Josh and Katelynn Cotton: The Cotton Team 904

Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast. Your host. Tracy Hayes, today I have a unique team, a husband and wife real estate team that is one of the most successful teams in Northeast Florida. They've broken the mold from traditional real estate by utilizing innovative, hyper targeted marketing strategies, modern technology, a work hand in hand with professional creative teams throughout their office to list and sell homes. Let's learn more of what makes this young, amazing couple great at real estate, working together to lead a team, the Cotton Team. Let's welcome Caitlin and Josh cotton to the

Katelynn Cotton  1:37  
show, wow. Thank you for that amazing intro.

Tracy Hayes  1:41  
You're welcome for that. I appreciate you guys having, having come on, having Jennifer on now, Markham right last fall, and I've been watching what you guys have been doing, and now I'm in your building here. So this is great. So we're close by, but I'm going to kick off the show just kind of give a little bit of background, and we'll just just kind of go back and forth with the two of you versus, you know, normal podcast is one on one, but I'm getting used to doing this two on one interview, so I'm gonna bounce back a little back for so we'll start with ladies first, Caitlin, tell us a little about where are you from.

Katelynn Cotton  2:13  
Okay, so originally, I was born in LA. My parents, my mom, had a dream to become a singer, so they moved out there in their early 20s, and then they realized it was very expensive, and my dad got a really good job in Jacksonville, Florida, so that brought us here when I was three years old. And so I basically say I've been raised here my whole life, you know? But, yeah, I love it. I grew up in Ponte Vedra, and we live six minutes outside of nakati right now, and we really love it. I don't think we'll ever leave.

Tracy Hayes  2:43  
And you went to the University of Florida. UNF, I'm sorry. UNF, I did that off memory, and I got in my notes right here in front of me. So you, you you went to UNF, what did you study there? What was your What was your vision of what you wanted to do?

Katelynn Cotton  2:54  
So I actually wasn't real estate. Well, I always had a big interest in real estate. As a kid, I watched it wasn't HGTV. Do you remember, just like the real estate channel? I think it was channel 20, when we had cable, it would just show houses. I watched that all the time. I loved going to open houses with my parents. I would beg them take me to the open house. Like, I loved houses. I just, I try to be an architect when I was a kid, like, I love drawings, I love floor plans. But that was like a far away dream. I just felt like in my early 20s. I don't know why I didn't pursue it earlier than I did, but I actually went to UNF for elementary education. I love kids. I love teaching. I graduated. I was an education major. Oh, yeah, so much appreciation for our teachers, especially during the covid times and right now. I mean, their job is harder than ever, but I just learned really quick. I don't think I have the patience for teaching, and I just wanted to pursue real estate as my lifelong dream. So here I am.

Tracy Hayes  3:48  
Yeah, education, teaching, patience, that's amongst many other things. Yeah, I could never do it. Yeah, I'm a little older than you guys, probably almost twice your age, but you know, a little old school when I always say, I've said this on the show before, when I grew up as someone was in your face, it's because they care today, if you're in someone's face, they think you're trying to put them down or, you know, demean them in some way, shape or form. So I don't, I don't click with that

Katelynn Cotton  4:18  
kindergarten. So I think that was just really hard.

Tracy Hayes  4:21  
Yeah, yeah. Well, you grew up with the you guys are young enough that the parents, you know, obviously you heard the old story, the old stories before. I'm sure why you're teaching, you know, where the teacher called the Father, and the father came right in the right in the school and took his son out, whooped his button. Yeah. All right, Josh, how about you? Where are you from?

Josh Cotton  4:42  
I was born in Louisiana. I lived there for about five years, and then we moved to St Louis, Missouri, where I grew up. That's what I consider my hometown. Went to high school there, and then right out of high school, I actually moved here to Jacksonville when I was 19. 19, wanted to do something different. You know, when you start getting a little independence, you kind of want to leave the nest. So had a friend that just moved to Jacksonville, and we're like, hey, let's let's come down and check it out. And so I lived here for a couple years. Had fun, but my main goal at the time was to go to school. I didn't necessarily accomplish that while I was here, because I was living on the beach, but I did move back to St Louis to kind of get everything back in order, right? Got in school, saved up some money, stuff like that.

Tracy Hayes  5:27  
So that's it, Collin College, if I read that in your LinkedIn correctly, yeah.

Josh Cotton  5:32  
So that's from Dallas. So shortly after I got back to St Louis, I then moved down to Dallas, where I lived for seven years, and I did go to school there, and then, after living there for seven years, came back here to Jacksonville.

Tracy Hayes  5:45  
Okay, so you guys I know are sub 30, at least by my calculations. No, I

Josh Cotton  5:51  
wish I was a little older. He's a little Yeah. I wish I was Yeah. I like this game.

Tracy Hayes  5:58  
I just look at, you know, when people graduated from college, used to threat she did the straight thing. All right, so the obvious question is, as we lead into you guys, wants to tell the story of how, I want to know how you captured her, because I

Katelynn Cotton  6:16  
captured him. Oh, we kind of have, like, two different perspectives. I don't know. I'll start out, and then you can chime in. So I was 20. I just turned 26 so we actually met April six, 2000 it was at 18

Tracy Hayes  6:33  
or 732, in the evening,

Katelynn Cotton  6:36  
3pm so I joined. I used to do CrossFit, and I actually just randomly, just joined a new gym, and I just wanted to try it out. And they were having a bike and booze with like their CrossFit crew. So Josh doesn't do CrossFit. His friends happened to do CrossFit at that gym. So I was at Mellow Mushroom with some girls that I had met at the gym, and then their friend group was behind us being really loud and obnoxious, and gave us pizza. But I was like,

Tracy Hayes  7:05  
Oh my gosh, they could be loud, obnoxious,

Katelynn Cotton  7:08  
very attractive. He had like a tank top on. He was showing his muscles and his tattoos, and he offered me.

Tracy Hayes  7:16  
I did see some pictures on social media, guns tatted.

Katelynn Cotton  7:20  
Yeah, some nice muscles. So he offered me some pizza. And I was like, Yeah, but I was like, wait. And then he just turned away, though, and I was like, Wait, hold on.

Josh Cotton  7:29  
Wait to a girl's heart is not through drinks, it's through food. You're not

Katelynn Cotton  7:34  
gonna hit on me, like, or talk to

Josh Cotton  7:37  
rewind our friend, I had to work, so I got there way later than everybody else. But our friends have obviously been all day washed. So they ordered multiple pizzas and didn't any of them. I mean, three huge pizzas. So I started just giving pizza away. I wasn't special. He just gave everything. Yeah, they're behind us. He gives us a pizza. Okay, that's how it started. That's what opened up the conversation.

Katelynn Cotton  7:58  
I was like, wait, wait, wait, you're very cute. What's your name? Let's talk. We actually played an age game. I was like, because he was like, How old are you? And I was like, How old do you think I am? And he was like, 26 and I was like, Yeah, I actually am. And he was like, How old do you think I am? And then I guessed 30. And he was like, good. Guess he wasn't 30. I just changed the subject for about two months. I thought he was, like, a lot younger than he was, which the age thing isn't a big deal at all,

Josh Cotton  8:27  
but birthday was coming up, and I was like, finally I said something. I'm like, oh, turning 35 this year. So she's like, wait, what I thought you were 30 surprise. I mean,

Tracy Hayes  8:37  
since we're on the relationship, my wife is seven years younger than that. And, well, would you say you're not listening? But she probably is a little more mature. I mean, isn't that kind of thing with the girl? Because if he was 26 he probably too immature. Yeah, too immature for you as being a 26 year

Katelynn Cotton  8:59  
old, I'm very glad I like the age gap, and I had some growing up to do, I will admit that, you know, he taught me some things.

Josh Cotton  9:05  
Yeah, we met at a good time. I mean, I, I was had bought my third house by then, and, you know, had obviously my cars and had a good job and everything. So I think that's somebody who she needed was kind of stable like that, versus when I was 26 probably have been that at all 100% 100%

Tracy Hayes  9:22  
I can relate to that story completely. So you are fancying real estate as you grow up. You're watching the programs. When do you start getting a taste for real estate? What leads you in that direction?

Katelynn Cotton  9:36  
So that's like part of our story. Sorry, I don't mean to chime in. So I had just failed the real estate test, like, a week before I met him, and then I took it again the next week I passed. Woo hoo. It is a hard

Tracy Hayes  9:50  
time. Help you study for the second No. So I was,

Katelynn Cotton  9:54  
like, a teacher. I was a preschool teacher at the time. I was nanny, and I was like, I really want to get into the business. This, I want to get into real estate. So I passed, got my license, joined a brokerage, and then I worked my sphere, and I sold like five homes right off the bat, one being his, because he was in the middle of a flip or renovation at the time.

Josh Cotton  10:13  
So this is where we our first listing was my house. Yeah, my first listing ever. I mean, we were talking dating, I guess, you know, at that point, for about three or four months, you know, nothing crazy serious yet, but we so I was like, All right, you can sell my house, but I had a realtor that I used to buy the house was very experienced, and she obviously was brand new, and just starting, I was like, All right, I'll do, I'll do a deal with you. Yeah? I'll do a deal like, but you have to give me 1%

Josh Cotton  10:40  
Yeah, I gave her a kickback, yeah? Hey, she got her first listening, yeah, I learned a lot. Hopefully you got the

Tracy Hayes  10:48  
kickback back. So,

Katelynn Cotton  10:51  
yeah, it all goes to one house. Now,

Tracy Hayes  10:54  
are you like, are you licensed at this time, she she got, she got licensed first.

Josh Cotton  10:58  
Yeah, she got licensed first. Just to fast forward through a bunch of stuff like, basically, I was a banker for 10 years. I was a private banker for JP Morgan Chase. I did that in Dallas, and when I transferred here to Jacksonville, I transferred in that position. I worked in St Augustine, then I worked at the town center. And my goal was always to work for myself in some sort of fashion. I'd always been interested in doing a franchise of some sort, because it's a proven business model. Always just had a huge entrepreneurial mindset. And so I started, I dipped my toe into real estate, basically by flipping houses. So I would, you know, buy a house and renovate it, flip it. And so when I moved here to Jacksonville, I had bought my third flip, and that's the one that she sold. Still never really thought about real estate as a career. You know, I watched Million Dollar Listing and stuff like that, like everybody does. I'm like, Wow, that's amazing. That's pretty cool. But, you know, I was like, that's not realistic. Probably in Jacksonville, you know, Lisa, those numbers they were doing, but when she got her real estate license, and I'm sitting behind this is right when covid started. So we were pretty slow at the bank. Not many people are coming in. I'm just sitting there all day on my phone, and she's like, closing deals and then, but she also has a lot of free time, and then she starts making more money than I'm making. And I did pretty well. No, no, yeah, we I mean, I did well at banking, you know, close to six figures most years. And so I was comfortable, but I was bored. And I obviously, like I said, I had a passion to be an entrepreneur, so I was just waiting for that right moment. I had some money saved up. I had just sold the house, and I see how well she's doing, and I'm like, well, maybe I can get into real estate, because I'm good at sales. That's what I do on the bank side, anyways. And so sitting there at Chase Bank, started studying for the real estate exam. You know, I had so much free time on my right

Tracy Hayes  12:47  
so, Caitlin, you're, you get started. You landed some deals quickly. And if you know, I'm not going to mention your previous brokerage, I know, if you want to mention that's, that's totally, you know, we'll talk about it. That's what. But what, one thing I like to reach out, especially to newer agents, or agents that maybe are hit a lid. And this is where, you know, the Cotton Team kind of comes in. What sort of things were they doing that help you get off to a little quicker start.

Katelynn Cotton  13:12  
So I actually learned everything from YouTube as my first, like, six months into the business, I door knocked Ponte Vedra Boulevard when I was a brand new agent, literally had I like, fear that was, I think, before I sold your house, and I'm going in this $4 million I'm just like, I'm just trying to, like, do anything I can to drum up business. And, yeah, you kind of have to be fearless. You have to put yourself out there. I got, like, I would say, kind of lucky, like I was working my sphere. So I did like, five personal deals that first six months. But then I was kind of like twiddling my thumbs, like, Okay, I didn't have any online lead source. I didn't have the best training or mentorship. So I was just kind of like, Hmm, maybe I should join a team. So I did join a team. I completely that was also when I was the same brokerage, and, no, I went to a different brokerage. Yeah, I joined a team. I learned a lot. It was great for you know, the time I was there, I put like, 13 under contract my first 90 days, like, I it like, clicked when I had good mentorship and everything I learned, like, Okay, this is what it means to be a realtor. This is how I can work online leads. I totally get that.

Josh Cotton  14:19  
I always say it was like, boot camp, like, yeah, boot camp. Learned everything. Got the discipline, and then, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  14:26  
Is it common? Because you've been on a team, you know, run a team that, when you do bring someone in that you put them on that 9120, day schedule, this is what you're going to do. Is that very common, as far as real estate teams, to have that very structure. Yes, because I, I just assume being from the outside, the perception is coming from corporate America. You kind of need that before you could start to open your eyes what this business is all about.

Katelynn Cotton  14:52  
I would say, if you run your team correctly, yes, like, you should have like, guidelines and short term goals. Like, okay. Okay, you're going to do all of the you're going to learn all of our procedures, systems. We're going to role play this many times a week. You're going to come to our meetings. You're going to shadow me, you know, you're going to come on my listing appointments. And then you should have this money under contract within 90 days, 120 days, whatever it may be,

Josh Cotton  15:17  
which is standard, is usually two to three. That's pretty reasonable, especially last year that was, you

Katelynn Cotton  15:23  
want to make sure that they convert. If you're paying for these leads and you're giving them, you want to make sure that they are able to close the deal.

Josh Cotton  15:29  
So her doing 13 and 90 days was obviously very good.

Katelynn Cotton  15:33  
So then the light bulb clicked. I was like, Okay, I my my entrepreneurial spirit. Was like, I want to take the best parts that I'm learning from this team, and I want to start my own team with. And then we were engaged, and we got married. That was covid, 2020 We got married in our living room.

Josh Cotton  15:51  
Hey, that's a story, right there. Yeah. I mean,

Katelynn Cotton  15:53  
we were like, spend 70 grand on a wedding, or let's spend 70,000 towards a new house. We started the Cotton Team with, I think it was, what, 60 grand in our bank account, and we're like, Okay, we're good. We need to make a sale within six months. Hopefully we can do that. And we did

Tracy Hayes  16:10  
so you guys eventually, because you joined the same brokerage that she was with. And if I saw that correctly, well,

Josh Cotton  16:16  
so what happened was the broker that she was with basically said, you know, if he joins a different brokerage, then I'm gonna have to go. So I was like, Well, I want to try something different, just to see we wanted to get, you know, different points of view. So I wanted to try a different brokerage, interesting. And so that's what initially happened. So she's like, well, unfortunately, you know, Josh just passed his test. He's once go with this brokerage. You already told me you're gonna have to let me go. So I guess this is my two weeks, and, you know, well,

Katelynn Cotton  16:42  
and I wanted Josh to have his own experience, you know, I didn't want him to be because I already knew how that team worked. Like, I wanted it like been in the business, what, eight months or so, yeah, like, I would say by that time it was, like it was a year, a year and a half, maybe. And so then we went to another brokerage together, started our team there, and then we learned very quickly that wasn't the brokerage for us. And well,

Tracy Hayes  17:06  
in not to say the name, we'll protect the names. Yeah, but just so I think one thing about our industry is we only know what we know, and unless you're talking to other people or have experienced it, you don't know. So someone's listening out there an agent, someone thinking about being an agent, against listening to the show, and it wasn't working for you. Now, that may be totally different for people that are there. May actually work for someone who's there, but what was it for you guys that wasn't working at that brokerage that you guys had spelled, you had to move?

Katelynn Cotton  17:36  
I think they just weren't like up to date with what was going on in the market, and we needed, like, that guidance and, like, the market pivots, and so we need to pivot our business structure and like, what we're doing, and it was just really old school tactics that they were preaching all the time. And like, that wasn't necessarily like, what we wanted to do with our business, you know, like the way that they sourced leads and everything, and we wanted just to go a different route. So it just wasn't an altogether good fit.

Tracy Hayes  18:03  
All right, I'm an old dude, so what's an old school way versus the you know?

Katelynn Cotton  18:07  
Hey, I'm gonna call Betty my best friend at tennis, and Betty every three months I'm gonna call you and you better give me a lead, you know, that kind of stuff. Like, I don't want

Josh Cotton  18:18  
to be asked them to be like a referral source or referral partner, and even though they're just a friend, well, there are people that like sing your praises from the mountaintops. That's, that's the type of person you're supposed to ask to do that for you, which it does work, and you should still have that should be a part of your business. But their main focus was, like, that's like 90% of your business, because they didn't do anything with online leads. Well, you know, in this day and age with all the technology like, that's where most people are shopping, is through Zillow, realtor.com, and all these well, especially,

Tracy Hayes  18:47  
start a team young, yeah, and get it going, you need to have that influx.

Katelynn Cotton  18:53  
Well, yeah, what's the point of us starting a team? If we're not going to provide for them, we're just going to say, hey, work your sphere. Call Betty every year.

Josh Cotton  19:00  
They can just do that on their own. So yeah, we just our structure and the the knowledge, like they knew what they were doing to an extent, but it was also a newer brokerage person they brought in to do all the education. He obviously had been been in the business for a long time, but it was still always kind of just very surface level on what we learned and then. But I was fine. I was like, whatever we're doing our own team, we're doing our own thing. I was kind of, like, on a kind of, like, on an island. And she was,

Tracy Hayes  19:27  
you had to go out and discover a lot of the things, yeah, shells versus getting

Katelynn Cotton  19:30  
but I was like, I don't want to be on an island. I want my brokerage to feel like home, like I want to be able to call them anytime, and like, I want to feel like, very confident that they are giving me the right guidance and the answers to my questions, you know. So then I'm, like, scrolling on Google. I'm like, I don't, I didn't want to go to a big corporate, you know, brokerage. I wanted to go somewhere, like local, maybe, like a boutique brokerage with 100 agents or so. Like, the number didn't matter to me. I just wanted that, like, family, community, feeling.

Tracy Hayes  20:00  
You want to put on the, I call it putting on the Jersey you're on that team, you're going to wear, that, that name, that label, and you're going to represent. You want to be proud of what you're

Josh Cotton  20:09  
representing. Yeah, you're not embarrassed

Katelynn Cotton  20:11  
to me and I wasn't, yeah, very proud of has to be of self.

Tracy Hayes  20:15  
How was so. And I guarantee this is not the only brokerage out there like that. So as as young people, you grew up with technology. Were they talking about social media? Because this is only what two years ago, right? Yeah, they were big with social media. Social media was actually in the play.

Katelynn Cotton  20:31  
It just wasn't like online leads, which is like what I became really good at, and I wanted to implement in our team. So it just like

Josh Cotton  20:40  
she learned from her brokerage like that. I called the boot camp like they got online leads from Zillow. So you learn very quickly how to convert those leads. And you know, you can do really well. Yeah, once you, once you, once it clicks, you can do really well with it. So we wanted to replicate that. So this is a

Tracy Hayes  20:55  
question off my list here, or anything. But just talking about online leads and in the team concept, I assume, the ideology, though, is the is to wean off, is to eventually get to a point where you've done enough deals, you have, you have mastered, or at a mastery level of marketing, your circle of influencing marketing, your past clients, you know, that sort of thing. How long? I mean, I guess you guys probably listen to stuff, where, at what point are the pros telling you that someone should eventually, you know, after so many years, they should be on their own? Is there? Is there a number for that?

Katelynn Cotton  21:33  
So, I mean, there's a top producer and our brokerage, Erica, Jala. She's amazing. Love her. She does a lot like

Tracy Hayes  21:41  
coming on the show. I believe the 31st awesome.

Katelynn Cotton  21:43  
She's a good time. She's 40, 50 million a year, and she still pays for Zillow, just because it's extra icing on the cake. You know,

Tracy Hayes  21:50  
she has the bandwidth to handle it.

Josh Cotton  21:52  
Yeah, it's just a pillar of your business. It's not all of them. And so initially, when you're starting a team, and we wanted to grow quickly, which we did, you need to feed your team leads? That's why they're joining your team, among other things. But the main reason is, you're going to give them leads that they can try to convert, and you teach them how to convert. So initially, you know, we go with like Zillow, realtor.com, couple other lead sources, and we're getting, we're paying a lot of money for these Zillow leads per month, and they're rolling in. And then we're teaching our team how to convert now, once they get to a point where they've converted 2030 leads, they now have all these like referral sources, as long as you know they had a good transaction.

Katelynn Cotton  22:32  
We always say, you know, every online lead you get, you should try to get one or two additional out of that,

Josh Cotton  22:38  
whether it's them buying again an investment property, or they're referring you a friend or family member from that. So our goal was to like the team that she came from the boot camp. Their main focus is to always be lead source, 100% online, where we want to be a hybrid, where we're doing, yes, a part of that is our business, but we also want our agents to get really good at working their sphere, door knocking, doing events, open houses, open houses, all that good stuff, right?

Katelynn Cotton  23:04  
We're a good mixture of everything, because we want them to be well rounded agents, because at the end of the day, online leads are awesome, but the conversion is only like 10% Yeah? So you have to have a ton, and you have to call a lot to get some yeses. You're going to get a lot of no's first

Josh Cotton  23:19  
which we were at 14% last year, which is really, really good. We were like, in the top 1% on Zillow. But the leads is the market shifts completely changed, right? So they're not these people that are ready to go buy a house in a weekend anymore. Now it's, it's back to kind of a normal market where they're like, I just want to kind of browse. I might buy in a year from now. Well, if you're spending all this money on Zillow, us, as the business owners, every month, you have to get that money back within the next month or two, otherwise you're going to be floating nine months worth of leads without the return. So we are shifting our business towards like we were just talking about more of the hybrid, you know, the referral sources, open houses, door knocking back to kind of the old school realtor, if you will.

Tracy Hayes  24:01  
Well, you know, everyone that I have had on the show, and this is episode 83 so roughly 75 agents, most of them high producers. They are doing all those steps. Now, obviously, it depends on how much bandwidth you have to. I mean, some of them don't want to, you know, they're, they're busy enough, they're maxing out. They don't want to hire that other transaction coordinator, or partner up with another buyer's agent or whatever, because that's what you need to eventually do to keep to do the $50 million a type thing, and you have to be doing the old school steps. The guest I had on Monday, we're talking about, she's thank you cards, five of them a day. You know, I've had numerous agents bring that up old school, you know, the guy who sold all the cars, you know, sending the cards out to all his past clients every month, reminding me, I'm here. I love you. Send me, Send me a referral. And you know, of course, the old agents, you know, talk about how they that's all they deal off. And I think it's a you have to. Work that, and the only way to work that is the online leads allows, if I can use this analogy, and you guys can agree or disagree with me, I, and I have said this before, real estate agent when I was growing up, when I was, you know, 2025, years ago, when I was your age, they were most of the time that wife typically not, not to be biased in a sexual way, but the wife of the banker at Citibank, she was doing it as a hobby. She just, she was in it. And then, you know, by the time she was 5560 years old, she was doing all the all because she had just been doing it so long in the area. And everyone knew her as the age in the area. Now, younger people can enter this space and but it takes that lead, that lead generation, the online leads, to get the Jumpstart so you can start earning the income before you start weaning up. You just, you're just closing that gap, yeah, the time gap of having to be in. I mean,

Josh Cotton  25:55  
you can certainly do, like, her first brokerage, like we mentioned, didn't have much support. She passed her test, and they're like, All right, good luck. She was like, Well, what do I do now? And then she YouTube.

Katelynn Cotton  26:03  
Josh was like, I feel like they're just throwing you in there and not giving you help. And I was like, Well, I think that's what real estate is, kind of like, like, I had no idea

Josh Cotton  26:11  
coming from Chase. I got the real you know, we had training once a week. Like, yeah, all the support I could ever want or need. So I'm like, why aren't you getting on the internal site? Between managers and knowledge and everything. So I was like, why aren't you getting that in real estate? I was

Katelynn Cotton  26:27  
writing contracts before I knew what the contract said, you know. And then I would, like, call, like, my mentor, and I'd be like, can you check this? And she would, she would go through it thoroughly with me, but, like, I didn't know what I was doing, right, you know?

Tracy Hayes  26:38  
Right? The I'm just gonna throw Keller Williams out there, because Paige Wiseman was on on Monday. I forgot Paige's name for there for a few seconds, but and she was talking, you know, she's been with Keller Williams all time, because they have been successful in their own right. Some people agree or disagree with how they, you know, do it. And every franchise is a little different. But they had that training early for her. They had that structured environment. Now, of course, she caught on, I think, quicker than most, because time period, as she was talking about, you know, I know a few agents in the area that are really great that started about the same time, prior to 2008 collapse, but they had that. But yeah, like you're saying, Why don't they have those internal sites? And it takes a larger Keller Williams, the financial input into it, and that goes back to your what you're saying. They just throw you out there. And you know, they know 80% are you going to fall out? Like, are they waiting for? The 80% of drop out? And then start teaching you what are they what are they waiting for?

Josh Cotton  27:37  
Why those brokerages charge like, I mean, not all of them, but some of them charge, like, office fees or desk fees, and so at the end of the day, they're not really concerned because they're going to

Katelynn Cotton  27:46  
get there. And not everyone is like a natural born leader and like a mentor and like, doesn't see the full picture. You know, they're just, like, wanting to start a brokerage and then put people in place, but maybe they just didn't think about all of the systems and procedures support, yeah, and

Tracy Hayes  28:02  
then how the support got to them, which kind of goes into a little bit of the next couple of questions that I have. Is for you guys, you've been in the business just a few years, but you have a team. You're leading people. What are you guys? And maybe it's a little different for each one of you. So each of you comment, what are you doing to keep yourself ahead of them. So you are leading the people that are on the Cotton Team,

Josh Cotton  28:26  
guess I can tell you. So we, you know, a lot of leaders or bosses, if you will, they lead from like the top. We like to say we're down in the trenches with them. And we still go door knocking. We still do the events, open houses when we can. We? We're still very much selling, you know, day to day, so we're in the trenches with them. So I think part of that is they respect us, because we're not just telling them what to do and then just going and

Tracy Hayes  28:51  
laying it 15 years of doing $15 Yeah.

Josh Cotton  28:56  
So we're still very much, very active in it. We try to do everything by example, everything that we preach we do, and it works. And they see that like, oh, what you just told us you just did, and it works. So then they're more inclined to like, Okay, I'm gonna really listen and do what you're saying. And that's why some of our agents have really excelled, because we they do exactly what we say.

Tracy Hayes  29:16  
So interesting. So obviously, you've been in corporate America with Citibank before Chase, I'm sorry, and, and I've been in corporate bank, corporate world longer than that. How important is it to have a leader like that that, actually, you know? Because I think when you when you have that, I I hope I have that here with John sitting on the other side, that they have your back, right? They're in it. They're just as involved. They're not sitting in, you know, over in Orlando, or they're sitting in Atlanta or whatever, and they're, they're giving direction, you know, maybe you see them at a social if you're in the real estate world, but they're not really, they're not really doing it anymore. And I have, I've seen in corporate America where owners of corporations, luckily, they have some people under. Them, keeping them alive, because the mindset of them is, like, 15 years ago, kind of like you were saying the initial brokerage, you're doing an old school, you know, how important is it to have that, you know, that leader in the trenches,

Josh Cotton  30:12  
I think it's hugely important. So, like with the other brokerage we were just talking about, he was leading from what he used to do, but we never saw it happen. Like, he's saying, like, oh yeah, this works. This works. This works. And we're like, Okay, well, let's see it work, because we're trying and it's not working. And that's kind of like, well, I don't really know if this works anymore, you know. So I think for our agents, being able to see, like, door knocking is hard. It's not fun, and especially in this weather, it's hard, you know. But like, we've shown them examples where we've knocked on a door and we've later converted those leads like so they've seen it, or open houses, same thing. I think it's hugely important.

Katelynn Cotton  30:48  
Yeah, I always say, like, Okay, here's the protocol. If you follow this, like you are guaranteed success. You just have to do the work. You have to do the things like, real estate is not easy. You're chasing people's business all the time, and this is an oversaturated market. There's a ton of agents. You have a ton of competition, and buyers are liars. Sometimes they're not the most committal. So especially with online leads like you, we just have to show up and give the best first impression, you know. So we talked about doing driveway consultations like we talk every Monday and Friday at our meetings, like, Okay, we learned this. This didn't work. How's this going? Brett, you know, that offer that you wrote, why did it not get accepted? That conversation you had? Why didn't you get your buyer engagement agreement, you know, signed? What can you what can we say differently next time with these conversations, right?

Tracy Hayes  31:37  
How important is it? Especially, you know, with Well, I think anyone doesn't matter how old you are, you have to be consistent in what you're doing. In our business, whether you're on the loan side or on the on the agent side, you have to be consistent. And the reality is, you only need a few deals a month to be pretty successful and do really well. But I'm more of a like. I'm focused on like, how many number, how many units, right? I'm not focused on the volume, or, you know what, my check will show up on the day it's supposed to get paid, right? I don't I'm not focused on that. I'm not counting that. But to keep them focused on the keeping the main thing, the main thing, and like said, door knocking. Like, how many doors you're going to knock on to eventually, people are going to answer. And you may only have to do this for a year or two. And all of a sudden you're going to have enough clients that they'll be calling you, you know, what do you do to keep them focused on on that?

Katelynn Cotton  32:31  
I think so we do, like, a lot of short term goal planning. So like, every quarter, like, we'll sit with them, we'll say, okay, like, how many units do you want to sell? Like, how many conversions? And this has been like a tough market, not gonna lie, like last year, like everyone was feeling it, like we had an amazing year. It was just like a completely different market. And it was also hard. You had to go show a house right away, you know, because it's gonna go under contract within an hour this year. It's definitely just been different, you know, with the increased interest rates now buyers, like we, our buyer pool is less, and then sellers are kind of on the fence again, you know. But I think keeping them focused is just keeping them accountable. You do calls every day, so prospecting is huge for us.

Josh Cotton  33:10  
We concentrate on having conversations more than just, Oh, you got 50 calls, but nobody talked to anybody, zero people. Well, then you didn't really move the needle. So you have to have conversations, because that's actually going to get you somewhere in your business. So we make sure they concentrate on the conversation.

Tracy Hayes  33:26  
Because today, in today's market, as you're talking about the slow down a little bit and have those conversations because they are now, well, we're not sure right now, maybe if the right house shows up, because inventory is low, you know, we may do something. So you got to, like, you got to really build that relationship more so than a year ago. You know, last year was, how fast can you write the contract and and then, you know, negotiating accepted for you. You're just, like, right into it. Now it's you gotta you're nurturing.

Katelynn Cotton  33:53  
It's a lot of nurturing we're seeing right now. We have also a lot of out of state buyers, so it's like, you know, nurturing that relationship, getting, like, them in touch with a realtor, maybe in New York, and, like, waiting for their house to sell, like, it's just, like, it's a lot of touch points right now before you actually make the sale, is what we're finding. But, you know, the prices are good, so our team is okay, but we

Josh Cotton  34:16  
also concentrate in like, we're, this is what we're talking about earlier. We're like, hybrid team. We don't just rely on the Zillow leads and stuff anymore. Like we've gotten leads from our social media. We have a YouTube channel. We've gotten leads from that, like really good leads. So we try to have as many different channels where leads can come in, because maybe one comes from here, one comes from there. It all adds up to three or four for that month you have in a good month, you know, if you're only relying on one channel. Say you took Zillow out completely and you're only relying on referrals. Yeah, you may get one or two, but why not have a lead source on this side so where you can get three or four, five or six? So I think that's really important to have all those buckets

Tracy Hayes  34:54  
change a little bit. I want you to think internally right now when you. First got out there, you shouldn't have the brokerage with the leadership, but personally, now you went knocked on doors, so you had this, yeah, that takes a lot. Someone says they knocked on doors that that's a lot, or, you know, even the true cold calling type of stuff. But what internal challenges did you have to overcome? Whether it was just a maturity growth, a mindset when, you know, in that first year, what are some of the personal we want to call mental challenges or growth challenges, you had to,

Katelynn Cotton  35:33  
well, I think just always being like, Am I doing the right thing? You know, I, like, I had someone looking over the contracts for me. But like, you know, when you're in front of someone and they're asking you questions, and, like, this is your first few transactions, and I don't really have someone to call, you know, just like, kind of like, second guessing myself, I would say, and also, just like the inexperience I had, I had to trying

Tracy Hayes  35:57  
to throw that back at you from This so knowing that someone's a new agent, they're watching right now, or they're listening this podcast three months from now, they're dealing or, you know, they can envision them having that same challenge. How are you doing it now as a leader?

Katelynn Cotton  36:12  
So I take that girl that just got licensed had, like, no direction, and I like, I'm in their shoes, and that's how we really structured, our mentorship, our boot camp, you know, like, I'm not going to let you go show house if you haven't shadowed me. Or we have them write five fake contracts and read the contracts like six times and I we ask them questions, and we have them explain the contracts like as if we were a buyer. We do a lot of role play with our agents, so just getting them ready for the real world. And yes, they're going to learn a lot when they're actually out in the field, but we want to set them up for success where they're like, Oh, I did actually learn this, like last week from Josh and Caitlin, they told me about this, you know, you

Tracy Hayes  36:55  
know, that's, that's a common theme of the top producers, is that contract and knowing it. And I think I had somebody that talked about how they actually wanted to be able to be able to turn it and like they're showing a customer, and be able to read it upside down, yeah and nowhere. Or someone says something about whatever, and they go, oh, yeah, that's on page two line whatever.

Katelynn Cotton  37:14  
Well, and we teach that like you want to go over the contract with them in that initial consultation, because when you're writing an offer, you don't want to be on the phone for two hours explaining what each thing says you want to get the offer in, you know? But, yeah, the

Josh Cotton  37:28  
first offer you wrote was, like, took you two three hours to do because you had no idea what you're doing, which is fine, because you weren't taught. But like, now all of our agents, we can write an offer and be accurate within like, 10 minutes or so, because we know everything that's on there. We know everything we need to do so.

Katelynn Cotton  37:44  
But also, when you're you know, doing the consultation with the buyers, like when the agents are actually out in the field, we do like a first greeting consultation. We try to at least but not every buyer agrees to go have coffee after a showing. A lot of times they just want to see the house, especially Zillow leads. But that's why we do, like, driveway consultations, but we give them our buyer's guide. We ask them, like, what their goals are. We just really want to, like, get that relationship started and show them our worth, so they don't just go back on Zillow to go tour a house with another agent. So yeah, the worst thing that happens is, like, if your agent doesn't know the contract, and they're like, What does this mean? And and then the agents, like, um, you know, like, let me look

Josh Cotton  38:26  
at that paragraph again.

Tracy Hayes  38:28  
How about you, Josh, what were so many challenges? Obviously, I think, I think women have an advantage over us in sales. As far as they don't know they have it, but they do. Yeah, what challenges did you have?

Josh Cotton  38:40  
Well, I think a big thing for me, because I've always been very outgoing, very social networks, everything like that. So being from St Louis, I have a huge network there. I had a ton of friends. Like, I always think, like, if I would have started real estate in St Louis, like, I probably hit the ground running, because I had my right people talk everywhere. Yeah, I had circles and spheres everywhere. And even in Dallas, I had a pretty had built up being there for seven years. So here, being in Jacksonville, I'd only been back for like, two or three years, which is still a decent amount of time, but it's like, it's not a lifetime. If, like, you grow up somewhere, you have

Tracy Hayes  39:13  
an area, yeah, that half the people you did meet the two or three years probably didn't move somewhere.

Josh Cotton  39:17  
And the reason I moved back here to Jacksonville was because all my friends were here as soon as I moved back, three of them moved away. I'm like, okay, so yeah. I mean, everybody's moving around, especially in this day and age. Like a lot of people can work from home, so they're remote. They can move all over the country now, so people are coming and going a lot more. So yeah, your network, you always just have to be out there networking with new people, because if you don't have that, then that's source you're missing. So how?

Tracy Hayes  39:46  
Because I've had some top agents on and couple them regret not digging into their circle, their personal circle quicker from the get go. Yeah. So how important is it, or what are some of the things that you guys do to. To not your past customers, I mean, because that's, you know, but just just your friends, because we have to remind them what we do all the time. Yes, unless we're like, hanging out with them every weekend, they don't remember what we did half the time if you hadn't seen

Katelynn Cotton  40:11  
them well. I mean, we're big on social media, so all of our friends follow us there, and I think we post at

Josh Cotton  40:16  
least Caitlin's really good at like you've closed so many sphere leads I have. There's some that obviously always fall through the cracks, but you've she's closed a lot, yeah, a lot of our just regular out of nowhere deals just become like, oh, so and so reached out to me, or I reached out to them just to say, Hey, how's it going? And then they close the deal.

Tracy Hayes  40:33  
Social media has aided that top of mind thing. Do you guys do anything else? Or you try to get everyone on a birthday card list, or your big Christmas cards. I mean, how regularly do you try to touch

Katelynn Cotton  40:46  
them well? So for our past clients, yes, like, we're I send flowers on their like home year anniversary, but that is on our to do list, is to like, actually send them like so something we want to get

Josh Cotton  41:00  
better at we want to get more consistent at, because we do do it. But again, a couple of falling through in the cracks, we get busy.

Katelynn Cotton  41:06  
Busy. Last year I wanted to drop off. I think this is such a great idea, like pies for like Thanksgiving or Christmas, you know, something cute to like all of our past clients. But I was, like, nine months pregnant, and I was just not feeling it. I didn't want to do that this year, but yeah, we

Josh Cotton  41:22  
can bring our baby and be like, Yeah, it's

Katelynn Cotton  41:24  
really important to, like, touch those past clients, because you never know. Like, if they're going to give you, they all, they will give you a referral if you're top of mind, you know, so it is important and you want to show your appreciation like they helped you close the transaction.

Josh Cotton  41:38  
Well, even in something as simple is we have a lot of good systems in place. We use Boomtown, which does a lot of the hard work for you. You can set people up on two to three year drips, and it'll automatically go out on an email that you typed. It just goes out in timed intervals when you want it to go out. So it's great because, again, you get busy, you have all these different clients who've closed in the past. You can't keep up with everything, so the system definitely helps you. It'll send out an email from you, and then that client responds and emails simply like, hey, you've been your home for a year. Hope everything's going well. Hope you still love it. If you don't, I can sell it for you, something funny like that. And then they always reach out, Hey, Josh, yeah, thanks for loving it. Everything's going great, actually, you know what, I've been thinking about, getting into investing. Great, let's meet and get coffee, and then that's, you know, at least, or that's where you get another lead, right?

Tracy Hayes  42:28  
All right, I'm gonna change gears just a little bit, and really, let's focus on the Cotton Team. Okay, you're from that standpoint. You guys were young, you moved to the brokerage. He he gets licensed. You go to this brokerage together. Now, at that point was just, Hey, are you married? At this time, we're married. So you're just like, oh, just the two of us are at that point, you're like, hey, we're ready to start recruiting agents and and so for what was that? What was that mindset? Because I want to kind of build a story of what, what you guys were thinking. Because I think anyone looking at all these guys are maybe in the business two or three years what gets you into like, hey, I want to, I want to invest and invest in other people. Because it takes a lot of energy. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm 1099, they're not paying me to be Oh, trust me, they're paying you because they're pouring your knowledge into you. And that takes a lot of energy to train people up to

Josh Cotton  43:19  
a successful team. Takes a lot of energy. Yeah, you can run a team if he doesn't take much energy, if it's not successful, yeah. So to really be involved, it does take a lot of energy, a

Tracy Hayes  43:27  
lot of a lot of energy there. So what's your mindset? You use? He jumps in with you. You move over this new brokerage. Are you at that point thinking about, hey, I want to have a 10 person team, or what? What's your what's going on in your mind?

Katelynn Cotton  43:40  
So we okay. So I was wanting to leave our said brokerage together. I was wanting to come to a local brokerage. So I was Googling local brokerages near me.

Josh Cotton  43:50  
But we did actually have two agents on our team at the old brokerage already. We had already recruited two. And the initial goal was, like, small, like, All right, let's maybe just do five,

Katelynn Cotton  44:00  
yeah, because we just had got Boomtown, we had, like, all these procedures in place, like, we had a big vision. But I was like, I just don't feel like we can really, like, elevate here, like, this is just not the right space for us. So then I looked at round table realty's website, and I saw the cute video of Keith and Howard, and it said, like, contact us. And so I was just like, hey, I'm not happy at my brokerage. My husband does not want to leave, but I really want to Howard. Howard emailed me right away at like, 10pm at night. He was like, Hey, can you talk on the phone tomorrow? And I was like, yeah. And so I had a conversation with him, and Josh didn't really know at the time. And then I was like, I really want us to go meet these brokers. They just sound so genuine, they sound so knowledgeable. They're people before property. I love that little slogan, let's just go meet them. And he was like, really reluctant.

Josh Cotton  44:54  
I don't want to go. I'm like, We're fine. We're doing our own thing a brokerage hopper.

Katelynn Cotton  44:58  
You know? He was just like, we can do our own. Thing, no, this was, like, totally game changing. Just like the two hour conversation we had with him, he taught us so much and opened our eyes to, like, all of like, the technology they use here, just like the marketing, like, just the programs and things that we could do for our clients that we just had no idea. And Josh was like, Holy shit, okay, I'm ready, sorry. He's like, Yeah, I didn't want he's like, I didn't want to leave. But like, now I'm 100% sold.

Josh Cotton  45:27  
Well, it was even it was just simple stuff that, like, you should know on the contract, or you should be taught at our old brokers that we weren't learning, that he would like, oh, well, did you know about this? We're like, No. And you're like, do you know about this? We're like, no. He's like, Well, do you know about this? We're like, no. We're like, Oh my gosh. My eyes opened up, like we don't know anything.

Katelynn Cotton  45:44  
Yeah, if we're gonna lead a team, we need to know our stuff.

Josh Cotton  45:48  
You know somebody behind you, like a brokerage, that's really way more knowledgeable than yourself, right? Because that's who you're gonna use to lean on.

Tracy Hayes  45:56  
Well, you guys are, you guys are leading a team. And then my question earlier was, you know, what are you doing to stay in front of them? And Howard's got to do that. And obviously he's got many more years experience. And the top brokers in the area are always out there searching, what's the latest thing? What's the industry doing so they can and I love this. Sarah Rocco gave me this, but it's common sense value, you have to continue to give value. So him giving you guys value, you saw value coming over right away, and then that value has to translate from you guys to, you know, the peeps that you're leading.

Josh Cotton  46:32  
Generally. I think he just gave us the fuel we needed to really take us to the next level. Like just his their energy, their knowledge, everything, like they just believers of us. Like, it all just helped us. Like, okay, let's do this. And we just, we, like, buckle down and like, really refine our systems and make sure we had everything in place. And then we do a lot of behind the scenes. Like, you're asking, how do we stay ahead of our agents? Is we're listening to podcasts every day. We're reading. We're like, we do everything, like, tons of knowledge, as much as we can, every day, every week, and then we applied that with ourselves. And then we're like, okay, that worked. Well, let's, then I'll tell this to our team. So that's kind of how we do that. Yeah, moving over here was definitely like,

Katelynn Cotton  47:13  
yeah, decision ever with all the, you

Tracy Hayes  47:16  
know, the YouTube you mentioned, you just mentioned the podcast too. I mean, do you directly share the podcast? Like, oh, my god, you guys,

Josh Cotton  47:23  
yeah, sometimes, if it's a really like, Okay, this is a main focus. We want to, like, there's one from home light that they this team did where they would do these boxes for listings. And we were like, Oh, that's a great idea. Let's try it. And we tried it out, and it's been a great hit. So we wanted our team to, like, soak up everything from that podcast.

Katelynn Cotton  47:39  
We'll have them listen to it, and then we'll do like, a takeaway on Friday.

Josh Cotton  47:43  
What did you all take away from this?

Tracy Hayes  47:45  
And they'll each give their version. That is, that's leadership right there. Because you have been in corporate America, they're not doing that. Only the really, that unicorn leader is doing that and sharing the knowledge that they're taking and going, hey, you need to watch that YouTube video I just watched that was that's got some great stuff. Instead of you trying to recreate the YouTube video in front of them, it's like, it's already there.

Josh Cotton  48:08  
Well, it's like the game of telephone. You know, you may catch some of this stuff, but you don't say it all correctly, or everything that you wanted to. So have them watch the actual YouTube video, or listen to the podcast. They hear exactly what you heard, and then hopefully the light bulb clicks for them too, like it did for us, right, right?

Tracy Hayes  48:24  
Well, I think that's very interesting. Light Bulb clicking like minded people. And we tend to see to attract like minded people to ourselves, you know. And hopefully your team leads, the core of your team clicks with you, because they think the same. They'll listen to that podcast, and they'll not only the light bulb that went off for you, they might even find another light bulb and go bulb and go Hold on second. Did you also hear on this edit here?

Josh Cotton  48:46  
That's why we do the takeaways. Because, like, what did you take away? Oh, yeah, I didn't even think about that. That's a good point.

Tracy Hayes  48:51  
That is that's so refreshing. Because I think a lot of people, and I don't know if I like to kind of kind of use the scarcity abundance mindset, but they think they heard that podcast, well, so did whatever amount of 1000s of people that are telling how big the listener group is, or watch that video, or got that knowledge, and they're like, oh, I want to hold it for myself, but that doesn't help the Cotton Team. That doesn't help that doesn't help round table Realty grow. If you're you're trying to hoard the information, or you got this great idea, listen to this inspirational podcast, and you got to share it, yeah? And the whole rising tide rise, rising tide rises or something.

Katelynn Cotton  49:28  
They're very collaborative. You know, it's not just us talking like we want to hear. What good ideas, yeah. So I would say that's like a positive aspect of our team is like, it's not just us talking to them or talking at them. You know, it's never like that

Tracy Hayes  49:45  
kind of on the scenes, on the same center. One of the common themes is hanging out with successful people. Now, you guys are young in the young in the business, but you've already dove in. You're leading a successful team. But who are some of the people that you know? I assume, Howard. Would be on this list. And Keith, or Yeah, I mean, what do you guys do to surround yourself by some of those successful well, it doesn't have to be in the real estate industry with other successful people that motivate you, but open your eyes, you know? Because, again, we only know what we know, yeah, and to open your eyes to this business. Because, like I said, there's still a lot about the lending business I don't know, because I haven't been, you know, involved, like, obviously John, he's big in the renovations. I haven't, I've done some renovations, but not to the caliber. He just wrote a book. It's coming out, you know. So what do you guys do to kind of get out and mix and mingle with some of the success?

Josh Cotton  50:35  
Well, I think after, you know, our monster year we had last year, that organically, people have started reaching out, like, we're obviously getting invited to, like, the top producer events with Elevate, what it's called, it's just, yeah, exactly, there's several of them. So we started going to those. You just start networking with people, start mingling with people. And then, like, the last event that we went to actually was put on by Keller Williams. And we set like, we mingle with people, and we ended up talking with

Katelynn Cotton  51:07  
Kelly DeLucia from the Welch team. Love her.

Josh Cotton  51:11  
She's, she's a top producer, for sure. She's been on the show. Yeah, she's a big time producer, and so we're like, soaking up knowledge from her. We ended up like we were talking outside, then she ended up, like, sitting down with us at the bar, and we talked for like, another two or three hours, and she was very, you know, nice to give her her time. And just we were asking all kinds of different questions,

Katelynn Cotton  51:29  
which I think that's really cool about our industry, because we were also talking to Gwen valen, who was, like she did like, 100 million with her small team last year. And it's like they are so open to sharing what's working for them. It's like, not like a secret sauce, like, we're all trying to do the same thing, and there's an abundance of clients out there, you know, it's not me versus you. So I just thought it was, like, so awesome that everyone can just, like, share what's going on, what's working and what's not working.

Josh Cotton  51:57  
And that's why we don't mind doing the same thing, because, like, we had that happen to us, so we're willing to help other new agents like that are just agents like that are just starting their journey. I've had

Tracy Hayes  52:04  
people like, hey, oh, you know that's you shouldn't tell your people, yeah, tell your secret. But the reality in, I think, in our business, is every transaction is different. Every customer we deal with, different. Every loans different. You know, everyone's just different, right, in their own world, although we may live in the same geographical area, but how we make our money? You know, our lifestyle, what we spend money on, what we don't. You know the house we're buying every every single one's different, because they all have a different address, right? And the reality is, what works for you may not work for someone else, but you're sharing the idea. And it's great if they went out, if there was a cookie cutter way to do this business where it's like, Hey, if you do one, two and three, you're gonna sell $100 million everyone would be

Katelynn Cotton  52:50  
doing like, Sign me up. Yeah,

Tracy Hayes  52:52  
that to share the ideas. Someone may take your idea and your idea, my idea, and then mold it in their own idea. And then How hungry are they? Some people just want to do so much. Others want to do $100 million so everyone's so different. So to if you don't share, in my opinion, if you don't share, you'll never be shared with.

Katelynn Cotton  53:14  
So it comes back to you, yeah, 100%

Tracy Hayes  53:17  
all right. This is, this is the question I've been thinking about also and looking at our time. I want this answer, okay, yeah, husband and wife team, you guys, you know, you're buying leads. How many leads you're buying? We talked a little bit out, you know, you had some people that were, say, not really fitting into the team, these business discussions that you guys have internally when you go home, or do you keep business out of the house?

Katelynn Cotton  53:42  
No, I think a great like part of us, because, you know, like, I don't have to wait till the next day to call my business partner to discuss this issue. Like, you know, let's hash it out and let's talk about what's going

Tracy Hayes  53:56  
on all week long, right? Be an ongoing discussion that you continue to bring up and think about, yeah,

Josh Cotton  54:02  
and sometimes that's good, because then your your initial thought changes as you're talking it through throughout the week or the day or whatever, after hearing

Tracy Hayes  54:09  
her thoughts, your thoughts. But there has to be, I imagine there's a lot of collaboration, because you guys probably wouldn't be here right now and where the Cotton Team is if you weren't mostly agreeing with each other, yeah. What are some things that you've maybe you disagreed with him, but you went ahead with his idea and vice versa. What are some disagreements that you had

Josh Cotton  54:32  
that you were, well, the first one, like we already kind of mentioned, was, I was like, man, we don't need to go to New brokerage. Like, okay, you know? And she was right about,

Tracy Hayes  54:40  
you know, you know, you got a point there, yeah, well,

Josh Cotton  54:43  
and it's cool too, because we're, we're very similar in the, in the mindset that, like, we're both very entrepreneurial, but then, like, we're also very different and other things,

Katelynn Cotton  54:51  
okay, so I am a little bit of a dreamer, like,

Josh Cotton  54:55  
I'm the realest visionary.

Katelynn Cotton  54:57  
I think, honestly, you can do anything that you put you. Mind to, I think, I think it can happen. Like, I have big dreams and help, like,

Josh Cotton  55:05  
so we, like, balance each other up. She's up here in the clouds, and I kind of bring her down a little bit to more realistic level, but she also kind of brings me up a little bit like, oh, well,

Katelynn Cotton  55:13  
maybe we can do that. I have, like, said that we could do, like, it's

Josh Cotton  55:17  
our goal was to do 30 million our first year, which I was like, okay, that's crazy, you know. And we ended up doing 50 so, you know, we crushed it. But so it's good because that she had this crazy mindset to do 30 billion in our first year when I was didn't even think that was possible, you know. So it's good to have kind of both sides of the coin.

Katelynn Cotton  55:35  
I think anything is possible.

Tracy Hayes  55:38  
Have you have you guys read the book rocket fuel. No. Sarah Rocco actually gave me the book. I read it and gave it back to her, but I would go get it. It talks about visionaries and integrators. Okay? And it sounds, sounds like visionary, you're the integrator. Yeah, you're the ones. Yeah, bring her down. She has a visionary that we're gonna walk around the globe. And you're, you're telling her, Well, we've got to cross these oceans. We're gonna need, we're gonna need all this, these

Josh Cotton  56:09  
vision and then I try to reverse engineer, like, Okay, well, how do we get there? You know, is it possible? Is it truly possible?

Tracy Hayes  56:14  
So it is interesting. It's not a long book, but rocket fuel is the name. But I would, I would recommend it, because I think you guys are probably like, yeah, that's us. Yeah. Because they talks about in there how, you know, it's very tough for a visionary to find an integrator, a good integrator. I'm a visionary as well. I haven't found that integrator in my business. Yeah, life is and that makes all the difference.

Josh Cotton  56:39  
I think it works because, like, Yes, I but I still have vision too. Like, I'm not, like, so, like, I'm only realistic. I'm not gonna dream past that. Like, I do have a little vision. She's just way

Katelynn Cotton  56:51  
above, yeah? Well, we're both, I think, like, obviously, if you're an entrepreneur and you're a team leader, you have to be risky, because you're fronting all this calculated risk, yeah, but calculated risk. So I'm like, he is the financial guy where she

Josh Cotton  57:04  
may have just took the risk. I try to take the calculated

Tracy Hayes  57:09  
risk. Well, the importance is both are very

Katelynn Cotton  57:11  
important. Yeah, we complement.

Tracy Hayes  57:14  
Collaboration is so you guys like to meet on Monday and Fridays with your team, from what I understand, yeah, they're not. I mean, what do you mean? You guys meet for an hour, or you try to keep it short typically. I mean, what do you try to get out of the because obviously, most people like, oh, we meet once a week. Or some of these brokerages, they don't even meet at all, which I see no value.

Katelynn Cotton  57:34  
What's the point of being on a team if you're not meeting with your Yeah,

Tracy Hayes  57:37  
I mean, you have to have some sort of personal account of accountability in your business, and especially if you're, you're wanting value. If I'm, if I'm an agent with you, I want you. I want value from you guys. I want so the only way for me to get it is to, is to interact with you and come into the office. So if we're gonna, if I know Monday and Fridays, you guys are here, and that's the time we can sit down and, you know, talk about new ideas, or video marketing, whatever it is that you guys but what do you what do you what do you guys try to what's your what's your goals in those is it different on Monday and Friday what you're trying to do? Or you just, you just like to meet twice a week just to get that couple of hours?

Katelynn Cotton  58:11  
What is it? Yeah, so we'll meet on Monday and Fridays at 930 and it just depends, honestly, what we have to say for that meeting. Like, it's different every week, but they call us. You know, they can call us all week long. But our meetings as a team is Monday Friday. We wanted to give them freedom, like we wanted them to feel like they're not tied to a desk Monday through Friday, like they're all adults, yeah, like they can prospect at home. They don't have to be in the office. But yeah, we do encourage them to stay for a couple hours in the office. Like, you know, most of them stay till 12 or one on Mondays and Fridays to prospect together and just to, you know, have your friends around you. All of our

Josh Cotton  58:49  
feed off each other's energy of someone who's having, like, Man, I just had two great conversations in a row. They're like, excited, and it kind of just feeds off onto the with the other agents and and we do like silly stuff too. Just to, like, you know, just keep the morale up. Like random, everybody just wears a weird hat during the meeting for no reason at all.

Katelynn Cotton  59:07  
And then I just started on our YouTube channel. You can go watch this after this podcast. We just did like, a office parody episode. So it's, like, very dry humor, awkward like, but we call it the real estate office. Episode One. I actually took Episode Two off because Josh said it was way too cringy, but everybody thought it was hilarious. I'm actually going to put it back on if you want to go look at some funny just, do

Josh Cotton  59:35  
you know funny stuff like that? Just, it doesn't always have to necessarily be about real estate. Yeah, we're very camaraderie of everybody being together makes it like a family.

Tracy Hayes  59:44  
Everyone being together. How important is it to show up? I think not. We're having the challenge and in the loan officer, in the just because of covid, and everyone's falling back on that whole they're just they're still. Trying to fall back on, on working from home. And I understand there's certain things you can, you know, do a lot of things at home. You cut out, you know, cut out at noon time, but there's certain times you have to put the grind in. Maybe it's making your dials or whatever, or showing up and sharing. How important is it to show up to the sales meetings your brokerage is having or your team's having. How important is even to show up to some of the social so you can interact with other top people and hear the stories.

Katelynn Cotton  1:00:30  
It's so important. It's like, what's the point of being a part of a team if you're not doing that? And yeah, sometimes you don't want to. But like, I think everyone's loves our schedule, and, like, when they do come in, they do feel better, you know, like, just because it has been a really tough market this year, yeah, that's why we do the funny hats and, like, the funny episodes on YouTube, just to, like, not be so, yeah, not be so, like, Oh my gosh.

Josh Cotton  1:00:53  
But it's also about, like, we have good stuff to tell them. Like, whether it's just, we just listen to a good podcast or write a good book, and we, you know, we all want to discuss it, or even something as simple as, like, we had one time where a agent had a deal that was under contract, fell out of contract, and we had another buyer that was looking for that exact same house, and we're talking about him, and they're like, oh, wait, I have a buyer for that house. And then we got that

Katelynn Cotton  1:01:19  
right under contract. Like, happen if we weren't with her in that office, exactly, and this

Josh Cotton  1:01:23  
is when the market was crazy, it would have been gone in two seconds. So just stuff like that. It's important to be a part everybody together, so we can all share experiences from the weekend help each other out. Yeah, Mondays are kind of like a recap for from the weekend. Like, how did it go? How are open houses? Would you guys, blah, blah, blah, Friday is kind of like, All right, let's get it. Like, let's go. Because the weekend,

Tracy Hayes  1:01:47  
who's got the open house exactly everybody knows where everybody else is at. So share and you mentioned earlier you felt like you were on an island. It was Josh mentioned an island. Do you feel a lot of agents that 80% of that were in the class that got licensed the same time you did it, 80% of them, within two years of that period of time, are not even going to be in the business anymore. That a lot of them maybe almost intentionally, but without obviously realizing it, and put themselves on an island, because they're not showing up. They're not finding that brokerage. And this will lead lead into the question for you guys to advise someone out there, maybe looking to get in the in the business, how important is it for that new agent to actually interview the broker? Their broker is going to ask some questions back, or Team Leader ask some question, make sure they're a fit and they're not going to poison the team, but it's important that there's this business has done so many different ways, exactly as many brokerages are. There's that many different ways of doing this business, and some better than others, and many that are great, but how important is to really dig in and understand yourself. So you know the questions you need to ask that broker to make sure you brokerage give you that value that you need.

Josh Cotton  1:03:05  
That's very important. I mean, especially being on team like, you know, obviously we have our expectations. So we have them that agent has to make sure. Like, am I going to be able to meet all those expectations? Or am I going to am I going to want to do that? Because some agents don't want to even come in two days a week. They just want to work, like, from home you're mentioning. Some are like, well, I want to be there five days a week. Okay, well, that's probably not our team, because we're not

Katelynn Cotton  1:03:29  
in funding. You're welcome to come into the office.

Josh Cotton  1:03:32  
So yes, they need to ask those questions, because they need to see what's going to be a good fit for them. Because whatever is a good fit for them, they're more willing to then show up and do the work. Show up and do the work. You know?

Katelynn Cotton  1:03:43  
Yeah, I think a lot, sorry, I think a lot of people get into this business, though, and they don't. They just don't know how real estate works to begin with.

Josh Cotton  1:03:50  
They watch Million Dollar Listing. They're like, Oh, cool. You just go, like, negotiate some, some cool deal.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:57  
Yeah, I don't know how many people Ryan sir Hayes now has is he's grown his business. Yeah, I guarantee those. And there's a lot of young people on that team. They're grinding.

Josh Cotton  1:04:08  
It took him 15 years to get where he's at. You know, if you ever, I'm sure you've read all his books, but like his very first book, he talks about like he would go to, he signed up to four different gyms just so he could try to get referrals, like he was a hustler, yeah, and he even kind of lied his way on to Million Dollar Listing, like list broker that he wasn't at the time. But you

Katelynn Cotton  1:04:31  
know, like, had his mom call him, like, seven times. People to be like, Oh, wow.

Tracy Hayes  1:04:42  
My thought was going in there? I forget what the original question

Josh Cotton  1:04:47  
about showing up, yeah, well,

Katelynn Cotton  1:04:49  
and it's important to interview your broker. Think of the list of questions and but, you know, sometimes you are like, you're just very naive, you know, to the business.

Tracy Hayes  1:05:00  
So if you were to do it again today, you know at some point prior to the test, post test, you're figuring out who you you're going to get started with knowing what you know now, if a girlfriend of yours came to you said, I want to get into real estate, what kind of conversation would you have with her?

Katelynn Cotton  1:05:21  
Well, I don't think I regret how I did it, because, honestly, that was the motive to start our team. Because I was like, wow, I had no mentorship. I like, this is I want to give that to our new agents. But I would say, hey, you need to actually interview. I don't regret how I did it, because it helped us form

Josh Cotton  1:05:39  
friends right now that are, like, I want to I'm they're studying for the real estate license, like, right now. And so it's like, we're telling them that very important question, like you said, is, interview your broker, make sure that's somewhere you want to be so you don't have to broker hop, you know, like, make sure that they're going to provide the support you want, the knowledge you want, like, the expectations that you want. Do you want somebody to push you, or do you want someone to kind of just be hands off your thing.

Katelynn Cotton  1:06:02  
And are you going to be full time? Because this is a hard industry to just be part time. Like I had this one girl I went to high school with, she just had a baby, and she was like, hey, you know, do you think real estate is, like, right for me, or is it over saturated right now? Like, I would love to just do it. You know, I love the flexibility. And I'm like, it takes years to be flexible. You gotta hustle, and I don't know, like, if that's what you can do right now, I don't know your situation, but, like, I don't sugarcoat it. I have a note saved in my phone. It sounds a little negative, but I think people think real estate's so easy, and I just tell them the truth. I'm like, No, it's it's a hard you don't

Josh Cotton  1:06:40  
get paid until you close. You don't have health insurance. Like you're driving around town, like, there's, there's a lot that goes into real estate that people don't realize. But also, like, we wouldn't do any other but also, you can get a great big paycheck at the end. Sometimes, when

Katelynn Cotton  1:06:53  
you meet these clients who are amazing, and you have lifelong relationships, and you change their life because you help them get their dream home when there was 10 other offers on the table, and they couldn't have done that without you. You know,

Tracy Hayes  1:07:05  
some brokers are good, it's newbies. Some aren't. Obviously, there's some that cater to that sort of thing. But you failed. I'm gonna say you failed, but you the failure wasn't you weren't with the perfect brokerage to begin with. So you failed in to find the brokerage that you needed to be with, that an agent, a girlfriend starting today. What they need to learn about themselves? What do they need to sit and take a week or month or whatever, and dig in to themselves? Because even at my age, in changing lenders that I have recently, I had to dig into, how do I want to run my business. How do I want my business? I have 17 years of experience. You know, I'm a unicorn out there right now, looking to find the right lender to be with. Someone's looking to be with the right brokerage, but they have to know, ideally, sometimes you can stumble into the right brokerage, but you had to find something out about yourself. What did you have to find a couple of things that maybe you found out about yourself in that first six months with that initial brokerage, you had to dig deep into yourself and say, This is how I want to run my business. I like learning on YouTube.

Katelynn Cotton  1:08:12  
I would say, know what day to day practices you want to do? There are some teams who aren't hybrid teams like we are, and they just want you to call a bunch of leads every day, strictly online leads. And if you're on their team, that's all you're doing. There's other teams like us who are hybrid, who were like, okay, yes, you are going to make calls every day, Monday through Friday to help build your phone cadence and your business. But we also want you to door knock a couple times a week, or host two open houses a month, you know. So figure out, like, what practices you're wanting to do as a realtor, because you're gonna have to prospect, no matter what, some

Josh Cotton  1:08:48  
just magically appear in your

Katelynn Cotton  1:08:50  
box. Yeah, sold a house.

Tracy Hayes  1:08:53  
Have you ever talked somebody out of being a real estate agent?

Josh Cotton  1:08:55  
Yes, yeah. We've had a couple people that like interviewed with. Well, I could say,

Katelynn Cotton  1:09:00  
think, talk out. I think

Josh Cotton  1:09:03  
for our team, yeah, because again, more like they want to be a part time agent, and obviously a part of our business is paying for leads, so we need to make sure those leads are worked. And it's hard for those even followed up on, and it's hard for you to do that if you're only working part time. So I think maybe a couple people here and there. We, when we really tell them the ins and outs of the business, they're like, I don't know if that's for me, you know?

Katelynn Cotton  1:09:26  
So I think a lot of people, though, have to, like, see it for themselves. So like, we've

Josh Cotton  1:09:31  
we also praise real estate too. Like, it's fun, it's flexible. Can be flexible, yeah?

Katelynn Cotton  1:09:36  
We don't want to be, like, negative. Sound like we love the industry. It's just you have to work hard. Yeah?

Tracy Hayes  1:09:41  
Well, you guys are, I mean, you have to, you're gonna agree you're comfortable being out of your comfort zone. Yeah, a lot of people like the comfort zone and come in their office nine to five. They're not chasing leads. Yeah, they like to be in the cube and handle I mean, I think one of the biggest things challenges that in in the lenders world right now is as a lot of these online. Companies are trying to get out where loan depot was online, but they got out years ago, and then into the retail world, you know, being out on the street versus direct to consumer, and just because they want to take the test, they want to make the money that a loan officer makes, but they don't realize, yeah, the loan you have to go out and interact with people. You have to, you know, get stand up in front of, you know, give a lunch and learn whatever your whatever your method. Or maybe you are sitting there cold calling, but you still going out meeting a real estate agent you never met before. You got to get out there and be part of it where there's some other people that like to sit in a cube, and then people don't realize that there is, you know, the disc assessments is one of the methods, is there's certain people for certain things.

Katelynn Cotton  1:10:39  
I 100% agree. We had one agent who she's still really good friends with both of us to this day. We love her. And she sold about, like, 12 to 14 homes last year. She's pretty good, yeah, and then, but she was just like, this year after the market, and she was just like, I need a break. You know, I'm really it's just stressing me out. So she started doing some admin help work for us. And she's like, I love the admin side. And then she was like, a TC for a little bit for us. And then she was like, Wow, I love, like, not being in the transaction, just like helping part of Yeah. So I definitely think it, maybe it depends on your personality and just like, what you like to

Josh Cotton  1:11:17  
do, more reserved, a little, you know, more laid back. So sometimes when you have to have those aggressive or not aggressive, but those conversations where you got to tell either the buyer or seller, like, hey, you know she wasn't, it can stress somebody for her to have those conversations. Some people, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:11:32  
they do

Katelynn Cotton  1:11:34  
better behind the Hayes. Maybe

Tracy Hayes  1:11:36  
I know Keller Williams is big on the disc. The people I follow in the loan officer world are big on the disc. I know John and Brittany Brooks with momentum. They're big on the Clifton assessment, which is little bit deeper, because I think those tests are so much better than they were 1520, years ago. They really and, you know, I'm sure the three of us took a we're probably all 3d and I are probably, you know, where we're at, where that person you're just talking to is a high C, they're detail oriented, they're comfortable in the cube. They're not the go getter type thing. And people have to realize where they are, because I think one of the sad parts is someone jumps in they want to be a loan officer or they want to be a ruler, and they're not successful at that, but they're not lucky enough to realize their transaction quarter, and they get out of the business all the other when really they're great trends

Katelynn Cotton  1:12:25  
where there is a space for them in this industry. Maybe it's just not the selling face to face, right?

Tracy Hayes  1:12:30  
Exactly, all right. We've been going for a while. So I want to, I want to fit. This is the last formal question. One of the common themes that I hear is consistency with the top producers, what would you guys say that you guys do? And maybe just something personal. I had Shelby Florence with Compass. She says, if she doesn't work out every morning, it's not it's not going to be a good day. That's her thing. What is it that, whether you're doing personally or in the business that you feel and this is actually something you just started a couple months ago because you found out about it, or something you've been doing since? Doing since you started. What is it that you're consistent at that you feel moves the needle in your business? You're doing consistency, consistent, day, consistent.

Katelynn Cotton  1:13:11  
I would say for me, I like to go on a walk every day, and then I do like to Josh is like, it's her diary. It's not my it's like my visionary manifestation journal, and I go back to, like, two years ago, like, I because I date them. He's like, how do you know what the date? I'm like, I date every entry, and I'm like, everything that I write happens. It's like coming on, like manifesting. I like to do that. And then

Tracy Hayes  1:13:38  
that's one thing that talks about Rocky the visionary needs time for their brain to start sorting all those thoughts. And then, you know, bring up the ones that, yeah,

Katelynn Cotton  1:13:46  
I call it like a brain dump, like, I just write out, like, it's not like, Dear Diary, this is what's happening. It's kind of just like my jerk today, yeah, it's like, maybe, like, some hot leads I'm really focusing on, and then, like, maybe things I want to talk to about our team, and then, like, work related stuff, or getting pregnant again, anything,

Tracy Hayes  1:14:06  
all right, so you're consistent with your journaling, your thoughts. You take a walk to help you. I mean, start sorting

Katelynn Cotton  1:14:14  
those things out. Yeah, some kind of movement every day.

Josh Cotton  1:14:17  
Same I like to try to work out. You know, at some point during the day, it's not always in the morning, but getting a workout in and, you know, I think we're both very into the fitness, and that's a big part of why we connected. Was through CrossFit. I wasn't doing CrossFit, but I was doing

Katelynn Cotton  1:14:31  
other stuff. I would say yours is also you listen to a podcast.

Josh Cotton  1:14:35  
Well, that was my second part of it is like, at some point in the day, I have to listen to a podcast, watch a youtube I want

Tracy Hayes  1:14:43  
to so 15 minutes or an hour,

Josh Cotton  1:14:47  
some new knowledge for the day from somewhere. It doesn't and it doesn't always have to be real estate. Sometimes it's just what's going on in the world, or about entrepreneurship, because we actually are opening up a net 45 gym and.

Tracy Hayes  1:15:00  
Yeah, let's drop that F 45

Josh Cotton  1:15:03  
Come on, yeah, opens in like, two, three weeks. That's been a lot of hard work. We've been working on that for like a year, where you guys live on in Fleming Island. Now, we know we live over in St John's, but it was

Katelynn Cotton  1:15:13  
a good location. Territory was open, so we touched on it, yeah.

Josh Cotton  1:15:17  
But um, so, you know, big entrepreneurs like in like, I want to get, I haven't flipped the house in a couple years. I want to get back into that. We also want to do investments with our real estate, like Airbnbs and such. So soaking up as much knowledge, for me, all those different sectors is so important to my day.

Tracy Hayes  1:15:32  
There's no doubt in, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm up at five o'clock. That's That's my days to work out, and I'm in there for an hour and a half because I walk for 30 minutes, and then train with a trainer for an hour. And how you feel when you come out, you just in your endorphins or whatever, from the working out, I think you would agree. And then I grew from the podcast start or reading a book or some sort of knowledge, or even if it's just Steve Harvey with some motivational story. He's so awesome. Yeah, it gets it's to me, it gets the door, it gives you, rises your energy up a little bit, and moves you up, moves you through the day.

Josh Cotton  1:16:11  
Well, I was really fortunate in my last job with being a private banker. I dealt with high net worth individuals that their bank accounts had 250,000 or more. And it was an incredible opportunity, because I got to meet all these successful people, and I got to have direct conversations with them, like, you know, how did you make your money? And like, you know, I see their bank accounts so I know they're telling the truth. I can see exactly what they're making. But that was super eye opening to be able to, like, talk to all these successful people, and they all had the same thing in common was, like, consistency, working hard. They all had their routines that they did, and a big part of them, I'd say, 95% of all those people had started in real estate with, like, investments and flipping houses or whatever it may be, and that's what initially kind of sparked my interest in real estate. And then not, obviously, we're an agent, but it was just cool, like seeing all that from the back door, if you will.

Tracy Hayes  1:17:05  
We've gone a little over, but this has been a great conversation. Let's I wanted to

Katelynn Cotton  1:17:11  
just do a quick call out our team, to your

Tracy Hayes  1:17:14  
team, and just say, just a couple quick, you know, notes, what's important about them? Well, what? What great things you see in them, something. So let's start with key Rhonda.

Katelynn Cotton  1:17:23  
Okay, love her. She has the best vibes ever, best energy. She's so

Josh Cotton  1:17:29  
detail oriented. She Yes, we tell her. We say, like, Hey, this is how we'd like you to, like, close out your leads. Like, send us this email with this, this and this and like, from day one, she's

Katelynn Cotton  1:17:39  
always done everything we asked to a T. Everybody else most time doesn't do that, but three weeks ago,

Josh Cotton  1:17:46  
so she has super detail oriented and hard worker.

Katelynn Cotton  1:17:50  
I could say the same about like all of them, they're they all just fit so well together. Emily is hilarious. You'll see on our episode. She is a very hard worker.

Josh Cotton  1:18:01  
She's our newest join. I think she is

Katelynn Cotton  1:18:03  
our newest join. I will say about every one of them, I feel so confident if I give them a lead, any of them, they will take great care. Yeah, that's the amazing thing about this core team. Like we have gotten a lot smaller because we have had to trim our fat as business owners, and how the industry has changed.

Tracy Hayes  1:18:23  
You want to stay at that 14, 15% you've got to, because you

Josh Cotton  1:18:26  
got to get every return. We call ourselves SEAL Team Six now, because it's like we're we've really dialed in to, like, kind of the best of the best now. And you

Tracy Hayes  1:18:35  
can, it helps you mold in a new person when everyone else is so elevated, high level, yeah, you can kind of plug that new person in, Jennifer,

Josh Cotton  1:18:44  
funny, she's a high producer too. Podcast. She's always got deals

Katelynn Cotton  1:18:53  
going, and she brings really great suggestions. And she is like a good like, teacher, like, she'll share her past experiences.

Josh Cotton  1:19:02  
We had her mentoring at one point, but she had so many deals going on at the same time. She couldn't do both,

Tracy Hayes  1:19:07  
yeah, she's, she's, she's working, she's working it. Brett, oh, he's awesome.

Josh Cotton  1:19:11  
He's a grinder. He, he's, like, every weekend open house, yeah?

Katelynn Cotton  1:19:16  
Like three open houses on one day. Yeah. He's so good on the phone, so natural

Josh Cotton  1:19:23  
with online takes great notes like whatever Howard says, or we mentioned, he always has his phone out and he'll record whatever the meeting is.

Katelynn Cotton  1:19:32  
They're all very coachable. That's why they're on the team. They're all team players,

Tracy Hayes  1:19:37  
and Alex, which I believe, is one of your top producers, right?

Katelynn Cotton  1:19:40  
Yes, I think one of the, like, greatest aspects of Alex is She is a former teacher. That's how I met her. So she brings, like, a lot of great qualities, from her teaching to real estate, caring. Yeah, she cares so much about her clients, you know, and she'll like one time when she was shadow, or I was shadowing her. She was like, I don't know how to, like, leave a conversation. I'm like, okay, sometimes you just have to, like, after an hour and a half of being with them and just talking about, Hey, I gotta have another appointment. And she's like, I can't shut it down. I just love talking to them and people. She says, she always says, people just spill their life to her,

Tracy Hayes  1:20:18  
my wife, can you be the same way? She can go on and on, and I say, Honey, at some point you get to say, hey, hey, you know, Hey, I gotta really run. Let's, let's, let's circle back.

Josh Cotton  1:20:25  
Schedule this for another time. Yeah, she's definitely a rock star. I mean, she just took everything that we told her from the very beginning and just did it. And she was like, You guys told me what to do, and I did it, and it worked. So she's been crushing it ever since day one.

Tracy Hayes  1:20:37  
And you, you have a transaction coordinator you mentioned earlier.

Katelynn Cotton  1:20:40  
Yeah, we have a transaction coordinator, Kelsey Mancini, I think that's how you say our last name. I've never said her last name, but she's awesome. She's used to doing 60 transactions at once. She really does all that experience. Very experienced,

Josh Cotton  1:20:54  
I think, kind of like the backbone to hold all this together is Sarah Michael. She's our inside sales agent, like our secret weapon, yeah, she, she makes a ton of calls for everybody. She's amazing.

Tracy Hayes  1:21:07  
So she stole marks to sit on the dialer.

Katelynn Cotton  1:21:10  
Yeah? I mean, I think she likes it. She

Josh Cotton  1:21:13  
stole her from hand and some because we were getting a massage, and she was, she was there, like, sales person, and she like, closed us on getting a massage package, and we're like, You're really good. Have you ever thought

Tracy Hayes  1:21:23  
about the price point?

Katelynn Cotton  1:21:25  
Because I didn't, because we just had put an ad out for an ISA. And I was like, I like, we've never hired someone from online. We've always been organic. So we met her in person, and I was like, Oh my gosh, she'd be a great fit. Do you want a job? So all our team is organic.

Tracy Hayes  1:21:39  
20 years ago, when I was in telecommunications in a retail store, I went out

Katelynn Cotton  1:21:44  
and found people, yeah, yeah. It's the best way to grow, yeah. All right.

Tracy Hayes  1:21:47  
These are my last two minute warning questions. Okay, these are kind of more or less what's, what is your favorite, most favorite thing to do in Northeast Florida, Josh, because you have, how many you have, one child

Katelynn Cotton  1:21:59  
now, yeah, we have a baby, seven months old.

Josh Cotton  1:22:02  
So she's to the age now where she's like, in the stroller, and she's like, so I think that we've just been working for the last two years.

Katelynn Cotton  1:22:10  
Like, No, I'm just kidding. We like going to the beach.

Josh Cotton  1:22:14  
Yeah, we go out and try, like, try new restaurants, you guys.

Katelynn Cotton  1:22:18  
I mean, I would love to join a beach club. We're waiting to open

Josh Cotton  1:22:24  
our gym. I think my favorite thing will be taking Liliana out on all of these new adventures. You know, the zoo, the beach, everything as she grows. Are you guys boaters? Do you like to Yes, I do love deep sea fishing, and I haven't been able to do that since I've been back in Jacksonville. But there's something I

Tracy Hayes  1:22:40  
want to what we need to do is we can get the team, and I'm the boat club, Freedom Boat Club over here, one of the pontoons one night. So yeah, that sounds amazing schedule it Brett's been on that cruise before, but if you've never cruised up Julington creek or up Black Creek, it is so amazing realize it's right there. So we'll stretch out there. I want separate answers on this. Okay, is it more important who you know or what you know? Who?

Josh Cotton  1:23:06  
Who agree there? Yeah, yeah. Just because, like, with that 45 and we're actually planning open multiple other locations because of somebody we know, we have an investor that we're able to take us to the next level with that

Tracy Hayes  1:23:19  
person introduced you to

Katelynn Cotton  1:23:21  
the actually, this is a funny story. Do you want to 30 seconds? When I was an inexperienced, new realtor, our family my family friend, she knew me since I was five years old. She turned me down to sell her Roscoe house in Ponte Vedra, million dollar sale, which is going to be about a million dollars. And this market could have sold for 2 million if she had waited. So I was so upset and offended. I was like, who, like, my family,

Tracy Hayes  1:23:49  
friends, you probably had the original five on your about that

Katelynn Cotton  1:23:53  
was no that was after we I had about 3540 sales under my belt. That's why she gave

Tracy Hayes  1:23:59  
us the interview. I mean, in that short period of time, that means sales, you know

Katelynn Cotton  1:24:03  
what you're doing, yeah, but still, you know, maybe it was my age, or whatever, she still saw me as a five year old girl, but I cold called every expired listing that was unique and on the water, because I was like, I need to get a very unique property, and it has to be Over a million dollars. So we got a $3 million one in Neptune Beach, and we sold it, and we made we netted them $250,000 more than they originally needed or like wanted. So anyway, but now we built a really good relationship, and it's going to lead to other opportunities for us. So that's my

Tracy Hayes  1:24:39  
little who you know? Yeah, I appreciate you guys coming on. Thank you. About you guys and now that we're in close proximity, you know, if there's anything obviously we can do for you here at Lone depot, hope we can carry on that conversation. Get John back involved, yeah, from that standpoint, but appreciate you coming on.