I love talking to Kim. There's and then I have a friend that's down in Orlando. She's been in the business less time than I have. And has done amazingly well without buying leads ever. And she doesn't pay a marketing team. She does it all herself. Has a huge team, very successful, she

Tracy Hayes  1:10:13  

would have a huge conversation about relationship building and staying top of mind. Christmas cards out.

Bobbie Brennan  1:10:20  

Yeah, yes. And, you know, she's a big believer in open houses, you know, but the way she does their open houses is very different than what we normally do up here. But that's saying, I don't think you should just limit yourself to our town. See how somebody is succeeding in another town, you know, pick up tips from them. Well, how

Tracy Hayes  1:10:42  

important, you know, talk about surrounding education and surrounding yourself by people, like, we're gonna have a rebar then here on the 27th but to go to an event like over in Orlando, they consist. There's always, you know, because it's Orlando, there's events. I wanted to go over and meet some of these people from other areas.

Bobbie Brennan  1:11:00  

I do think it's important. I mean, one, you're networking from all over the place, which is important. But two, like I said, they may be doing something that we don't do up here, that you will hear and think I should do that up here. So I think it is important

Tracy Hayes  1:11:16  

100% what do you love most about real estate? It's the

Bobbie Brennan  1:11:21  

same canned answer everybody gives the people. I mean, I have made lifelong friends with a lot of the customers I've met. I've seen kids go from babies to middle school now, you know it's, it's definitely the people. I had an older jump. It was an older couple, and at first, when I first met them, they rented a house, then that house had some issues, so we got them into another house, and they realized they needed a pool because they were older, both of them had physical issues. And so then we fast forward to covid, and the husband passed away, and but this man was a retired, old, gruffy marine that would call me. I've got one of those at home too. Well, he would call me at 11 o'clock at night just to talk. And it became funny, my husband was saying, set your boyfriend Stan. And I would say, yes. So when he passed away, and I went over to help his wife and we were having a story, there was a time when somebody was dropping tulips off at my house. I had no idea who it was. Well, his wife said it was from Stan. He knew they were your favorite flowers, so he had been dropping them off for you. And I was so touched that he was doing that without ever saying a word to me, and his son said, yeah, he thought you were one of his best friends. And I said he was one of my best friends. He was an amazing man, that that's what I'm saying. When you take the time to really know your customers, you get a wealth of knowledge and a beautiful relationship in

Tracy Hayes  1:13:03  

12 years. Is there anything, anything I write your biggest mistake, but just something you did related to the industry to educate new real estate agents, or, you know, agents that might be out there listening something you did that you would say, that's not a good

Bobbie Brennan  1:13:20  

idea as far as marketing, marketing,

Tracy Hayes  1:13:24  

yeah, maybe how you showed a house, you know, listed a house, maybe you did it wrong. You did it, did something, tried something new, and just didn't work or or like you, yeah,

Bobbie Brennan  1:13:35  

I would say buying leads was a big mistake. I mean, I lasted maybe two months and I got rid of it. I said, this is it wasn't your cup of tea. Wasn't worth it. It they weren't qualified leads, and it just wasn't a good fit. Biggest thing I would tell all agents is, even if you have a transaction coordinator, pay attention to your contract. Look at every detail. Don't rush through it. If you got a buyer that's getting new construction, read that contract thoroughly. Don't, don't just rush through things and think that everything's going to be perfect. Pay attention to it

Tracy Hayes  1:14:15  

and to touch on the contract. And this is a recommendation I get, I've heard several times, and want your touch on how important is it to go to that training every time someone's doing a contract by a different instructor, because you're going to learn something a little different.

Bobbie Brennan  1:14:32  

You know what? I think that's a good point. I mean, I I get well, I think I just accidentally have gone to different ones just because of timing, but I think that's a good idea. You should go to different people teaching, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:14:45  

Because I think you're just like teaching. I mean, if someone's teaching history, there might be a part of history where they have, they're really strong, oh yeah, you know. And so they're really gonna like because they just really drilled down on that. And they want to, they just want to tell you everything they knew. And. Think it's the same thing in the contract. There's different things on that contract, whether it's by experience or failures that they're going to drill down on you, on where another person is going to drill down on another section and just and of course, keep yourself refreshed

Bobbie Brennan  1:15:14  

like you know what the analogy would be. For me, it's a lot like your trivia team. Not everybody is good at one thing. I obviously am not there for the history or the sports, but I do have a little niche that I can answer on right? So you are going to get something different from everybody. All right,

Tracy Hayes  1:15:34  

what is your favorite thing to do in Northeast Florida and our Florida lifestyle question?

Bobbie Brennan  1:15:38  

Oh, my favorite thing to do is be out on the boat, on the water, St John's River. Oh, yeah, my husband and I both grew up water people. We grew up water skiing. So I I like the river, the lakes, the ocean, anything to do with water.

Tracy Hayes  1:15:53  

And I think that it's one of the gems in Northeast Florida that a lot of people, of course, are finding out, is we do have the St John's River. We do have the intercoastal and get out in the ocean in St Augustine, or go out through Mayport and go out to the ocean, but you have the river, you have the intercoastal waterway and the ocean. So if you are a boater, there's just so many things to

Bobbie Brennan  1:16:11  

do, and there's so many great restaurants on the water. It's just it's a casual, fun lifestyle,

Tracy Hayes  1:16:17  

and we always love, obviously, going out and seeing the different wildlife, whether it's a manatee or the porpoises or whatever, jumping in. Yeah, well,

Bobbie Brennan  1:16:26  

and you know, a lot of people don't realize, both on the intercoastal and the river, there's so many sandbars that you can park your boat on and you can get out with a group of boats. That's what we do. We meet a group of boaters, and we park our boats and sit out there,

Tracy Hayes  1:16:41  

spend the afternoon. Where's your favorite? Where's your favorites? But you guys, well, if I

Bobbie Brennan  1:16:44  

tell her the pineapple, it's no, we go right off of Alpine, Alpine.

Tracy Hayes  1:16:52  

You have to show me that after the show. Yeah, I'm in the freedom Boat Club, so I we bounce around to the three different marinas. And so if we go to st out of Julian creek right here, we're going tubing, that sort of thing. So generally, then the kids want to actually get in and swim. So we want to go somewhere where we want to, yeah, do that last question. Is it more important who you know or what you know? And why?

Bobbie Brennan  1:17:18  

Wow, that's a really good question. I don't want I don't think it's who you know. I don't think that. I think it's what you know. Why? The more you know, the more educated you are, the better agent you are for your customers. Just because you know important people. That's not going to that's not going to get a customer to want to go with you. But if you can prove to your customer that you have a wealth of knowledge, they're going to use you. They don't care who you know.

Tracy Hayes  1:17:57  

Well, I think you actually just tipped on something that's it's actually too because most of this conversation has been better about relationships and who in you know, and knowing that you do real estate, you you said, Well, you didn't really say, but you didn't really describe, like, Yeah, I'd love to meet somebody and tell them, you know how the homestead exemption works, and all this other you didn't spill all that out. However, I think you are tipping on the point of the fact that you can control your education, right? You can not, can't necessarily control the person who may talk to you in the line at the grocery store. They may not want to talk to you, whoever they just I don't want to talk you know, there's times where I like, No man, I just don't want to talk to you. But you can control your education and the level and how fast and so forth that you can gather, and especially now where it is. It's not like it was last year where you real running from one phone call, from the next, getting the next thing, trying to get contracts in and that sort of thing, and trying to negotiate an offer, you know, or get your offer accepted. There was a lot of that action going on. Now you're stepping back a little bit where you need to be. I mean, this is a question I typically ask, but I didn't ask it today. Is how important is it for an agent at any level to be scheduling some sort of education, whether it's weekly or monthly, but it has getting it on your schedule, whether it's a class put on by a lender or the title company or going down to nefar?

Bobbie Brennan  1:19:20  

I will tell you that, you know, I had not been the greatest at doing that, but from November to now, I think I 1011 classes that I've taken, and I've got one on Wednesday, one on Friday, and in each class, I've gained a little bit more knowledge about something. So I do think every agent should be taking every opportunity they have to take a class,

Tracy Hayes  1:19:48  

and then in those classes, I imagine you're conversing with some of the other agents that maybe you don't even

Bobbie Brennan  1:19:54  

know you are you're for. You're networking with other agents that. You can rely on if you need to, or you can help. But the other thing is, it's such a wide, vast array of classes that we're taking. I'm taking right now, everything from how to grow your Google business, or the loan toolkit or master of CMAs, you know, things like that. It there's so many different classes, and then go to flex, MLS, take their classes, right? Try to stay up on everything.

Tracy Hayes  1:20:30  

Ultimately, it's, it's going to give, especially a new agent who doesn't have a lot of at bats, hasn't done a lot of contracts, would you agree? It's part of your confidence builder.

Bobbie Brennan  1:20:39  

It is, it is, you feel a lot better when you're meeting with somebody that you know what you're saying and doing. You don't want, you don't want to go into a meeting with a customer, and I promise you, they're going to ask you questions, especially if you're new that you don't know. You don't want to be that person that says, let me make a phone call or let me check with my office, and I'll get back to you. If you have that knowledge. You can do it in advance, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:21:09  

Well, I mean, would you agree? And you just think that to not drag out our podcast here, but yeah, if you're, if you're, you got a seller or buyer that wants to look in a neighborhood that you're not familiar with, and maybe good to maybe call an agent who is popular in that neighborhood, or the listing agent, and say, Hey, what do I need? Is there anything I need to know with some highlights, some benefits of being in that neighborhood that I can share with my buyer? Or they may just ask a question, what's a, you know, a common question that you're getting over there? So you know, before you even walk in the door.

Bobbie Brennan  1:21:41  

Well, you know, a real quick example is we had an overseas client that needed a property manager for an area that we did not cover. We didn't have any vendors covering it or anything. But because of networking, I found somebody that could do it for this customer. That customer was so pleased with us, that we went above and beyond. And that's that's what networking in the business can do for you. 100% 100%

Tracy Hayes  1:22:07  

Bobby, I appreciate you coming on today. Is there anything you want to say to anyone? Do we cover I think you covered everything. I covered everything. And then some.

Bobbie Brennan  1:22:16  

Tell everybody, go out there, spread some kindness and love.

Tracy Hayes  1:22:19  

10 four on that. Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks, Tracy.

Commercial  1:22:25  

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

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