Hannah and Carlos Lopez: The Lopez Group 904

Hanna Lopez  0:30  
The biggest fundamental is mindset, and if you out the bat, don't even value yourself. I mean, you have to learn to value yourself, and you are worth whatever commission you're trying to get. Don't just be quick to discount because then that's showing to the seller that you're not even willing to negotiate for them. If you can't even negotiate for yourself, how are you going to negotiate for somebody

Podcast Intro  0:51  
else? 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  1:25  
today, I have an amazing husband and wife team. They're one of the most successful teams in the St Augustine, St Johns County, Florida area. She is hyper local, having been raised locally here in St Johns County. He Hayes from Cuba. They are both bilingual and enjoy assisting the Hispanic community. Let's welcome the Lopez group, 904, Hannah and Carlos Lopez to the show. Thank you so much.

Tracy Hayes  1:48  
Pronounced Cuba, right? That's really how it's pronounced. Cuba is not Cuba. It's actually pronounced Cuba, yeah, cool.

Tracy Hayes  1:57  
My little Spanish flair there. All right, but appreciate you guys coming down today much. Yeah, we're super excited, really getting looking forward to get to know you guys a little better. I know you guys been doing very well. I see all your social media, and we're gonna talk about social media here on the show a little bit and how it affects you, because I think you looking besides LinkedIn we talked about, you don't have a LinkedIn, but I think you guys should have a LinkedIn page. But I really enjoy your your YouTube page, which I think a lot of agents are not doing enough of, and we talked about just, you know, any video you should be doing stupidity on YouTube, in my theory, because it's a library, absolutely, that's what you know. And whether you'll see videos that are three years old, that people still find if they search a certain neighborhood or whatever, yeah, definitely. So get better at that, ladies before gentlemen. So we'll kick off. Hannah, tell us what it was like growing up here in St John's County. Oh, man. So I was born and raised here, my parents were born and raised here, I've seen all the change from, you know, two lane to us, one with no lights and tons of trees. Your roads, yep, growing and downtown is crazy, and

Hanna Lopez  3:02  
it's, yeah, I you know, it was a great little beach town. Did you go to St Augustine high or did not? I went to Pedro? Pedro? Okay, so I grew up in the south end and St Augustine shores. My dad went to St Augustine High

Tracy Hayes  3:12  
School. No, I was thinking Cole slate, that's called his name, slipped my mind. Cole grew up, obviously, in the northwest sector, and he talks about 210 being a dirt road, yeah, basically. And then obviously, he went to Bartram, which was built around the same time, right? Pedro and Bartram, they look identical when you pull up to him or walk inside, yeah. From that standpoint, how do you think that? Or what do you do to bring that out in relating to, you know, people coming here for the first time looking at homes,

Hanna Lopez  3:40  
well, I can easily relate with them, and I can explain all the changes of St Augustine. And one of the biggest selling points that I like to mention to people about St Augustine is, even though, you know, we are the fastest growing County in Florida, I would say we still kind of remain small, and we have that small town charm. And so to me, it's, yes, you're going to see a lot of changes. You're going to see more schools, you're going to see more traffic, but you'll never see high rises and souvenir shops and all of that. So St Augustine still has such a small community. I mean, everybody is supporting local businesses. There's a lot of new businesses, and it just that local charm is still there, and I think it'll always remain there.

Tracy Hayes  4:21  
Well, I mean, just to call out to the, you know, the city of St Augustine, Chamber of Commerce, and how pro business they are. You know, every weekend there's something going on. Tourism is the is the dollars, because we're Florida, yeah. But they, they do everything that they can to be as pro business as possible, thinking of the bigger picture of, you know, visitors coming here and spending their dollars, whether it's in the restaurants, the hotels, etc,

Hanna Lopez  4:45  
yeah. And the good thing is, instead of smell, couldn't be, you know, like Daytona, where there's just all these different shops. It, like I said, with with them being so pro business, it's just very like the small business and, you know, families are supporting other families, and I feel like that's what makes a difference in St Augustine.

Tracy Hayes  5:00  
Right, all right. Carlos,

Tracy Hayes  5:02  
we told you pre show we want the story because I think people resonate. I mean, every fellow Cuban that I've met I have a great respect for, especially their work ethic. And, you know, sometimes they can be super competitive too. I don't know if that describes you a little bit, but tell us about your your journey.

Carlos Lopez  5:24  
So, yeah, I'm from Cuba. I was born in Havana, and I moved to the US in 2011 I was 18 years old, and I came straight to St Augustine. I think that's, that's one of the best things that fun fact happened to me.

Tracy Hayes  5:38  
Well, she's sitting beside you. Obviously, that was one of the best movies.

Carlos Lopez  5:43  
Well, yeah, right. Didn't get stuck in Miami, right, right? That That, to me, has been the best, because it made me grow, you know, I learned a language a lot faster than some of my friends that left at the same time. And so, yeah, that's

Tracy Hayes  5:59  
what's just

Carlos Lopez  6:00  
going so that's, that's how I got here.

Tracy Hayes  6:04  
How, how were you able? I mean, right now the climate, I think it was Obama's administration tried to lose. What was the climate? How did you get out of Havana? Because that's, I think that's probably a lot of so

Carlos Lopez  6:15  
really, I don't have a sexy story about that. The way I got out of Cuba was very easy. My dad's the one that did the crazy part. Yeah, my dad left Cuba with a fake work permit to Guatemala. From Guatemala, he went to Mexico, Mexico, he crossed the border. And at the time, you were able to go to the border and say, Hey, I'm Cuba, and I'm here to, you know, I'm escaping communism or whatever. And he did that, and he was able to enter the US. And after he became a legal resident, he put in papers for me and my sister to get out of Cuba, and we just flew, you know, after five years, because it took a long time, right after five years, they gave me my dismissal papers for the army and just let

Tracy Hayes  7:01  
me go. So there was a five or six year period there. You didn't see your dad, yes, yeah, wow, yeah. And that was his total mission.

Carlos Lopez  7:09  
Yeah, that's the reason why he left Cuba, because there's no future over there.

Tracy Hayes  7:12  
Yeah, amazing. Was he already here in St Augustine's why you came to St Augustine. What actually

Carlos Lopez  7:18  
got you here right before we moved? He came to to St Augustine. He didn't want us to grow up

Hanna Lopez  7:23  
in Miami, but he kind of bounced around from, yeah, he

Carlos Lopez  7:27  
went from Miami to Tampa, but he decided to move to St Augustine that way we could insert ourselves into the the American society, right?

Tracy Hayes  7:36  
Easier. That's actually brilliant. I mean, way, way he, you know, put because obviously, you know, you go to Miami, we, I think the average American visualizes these communities of, you know, there's a lot of cultures that make up Miami, as they do New York, and they generally try to gather together, type of thing. And sometimes you don't get out in if you want to call it mainstream

Hanna Lopez  8:00  
or learn the language.

Carlos Lopez  8:03  
You know every time we go to Miami, I think the same thing, it's like it's oversaturated. I would say there's a lot of opportunity. And I believe that if we were to move to Miami tomorrow, we'll, we'll make it right with the things that we know now, but coming from a different countries, straight to Miami, where you're comfortable right with your language, you don't grow, right? If you want to grow, you want to get out of your comfort zone. You want to learn new things. That's what makes you

Tracy Hayes  8:33  
grow. That's awesome. I totally agree, totally agree, that that's a great, great story there. So how do you guys end up knitting? Do you wait till she comes back from Spain and knows how to speak Spanish before you actually are? You know?

Carlos Lopez  8:46  
No, she was already here when I she came back from Spain in 2011 so we met, really, at a hotel that she used to work, and I used to work, but I got, I got let go. That's a whole other but I go back to a hotel and I'm like, hey, I need my job back.

Hanna Lopez  9:10  
You need to say he came back to the hotel after I became friends with his stepmom, and I was practicing Spanish with her, and she says, You need to meet my son. He asked for a job to come back.

Carlos Lopez  9:24  
I was doing maintenance work, and she was the cleric, and that's how we met. Awesome. Yeah, good friends and yeah, tell

Tracy Hayes  9:32  
us about this from this train right now. You guys are working at the hotel. What kind of period of time goes by and then, you know, or do you both enter real estate together? Or zahana goes in first,

Hanna Lopez  9:43  
I go in first. But there's a whole nother story. Okay, go for it. So after I left the hotel, I ended up being a nanny for a little bit, and Carlos actually, the dynamic of our relationship has always been him kind of being the visionary and me being the integrator. I think that's. Always how we've been. So as a nanny, I was like, okay, you know, I love being a nanny for this family, but I want something more. And Carlos sent me an ad for a dispatcher for 911, the sheriff's office, right? And he said, Hey, this is a great salary.

Carlos Lopez  10:14  
Well, here's benefits. But backstory is that I always wanted to be a cop. That's what I wanted to do, right? But I couldn't, because I wasn't a citizen. When she was telling me that she was, you know, she wanted to do something different, I was like, hey, you know, I just saw an ad that the sheriff's office is hiring dispatchers. Why don't you, you know, you'd be great at that. You have all the skills. And she, she ended up applying and getting the job there, yeah.

Hanna Lopez  10:41  
So I was there for five years answering 911 calls. I was doing the radio dispatch for police, and then Carlos got his citizenship and he became a cop. So here we are again. So he was on the road, and I was his dispatcher most of the time. So let's

Tracy Hayes  10:56  
step back just, I mean, on that because, I mean, we think the amount of people you meet, yeah, in that position, obviously, you probably knew everybody in the St Johns County Sheriff's department within a very brief period of time, as small as it was. And, you know, growing now might be a little more difficult now, but, but I mean, what you know again, you know, I think he leads us on a path, and that path was you getting even more ingrained into St John's County, and now you out patrolling. You're meeting people and business owners and so forth.

Carlos Lopez  11:25  
I was meeting, obviously, all kinds of people, unfortunately, not the kind of people I wanted to be meeting, but yes, and you know, to me, that job really made me into who I am today. It gave me the ability to talk to all kinds of people gave me confidence. It's really interesting how it does that.

Hanna Lopez  11:47  
Yeah, everything is like a little pathway to where we are now, because answering 911 calls, I mean, you're dealing with people's worst day of their entire life, and it's whatever they're dealing with, and I'm the first person they talk to. So I had to learn through training how to talk to those people, how to calm them down, how to stay calm myself in a really stressful situations. And that all ties into real estate, because obviously real estate people aren't dying on the phone. But, you know, there's emotions involved. There's a lot of emotions. And the biggest investment somebody's ever going to make, and it's a lot of money. And you know, I think moving is like the top five, or one of the top five most stressful things that you endear in your life. So I think being able to integrate all of that training has really helped me help people. Yeah,

Tracy Hayes  12:33  
yeah. It's interesting. Again. Like I said, I think you guys are gonna be like 176 you know, listening to everyone's story and how certain things fell into place and prepped you for that, because you probably could, wouldn't even think of becoming a real estate agent prior to doing that, because I think confidence is one of those things, like I said, being able to talk.

Carlos Lopez  12:56  
So yeah, for me, it's been different, because I never thought of becoming a real estate agent. Now never crossed my mind. However, I always liked real estate investing. One of the first book I read was reach that poor dad and then the cash flow, cash flow quadrant, right? And ever since I read those books, it closed me on the idea that I needed to become an investor at some point in my life, and and that's I knew that. And then she got into real estate, and then I'm like, okay, maybe this is the universe telling me, Hey, this is where you need to go. You know exactly. So that's and that's what I did.

Tracy Hayes  13:41  
You're dispatching, yep. What brings the real estate bug? Though? I'm like, like, who talks to you? Who do you meet? What happens

Hanna Lopez  13:50  
here? Yeah, so I've always thought about doing real estate. I just never did it. I don't know why, until I probably pushed Mary along with me to push me. But I had a baby, and then I was pregnant with my second, and I was in dispatch, and I just got to a point where I this is really hard. It was really difficult. We were working 12 hour shifts. Night. We were on the same shift, so child care, and it just got to a point. And honestly, I Maddie Beal, she's with momentum right now. She actually sold us our house.

Tracy Hayes  14:21  
Okay? I'm gonna call timeout right now. I invited that young lady to be on the show we scheduled, but then she ended up deciding to go to Dominican Republic. I think it was, yeah, and she's never answered my message again, so I'm dropping it. I'm calling her out, and hopefully you'll call her come on the show.

Hanna Lopez  14:38  
Gotta do it. She is

Carlos Lopez  14:40  
definitely special, very special person really, really is when we met her, she, I think she was 19 years old. She was our realtor. And that was another thing that I was like, man, what the heck, right, you know? And I told Hannah, I said, this girl, like she's got time. I remember. She showed us a house, and she was like, you know, talking to us. She's very, very social, right? And she was talking to us, and she's like, Yeah, you know. And after this, I'm going to the beach, you know? But no, it made me realize, okay, these people have time. They are, they are the owners of their time. And, you know, it's, it was one of the things that we didn't have at the time,

Tracy Hayes  15:24  
right? Well, you know, the the laughable thing is, you know, I've had Christina Welch on and she made it great. It's not HGTV, everyone sees that, but the real estate industry in general, even on the loan side, especially when I was working for the builders, and they're all working on the weekends, so we're answering and doing pre approvals all weekend long. Your your business is your lifestyle, right? It becomes a lifestyle and that you're working 24/7, at every opportunity, meeting, talking to people, you know, networking in a in a subtle way. You're not selling anyone unless they tell you, Hey, we're looking for a home otherwise. But most people can start they want to talk about real estate. That's a very common, neutral thing to talk about. Yeah, definitely,

Carlos Lopez  16:07  
if you're gonna do real estate, yes, it does have to become part of your of your way of life. However, I'll say this because a lot of people say you're a realtor. You you know you never have time for anything. If you master your schedule, and you schedule the time for you and your schedule you you'll be able to have it, you know. And exactly you don't have to work. 24/7, you know, if you run your business like a business, and you don't let the business run you right that, you know you have that you are able to achieve

Tracy Hayes  16:42  
that. I think a lot of agents to get caught up or too overwhelmed or, I mean, some of them probably even burn out. Is they're not like, okay, my kids ball games tonight. I'm blocking that time off because that's what I'm doing. And if someone calls and says they want to look at a house and say, Hey, sorry, I've got another appointment. So one thing I learned at Quicken Loans early. It was they said, When customers call, don't be so quick to answer the phone right away, send it to voicemail, wait a couple of minutes and call them back, because you're busy talking to somebody else, and you want them to have the perception, which becomes reality is you are you are busy. You are working with other people. These people do not your only customer on the street because you're that

Carlos Lopez  17:22  
good. And with that being said, is like, don't get me wrong, if you are starting and you're brand new, you should be by your phone. Yes, you don't have the luxury of having the time. You have to do it. But as you go and as you're making you're making money, you're getting more clients try to accommodate yourself to where you have that life that you want. It's why you're working as hard as you do. Exactly we are just now tapping into like creating other stream, stream of income, other businesses, investing. That's another thing you don't want to become, be a realtor for the rest of your life. Can you imagine 4050, years old, having to put on signs on the side of the road? Nobody wants to do that. That's a real

Tracy Hayes  18:08  
some people do nobody. Some people get caught up and they love that they love. There's parts of everything. Everyone does what they do, and there's something that's part of it that they love. Yeah, there's a lot of other stuff that they don't, you know, could let somebody else do? Yeah? There's always something you know, whether it's a negotiation or whatever it

Carlos Lopez  18:27  
is, if I had to advise my child, I will let him know that make the money now, but invest it that way later.

Tracy Hayes  18:35  
You don't have to, I totally agree to where you don't, actually, you know, have to answer the phone,

Carlos Lopez  18:41  
yeah, because, you know, it's, it's a trap. It can become a trap.

Hanna Lopez  18:46  
And to circle back on all of this whole topic is, you know, when I first started in real estate, I started with the team, and so the way I was getting leads was through Zillow. So,

Tracy Hayes  18:56  
well, we go back even rewind just a little bit further from there, because we didn't actually get to the point of who, like, what was the enticement to come over to Real Estate? What made the jump help you make the jump? So

Hanna Lopez  19:08  
I called up Maddie, and I said, Hey, you know, I'm really thinking about finally making the jump. As crazy as I was. I feel like we always make really crazy decisions in the most crazy time. I mean, I was pregnant with the child, like I had no means to quit my job. But I told Carlos, this is really what I want to do. And he said, do it. You're going to be great at it. And I think just with that push is just okay. So I did

Tracy Hayes  19:29  
it. So, so when you marry the right person to where you could actually say that as a fresh air to me as a husband, yeah, not to be on the

Hanna Lopez  19:37  
same page for sure always, and that we can touch on that too. But I called up Maddie, and I remember, I called up a friend, my friend named Taylor, and Maddie is with them, DJ, and Lindsay Taylor is with the newcomer group. And I said, Tell me, like, what I should be doing, you know, I'm a mom, you know, I'm pregnant. I'm expecting, but I want to make money, and so I kind of weighed my options, and I ended up. Going with Luke And Sadie, and it was great. I mean, they, honestly, they have molded me into the person that I am today, professionally. And then I got to a point where, you know, I really wanted to brand my own, my own way, and I really wanted to build my own and that's kind of where I went. So 2020,

Tracy Hayes  20:15  
and both of those groups are fairly similar. DJ and Lindsay are very good friends with Sadie and Luke. You see him going to dinner all the time, or whatever the other different events and so forth. They run their business. Probably, if I was to, like, name the top five unique real estate agents that are running their business, you know, like many others, are not it. Those two would be in that top five group easily. Just, just, just how they do it, how for you being new. Never sold a home before. You know, you went and, well, in this case, you actually spoke to two similar brokerages. You chose Luke And Sadie for whatever reason, maybe you want to mention, or whatever. What is about them that clicked with you, but they you come to work. That's their

Hanna Lopez  20:58  
Yeah, I had a baby on the way. I was like, How much money can I make before this baby comes? And I remember asking Taylor, how much money do you think I can really make before I have Ruby? And she told me an amount. And I just thought I cried. I was like, I could make that amount of money before have a child? And she's like, Yeah. Like, easily. And that's when I just everything changed for me. At that time, we were doing Zillow calls, and it was whoever got the phone first. They have different systems now, yeah, but in that time, was whoever got the phone call first, is the one who got the lead, best bet I'd be driving. And I'm like, Oops, I got it every time. And that's what I

Carlos Lopez  21:35  
was saying about like, if you're starting, that's your that should be your attitude, yep, yes, there's no, you don't have the luxury to not do that.

Hanna Lopez  21:43  
I wanted to make as much money as I could before Ruby came, and obviously after she came. But you know, I knew I was going to take some time off and stuff. So I just, I wanted to bank as much as I could. And we did, and that was just completely life changing. I had no idea that that was even possible. Yeah, so I continued doing that, and that's kind of what I was saying about answering your phone. In that time, it was Zillow leads, so it was, you know, you are tied to the phone, and even if you have certain schedules that they set for you, for like, on call schedules, that's what you have to

Carlos Lopez  22:12  
do. And so she double my salary in half a year. I'm serious,

Tracy Hayes  22:16  
yeah, yeah, yeah. So initially, because I want to tap on that, because I know there's a lot of I get them. I get the messages. Every so often someone will watch one of the videos or one of the reels that are put out, and you know, at that time, money was was the foremost thing in front of you, because you were probably working paycheck to paycheck on a county salaries that you were How have things evolved for you in what your mindset is and attitude now that you've been in and have continued success? You

Hanna Lopez  22:48  
mean my mindset in real estate,

Tracy Hayes  22:50  
well, getting away from just, hey, how much money can I make this year? Yeah, that's not probably you don't even really. You envision, this is my goals, and this is how much I can make now you have, you probably have a different attitude every day. When how much money can I make before my baby's

Hanna Lopez  23:05  
born? Yeah, now, I mean, we, we're opening up a new business. I can't talk about it yet. Okay, want to, but that's

Tracy Hayes  23:12  
we'll have a follow up, and we'll do a follow up, 30 minute market update, is what I call it. We'll stream. We'll talk about that when it

Hanna Lopez  23:19  
comes out, really amazing. But when you think about, you know, I often humble myself a lot thinking about that time in my life when I was, you know, living paycheck to paycheck, or, you know, all of those things, and then to when you have a lump sum of money in the bank, to where you're comfortable. And I think now I just kind of changed the mindset of you still have to kind of almost have that mindset, in a way, to just really respect the money that comes to you, and to respect, you know, because that money can go quickly, and a lot of people spend it quickly, and we've, we've done that. I mean, everybody's done that. When you get more money that you're not used to having, you don't really know how to control it. But I think for us back then, educating ourselves has been and investing in ourselves, you know, just reading books about how to invest getting

Carlos Lopez  24:03  
a coach. Yes, say we didn't have a coach back then. So a lot of that money, it just, you know, just went away. Let's

Tracy Hayes  24:11  
tap on the coach fill in the gaps. So you're, you're doing well, you're, you're, you know, doubling his salary, or whatever. However you gestured there. When do you Carlos? When do you go, Hey, maybe I should get out of

Carlos Lopez  24:23  
patrol car. Here it was. It was about two years after that, right? I want to say this, but yeah, so it was about two years after she went to real estate and but I, I really didn't want I really, I seen Maddie, I've seen other other guys and momentum Realty. And I was like, that's really the group of people I want to be around. I really want I didn't resonate with any other team out there. And so I told Hannah that. I said, I. I will get my real estate license, but I momentum is where I want to be. And, you know, me at the time, momentum wasn't even taking new agents, you know, I kept working on my real estate license, etc, and then she decided to to part, you know, go on her own and do her her own branding and stuff like that. And that's how I was able to get into momentum, yeah? Because, if not, I would have been able to,

Hanna Lopez  25:26  
because you have to sell a certain tier before you can get accepted. Yeah. Now they have different programs for newer agents, but at the time, they didn't,

Tracy Hayes  25:33  
yeah, what is i When John and Brittany? What are they called? They have the, the ASCEND, you set, yeah, send group, yeah, yeah, for the newer agency.

Carlos Lopez  25:41  
That's how I got into that. But I always knew

Tracy Hayes  25:45  
I was very clear. Okay, so let me get this straight. So you had to have your father come to the States to get into the United States. You had to have your wife do really well at momentum to get you into momentum. Is that

Carlos Lopez  25:55  
where, you know, there's a lot of behind the scene, quite frankly, that's, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  26:03  
all right, so let's bring it back now. We've, we've, we've, we feel that you jump out of the car, you jump out of the patrol car, you're, you're, you're going, do we? We immediately form a team. I mean, this is in discussion. We're immediately the low tip Lopez group,

Hanna Lopez  26:16  
yep. So we formed the team. He stayed on part time method cop, because it was just kind of like the rocky benefits and, yeah, which now, again, after tons of education, we realized those benefits are nothing. Because, I mean, they're great, they are great. But what I'm saying is, with the amount of money that you can make in real estate, it's going to pay for all of that, you know what I mean. So it's just, there's pros and cons. But the thing that I started noticing was, you know, I started noticing a lot of change in Carlos after being a cop, you know, just his mood was different, his body was different, just a lot of stress. A lot of, you know, not sleeping well. And, you know, once he got into real estate, and he jumped out of, you know, being a law enforcement, it has changed our life for the better. And, you know, I tell him, I'm like, you know, not being a cop looks really good on you. He's just, you know, it's just not, I got him back. It's different, right? It changes you a lot. Let's,

Tracy Hayes  27:15  
I want to just backtrack a little bit, because I always like, I always think there's a new agent, or maybe an agent struggling, which we could talk about. But you come in, you you bought into the structure that Sadie and Luke had had put together. How important, when you're looking back now, was that for you? Obviously, you assume you believe, because based on what you've expressed, you chose the right brokerage, but you bought into their systems. You went after it. And then, you know, just how structured that structured environment that they provide, you know, looking back, how, how do you think that changed your career versus, I'm sure you've met other agents that started at many of the other brokerages in that are available to go to, and how you know that it helped you versus some of the struggles that they're going through?

Hanna Lopez  28:06  
Yeah, no, the newcomer group taught me everything. I mean, they, you know, they had the ad spend to where, you know, there were leads all the time. It shows it was up to you to close them. I mean, you were given leads every single day. So if you have the mindset to go for it, and you're willing to just hustle as hard as you can. I mean, I was there for about a year and a half, honestly, that's their structure of, you know, office time and respecting your schedule that still follows me to this day. And, you know, I learned so much because right before, when I joined there, it was right when covid was about to happen, so we had no idea that was obviously gonna happen. But then the market went crazy. And so all of that was like contract experience, you know, just how to show houses, how to close people, and it was very quick moving. I think I got all my experience from that.

Tracy Hayes  28:56  
You were fortunate, because, much like me, being in the call center, a lot of at bats, right? I'm pulling a lot of credit reports, seeing a lot of situations, getting loans done for people in because of the volume there accelerated your thing. Did you have a mentor? Did you, you know? Because obviously, you know some of the skills, even answering the phone, it's not Luke And Sadie, aren't, you know, Quicken Loans and having a training department and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I'm sure they had some training. Hey, this is how we want you to answer the phone. But I imagine they're tweaking that all the time. Yeah, was there someone that you mirrored that you, you know, saw? Hey, how do I take it from the phone call to the first meeting, buyer consultation or listing consultation and obviously showing homes or doing an open house.

Hanna Lopez  29:44  
Well, they had a woman working for them. She doesn't work for them now, but in that time she was working with them. Her name was Diane. I wish she knew still how much she means to me to this day. And she and I really, really bonded, and she was basically my mentor there. I don't even know what her actual job title was, but she helped training, and she was very, very successful back in her time where she lived, and now she just didn't really want to sell real estate at the time, but I learned so much from her. And I mean, that was many phone calls. I would call her all the time. Can you help me? I have a question, you know, what does this mean on the contract I had phone calls that I got from Zillow of a million dollar buyer, and I said, Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. Like, how can I be the best I can be with this lady or this person? And you know, she just kind of brought me through. And

Tracy Hayes  30:32  
just she really, she had an in house coach,

Hanna Lopez  30:35  
really moved me a lot. And I still am just so grateful for her. Honestly, I talk about it all the time, if you were

Tracy Hayes  30:42  
advising someone that wanted to get in the real estate business today, because I think there's, I really wish, and I haven't mentioned this in a long time, but that some of these new real estate agents need to be the first training besides, obviously, to Trump, you know, the past the test, all the legalese things that you need to know or be advised of anyway, who remembers half of it right? But how to go in this when you had that initial it was a Taylor at Luke and say, when you were talking with Taylor, and why should I go to the newcomer group? Was this late, Diane brought up about what a wonderful support person she is. No she

Hanna Lopez  31:21  
Taylor kind of explained how, you know, the newcomer group is more boutique. It's more I don't want to say family friendly, because I don't want that to come off on the wrong in the wrong way. But it was just more boutique. So it was just different. And I just really resonated with that. Because, you know, I was a mom and I was pregnant, and I just I wanted a smaller team around me to help me grow? Right?

Tracy Hayes  31:43  
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of agents, unfortunately, like they they never 80% we know, fall out, you know, they never renew their their license, and it's because they're not there. They didn't choose the right brokerage. But it goes beyond just choosing the right brokerage, or even broker. In this case you Hey, newcomer group, sounds great. Tight knit group that's for each other. And then all of a sudden you get there and you find Diane, which was double bonus. Yeah. And lot of agents don't dig deep enough to realize we need to find the Diane's in those brokerages, right? Yeah, absolutely. So you still with the newcomer group. When he comes on, or we've gone over the momentum, or so you go over to momentum, yeah, okay, you want to do your own thing. He jumps Carl's tell us about your your ramp up in the learning curve of becoming a real estate agent. It

Carlos Lopez  32:31  
was, it was rough because, again, it was a rocky time. And the reason also why I come on is because she, you know, she she grew, but she needed that extra. She hit a lid Exactly, yeah, and she's the one that tells me that, hey, you know, I know you like this. If you if you get your license, you can join me, and we can do amazing things. And that's what I did. I just worked on my real estate license, and once I got it, I went part time, because I still wasn't

Hanna Lopez  33:05  
sure right, part time with the with police,

Carlos Lopez  33:10  
with St John's County. And then I did real estate full time, part time St John's. And then we kept growing and growing and and I finally was like, I have to, have to do this

Hanna Lopez  33:23  
completely. Gotta rebuff the band aid.

Tracy Hayes  33:24  
So she invites you in to work with her, right? Which, I don't know me, my wife just talked about it, but I don't know we're, we're both, well, although she, she, she's more of the project manager type. I have the high D personality, yeah. And we, you know, to actually work together, because we have, we won't have the same goal, but a different way to get there, right type of thing. So what you saw in him, where he could hopefully break you through this lid and skills that he has, what are some of those skills that you thought that he would he was because I don't think this would happen in any well, even just even two friends, but let alone a married couple, what are some of the skills that he that you're like, wow, he could do some of these things and take off my plate, and I can move forward in more of the obviously, the money making things, showing more home, seeing more people. Yeah?

Hanna Lopez  34:16  
Well, you gotta understand, we went from working in the hotel together, working in the sheriff's office together, so we've always worked together. It's just we've always had that really great balance. We're still learning.

Tracy Hayes  34:27  
Me and my wife met at work too. So that's not guaranteed.

Hanna Lopez  34:31  
You know, we're still trying to find our balance and how things move. But first, perfect by any No, I never said that, but, you know, Carlos has this, what is the word? I don't know how to say it, but he can really see something from, like, an aerial view, and just kind of like, check himself out and think of, like, the big picture, the big vision. And I'm stuck in, like, no, but I have to finish this Canva, I got to do this invite. And he's like, but. No, like, none of that matters. So I think for him, it's just truly the visionary of our company of like, where are we going, how we're going to get there, that's not working. We need to, you know, pivot this way. When I'm more of like, just tell me where to go and I'm going to do it kind of thing. He just, I,

Tracy Hayes  35:18  
because I can relate to that part. Yeah, there's like, okay, and you learn by maturity too. It's taken me a lot longer. I see people like Miss Beale, you know, doing wonderful things. And I've had a lot of agents under 30 years old. I'm like, Man, I wish I, you know, had your skill set when I was under 30. It took me long. But, yeah, they actually sit back and go, Okay, do I do? I want to even send that text message, you know? Or you're in negotiations, it's like, okay, in the long scheme of things, if it's like a chess game, if I move over here, what are they going to do? And you start like, trying to move two or three steps ahead to see, is it even worth, you know, is that important? Yeah, does that text message really going to or someone going to get ticked off, and now I'm, like, backstepping. It's funny

Hanna Lopez  36:05  
for him with negotiation. I mean, that's what he's done for years as a cop. Yeah? For us, I kind of almost,

Carlos Lopez  36:14  
well, no, but like, you have dealing with conflict, yeah? Very easy for me, yeah. And

Hanna Lopez  36:19  
to me, I'm a softy, so like they didn't put an explanation point on the text, like they hate me, you know, so or when you have just leveraging that out to him, for Carlos to kind of, he's more black and white when I'm kind of, you know, so

Carlos Lopez  36:33  
setting clear expectations good for both sellers and buyers. Yep, you need that, because then they get disappointed at you, and then, and you can't sugarcoat anything,

Tracy Hayes  36:43  
either you can't do you when someone, when you're working with someone on the listing you're buying side, or if there's, if there's difference when you work, or are they basically in contact with both of you, or someone takes point

Hanna Lopez  36:55  
on No, it's really both. I kind of take point when it comes to, you know, after contract, I kind of just help with the communication part of it, but it's streamlined. I mean, we're always in that group chat, so if I'm busy, he can take over and vice versa. But people ask us a lot of the time, you know, so for listing like, listing appointments, do you guys go together? Is it like, exactly? That's my next question, yeah, we always go together and we get them, yeah, because people like it, they can resonate with us. They like our dedication to each other. So they can see, like, Okay, if you guys are dedicated to each other, I know you that you're showing me that you're dedicated to me. And then it's also really important that we have two different views of something. So if, if a seller says, Do you think I need to do this, or should I do this? You know, I'll give you my opinion. And then Carlos gives his different outlook, and they like that. We can kind of ping pong the idea around, rather than me coming in there and telling them they need to do something. So I think it's just, it's very comfortable. And, you know, we're all about building relationships. That's really our tagline. And so going in there together, I mean, we're just building a relationship for the long run.

Tracy Hayes  37:57  
Well, you hit on something there, because a lot of people, yo, when we leave a conversation, oh, man, I should have said this, or should have said that. But when you're when you're there together, he's listening to you what you're saying, and then he's able to, you know, maybe, you know, you left something out. Maybe he, you know, I think in sales, a lot of people don't realize the ability to, I call it, we've talked about on the show to to turn it over, right? Because you could be going, going, going, going, and you're not by yourself. And they're like, okay, but you're not saying the right thing, yeah. But he's able to evaluate that conversation. I'm sure vice versa happens as well. And then insert a, insert a statement in there, and they're like, oh, okay, now I get it because she said it, yeah,

Hanna Lopez  38:43  
Carlos is very black and white. So he, you know, as an example, not that this has happened, but he'll say something like, no, the paint color has to change. And I like, Well, no, I mean, it's beautiful the way it is, you know. So it's just, right, he's very black and white. And I'm more like, I can take it and make it just put some flowers, make a little bit prettier. But, yeah, it's just, it's funny dynamic, like,

Tracy Hayes  39:06  
Well, it's interesting. My my former boss at quick one would always would tell you, Oh, you're good with the Northeast. I grew up in northeast. I was born in New York. Grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and you're having those people on it's a different conversation. You can be like, you know, to the point with some of them, others need a little more empathy. Is the word, yeah. But being in Florida, we have such a mix of people from all over, you know, your Midwesterners to the north Easterners, they have different attitudes on those type of things. I think listing appointments and correct me, var, I think you'll agree with me, but right now you're going in and to tag on the NAR lawsuit, right? Showing our value is no more important than right now, going into that listing appointment right now and really showing your value like, Hey, this is how I'm going to present your home. Right? Which I know Luke does a very good job on Instagram when he shows goes around the houses and he shows that extra value. Express a little bit. You know, how important you guys go in. What do you set a game plan when you're going in? Could you have some preliminary information tell us how you guys walk through as a team, and then how you go in and present to a pops? Possible listing it. Well, it's

Hanna Lopez  40:22  
actually kind of funny, and people may completely disagree with me on this. We we have material. We have material that we could bring into a listing appointment. We have it. I typically go in there kind of empty handed. I go in there with the knowledge I know, you know, when they bought it, what the comps are all of that. And I do sometimes leave it in the car if I have it down, but I'm not going in there to show them all my stuff. And I just

Carlos Lopez  40:48  
don't sell that's and I think there's two streams, right? We go in there try to help them. What do you need to do? You know, if I have to force myself to you and sell myself. Then not then I'm not that good. Yeah, you know.

Hanna Lopez  41:06  
And there's no point of me going in there saying, like, I sold this. I do this, I do that, I can do this. They probably hear that all the time. And so for me, it's like, tell me what you need. You know, we just, we went on a listing appointment here recently. Have a husband and wife, and they're sitting on a lot of equity right now, and they need to upsize. But they weren't really sure what they wanted to do. So we could have went and then we could have closed them on selling. You need to sell now's a great time. We're hitting the spring market. Blah, blah, blah, but we actually turned it to say, Have you thought about renting this out? You could cash flow positive? I mean, probably, like, 1000 bucks a month just from that, and that would help cover your next mortgage, or whatever it is, and they love that. I mean, just the fact that we are going in there with different solutions for them. I mean, not that we're going to make money on them renting it out, but it's not about that, about building the relationship and building the

Carlos Lopez  41:51  
trust, yeah, and you have to think about what happens after the transaction. You know, you got them to sell the house, and after the transaction, they might be thinking, man, you know, maybe, maybe we should have done this. If Carlos wouldn't have resent you. They might not tell you, but they're if they think that, they might not call you ever again, right? You got that transaction that time, but you're never gonna get anything after that. You know, most of the people, and I say most, because you always have a client that

Tracy Hayes  42:26  
doesn't matter what you did, right? Yeah, but

Carlos Lopez  42:28  
most of the people that we do business with, they're on our phones forever. Yeah, it's a relationship that will be there forever, you know? Yeah. And I rather do my business that way, because it compounds, right? And, you know?

Tracy Hayes  42:47  
Well, I think the differentiator, like I said, you're providing the solution provider. So anyone listening to the podcast today, they want to learn something from this segment that we just talked about, is going in and listening to them, instead of coming in and being garbage. We call it garbage of the mouth, you know, and then going, Hey, based on what you said, we would professionally suggest this. Yes. And to go back to the listing appointments, I've, you know, just some comments that I've heard over the last few months. In the current market, going into 24 we have more buyers that want turnkey. They don't want a project. They don't have time for a project, and let alone money for a project. So prepping the home for that, having that upfront conversation with that person, being more direct, like, hey, yeah, maybe we need to paint the pink room. Yeah, right. How important are you? How do you approach a customer in that because I imagine you've walked into some homes and you're like, we can't do photography right now. Yeah, we need, we need a week or so to get this cleaned up. Yeah, how do you, how do you handle that

Hanna Lopez  43:50  
situation? Well, I think, you know, when you work with us, we we have a lot of resources, you know, we try to give them resources off the bat. You know, when we walk into a house, we're not gonna say, oh, gosh, this is like a disaster, but we walked into houses that just aren't ready yet. And, you know, we get, at least to get the best, yes, yeah, money. So that's we're honest with them, and we give them options, like, Listen, if you want to list just the way it is right now, that's fine. If you don't have the money to spend out of pocket, that's okay. But here's the three prices that we're going to be looking at to sell. Say, we're going to be looking at this price. If you don't do anything, we could test it at the middle price, knowing that we're probably going to settle at the first price, right? Or if you want to put some extra, you know, blood, sweat and tears into the house, we could then try it for x amount. And then we like to give them some options. So if you do that, we can give you our cleaner. Then we can, you know, cover in the first months of staging, and let's restage the house and or get an interior designer in here to kind of spruce it up a little bit. So there's a lot of things, I mean, resources, the connections that

Tracy Hayes  44:49  
we have. Well, how have you noticed? Because I think, you know, one again, top, the only the top agents on, and one of the common things I hear is having those contractor lists, whether. It's the cleaning lady. We know. We

Carlos Lopez  45:01  
have a relationship, a connection, with all these companies, and that's what, who will work

Tracy Hayes  45:06  
with, right? Yeah, right. Being the concierge, you've got the connections. We can come in here and have this kitchen spruced up, or whatever, bathroom or whatever, because, again, that's going to drag down, get people to low ball. Oh, it needs a lot of work, where maybe it's just a little TLC got there. Let's I want to tap on the social social media a little bit. I've gone on, viewed your YouTube page, your Instagram is there. You got those, those, I love those little ones, where you're sitting down, you get the white words in front, but you guys are doing little educational videos for a minute or two, or whatever it is. Because I, when I look at some of these big Instagram real estate agents, they've got those videos regularly. That one lady I was showing you earlier on there, I don't think there's a way to measure if you get business on social media, but how has it made you look I'm gonna use the word legit, because I really believe, as we were talking pre show about LinkedIn, people will go on these places to learn a little bit more about you versus what you know. Did they would? They the person that was in front of me. What's behind the scenes? All right, let's go to social media and find out they like this to everyone you know. Who is this person? That is what I think they're doing, yeah. How? How? What's your mindset on social media as part of your marketing

Hanna Lopez  46:18  
plan? Last year, we invested a lot in social media. We did, you know, professional videos. We did the YouTube we got, you know, all of the B roll, and we made it super fancy, and all of that, we got a lot of compliments from many people. Oh my gosh, you guys look like you're doing so great. You guys look like you're doing so busy and or that you're being so busy. And, you know, that's great. And I love the compliments. But after doing just some more digging on people that I inspire to be like in the real estate industry. I mean, nationwide, I personally really love the raw videos, because that's who we are, is we're not the flashy realtors that show up in a BMW with the big bag. And that's just not who we are. And so I think, you know,

Tracy Hayes  46:57  
to be more overly staged videos. Yeah,

Hanna Lopez  47:00  
I like the wrong stuff, edited videos. And a lot of people have said, you know, they they like the wrong stuff because it makes them relate to us more, because we're not, you know, trying to be someone that we're not. So those, yeah, those videos.

Tracy Hayes  47:14  
No, there was one on there this morning. And I may come and I can't remember if it's on Facebook or not, but it was, it was so well done. Oh, that one, I did

Hanna Lopez  47:24  
that in 30 seconds on cap cut. Yeah.

Tracy Hayes  47:28  
That was really good. That was really good.

Hanna Lopez  47:30  
Yeah, you know, just, but I did use some of the B roll that we did in our old videos. But, yeah, you know, I really love those old videos that we did, but I'm really trying to get into the more raw footage, or just kind of creating fun stuff that are quicker. I love reels. I think that's really fun. And it's just, you know, it shows our life with music behind it, which is more fun. But, yeah, so I think I'm trying to balance social media because it is hard to handle that. And I would love to leverage that. At some

Carlos Lopez  47:55  
point, I would love to leverage

Tracy Hayes  47:57  
that. Well, I mean, are you scheduling time for it? You were talking about scheduling earlier. Are you like, hey, whatever, Monday, Tuesday, more, whatever we're going to spend an hour to do it. Or is it? Are you kind of more like, Hey, we got some time. Let's shoot a video,

Carlos Lopez  48:11  
kind of like that. As of right now, we are like that. Last year we had it scheduled.

Tracy Hayes  48:15  
We did, yeah, well, your videographer is supposed to actually show up here. You know, we were going to cut a couple. Really. Yes, he does some great stuff. And I always like, come in. We'll, we will, hopefully he was supposed to be here by now. As far as he hasn't opened the door yet, but hopefully he'll come in. Well, I noticed on your website you have, you have a handful of YouTube videos that you have there. I think a lot of agents are not doing enough in putting it on YouTube as we talk pre show. It's a library, and you have, I know you have some neighborhood videos in there, because you just tell you at the neighborhood right across or an address or whatever. Yeah, that address is ever Googled? Yeah, that video is going to show up Google and YouTube. Yeah, they're like, married, like Facebook and

Hanna Lopez  48:58  
Instagram. Yeah, I'm not a super tech savvy person. And Matt honestly was like, helping me so much because, like, how do I do this? What does this mean, right? Yeah, you're so right. I need to just get more into the YouTube. We just get busy and, you know, you make the videos,

Tracy Hayes  49:12  
just put them on, just put them down there. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we need to be. If you saw the mountains of content that I have. My I have a two terabyte Google Drive, yeah? I mean, it's, I mean, I load everything on, you know, I save everything from all the shows on there so I could go back and go, Oh, you know, I'd really like to get so and so's attention they were on the show a year and a half ago. Boom. I take that reel and pop that reel again, yeah, type of thing. But again, just, I these people from out of out of area, they're looking they're Googling, whether it's the neighborhood, whether it's find out background for you, and that YouTube, it's there, and it will pop up three or four years from now, whatever as this show will pop up. If you Google a lot of people been on the show, it'll come up. Apple podcast right there. And then it'll and. I'll have the YouTube video underneath it as well, that there's a YouTube video about the person as well. When you when you search, we talked about a listing consultation. Let's talk about a buyer's consultation. Okay, what is the Lopez group in going into that you well today you more working organically from, you know, the many clients you might have gotten off of Zillow now are here and referring you is that pretty much where your business is

Hanna Lopez  50:25  
coming from, and a lot of our sphere of influence, you know, being born and raised here, have a lot of connections, and, you know, a lot of friends and stuff like that. So that has been a huge lead source for us.

Tracy Hayes  50:34  
Just join the, join the social social media with the circle of influence. Okay, you mentioned earlier, lot of people are seeing your videos. Oh, you guys must be so busy. I'm seeing all these videos. That's the perception that they're getting, because you're top of mind. It's so true. Yeah, it's true. I've had agents you you talk about when they first got started doing a bunch of social media videos and their friends going, oh man, you must be killing it. They didn't sold the house yet. Yeah, some of that perception that's become reality, yeah, but staying top of mind, because I think that's where people like, Oh, do you get any business from? From social media? Well, do you have a circle of influence? You've got to constantly be reminding them you're if you're not going out to dinner with them on a regular basis, they're just people you know, or maybe people in the sheriff's office. And maybe you don't see it that often, but you know each other, and they're seeing those videos go, oh yeah. Carlos is a realtor,

Hanna Lopez  51:25  
and that has happened many times when people reach out and they're like, oh, you know, I see your videos. And I was thinking, my aunt needs to, you know, XYZ? And I think all of that comes down to, I know you want to talk about the buyer's consultation, but one word that we really live by is intention and being intentional. So if we're out with wherever we are, and somebody talks to us about something totally different, we always seem to tie in a realtor, you know, so some way or another, and we never want to, like, throw it up and just be like, oh, you know, let's sell. But it's just being intentional.

Tracy Hayes  51:57  
You show up with the jacket on right, they know what you're doing. I love our new swag. Gotta, Yeah, gotta get this guy. I haven't got any momentum swag here. I've got swag from others here. I'm call out the John, and I don't have any momentum swag

Hanna Lopez  52:11  
here. But being intentional, I think, you know, even with any new agent or agents that are on social media that aren't getting any deals from that or have no deals, I mean just being intentional with whoever you meet, wherever it is, and just letting them know, even if you're on vacation, sometimes we'll be on vacation, like, hey, my goal today is to meet someone and give them my card. I'm In Miami, but you never know. We

Carlos Lopez  52:32  
make it a game. Your stack of cards, I have mine, we'll see

Hanna Lopez  52:39  
who can give out the most cards today. It's true, though. I mean, you just never know who someone knows actually,

Tracy Hayes  52:44  
before we go into the buyer's consultation, tie listing into the social media. Because in what your mindset is, maybe you're evolving that. Because I think you know any good people are always tweaking what they're doing to try to make it better. I had George Guerrera from Miami, we were talking about earlier, R, E, S, F, in Miami. And he believes the 2034 2044 real estate agent is going to be more of the talk show host or newscaster. Video, Video, because he basically that's he's built his career around that for 15 plus years. And his whole agency down there of almost 500 agents, he believes. Video, when you go in, you're in St Augustine. Some of these houses are near the beach. How important is like, the like, you have the video, paint the picture?

Hanna Lopez  53:29  
Yeah, it's very important, because you're getting your your videos out there. And we've, we've done a few different things, like I said about the tweaking. We've done professional videos with Matt. We've done walk throughs, we've done where we're in the video, or not in the video. And sometimes I feel like I get more attention with the reels, doing fun reels, putting fun music to and I think people it's quick. It catches the eye there. He bucks into the music. And it's just it kind of creates a lot of attention that way, rather than, you know, a two minute video of a house. I mean, sometimes we're like, okay, you know, well, I

Tracy Hayes  53:58  
think you need to have the YouTube library, for those who are doing research, top of mind the quick reel reminding them that you're

Carlos Lopez  54:05  
in real estate, yeah, absolutely. And yeah. And it also depends on the of the house, you know true, which, what tier is the, you know, commission, how in depth of a value, what percentage are they paying, and things like that. Because you, I mean, you can, you have to do math, or you're not just throwing money out there to make pretty videos. If you're not converting, it's gonna put a hole in your pocket.

Tracy Hayes  54:31  
Yeah, it's funny, my wife, we were having this conversation the other day about there's some agents that immediately go into discounting their thing because they're not willing to say, hey, yet, you're paying me for this, because we're going to spend X amount, we're gonna do video, we're gonna do drone, because you, you're two blocks from the beach, we need to show people that and everything. I mean what you've you've obviously run into some of these agents. I'm sure you've done enough transactions that are just there. It's all about the dollars. I. Okay, well, I'll discount and I'll put my name up there, and I'll handle the contract for you. It seems like that's all they want to do, and they're really, you know, well, I think you and I you and I think for especially for you guys, because you guys are real estate agents, run themselves out of the business because that you really, that you really need to make that money to provide the right service, give them all the benefits that they're supposed to be. And like I said, some houses don't, you know, they warn a video. You know they all warrant pitch. You gotta have pictures, right, because you put them up there. But you know, some of the agents do. I'm sure you've gone on their MLS. You're like they took that with their cell phone. It really isn't that good. That irks me.

Hanna Lopez  55:36  
It irks me so much because you're doing your Seller is a disservice. I mean, a video or not, pictures are always going to be there. People are always on Zillow, you know, and

Tracy Hayes  55:47  
or Google, if you Google that address, those pictures are showing up on an all website disservice.

Hanna Lopez  55:52  
And when you're so quick to discount yourself, I mean, being in real estate, I think the fundamental I was just talking to a girl that I know she's thinking about doing her real estate. And she goes, Do you have any new books for me, or any books that I can read? And I said, I do? I You

Tracy Hayes  56:05  
have a great podcast you can recommend, yeah, books.

Hanna Lopez  56:10  
But what I will say the biggest fundamental is mindset, and if you out the bat, don't even value yourself. I mean, you have to learn to value yourself, and you are worth whatever commission you're trying to get. Don't just be quick to discount because then that's showing to the seller that you're not even willing to negotiate for them. If you can't even negotiate for yourself, how are you going to negotiate for

Tracy Hayes  56:31  
somebody else? Oh, good point. And, yeah, that's a good reel right there. Yeah, right. Look

Carlos Lopez  56:36  
at the camera,

Hanna Lopez  56:40  
but it's true. Yeah,

Carlos Lopez  56:42  
part of that, you know, because we've done it too. Don't get me wrong, we've done it, but if you're newer, you need to get a mentor that tells you these things so you can learn quick. And you know, learn how to show your value, show the client where you're spending all that money he's paying for. If that is justified, they'll pay any amount. Yeah, they will,

Tracy Hayes  57:07  
yeah, yeah. Because when it comes we always use the term stepping over quarter to pick up a nickel, because that's really what they're doing when they when you start discounting yourself exactly, just show them the value. And it

Carlos Lopez  57:19  
depends. Some clients will will not pick you because of that. If you tell, if you come and do a service for me, and I'm I think you're sheep, then I'm gonna think that there's a reason why. You know there's a reason why, and you got to show your clients value, why exactly, and you cannot tell them, hey, yeah, my commission is 6% and yeah, what am I paying for?

Tracy Hayes  57:40  
Yeah, right. Explaining that my

Carlos Lopez  57:43  
cousin is a real estate agent. He can put an MLS to you. Got to tell them why they're playing, paying six where

Tracy Hayes  57:49  
the value comes in. Well, we're gonna, we're holy, I'm gonna hold off on the coach, because he just brought it into the buyer's consultation showing the value. Because with the NAR lawsuit, that's really what the bottom line is. We are not as real estate agents the community. We got to get better put more videos out there showing the value of what what you bring. So when you are having that buyers consultation and showing the value that you're going to bring to them, you're not just, you know, the person there to unlocking the doors, the behind the scenes that you're doing. Because I think, by much like the listing agent, same thing. It's an iceberg. You're only seeing the very top of it, and there's so much more that you're doing behind the scenes. At home, you've got the buyer consultation, referral, whatever. What's your approach? What do you like to do? Meet them for coffee. Do you like to do a face to face? Or some agents like to do zoom. How does the Lopez group do it? I

Hanna Lopez  58:39  
like to meet them. We're really listing heavy right now. So I would say the buyer side has we've had less and less buyers, which is good. That's our goal. Is we really want to do listings more, but with buyers taking the time to sit down with them and to educate them, because especially in this market, I think a lot of buyers think it's 2008 and they can just get a deal and and low ball everything. And then there's sellers, which is, comes in the buyer's console, because you also want to tell them, sellers think it's 2021, there's a huge, there's a huge gap. They want, top dollar you want, you know, just whatever you can get. And it's just about educating them and letting them know what's happening in the market, and giving them clear expectations of what's going to happen, right? You know, I like to figure out, obviously, their timeline, their budget, pre approval, what they're looking for, listening again, listening to their needs. Because, you know, you may have the perfect house for them, and they may not know it, so it's just you have to talk to them and listen to what they really want to do. But I think just figuring out all of those boxes of, you know, the timeline and the budget, and explaining to them how it's going to go, Okay, so we're going to start looking at houses, and when we start offering, you know, just letting you know this is what's going to happen with negotiations, inspections, going over that, because you almost want to just give them the news of what could happen, almost worst case before they know, because if they love a house, and then you get an inspection report back, and. It's terrible. You know, that is just heart shattering to anybody, because they're like, Oh my God. I thought I already envisioned my family in this house. How are we going to do this? So I think just kind of explaining how the inspection works, and how, most of the time, it's a lot of information that seems terrible, but, you know, you really got to focus on structural, electrical, you know, the roof. So all of the other things the cracks in the sidewalk are, you know, they may see like a huge, big red flag, but

Tracy Hayes  1:00:27  
well, like when you when a buyer, you know they see they want, they move to the point of making an offer. So they're, they're throwing their heart out there, because now the emotions get involved. They're, they've, they're, they must have some emotional connection with that property. Yeah, now you and I know some of them fall out for good reason. And actually, the next property is really the one I really wanted a lot of times. But as an agent speaking to other agents that might be listening, you've got them on the hook. So doing the like, the things you just said, preparing them for the inspection report. You know, it's so that they aren't scared, I mean, and how important is like for to have a relationship with a good home inspector to begin with that actually knows how to present that to them, rather than throwing it at them and then scaring them and they run, yeah,

Hanna Lopez  1:01:16  
killing the deal. Yeah, no. It's just, you have to have someone. And we do have a great inspector that we work with, and he's willing to pick up the phone and to actually go over these concerns with them and explain, okay, you know it, yes, you know it may look really expensive, but you're really only looking at X amount. It's just it's good to have those people again, the list of resources and trusted resources that we worked with time and time again, and we have, you know, a great relationship with that's going to be honest, because I'm not hiring this inspector to just give you the report and tell you everything's great. I want him to be honest, but I want to do it. I want him to do it gently, with education behind it, of how you can you know what the solution is to the problem, rather than just giving you a whole list of

Tracy Hayes  1:01:56  
problems, right? Obviously, we got a lot of new construction, which is most of the inventory you know, out there right now, what the buyers that you've had? You know, in 23 you know the incentives the builders are putting out there, you know, when working with your buyers and also with some of your sellers, and because, obviously the sellers got to compete against that, right? Yeah, you know structuring how they want to list a house, they want to advertise a buy down, like the builders do right away, that they're willing to give that incentive. Talk a little bit of that. And you know, of your mix last year, I mean, how much new construction did you end up doing? Because I think a lot of times, like anything, the people come in, they think they want new construction, they end up buying an existing home, and vice versa, a lot. Yeah, you know, how do you go with the flow, so to speak, and working those, those type of things with the current market conditions.

Hanna Lopez  1:02:43  
Yeah, I would say with new construction, we did a few last year, and those were great scenarios, because I think that there's families with, you know, young children, and they don't have, you know, a lot of cash out of pocket to do the down payment and the closing cost, and, you know, everything else on top appliances and all the Yeah, so I think new construction is just the best product to sell. And I hate that sometimes, because I'm like, I love my lenders. I want to give them, you know, like, but it's very hard to compete, because they they buy down your rate, you know, they pay all of your closing cost, so you're able to get into a property with very little money out of pocket, right? And so obviously, the monthly payment is what's enticing to everybody, but new construction. I mean, you're buying it new. You have all the warranties you have, you know, less money out of pocket. You're able to save a lot of money that you thought you were going to spend, which is better, you know? But then I have people that really want the character of a pre existing and I could understand that too, because you're not going to be the cookie cutter. You're going to have more yard space, more character in the neighborhood, right? But everybody's different. I mean, how that kind of works out, but I would say that the new construction is for, at least in our experience, the younger families that are their first home, yeah, you know, they're not really sure how to do a lot of like the the maintenance of

Tracy Hayes  1:03:58  
a house. They don't know what a heater is.

Hanna Lopez  1:04:01  
It's good to kind of have that. And it's like an introductory to home buying. And sometimes does make the best investments, because it's very little money out of pocket to acquire the property. So that's even more of like an investment standpoint. And one thing that again, with the buyer's consultation, especially with first time home buyers, younger ones, we always tell them, this is your first house. Don't think about the house that your parents have, the house that your parents have, they took or many houses to get there. But with your first home, you have to look at it with like an investor lens. Go in there. How much money did it take me to acquire the property? What is my monthly payment? What are the rental comps around it? And just give yourself maybe a plan. Maybe you stay in there forever. I doubt it. You may think you want to, but things change. Kids grow. Kids want to go to different schools. You know, your job may change. So if you think of like a good investment, and then in three years, you're able to hold on to that as a rental or, you know, they want to sell that. But there's just so many ways to think about. Yeah, then, I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say is there's many ways to decide what kind of property you're going to buy first, and you have to almost have an investor lens for that. And that's kind of where we come into how the,

Tracy Hayes  1:05:10  
well, the importance of, like you said, you mentioned several times you got to listen to them. They may come to you with a preconception, like, how many people come in say, I don't want to be in a CDD, because someone told them about a CDD, but then, but they want to live in nakati. Yeah.

Carlos Lopez  1:05:22  
Okay, yeah. What I tell people all the time, especially young people, you might not want to be in an HOA. Might not want a city, but you want to have a house. You know, most 30 year old man or and ladies here don't have a home they rent. So get yourself in house.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:45  
Well, you got the importance of, when you drive in, come home from work, every day you drive in, you want that to hopefully be like, maybe put a smile that you didn't have all day. Yeah, and

Carlos Lopez  1:05:56  
just, it's just the smartest thing to do. You know, it might not be the prettiest house or the exact location that you want, but it's your house, money you're paying every month. It's not going to the pocket of somebody else, going to your pocket, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:06:12  
Yeah, I want to do, we tipped on coaching. Yes, I want to, I want, we're gonna finish up with coaching, and then I want to, want to talk about the dynamics of you two to finish up. Okay, so you guys said you hired a coach, yes. So at what point did it come to a realization, or just going to a conference or something, or listen to John speak about coaching, say, Hey, maybe I should try this. What triggered you to say, it's time to bring in a coach

Carlos Lopez  1:06:39  
for us? I think we again, you know, I joined her, we grew together to where we could and to learn more. We needed somebody to teach us more. And that's, that's what

Hanna Lopez  1:06:54  
happened, yeah, and John and Brittany gave us a lot of recommendations, and they had a coach come in to teach momentum for, like, a day or whatever. And we just, we really liked her, and she had so much history of experience and of success, so she mentioned to the momentum tribe that she's willing to take on new agents. And that was just a conversation that we had of like, we need to invest in ourselves. We just went to a conference for multifamily investing. That was the first conference we ever went to, and that was like, now I understand the conference life, because you go there and it's just like, you're so just hyped up and you have so many goals, and you're surrounded by like

Carlos Lopez  1:07:33  
minded people. It was a Jake and Gino conference,

Hanna Lopez  1:07:37  
and that just kind of changed your mindset a lot

Tracy Hayes  1:07:40  
about a lot things that you're doing. Yeah, for those who've never had a coach, because I'm, I'm totally, you know, I hired a coach to for the podcast, right? He told me a lot of things I had never even listened to a podcast before when I was first said, like, hey, maybe this is something I want to do, to give you the behind the scenes, like stuff that's down the road, like you need to prepare for, but, but I would imagine, and you correct me, the coach didn't come in and just say, are you guys need to start doing this, this and this, without even evaluating what you were doing, right? Tell us. Tell us how that that first meeting that you had, or first initial meetings that you had before they actually started, maybe starting inputting some advice,

Hanna Lopez  1:08:20  
right? Well, to me, I felt like it was like couples therapy. It was intense, because she asked us a lot of questions. She wanted to understand our dynamic, our family life, our financial house. You know, there was a lot she was like a coach of like, almost like a life because she's not a life coach, but it was basically a life graduate, right? And I think she just has this way about her that she just peels and peels and peels back the onion, and she peeled a lot through us. And so she realized, like, Okay, this is where you know, you guys need to work on. And part of those things is differentiating ourselves, because we are, we are together a lot, and we love to do it together, but he's really good at certain things. I'm really good at other things. And it's just good sometimes to Yeah, to separate. And we can

Carlos Lopez  1:09:06  
call which is more efficient? We Yeah, exactly. It's more efficient. And she did, she did sessions with her first, and then sessions with me, and then after, she figured each, each of ourselves better, because

Tracy Hayes  1:09:19  
you're going to answer a question sometimes differently because she's sitting

Carlos Lopez  1:09:24  
there, we're just different. Yeah, she needed to get to know us, yeah, individually first to then figure out how to do it. You know, with us,

Tracy Hayes  1:09:32  
because you don't know some of those, like the family life, how that's actually affecting the business, you need to know that. Yeah, absolutely. And

Hanna Lopez  1:09:38  
with him being a cop, you know, that was the biggest stressor for a little bit. And so she was also just kind of like pushing us to just do the damn thing, you know, we finally did. And it's just like, I, we've never looked back since. And, you know, one of the things that she said to me that I'll, I'll never, ever forget, ever because we wanted to open up this other business, and in my. My mind. I was like, I'm kind of afraid to tell her, because, you know, that means that we're going to take not a step away from real estate. Real estate is our main, our main baby, but it is going to take some attention away a little bit. And I didn't want her to say, well, when are you going to have your time to do all these things? So I went in there with, like, my tail between my legs. We're thinking about opening up a new business. She's like, Okay, tell me about it. We went through everything. And she's like, okay, so how long, how many hours you think it's gonna take you away from real estate? I'm like, here it is. I tell her, and she says, No, because I think it's a brilliant idea, and you guys are gonna be really successful, you need to put time into this. And I told her, you know, but you know, I'm a real estate agent, and I just, you know, I want to do these things. And she's like, let me stop you, right there. Main thing she told me that just I changed my life, I feel like forever. She said, You're not just a realtor, you're a real estate agent, you're an entrepreneur with a real estate license. And to me, I said, You know what? That is so true, and it just enforced the fact that I can do other businesses. I'm not just a realtor, you know, I'm an entrepreneur with a real estate license, so I can do a lot of other things and be successful at it and sell real estate. Because all of these other businesses that we're going to implement, they're all going to be lead generation sources for real estate, you know. So it may not be directly tied in, but I yeah, if there's one thing that she taught me was, was that and that was really empowering for me?

Tracy Hayes  1:11:22  
Yeah? All right, so let's talk about that. What are some of those things? What is his superpower? That's what's his superpower?

Hanna Lopez  1:11:30  
Vision, vision. He has a lot of ideas. He does, and most of them are amazing. There's some that's like, All right, that's

Tracy Hayes  1:11:41  
how we gonna implement that. Yeah, I'm like, that.

Carlos Lopez  1:11:44  
I'm like, Carl isn't my coach. She, she taught that. I mean, she helped me. Like, feels like you gotta write those ideas down. You gotta write them down. You gotta. Because if you don't, you know, I also feel like ideas are just esoteric things, right? You know, if you put them down in paper, you bring them to the physical world, and that is the first step to getting so I'm

Tracy Hayes  1:12:09  
going to take that advice today, right there.

Hanna Lopez  1:12:12  
We do vision boards. I mean, we, we do a lot of like the journaling and the writing down.

Carlos Lopez  1:12:17  
You have to, and I don't, you know me by myself. I cannot do any of the ideas I have. But I also someone once told me, like, you know, Henry Ford, he wasn't building the cars himself. You know, he had way smarter people, right? Hired engineers to join those things. You don't have to be it. The ideas come to you, you got to find the resources and the people, people to do,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:47  
implement them. You know, does the visionary? I'm going to use the word creativeness, because I think that comes into the visionary part. I mean when it comes when working just with an individual deal and negotiating. I mean, like you said, we talked about chess earlier, that creativeness, that visionary, is like, Okay, let's look at this transaction. It's gone off the tracks. How can we get it on? How can we make, you know, a win, win situation for both I imagine that comes in a lot. She, she

Carlos Lopez  1:13:19  
talks to me a lot. If she's like, dealing with some type of negotiation, she's like, Hey, you know, pretty much with every negotiation, and I give her my input, sometimes she doesn't like it, because I can be like, no, just, you know what? It's just no, just No, and fire the client. I know crazy, but it sometimes is better. And that's, that's just,

Tracy Hayes  1:13:43  
you know, all right, what's hay in the superpower?

Carlos Lopez  1:13:47  
Oh, man, she she is, Besides, she's

Tracy Hayes  1:13:52  
got that great smile. Looks good on the Instagram.

Carlos Lopez  1:13:54  
No, no, smart. So I feel like her superpower is how diligent she is with everything, with everything she does. That's something that man. You can be brilliant. You can be a brain. If you are not diligent and have discipline, you'll never accomplish anything in your life, nothing. And for me, that that's been the main blessing that you know, having her, having that discipline that supports me. It's amazing.

Tracy Hayes  1:14:34  
Day after Valentine's Day. Look at that.

Carlos Lopez  1:14:38  
But it's true, and it's a huge help when it comes to business. Huge help. If, if you've never read the book rocket

Tracy Hayes  1:14:46  
fuel, yes, I have. Actually, the late Sarah Rocco lent that to me, and I read that 100% yes, yes.

Carlos Lopez  1:14:52  
It's a it's a powerful thing to have those things together. It's powerful, yes.

Hanna Lopez  1:14:57  
And we never really knew that until we had a coach. Guy who finally, she was, like, clear to the fog away, and kind of put us in our place of, like, you're the visionary, you're the integrator. I took the the rocket fuel assessment. Have you ever taken that before?

Tracy Hayes  1:15:10  
I think it was in the book. Wasn't it was like a little pre quiz or something like that. Yeah. Do it

Hanna Lopez  1:15:14  
online. If anybody's listening, it's really important to do that. Do it online quick. Yeah. His visionary score was like, yeah, just to the max. And it's interesting, because mine was 5050, visionary in integrator. Because I do, I, you know, I believe in manifestation. I have visions of our future. We do vision boards, we do all of those things. But I can integrate

Tracy Hayes  1:15:34  
it if you, if you and you're really, if you don't, you're as an integrator, don't see his vision, then it doesn't connect. In my opinion, you guys are so you have to have a little bit of visionary to say, oh, that that actually is a good idea. Let me see how I can integrate it. Yes, there's a

Carlos Lopez  1:15:53  
lot of times she's like, No, what are you talking about? Yeah. And sometimes some ideas are not for, you know, it might not be for today. It might be for five years, 100% I never know. So that's why they just come to us and we write them out. Yeah, I write them down and I live them there, because a time will come to where I'll be able to do that.

Hanna Lopez  1:16:15  
And we're now, we're opening up another business, and there's an idea that he had that he wrote down that's gonna scale this current business, which we didn't really think that could, they could relate, but it's true. Like, oh, and then with this, and then with that, in like three years, we can add this, and then we can go here. So we almost have, like, a map of how we want things

Tracy Hayes  1:16:35  
to look. I think a lot of people are, are in the box on some of those things. Like, I find it, well, nothing going to go back to John Maxwell. He says, one of the 25 things influence people is introducing them to other people. So I find someone when, whether I'm sitting here having a conversation with somebody, and you bring up something, and I'm like, Oh, so you don't know photographer, whatever it you know in me, in putting and you got to get outside. And then, how can this how can this person help this person? You know both people, but they don't know each other. And you say, You know what, you need to meet so and to get out, and how that business is going to, you know, integrate. And then, you know, again, I think, well, a little bit at the Dan Gilbert owns Quicken Loans. He owns many different companies, and all of them feedback in some way to each other. They lean on each other, whether it's leads, you know? Yeah, hey, I'm dealing with a bunch of home buyers. Well, they have a lot of needs, right? They need real estate agents. They introduce real estate agents to customers all the time. Well, wholesale we need, you know? Now they've got the app out there. It'll tell you all the you know, all right, well, we'll get in everyone's financial information. How about an app that tells them where they're blowing their money. At, you know that all those things integrate to a to each other, and he's surrounded himself by people that are finding these small businesses that he may not have had the original idea, but they're like whole wholesale, I could see how that and everyone, and he called it eat your own dog food, basically, you know, he would not allow anyone to do a mortgage that could be done at Quicken Loans with anyone else, if you went to another lender to buy your house, that was not but it's not like he was. He made it like a no brainer. I mean, you got the wholesale rate, you know, and that sort of thing. He wanted everyone to have, everyone that worked there had a Quicken Loans that they bought. You had a mortgage, you know, type of thing. But you got to think, bring all that together. And I think a lot of lot of businesses don't kind of stay in there too. You have to have the visionary, you know, the integrator is making that one business work. The visionary shows how all these other businesses can intertwine and network absolutely anything we haven't talked about. I mean, we could talk for hours, but

Hanna Lopez  1:18:49  
we've covered a lot.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:50  
Anything you want someone out there to know about the Lopez group, whether you know, I'm sure you guys being top producers, you probably get asked all the time. So you know, if there's an agents out there who aren't doing very well, maybe want to know about momentum and why you guys are there and and we're so passionate. As Carlos said, he wouldn't they wouldn't go anywhere else. He said, basically, is what you said. I

Carlos Lopez  1:19:11  
think I'm not leaving. That's what I would say to any new agent, to find a brokerage where they have really good training and support people that want to help them. Sometimes you go to a big team and on, is awesome, but no one's there to help you,

Hanna Lopez  1:19:34  
right? Everybody's competing. Just want you well, to tap

Tracy Hayes  1:19:36  
on that a little bit. You know, I think some brokers run their course. John Brittany, your very own. You know, how important is, you know, if you're going to lead brokers and want to be part of this, you know, the momentum family, you know, I'm sure every day they're trying to figure out a way to stay out in front be bringing you guys new stuff. Like, obviously, a coach moved your business. You. Hey, maybe we should go to this event together and go and you get energy from that. You know, how important is a broker to be out front, leading like that? And it's a challenge. It's a challenge for a broker to do that.

Carlos Lopez  1:20:10  
It's so important if your broker is not a leader, it's not that we like momentum.

Hanna Lopez  1:20:18  
I mean, there's they're smart because they have created so many ecosystems within momentum, you know, they they're now helping you fund, you know, any flips you want to buy. So if you find a flip, they're able to lend the money on it right now. So you have that, you have the title company, you have the lender, not necessarily saying you need to use all of those people, but they just have so many resources. And now they're trying to do marketing resources like, what do you need? And they're always asking, What do you guys need? What do you guys want? Let us try to implement it. Just tell us

Tracy Hayes  1:20:44  
they're out there searching it down because you're doing you're doing your day job, you're showing the houses, you're talking to new customers, and sometimes you can hit a lid there, right? You fill your bucket that you can't you don't have time to go find the next thing that's going to, you know in the next market turn, what's going and to have someone foreshadowing or just being out front looking for those things for you, which obviously makes, that's the value they're bringing to you guys. So

Hanna Lopez  1:21:06  
much value, 100% Yeah. I mean, that's like, just touching the surface of the value they give us

Carlos Lopez  1:21:11  
momentum. Reals is the best brokerage in Northeast Florida. It's hands down. It's great.

Tracy Hayes  1:21:16  
We got a commercial right there. Well, I cut that clip.

Hanna Lopez  1:21:21  
It is so true. Because honestly, you know, people have seen it when you're in brokerages that are so big, you know, momentum is really small. Now it's grown a lot that you think that you don't have access to your brokers. And I could text him right now, and then two seconds,

Tracy Hayes  1:21:35  
he'll text me, I have him. I've texted him. We were talking about the lending thing earlier, and he responded a reasonable period

Hanna Lopez  1:21:41  
of time. That's his job, because he knows he's like, I'm not even selling real estate anymore. I just all I want to do is support my agents any way that I can. And if I could be quick to respond and quick to meet with you, you know it's, it's

Tracy Hayes  1:21:52  
that's leadership and making you feel valued 100%

Hanna Lopez  1:21:57  
and I honestly think you know, the work that I've done and the volume that I've sold on my own, not having leads, and, you know, bringing him on, and everything, it's been because of their support and them telling me you can do it. There's so many brokerages that kind of almost cut your legs a little bit because they don't want you to leave. They want you to stay, and all they want you to do is flourish, and they're willing to give you all of their years of training that they've done and give you for free. And just tell you, like, go spread your wings. You can do all of these things that you want to do you could do. Sometimes people just need that. I all I needed. And

Tracy Hayes  1:22:32  
whether they actually, you know, they Well, we don't. They don't actually know if you're going to be successful on it, but just having someone say, I believe in you, yeah, yeah,

Hanna Lopez  1:22:41  
yeah. It's makes a difference. And honestly, that's why, you know, with him, that's all I needed, was for him to say, go do it. Yeah, yeah. You know,

Tracy Hayes  1:22:49  
my wife asked me yesterday, hey, we have some condos. We're six or seven of them, and one we're flipping. And she's like, I'm looking at this one here, and you know, I'm like, Honey, you're the real estate agent. The worst case is you buy it, especially if the person is willing to finance it in half. I said, if the market actually softened, what would we lose? 10 or $20,000 maybe we've got all these others that we've gained so much on. Yeah, go for it. Yeah. So if you think it's a good idea, I got you,

Hanna Lopez  1:23:23  
yeah, let's do it. I love it. Yeah, that's all you need, guys,

Tracy Hayes  1:23:27  
I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Great conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you.