Sara Gentry: Leveraging Social Media In Real Estate

Tracy Hayes  0:06  
Hey, welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast Today's guest has been a real estate agent for just short of three years and has had great success. She's been recently recognized by the jack's real producer, sirs, for her production in 2024 she has over a decade of social media management experience. She provides personalized service backed with an open communication with expert guidance through the buying and selling process. Let's welcome Sarah Gentry to the show. Thank you so much. Thank you. Glad you could come on today. I appreciate you coming down on this Friday. I'm really curious. I want to dig into, because every event that you guys go to, it's social media. Social media, social media. So I really want to get your insight actually coming from, you know, helping people do it to actually how you're, you know, helping the 904 home guide team to what you're doing. You know, personally, because I think my personal opinion on is all these agents hear these trainings, or you're being told by speakers or whatever. Hey, you got to get a social media. Social media, but they there's a disconnect from the training to putting the rubber to the road, okay, yeah, yeah.

Sara Gentry  1:16  
So I think social media is a huge part of all of our businesses, and it's kind of where it's going marketing wise. And it's free marketing. I mean, we could spend money to be in magazines and newspapers and whatnot, but in reality, the amount of people that look at

Tracy Hayes  1:29  
that in one day, that's the way it was, yeah, 25 years ago, that's the way you did it. We got to evolve.

Sara Gentry  1:35  
Yeah, you know, same as AI. Everyone like, it's like, crazy about AI, right? And I'm like, embrace it, use it, because that's where we're going. You got to utilize it. I think it's awesome. I never I started with social media, and I just loved it. I mean, I thought it was really cool that you can put out whatever you wanted, and watching the views and watching what people were interested in, and using the analytics to see like, what was tracking better. I was really into it. And then once I got into real estate, it was because I was doing social media for other realtors and brokerages and whatnot, and watching how their content grew, and then seeing them get actual like bookings from people, or like booking buyer consults and wanting them to sell their home and getting those messages flooded. And I was like, we're doing something right, right? So it's just an easy way to get the word out, and it's also a way for people to get to know you. You know that, I think that's a huge part, is just being genuine and understanding your personality, and they want to work with you, because they see you when your story is talking about this person's cool, yeah, they know what they're talking about.

Tracy Hayes  2:32  
Well, the instantaneousness of our world, right? We everybody wants something like an hour ago, and, you know, back, if you think about the print. I mean, how long did it take you to, you know, 25 years ago, whether it was a billboard or a magazine or wherever you might have had an ad, and it took so many days, if not weeks, before the audience would see it. And things have changed 100% Yeah, now we can, you know, instantaneous, within a few minutes, boom, have have stuff up there and our friends and family and influencing it. So, yeah, I want to so I don't forget, because I generally get, I get deep into conversation and forget. Remy graphics makes these great mugs for me. Everyone sees them every show. You've got a nice hot pink one and your bag there the show logo on the other side. Remy graphics, calm. They're local. Here in Jacksonville, they will make one offs for you. So I always tell people, because I think, I think the greatest thing if you're going to do closing gifts, yeah, really anything you put their name on it, they never throw it away. 100% they never throw it away. And so putting John and Sally, welcome to Jacksonville, or whatever, you know, on a as a closing guest, I think, is a treasure. And they'll, they'll throw out another mug before they'll throw out the one with their name, absolutely, they'll wear it out. If those ever wear out, I don't know.

Sara Gentry  3:54  
They don't. They stick queer, especially when they're etched like that. And I think I like how you said that too. You got to put their name on it. You can't just slap your logo and expect them to keep it. Yeah, they don't care.

Tracy Hayes  4:04  
Yeah, they may keep it for a little while. But then after, after, you know, you know, goes in the back, you know. I mean, I don't know how I keep telling my wife, don't even open new ones, you know, the you know, as we go around, like you were at the RE bar camp, or whatever they're handing out stuff like that, or whatever you get, I'm like, don't even open the new ones, just like, maybe we can give those to somebody else, yeah? Because we got so many already.

Sara Gentry  4:25  
I know, yeah, I have a cup cabinet too, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  4:29  
But their name, it's on their desk, right? Maybe put their companies in with anyway. But she does other laser engraved gifts, which is great. The mug is the one, obviously, we just use for the give out here at the show. But there's a whole magazine full of laser engraved gifts that you can get. Yeah, 100% I always like to get started easy one, because it's not on your LinkedIn. Okay. Where are you from?

Sara Gentry  4:49  
I'm from Chino Hills, California. So, Southern California. Yeah, I moved here in 2014 okay, just because I needed a change. I wasn't, you know, I was kind of stuck. You weren't married. Yet, just I got out of a, like, a longer relationship at that age, three years, and moved out. And I was like, I just want to go. So you graduated high school out there. Yeah, graduated high school in Chino Hills, and I got a full ride to UC Santa, Barbara, okay, for water polo.

Tracy Hayes  5:16  
So I played water polo since, wow, that's a tough sport.

Sara Gentry  5:18  
Yeah, it was my sport? Yeah, I got a full ride. I was an Olympic development team. I mean, it was everything, wow.

Tracy Hayes  5:26  
That is, that is really interesting, because I don't think people you know, my claim to flame and water polo is the intramurals at the Citadel, we played inner tube water polo because I couldn't treading, treading water, like those, those swimmers do, and then obviously they go on a sprint, or whatever, down, I mean, and they're not kicking off the wall, nope. You can't do that.

Sara Gentry  5:49  
It's like a 12 foot pool, yeah, you just kick off people the

Tracy Hayes  5:52  
that is, that is amazing. That is, yeah. So would you study there at that time, what were you thinking as far as a career when your athleticism was no longer going to you know, there's no professional water polo. So eventually that comes to Olympics.

Sara Gentry  6:12  
That was, yeah, the Olympics. But other than that, that was it. To be honest, I majored in general communications, because that's what all athletes did. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was there for water polo, right? That's where I went. Why I went to college. I was terrible at college. I didn't like play classes. I wasn't absorbing anything. I was practicing two hours in the morning, then going to weight room, then going to three classes, then going to physical therapy, because my shoulder was hurt and I had labrum surgery, and then doing to two hours more practice and sleep every day. So I might, yeah, yeah. Well, the get degrees, like

Tracy Hayes  6:48  
20 minutes in the pool. I'm already for a nap, so I don't know how you did two hours. Yeah, yeah. I don't think people realize the when you really look at this, any of these especially high level division one sports. It's 24/7, 365, they're they're training, they're going and you know, some of them, one of my friends now is daughters over at UF, went to IMG for soccer now at UF, and you know, she's like, you know, they wrote an article how she's like, going to be there should be a show, She's a freshman right now, how they're going to build a team around her, right and, but, you know, it's like, when, when do they go to class? Yeah, when do you didn't, yeah, you, I mean, and then when you're in class, you're like, you're mentally drained, yeah? Or you're physically drained, yeah?

Sara Gentry  7:39  
Have those clickers that will make you answer questions to make sure you're in attendance, I would like send my clickers with people to class, because I just wanted to sleep. I was so tired.

Tracy Hayes  7:47  
Yeah, I can only imagine. Wow, that's incredible. So, but that starts to come to an end. It's 2000 is this 2014 is

Sara Gentry  7:57  
that I left UC Santa, Barbara after my first year I was a red shirt because I had that labrum surgery, and I was still practicing and playing, but I was trying to rehab, and it just wasn't getting to where it needed to be. The reason why I had that scholarship was that your throwing arm while I was ambidextrous and water polo, but my main one was my right shoulder, and that's this one needed surgery, but this was the main one I got done. And it just it was a 5050, chance. I got it done, I USC, and I wasn't on the positive side of that 50 days. So I didn't have my scholarship, and I had the choice, do I continue to go to this awesome school, which I didn't care about? Like, I wasn't doing good in classes. The school was great. I was on the ocean. Yeah, it's nice, like that part was cool, but other than that, my grades weren't good. So I'm taking the spot of someone who genuinely wants to be there and has a passion for it, and me not even know if I can make it through and accumulate student loans like I'm out. So yeah, I left after my first year.

Tracy Hayes  8:50  
So what does Sarah do? Sarah

Sara Gentry  8:53  
started working as a store manager for retail, and then an office manager for EBT scam place for your heart. And I just kind of kept working my way through and somehow, just starting positions, at all these supervisor positions experience. And then I ended up kind

Tracy Hayes  9:11  
of trying to find yourself, which I think a lot of young people do. I mean, I did it for too long. I mean, but luckily, my wife is that much younger than I am, I mean, but I yeah, I mean, and we were big corporate workaholics. And, yeah, the 20s, our 20s, went by very quickly, trying to find, well, she found herself early. She's was successful right from the get go. Love that. But I didn't really get successful until I met her. So yeah,

Sara Gentry  9:38  
that's how I was. And then I ended up, I stayed in an extra year in Santa Barbara and moved back down to Southern, like, more southern California, and got a corporate job because that's what my parents did, and thought that was what I was supposed to do.

Tracy Hayes  9:49  
And then once I got there, wasn't really a pet. Wasn't like, hey, I want to get into this field. You just it was a job opportunity. Okay, that looks good. Looks like the pay is decent. I'm like, yeah.

Sara Gentry  10:00  
I did everything I nannied, I was in accounting. I was I just tried it all, yeah, wasn't passionate about it. And then I kind of felt stuck. So I was like, I need to get out of California. Like, let's try something new. So I had a friend in Jacksonville that I came and I was like, she's like, you can move in for a little bit and so figure

Tracy Hayes  10:17  
it out. Yeah. Okay, so you get here, that's when you start your social media. Yeah. About that time, yeah.

Sara Gentry  10:23  
So I started doing like marketing for just a bunch of like different small businesses and whatnot, and then it just kept growing

Tracy Hayes  10:31  
from there, because I, if I read correctly on there, that was, you're just kind of your own soul, consultation, consultative, talk

Sara Gentry  10:38  
to people and kind of pitch my stuff and do some marketing, but it didn't grow into like an actual job until covid.

Tracy Hayes  10:46  
I find that field interesting from the standpoint and for the audience. We're talking about social media, because there is there you can go to some classes, and I think some colleges are starting to take it on right as a as part of the marketing, because if you aren't marketing on social media right now, or you're a marketing company that doesn't offer any sort of social media, you're not, you're probably not in business right now, correct? Yeah, but the training is really almost like hands on, and then it's changing all the time. Like, Instagram just changed the size of their Oh, it makes me so mad. It drives me nuts, because I do the artwork for the show, yeah, now cuts off the edges because, well, if you're on the desktop, it's still the old way, yeah, on the phone, it's on, it's longer now. And I was telling my guy, who does that, does my artwork for me. I was like, they they changed it because they did. I said, Yeah, I just noticed when I went to post. So I googled it, and sure enough, it said they were changing, but they haven't changed it on the desktop. I know it Tracy. Tracy nuts.

Sara Gentry  11:51  
I'm surprised you go on Instagram on the desktop. That's impressive.

Tracy Hayes  11:56  
Well, only what I it's not as it doesn't function the same way.

Sara Gentry  12:03  
It's way more user friendly on the phone. Yes, phone

Tracy Hayes  12:07  
is, I think, is their focus. The desktop is just nothing. But I'm thinking, if you're working in social media and you're taking care of someone's Instagram, yeah, why wouldn't you be doing it on your desktop or laptop?

Sara Gentry  12:19  
I do it all on my phone to all their linked accounts. Yes, I have a third party, like a HootSuite or something, posting, which I try not to use, because I take all your information. But yeah, I have just a bunch of different accounts on my phone that I toggle through when I was doing it.

Tracy Hayes  12:32  
I don't know why they, you know, these guys are brilliant anyway, why they why they don't, if they're changing the phone, why doesn't the and when I originally started, allows you to do it now, but you couldn't invite collaborators on the desktop like you could on the phone. You can now, because that was a big thing. And again, I had to learn that because I didn't have a social media manager to instruct me. Yeah, that obviously an important thing when I'm, you know, like when I post your reels, is obviously invite you as a collaborator to get more exposure.

Sara Gentry  12:58  
Invite more than one collaborator now, yeah, so there's five of us in the real we could all be on there, yeah, and it just extends

Tracy Hayes  13:05  
your reach. No, I always put, like, the brokerage, or, you know, if it's real, I'll actually put real brokerage, the whole big deal. All right, so you're, you're, well, that my point was going back to that business of social media marketing in doing that is almost it's an ongoing learning process. And am I right? It's a lot of trial and personal trial and error. There's no textbook that you pick up and say, Here's how Instagram works. Read it and now you'll know everything about

Sara Gentry  13:32  
it, correct? Yeah, yeah. I think you know, to be perfectly honest, Tiktok, because other people are picking up stuff and other social media managers that I follow and whatnot. So a lot what I learned is just upkeeping through following them and seeing what they're doing if I'm not capturing it myself. Everything's changed. The algorithm is always changing. The video editing is always changing. Now we got to put captions on everything so no one wants to play it on loud like, I mean, there's just so many different things that you have to do.

Speaker 1  13:58  
My logo went out behind you, and that doesn't look good on the real Yeah.

Speaker 1  14:02  
Good on the reel sitting there for about an hour. Very good

Tracy Hayes  14:13  
reels look good so well, because you're in the business, you're following others who are sharing. Hey, you know which they probably would have shared. Hey, Instagram just changed their thing, everybody. Because Instagram doesn't exactly announce that.

Sara Gentry  14:27  
No, well, they have Instagram creators, and they announce a lot of the changes, but they also announce so much other stuff that they're constantly feeding out. It's kind of hard to sift through what's going on. But that, like the sizes, I didn't notice that until I go and post a client's reel. I'm like, this isn't posting right? And I had to redo all of my sizing and figure out, just play with it. And that was before even Google said, hey, it's this and this pixel. So I'm just like, playing with it and just trial and error at

Tracy Hayes  14:53  
that point. Well, I had Holly Carol on a couple months ago. She's a former Miss of. Canadian, Canada tourism model, everything. So she's wants everything to be perfect. So I'm posting her reels. So you'll, I actually learned how to like, which I'm sure this was there, you know, obviously picked the part in the reel where she's smiling, you know, she's not in a bad expression. And then they put the other thing was, it was cutting off, like, you know, when I was posted it was, it was cutting off the top of her head or whatever. And now they got, I've learned how to, yeah. Now I go in there and edit, edit the, you know, whatever. You call it, the cover, yeah, yeah. And bring her down. So it's more

Sara Gentry  15:34  
after you post it. You know, you can edit the cover by uploading a new photo, but you won't be able to drag it to change it. So just

Tracy Hayes  15:41  
after you post, yeah, you go back and edit, yeah. Because there has been times where I have forgotten to do that and hit edit and try to go back in and yeah, I fixed a couple of hers, but yeah, she was all over it, but it made me learn. But the other thing too is and listeners are talking about social media, and this is gonna work, whether you're in real estate or whatever. The other thing she said recommended to me was use AI. Use chat GPT to write your captions, yeah, but take out all the emojis. Take out the emojis. Oh, interesting tip. Why? Well, I guess you could just tell it don't use emojis.

Sara Gentry  16:15  
Just tell that it's chat GPT is the thing. It's very obvious when people are using chat GBT. I think you should use it as a guide, but customize it to be you. You know, you could say, Make this warmer. Make this, make sure this is included. But when you have it all bullet pointed it in all these emojis, I mean, we have property descriptions now that are essays. They're four paragraphs long. It's not that like, come on, shorten it, yeah, you know, make it short and sweet. You don't need all these detail just because an AI is going to write it for you.

Tracy Hayes  16:42  
Well, when you're scrolling through Instagram on your phone, I mean, in you guys, you probably study or get some statistics on what I'm not often going in and looking at the caption. Now, if I'm on my desktop and I click on it, the caption comes up alongside the thing. So there I may look at it. Yeah, usually I just listen to what the person says. It's someone I know, or whatever you know type of thing, or you know, even if it's not someone I know, it's just whatever they're talking about. I'm just interested in listening and listen to it. But I don't often go and look at the caption.

Sara Gentry  17:16  
Anyway, it depends on the content. And they also have kind of attention grabs where it's like, Oh, do you want to know how to do this in the caption? So I'm like, Okay,

Tracy Hayes  17:24  
well, so is the caption? Is the caption? More, though, for well, you know, people do people search in Instagram?

Sara Gentry  17:33  
Yeah, sir, Instagram would be like a search engine for sure. Could not just hashtags that pop up. By the way, people think you can only search off the hashtags, but like, it's kind of similar to Google SEO, where it's the keywords are going to pop up in the same kind of material will pop up from the keywords just from your captioning.

Tracy Hayes  17:52  
I, because I always found it interesting if people were saying that they were learning how to do something or fix something on Tiktok. Now, I'll go to YouTube for that, because I that's that's a search engine itself, and just, hey, how do you do that? And look for someone's video on what they're doing there? But it does blow my mind that on between tick tock and Instagram, they have become places for people to search.

Sara Gentry  18:15  
Yeah, all my recipes are from Instagram and tick tock, if I'm looking up, try to make like carbon are something I'm looking through Instagram and tick tock, not even Google

Tracy Hayes  18:23  
at this point. Are you? Are you actually going to the cert, hitting the search button and putting in easier? How do you make this

Sara Gentry  18:29  
family meal? Or yeah, and then I, most the time, download the video and then just follow it while I cook. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  18:36  
I personally never it. Just, it blows my mind. I just felt YouTube was more of a more friendlier platform for that,

Sara Gentry  18:44  
yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we're already on this app, though. So much so I we're way more on Instagram and Tiktok than where YouTube we all go down that black or that wormhole of just like the 62nd videos and then three hours passed by. So we're already on the app anyways, that it's just the easiest search engine to go to, versus YouTube, the only time I'm on there is if, like, I'm watching either a podcast that I like to watch the video on, or if I'm trying to see, like, some type of interviews. Honestly, I don't utilize YouTube a lot, all right.

Tracy Hayes  19:14  
So since we're on this subject and go deeper, let's bring in our real estate friends. Now, you've been doing it for a decade, real estate, social media and real estate. Yeah, bring our how it's you know what you've learned in 10 years? And again, it's constantly evolving, but what have you? Well, of course, they've changed the platforms a little bit too to force almost a change on how we're how we're doing business. But someone getting started right now, you know, is a novice at this, is hiring a social media manager, you know, inexpensive and beneficial thing, or what are some of the basics that they need to have they should be doing. You think, right now, as any real estate. Agent, whether, you know, obviously, we have some Instagram gurus. There's some people that are really good at it, and they create some great creative videos. But not everyone can do that, or they could if they wanted to, but don't have the passion for it, yeah. What do you? Well, how do you what would you be talking to agents and just getting them a basic social media, basic Instagram going,

Sara Gentry  20:19  
I think the biggest thing, and honestly, Mike's the one that drilled this is, Do not be a secret agent, right? So we all have Instagrams. We have them before real estate. So you already have this group of people that are interested in seeing you and what's on your page. And now it's time to feed the fact that you're working and that you're an agent and that you care, and this is your passion. So showing up on camera is so huge because people are understanding like, what you do every day, what your personality is, and what kind of just what you're passionate about. So I always say steer clear of, like, the templates of the just sold and this and showing all that you can post the house up there. Tell a story, like, how was that process? Tell me about the how'd you get that seller, what is something cool that happened during that deal that's so much more interesting than I sold this for 600k okay? Like, cool, yeah. And, you know, like, I want to know more and connect us with that.

Tracy Hayes  21:12  
I had a guest on Rick Gonzales. He's, he comes to Ari bar camp here every year. He lives out in the panhandle. He's with real as well. And he was, he gave me his gentleman's name. I have, I have to look it up. But he was recommending go out and whether it's your listing or not, just do a walk through with your phone on the house. And that this guy was get, he was killing it on tick tock, because, and they're not even they're not. They're not perfectionists. Him walking around with his phone recording and maybe doing some talking, maybe he puts his face. And I think it's, I want to know your opinion about obviously, being in the video. But you know, as a new agent right now, and maybe you don't have any listings, go around to a bunch of several open houses this weekend and do three or four, walk through videos and talk to people about the house in the neighborhood. Yeah.

Sara Gentry  22:03  
So when I started, I didn't have anything really going on, like, and I wanted people to know that I was in the business. Like, how do I connect this? So I started going to those beaches caravans, and I started going from house to house and getting on video and showing the houses and putting like questions in my stories, like, Guess the price? Do you like this kind of bathtub? Do you like this tile? And getting them to interact. So one, I boost up in their algorithm. And two, I'm seeing that people genuinely care and what they like, so I can track it and analytics wise. So I yeah, those weren't my listings. I didn't have buyers. I was showing I was just showing up at these households, whether that's an open house or going to the there's so many brokers opens now, like it's, you can find one every day, to be perfectly honest, yeah, or there's people listing. Agents were all like, Hey, I'm gonna go schedule showing. I'm gonna take some content. Is that cool? 90% of the time, if it's a vacant house, they're fine with it. So that's just how I did it. And then I got started getting the traction that way, and a lot of my peers are like, interacting and then asking questions. And it just kind of snowballed.

Tracy Hayes  23:01  
And, alright, so the question, I know most agents and they, I'm sure you get this all the time when you're talking to agents about social media, getting deals from social media. I don't you know, you may actually have someone that said, Hey, I saw you on Instagram. I saw you showing that house. I mean, and can you show it to me? I mean, I see that's, I mean that, but that's a unicorn. Yeah. I mean, what is the, what is the, what do you think is the when you're talking to these agents, you're doing some training or doing work for them, what is the core purpose of doing the things that we just kind of just talked about like you were doing?

Sara Gentry  23:39  
So I think it's to show people that you are in the business and you are doing it. I mean, regardless if that's a hard lead from Instagram or someone gets into your DM is like, hey, I want to buy a house. That's happened like twice to me, to be perfectly honest. But other than that, it's showing all of my sphere, who I all have on my social media, that I'm in the business, and it keeps me top of mind. It's our way of keeping top of mind. So you touch them on Instagram, you touch them on your you know, the feed, the stories, an email, touch and then I call them, right? I'm always going to be top of mind if they want, if they think of a house, I want to be the person that they think of to call to go see it, right? So that's, that's the main objective, is to just stay on top of mind.

Tracy Hayes  24:19  
Because I think I want to say, I know some I want to say it's Keller Williams. I'm not sure that that's correct or not, but there's coaches out there to promote, hey, you need to have so many touches. This is just a free way to add to the what we you know, the formal touch, like the email, birthday card, Christmas card, anniversary, card, whatever, those type of things that you might be doing. Newsletter, right be a touch and obviously physically calling them as touch, but backing it up with social media, yeah, to fill in the gaps well.

Sara Gentry  24:53  
And I think social media is just a more creative, personal way to do it. I don't read my emails unless it's work. I don't care. Like 90% of the time I'm not reading newsletters, stuff that comes into the mail. For the most part, I don't read that either, unless it's a bill, and I probably won't read it's just a way to show your personality. You're building trust and friendships through social media. I mean, I have friends right now. My best friend lives in Hawaii. I haven't seen her since high school. Wasn't friends with her in high school. We got close to social media, just her posting on her stories and me, and then we realized we liked each other's personality.

Tracy Hayes  25:26  
Well, there's, there's no doubt, we communicate more today than our parents or our grandparents ever did with their unless they live, still live in the same town that they grew up in, staying in touch with just Yeah, people from a distance, or, you know, my college alumni, you know someone will post something. Hey, does anyone know someone to do mortgages in or even even real estate agent? Hey, do anyone know? Hey, ask Tracy, because they know I'm in the business, obviously seeing the podcast as well, but because they're regularly seeing me all the time,

Sara Gentry  25:59  
yeah, I started getting you know how you have the Facebook groups, and they're like, we're moving to Jacksonville, looking for a realtor. All of a sudden, I'm having these random people tagged me, people I haven't even worked with before, right? But that's because, but they see your social media and busy, that's what I do. It.

Tracy Hayes  26:13  
Alright, two things. Let's start with stories. Where do stories play in what do you recommend? I noticed some agents here that in this couple that I know, you know and love, and I do too, they want to get on there and kind of give their hey day in the life of a realtor. Yes, I'm not totally against it, just because I like them and type of thing. But is that really resonating with the audience?

Sara Gentry  26:40  
I think when you have 30 slides of you talking in your car while you're driving, it's not so much resonating. It's boring

Tracy Hayes  26:47  
after one and a half.

Sara Gentry  26:49  
Yeah, you being like, Hey, what's up? This is what I'm doing. Cool, yeah, but please put captions on it, because not all of us are in places. Like, we're at the grocery store, we're at this we're we're hooked to work, yeah, it's hooked to our hand. Like, I don't want to have to play this loud for everyone else to hear. Throw captions so I can read it. I love that you do that for your videos as

Tracy Hayes  27:07  
well, because, well, that's something I learned early. Yeah, you got to put captions on it.

Sara Gentry  27:11  
Someone told me I'm guilty of it too. But where phones not are on, are on loud? Yeah, I'm pretty sure no one has a ringtone anymore because we just buzz. It's like, throw the captions on, but don't flood your stories with it. Stories are something to nurse. What who are already following you, right? And then I take your grid as your public resume. That's my resume. This is what I'm doing. This is what she likes. This is her business, her family, and her pillars that mean the most to her is on

Tracy Hayes  27:38  
her grid. Do you coach to do two separate pages and personal pages.

Sara Gentry  27:42  
I personally don't I think if you already built your sphere, then just integrate.

Tracy Hayes  27:47  
Unless there's some people who are like, I mean, truly, just love posting their family pictures, like

Sara Gentry  27:52  
it would be overwhelmed, yeah? And also, if they don't feel comfortable, if they have private pages with their kids faces and they don't want it public, I completely understand that, yeah. But for the most part, I think it would be great to just integrate all those pages, because those are all people that you can touch and already love you, and getting them to follow you on a strictly business page of just business, they're kind of like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  28:14  
Because again, go back to the core purpose. The core purpose is to be in front of your Johnny's friend on the baseball team's mom and dad, right? I mean, that's really what you're doing. So you post a picture of them at the baseball game, or, you know, a picture at the game, so they resonate and tag that. Of course, they'll see your other stuff

Sara Gentry  28:37  
when people look you up through social media. I mean, I don't know if you do this, but I'll get on Zillow. These are leads I have never met before, and if I'm kind of iffy about them and I have their name, I'll

Tracy Hayes  28:46  
look them up. Oh, I do every I'm a stalker. Nobody's Business. Yeah, I go on. I mean, trust me, I when I see a loan officer I've never seen before, and I'm a less consumer access and I'm looking back, where's this person been? Who have they ever even done a mortgage before? Yeah, I'm

Sara Gentry  29:02  
the type of person. I'm literally the person where a lot of my friends who are in the industry will send me names, or I've had license plates, I've had phone numbers, I've had this. And be like, what can you find out about this person? Like, give me five minutes. I got you. Yeah. So and that, yeah, that's looking through social media. So my LinkedIn is one the first place I go, yeah. But the problem is, with LinkedIn is you got to have a decoy page, because it shows who views your page. So if this person

Tracy Hayes  29:23  
No, you can shut that off. You can, yes, I shut mine off. Yeah, I do that.

Sara Gentry  29:28  
Like I could shut off for someone not to see me viewing it. Oh, we're,

Tracy Hayes  29:32  
yeah, yeah. There is a setting in there because I Yeah, exactly. But, and if they're not paying for the premium, it really doesn't give them too much, but you could shut it off to be anonymous, yeah, oh, we're gonna talk

Sara Gentry  29:45  
page just so I can look at people. This would be a lot easier.

Tracy Hayes  29:50  
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then boosting you, I don't know if you if I caught you saying something about do you boost? Do you suggest boosting posts? Where does. Come into play.

Sara Gentry  30:00  
It depends. You know, I've noticed a lot of people on Instagram boosting certain stories. So I was just talking to a new girlfriend. Her name is Christina Swier. She just moved here the other day, and I was like, your boosted story shows up on my page four times a day, literally every single time I see her walking through this house. It's a boosted story. But, you know the reach on that is he, are you just reaching your people, following wise? Are you genuinely going outside of that spectrum? And it's hard to China track that, because it's by clicks and it's by it's by views. But what if that's all just my peers, and I'm already reaching anyways, so I think it's hard for me to suggest that I do think boosting YouTube is fantastic. Mike does that with some of his videos, and the traction is great, and it also kind of just builds that rapport of people seeing it like, Oh, you got 1400 views versus, like, 30. So that aspect, I understand, but

Tracy Hayes  30:52  
in other words, doing it for you. Hey, I got a new listing. Yeah, you're doing a video. You're showing the customers. Hey, I do a video, and I'm boosting it. And, you know, I've got several 1000. Christa masure is big on that. Yeah, she's, you know, she sells that on. Hey, look how many hits I get on my when she's trying to close a possible listing client.

Sara Gentry  31:13  
Her reach in general. I mean, I probably get five calls a week from her people. We got this class. Are you coming? Oh, my goodness gracious. Like, I haven't been to one in six months.

Tracy Hayes  31:20  
But I've had her and go, go, her and go, go. Beth key, yeah, love Go, go, go, yeah. She will go, go. Will Blow Your email up. Love them both. Love them both. Great women, no doubt. Boost targeting the like on you on Facebook, for example, that's going in a neighborhood. Have you worked with that at all?

Sara Gentry  31:45  
So I've done, like, kind of strategic ad marketing. So I'm doing towards a certain audience, towards a certain County, towards a certain, you know, like, income range and whatnot. So you can really get into the nitty gritty of that.

Tracy Hayes  32:01  
And you do if you start going in there and boosting towards income and stuff, do you get in from a real estate agent? Does that violate anything from that standpoint?

Sara Gentry  32:10  
No, because the way that they do it through Facebook, I guess I was like, lack of better words to be honest, someone

Tracy Hayes  32:16  
would really have to someone would really have to be after you to find that information.

Sara Gentry  32:20  
Yeah, the way that their settings, it doesn't really, technically say income. I can't even think of it right now, but because I have them all preset, but it's just a certain way where you can kind of see what range of the people, what counties, what certain neighborhoods and areas that you're targeting, that it correlates in that

Tracy Hayes  32:36  
do you like to hit, if you're you know, because a lot we have a lot of pods planned urban developments, a lot of subdivisions. Do you like to, if you have a listing, Do you regularly try to hit everybody in that neighborhood with a

Sara Gentry  32:49  
Facebook and the surrounding ones, especially if you're in St John's? So like, if I have, like, a listening and say, Shearwater, I'm hitting river town. So really, they're all out there. Everyone's interested in all of those, right? So, and a lot of people are kind of switching neighborhoods at this point to kind of seeing different amenities.

Tracy Hayes  33:06  
Well, there was for when the rates were low, yeah, we had a lot of people neighborhood hopping, yeah, you know, in the NACA tea out of nakati, you know, they're the whole, that's like, the popular

Sara Gentry  33:15  
one, John's just hot, though, in general. So, and same thing, like, you have people in Rivertown that love the idea of nakati, or people in nakati that I love the idea of going to that way, because those are two separate areas, yeah, maybe

Tracy Hayes  33:25  
they move there, and then they hate it and they leave, or they are over there and their friends are over there, so they

Sara Gentry  33:32  
want to go in there, yeah, and nakati made its way into this just kind of being this cool on little town. I mean, golf carts and everything looks all pretty and perfect. I'm like, this is Truman Show, right?

Tracy Hayes  33:41  
I don't I am really concerned about slightly off subject here, but these electric bikes these kids have, and I was actually pulling into beacon lakes the other day, and this kid's riding what I think was an elect. It's electric, but back in my day, they were gas powered mini bikes, yeah, now it's electric and yeah, now they're just quiet, but they're still going just as fast. Yeah, that I am really concerned about somebody. If I think there's actually accidents going on, they're not, we don't see, yeah, I don't think, I think the media, the whether the sheriff's department or whatever is like, they put a hush hush on it. But I can't believe more golf carts are not being hit in some of these areas.

Sara Gentry  34:27  
My son got an electric scooter for Christmas, and this thing goes up to 90 miles per hour from eight year old. I have an app. He can't go overnight,

Tracy Hayes  34:35  
so you track, yeah, you have the 360 app, no,

Sara Gentry  34:39  
it's like the scooter app. Oh, the scooter hasn't Oh,

Tracy Hayes  34:41  
mom's Absolutely, absolutely, oh,

Sara Gentry  34:45  
he does not need to be going Yeah, and he's too scared to ride on the street, street, so he's on the sidewalk. So I'm thinking like people backing out of their driveways,

Tracy Hayes  34:52  
I literally can't. So my son goes to beachside. I'm coming out of beachside to come back over to St John's golf. So I'm going under 90. Five to the other side, there's three electric basically, they look like 10 Speed bikes, but they're electric, two boys on each one, and they are literally weaving in and out of traffic. Between the cars go under 95 as if they were a motorcycle, yeah, and come out the other side they were going, they ended up going to the Winn Dixie for those people know the area there on the other side. So they're going amount, and they're just weaving in and out of traffic. Then they get up on the sidewalk, then they're back on the road,

Sara Gentry  35:31  
because you're untouchable. Then about it, think back, I go past, I have one of those gas powered go pets, and I was zipping through the neighborhood. You can hear me coming, yeah, but I wasn't gonna get hurt me,

Tracy Hayes  35:41  
yeah, it's, it's just time. It's just time for them. Okay, all right, so something happens. Are you working with real estate agents?

Sara Gentry  35:50  
Yeah, so I was just, it was Stevie Hahn, do you know Stevie? Yeah, fantastic. With social media.

Tracy Hayes  35:56  
She is to me, she, she's the one who, really, I mean, as far as anyone who has got her career started, because I've had her on the show very early, yeah, and she says, clearly on the on the show, she was, she had people thinking that she was just this super real estate agent when she hadn't sold her

Sara Gentry  36:14  
first home yet. Yeah, yeah, no, she did it, right. So we had some mutual friends, and I started following her through that, and she posted something looking for help on social media. And I shot my like, shoot my shot, right? And she was like, let's go. So we started working together this before I was even in real estate, and she honestly showed me the ropes. So we were working for someone at that capacity to like, because she was at like, 19,000 followers, I think right then, it's a lot of followers and she, I've never met someone who works harder, by the way. I mean, this girl woke up at 5am and did not stop working till 8pm every single day. It was insane and really inspirational to watch.

Tracy Hayes  36:53  
Well, you know that the the point in her life when that actually started? She talks about it on the pod. You have to listen to her podcast. Yeah, she was, I can't remember what brought her to it, but she was basically hit rock bottom, and she was sleeping on a mattress in her brother's apartment, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was staring at the ceiling one night, and that's where it all begins.

Sara Gentry  37:15  
We have very similar stories with that. Yeah, I was homeless in Jacksonville when I moved here for a little bit. So I get that, and I love her grit and the way that she just consistently showed up, not caring and what she posted. And she was the one where, that's why I'm so focused on FaceTime. You love her personality on there. You're like, I'm your best friend. We're besties. Like we we see each other, and she responds to everyone. Or I was responding. She was getting leads every single day. No joke. So much so that, like we had like to keep up with an Excel sheet and making sure,

Tracy Hayes  37:49  
I mean, if I heard you correctly, because I had question, Kim I wanted to write down before I forgot, because you can hire these people that will respond like you, that's she was using some of that.

Sara Gentry  38:04  
She was using me doing that she responded to most, but some that would slip through, right? I would go in and or I'd be like, hey, Stevie, this person wrote. And she'd like, Oh, can you handle that? Blah, blah, blah. So, like, I'd respond to some of them. And then I was also helping edit it, better her post. I helped her put together her entire Kajabi course, which was incredible, like she did amazing, and got a lot of feedback and interaction with that. So yeah, you can have people respond for you. You can have people like stuff. You can have people comment stuff. I talked to someone the other day that owns a home inspection business here in Jacksonville, and they utilize someone in the Philippines to write comments on all of their like peers pages, like all the people who use them for inspections. There's, there's some disconnect.

Tracy Hayes  38:49  
Josh Rogers has a group of women that he uses in his face, or YouTube, whatever. Facebook page, yeah, I think it's actually a Facebook page who are regularly interact, you know, go on there and regularly interact, because it obviously just creates, you know, the algorithms picking up the Hey, we were these people are talking here, social is supposed to be social. Yeah? Supposed to be socialized. Yeah.

Sara Gentry  39:13  
And it means a lot. Like, if you know, the inspection company is writing long feels like, Oh, that's awesome. Thanks. Like, thanks for thinking. So it's probably some random that's doing it, but I appreciate it. You know, we don't know that, so I think that's good

Tracy Hayes  39:25  
if you serious. So if you seriously want to say, Hey, I'm gonna, I want to social media is gonna be my marketing campaign. This is what I'm gonna do. You would probably highly recommend, if you don't have the time to be constantly, hire one of these virtual says, And they learn how to react like you, if I'm not mistaken, from what I've heard or they depends, yeah, up front, they got to learn, yeah, they learn you, but how you would respond and so forth, and try to be as much like you as possible.

Sara Gentry  39:52  
You can even like come up with a page of responses and say, use one of these. So that way, it kind of correlates a little bit. Yeah. And I think. That's important, especially if you don't have time to do it. I have a friend who owns a brokerage, and he wasn't really doing good on his marketing. I just sat with them and shot with it straight. It's like, Look, you need to do something. He was like, Can I hire you? Like, cool. Let's do it. He sent me the analytics. This is like, our second month, and he sent me the analytics for his page three days ago. And he is like, plus 167% all across the board, insane from what he was before you started

Tracy Hayes  40:21  
working with him. And he was posting before was

Sara Gentry  40:23  
posting before, but it was just not anything that would interest anyone. So, like, we completely switched that, and now he's having conversations with agents, because agent attraction is obviously important, and people are interacting with this post, and he's getting more likes, and it's just opening up a whole different

Tracy Hayes  40:36  
brand, all right, so you start working, doing some work with Stevie, what gets you to make the jump into real estate?

Sara Gentry  40:44  
Her I saw God. Everyone was so thankful. And seeing her make money while helping people. Being able to do that is really cool. I always wanted to feel fulfilling in my work in that way. And it just looks like a lot of fun. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really get to see the hard side of real estate, because I saw it through her social media. And we tend to kind of cover that up a little bit. So I jumped in like, this looks fun. It kind of looks easy, like I think I could do it. And, you know, Mike found me through Stevie Han girl wicks with the 904 home guide team. And so he asked me to start working for him. I was doing his marketing. And then I started working on my license, kind of secretly, and just seeing if I could do it. And then I passed and I sat down with them. I was like, hey,

Tracy Hayes  41:27  
so at the time, I would imagine Stevie's with Keller Williams

Sara Gentry  41:35  
or kW then almost she was, she with, she was with exit. For when I started with her, I'm pretty sure, and I

Tracy Hayes  41:42  
thought she was at Atlantic partners before she ended up going over to Real herself. She was

Sara Gentry  41:46  
definitely at exit, but I think she may have been with Keller Williams. I don't know it was so long ago.

Tracy Hayes  41:51  
So one of the, one of the things I always like to talk about on the show, because I think this first step that we're going to talk about, your first step, basically, in the real estate, your first I mean, obviously you've already had a taste of from a marketing standpoint anyway, yeah, and seeing what she was doing, so you kind of saw it, yeah, of what was going on. So wasn't, you know, completely, you know, blind, like, hey, you know what, I'm gonna be a real estate agent. Let me see if I can take the test and not even that, talk to a real estate agent. Yeah, you've actually been interacting with several you chose to go follow Mike for a reason, so as a new agent and getting your business started, what was it? What? What was Mike's, you know, pitch to you? What was it about Mike that you felt, and obviously you're still with him and and your successes, you know there? What was it about Mike that you think you know, that you would recommend other agents to look for someone like Mike, if not, call Mike directly.

Sara Gentry  42:43  
Yeah, he invested into his agents, and he believed in them. You know, he saw the winner in them before they could. He I was and I would show up, and even though I was in marketing, I'd be in the office and see how he interacts with his team at the time. And I think there was like, three people on the team, and he really was, like, drilling and taking the time, taking 45 minute sessions just to coach them through something. I mean, they had the help. I needed, the help. I didn't know what I was doing. I get the gist, but there's so many little intricate things. And he's very chill and laid back about it. And he wasn't really kind of, like, hardcore. You need to be doing this. If they want it, they'll do it. He says, if they don't want it, they're not going to do it, and they're not

Tracy Hayes  43:24  
or if they don't like it, they're not going to do it, exactly, yeah, if they don't like cold calling, they're not going to cold call. So don't

Sara Gentry  43:29  
force them to cold call. And you know, if he'll see the drive and as much as he could in these interviews with you, he'll see if you want it or what your goals are and why you're doing it, and he'll take a chance on you. But if you're not willing to put in the work, and you're just not cut for the team. So, and we went through that. I mean, he cut nine people off our team one day. So, yeah, that was intense.

Tracy Hayes  43:48  
Well, there's, there's no, there's no, because they can definitely be a drag. I mean, it's why some, I think some great people who probably could be great brokers or team leads don't do it, because it's just, it's a drag, that it's, well, it's dragged two different ways that you know, when you got you're having meetings, you know, and they're not showing up, and you're having a meeting, you're preparing this information as you know, to share with others, to make others better. And then when someone doesn't show up, no matter if you if they're a producer or not, you that it takes something from you, and then when someone leaves the group, it takes something from you, because you accepted them into the group, and you feel maybe, what did I do? Did I short? Did I not deliver?

Sara Gentry  44:33  
And I'm sure he goes through that too. Yeah, you know, when you invest a lot of time and money into people because you want to help them grow, and they aren't returning, that then that it's just a waste of time. Yeah, you know, you can only do that for so long, or else, you're, you're in the making.

Tracy Hayes  44:48  
Well, you've got to be in it for the long haul. I know, you know some, some top teams in the area known one particular, basically from the time she got it started. Now, how? Has its own franchise and has been a powerhouse team for years. But it took a while of going through before you get that core group, yeah, the core group of people to stick. Because if you're the only one sticking, and everyone else is just coming and going, you ain't getting anywhere. You've got to start. Hey, start with the second one. It's third 1/4, one. When you got four or five core that have been there now three, four or five years, then you could start to and

Sara Gentry  45:23  
that's been fun to watch, kind of like just the trial and error and how he navigates through it. So I mean, like, right now, currently, I'm the longest standing person on the team, which is a weird thing to think about, and I've been there for three years. So it's just, it's been interesting.

Tracy Hayes  45:37  
Mike hasn't been in real estate that much, yeah, yeah, it's been a couple years since I had,

Sara Gentry  45:44  
like, where he's at and how short of time he gotta be doing something, right? So, and that was a big part of it, too. You know, when I joined it, he was only in for three years or so, and I was like, okay, and you're doing this at three years.

Tracy Hayes  45:55  
So Well, his business savvy, and that's one of the things, you know, I'm structuring my book right now. But where did people come before real estate? And, you know, there's some I can't write, put everybody in the book to, you know, 200 some odd agents, but some of the pre careers and how they took the career they had before and a lot of the skills they learned there, and put it into real estate, and it's become

Sara Gentry  46:19  
something 100% Yeah. I mean owning a recruiting company for him, I mean that definitely correlates into his real estate, yeah, business.

Tracy Hayes  46:26  
So, alright, so your first year you got Mike there, you're gonna follow him. What it? What challenges did you have, or even just challenge, just some of the things that you've worked through for yourself? Because I think what the question I actually put up here is, you, put up here is, you, what have you learned about yourself? But that could be a lot of different things. And I think you learn more about yourself when you have a setback or challenge that you have to overcome. A couple things.

Sara Gentry  46:54  
One, I did not want to come off incompetent. I'm big on that. So having to ask questions to Mike all the time. And Mike some questions he'll answers, and some he'll be like, who should you be asking? Oh, I should ask, like, title company, or I should ask a lender this. He was like, yeah, like, I could answer this, but who should you be asking? And I love that he did that because it forced me to call these people. And I would always start, I know it's a dumb question, but in reality, there is no we're just learning like. So that was really hard for me to overcome, because it was hard to build confidence when you don't know a lot, right? And competence is a huge part of this job. And then learning to be like when I get asked a question, instead of me trying to make up an answer, be like, You know what? I don't know, but I will find out, and that's okay. They don't care, as long as you follow up. Hey, as promised, you know, I found out blah, blah, blah, blah, they're fine with it. I thought I had to know everything which is not the case. Well.

Tracy Hayes  47:48  
I mean, have you in a story behind this would be great. Every transaction is different, yeah, and you have to build off the previous transaction to handle the next obstacle, even though it's nothing like the previous 10. All sudden, you got this 11th one, and that's like another, you know, negotiate whatever. You know, there's always a curveball.

Sara Gentry  48:12  
I had one this morning, then you're elevated. All right, great, go. Yeah. So a home under contract, and they say it was on septic, and then I was told the septics connect to a public sewer. And I'm like, Okay, that's interesting. And I Googled it. We all do it has to be a pump. All right, where's the pump? No, there is no pump. All right, Something's fishy, like, what's going on here? So we asked a septic company to come out, told them to do it's an older part of town or something, yeah, Bowdoin or Bowden. Yeah. The septic company was like, oh, we can't touch it because it's connected public connected public, so you have to get a plumber. So we call the plumber, and the plumber is like, Well, from what we see it, that's a public city neighborhood like that. That's all on public sewer, so it has to be on public and there's no septic. Like, what is going on here?

Tracy Hayes  48:55  
And so who gave you, who gave you the initial information that there was property

Sara Gentry  48:58  
disclosure, the seller says it's on the septic. And then we call the agent, and the agent

Tracy Hayes  49:03  
says it's, did you linked in the selling? Listing agent? Yet, at this point, she used

Sara Gentry  49:07  
to be on the team. Okay? So I know her. She's kind of family, like, in a way. So yes, it's

Tracy Hayes  49:14  
a lot felt there was some possible credibility to it. Okay, yeah, no,

Sara Gentry  49:18  
she's, she's, it's not her fault at all to be perfect line. It's the seller kind of being secretive. And then we found out that it's on public. So then I call jaa, like, hey, is this on public? It's, they're like, well, they're not paying sewage. So, like, so they're on a septic, so they're not paying sewage.

Tracy Hayes  49:35  
Like, okay, yeah. I mean, that's probably about as far as they can answer that.

Sara Gentry  49:39  
So we get a septic company to go out today and go look at the septic, and he was one who told us talk to the seller who was there, and he was present, and he was essentially no help. And he was like, what I think it is that they haven't been paying sewage, and they've just been getting away with it. So they're saying they're on septic, so they're not backdated all their sewage. Bills. I'm like, What do I do? How do I even handle this? Where do I go? So I was like, talking to my buyer. I'm like, Well, we're gonna have to call Jea. Well, what's

Tracy Hayes  50:12  
interesting about that is they basically have a because they don't know. They're not measuring the sewage coming out, they're measuring the water going in,

Sara Gentry  50:23  
and we did a scope, and it's all public.

Tracy Hayes  50:25  
Yes, no, so, but, I mean, they're they're billing you off of like, Hey, you're using this much water. So you were going to guesstimate you're using that this much sewage is coming out.

Sara Gentry  50:35  
Except they're not getting charged sewage, but they're

Tracy Hayes  50:37  
not getting charged sewage, and

Speaker 1  50:42  
because you can have, what do we have? We had a different meter put in for that.

Tracy Hayes  50:46  
I don't think they even do it anymore. I think they actually stopped. But we had a different meter put in that gave us water for because you're watering your lawn, and if you're watering your lawn, it's running up same water just as you were drinking and going in the toilet? Yeah, it was, you know, but it's going on the lawn. It's actually not going into the sewer. Yes, it's hard to measure. Yeah, so if you got you used to be able to buy the meter that had the two different things on, but I was told they don't allow that anymore. I don't know if that's true or not, but yeah. So how did you solve this? You're working on this, okay, but yeah, this is a great curve ball.

Sara Gentry  51:21  
You back? Yeah, essentially, we now know what's on public we know they're not getting charged for sewage, and then we're going to have to probably go the route of calling JEA and being like, Hey, this is the deal. And that may turn into them getting backdated all these sewage bills and maybe losing a deal at this point, but she doesn't want to go into it and all of a sudden get 1000s of dollars of bills because she's now the owner of the property, so

Tracy Hayes  51:45  
it's already she's it's under contract. It's under contract.

Sara Gentry  51:48  
Yeah, we're in the inspection period. I just extended it this

Tracy Hayes  51:51  
morning, right? So now you got to get that answer from Jay Yang, like, try to like,

Sara Gentry  51:54  
and it's gonna raise a lot of red flags for the seller.

Tracy Hayes  51:57  
Yeah, well, the seller already assumed they were going to pay. And I can't believe they like buying the house because they're not paying sewer. Yeah, they just assumed that was they're gonna get that bill anyway, like everybody else does.

Sara Gentry  52:08  
But why Mark, you're on septic when you're not

Tracy Hayes  52:12  
in the seller's property? Well, no, yeah, exactly. It's a seller that has to worry about it because they gotta come back. But they the question for the the JEA is, if Yeah, they owe $10,000 owe $10,000 they go back and go, Oh my god, yeah, this person moved in back on this date, 2004 or we put the city sewer in on this date, and they should have been paying it since that date, and this is all their water usage, if they still have those records. And and then go, Hey, you owe $20,000

Sara Gentry  52:38  
yeah, because that's 21 years of sewage. Oh, wow, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  52:44  
So now they, are they gonna put, are they gonna put a lien on the house? Exactly? I don't know. So now the title company's got to get involved, because they're gonna put insurance

Sara Gentry  52:52  
on it and do a municipal lien search, and what's gonna pop up? And, yeah, right,

Tracy Hayes  52:55  
because right now there's no lien on it, so they're gonna say it's clear, but they go and put that sewer lien on there. Later, the insurance companies got to pick it up. These are things you never Yeah, I guess. I mean, it does it, uh huh, yeah, that's a new one, right there, but that, that's the stuff that comes

Sara Gentry  53:11  
up 100% I mean, I there's countless things similar to this that has popped up. I mean, I have a brand new listing in Springfield, and they're, they live out of state, and I showed up the other day with stagers, and there's dry wood termite press everywhere they tended though I didn't know that, so I'm thinking, God, it's covered in dry woods. No, it's actually just old stuff that was never cleaned up. But in my head, I'm like, oh, here we go. But thank goodness it's all covered

Tracy Hayes  53:36  
but, but this is the life of a real estate agent, and you have to be able to roll with the punches, so to speak, you got to have great leadership, you know, people that you can rely on. Because I'm sure the first thing you did was call Mike, go, if you haven't told them yet, yeah, come in here. And you know, this is, this is its situation. But everybody in the office now, because when you're, I'm pro office, having worked in a call center for, well, I'd say I actually worked mostly from home, but the first three years I was in the business, wasn't a call center, but I didn't know anything about mortgages before that. So you learn a lot by other people's situations. Yeah, and it's not actually about mortgages, and they're got, you know, although there's guidelines changes and stuff like that. Hey, can you do that type of loan on that? Yeah? Oh yeah, we can do, you know, you learn that stuff. But the situations, because our clients are all different, the houses are all different, the situations are, yeah, every everything's coming at you. So we have multiple things working and trying to put it, you know, put somebody in a new home.

Sara Gentry  54:33  
And I definitely lean on Mike a lot. I go to the office, you know, a couple times to wait, to be perfectly honest, I do enjoy working in my home office, because there's a lot of people that come in and out, because all the real people are able to use our office, so they kind of a lot of voices, and I need to concentrate. But I enjoy going in there because I enjoy hearing him negotiating, not on the phone. I enjoy him cold calling and hearing those conversations, because I learned from listening. So when I started, he was taking me on his listening appointments. He was taking me on showings. He was. Are letting me listen in on phone calls and talking from, you know, his buyers that are in like the 2 million to the buyers that are in like the 250 you know, they're different conversations, yeah, and different ways of treating not treating them, but like, information that has to be given. So I learned a lot by just sitting in

Tracy Hayes  55:17  
and it's not as simple as, hey, this is, these are people are looking at 2 million, $3 million houses. These are looking at two or $300,000 yeah, there is a different way you you you might approach them differently, a first time home buyer versus obviously someone you know type of thing, but their own personal you know, their lives are different economically, but they're also just different people, some like and personalities that

Sara Gentry  55:44  
Jeff, that's what I meant, like seeing him handheld more and just working on those concessions for him and trying to lower that down payment, like that nitty gritty this. And then there's the ones here where it's like, okay, but the boat is this deep, and is it gonna fit, and how much water frontage? And you know, when's the last time that they drained this what's important to them? Yeah? So it's just a whole different avenue. So I'm lucky that I'm able to see just the broad spectrum of all the different types of deals, whether that's an investor, first time home buyer, or someone who it's like their sixth home and where they're buying. It's really cool. Yeah.

Tracy Hayes  56:16  
So, yeah, yeah, you mentioned grit earlier with we were talking about Stevie. I don't know if you've read grit the book. There's actually a book by Angela Duckworth. Yes, really good. You should pick it up or audio it, either way, I audited it. Actually bought it too. Someone stole it from me. I got to get back. But it actually gave me a presence because of all the agents that I've had on, I think that one of the underlying things for majority of them, it takes a lot of grit to do this business, because you are out on your own, you know, you try to team up with other people to give you support, but ultimately, you're the one that's got to get Yeah, Mike's not knocking on your door going, Hey, you didn't show up at nine o'clock this morning. You need to, you know, come in and counsel you that that's totally on you. You're, you're, you're self employed, you're 1099, you're, you're running your business. But I broke it down. I To me, you have to have, I call it your LLC. You have to love what you do. I believe there's a laughter, and I'm going to explain the laughter in a moment, and then you have to be consistent. That's your LLC to me that people have to be that have grit people. So the first part is gonna be easy. You're gonna be able to tell me why you love real estate, and we'll get that a nice reel for you. But the laughter part is kind of what we're talking about. Like you just were thrown this, but you're on your way here, or whatever, you're preparing to come here and do the podcast, and now you get thrown this like super curve ball, which you have a lot of places you're going to call after this and try to find out how, what's the Can we even save this deal? Yeah? Or is the seller going to back out because they're afraid to get a $20,000 bill right? Or, hopefully they've got a lot of equity, and they're like, I'll screw it. If they put a thing on it, we'll have to pay it. And whatever, yeah, whatever that situation. But my concern is the title company putting insurance on it, knowing what you know so many so the laughter part is, in you were saying you had a similar situation to Stevie, or you kind of hit a rock bottom and in, and you telling me a little bit early, but we get throw curve balls. And as you go on in life, we're hit. We're hit with similar size curve balls, but now we almost laugh them off, yeah, because you've been hit so many times in that part so and then we'll ask about consisting. But tell, tell us why. What is it about real estate? You love that?

Sara Gentry  58:40  
Well, I mean, obviously the reactions of people, and seeing how happy they are and starting the chapters and being trusted enough like this is one of the biggest financial decisions of your entire life. Most people, yeah, yes, most people, and you're giving me the trust to guide you through that process like that means a lot to me, and I've worked really, really hard to gain that trust and be a good advocate for you in that sense. So that means the world. So from that side, I love helping people, and I love all the people that I get to meet and build relationships. I throw events all year long, and I invite all these people to my house. They're coming over, we're hanging out, we're going to dinners like I love it. And then on the other side of it is the sky's the limit. There is no cap on how much I could possibly sell or who I can meet, or what I could do. I mean, it is how bad I want. It is how good I will do.

Tracy Hayes  59:29  
No, the time in the day is really right, how bad you wanted the time of the day and things you got to do.

Sara Gentry  59:35  
My reviews coming up, hopefully I get a 3% increase, right? No, I can. I can one year make 30,000 or whatever, or sell 10 homes, and the next year I can sit 300,000 Yeah, that's so cool. And it's up to me. It's not up to my boss or my supervisor or my review like it is up to me to do that. How much

Tracy Hayes  59:52  
do you look as you because you're in the social media part of you, so you're creative. You have a creativity part about you in the fact that you you. Although it can get you in trouble and cost you money, you're the fact that you can be as creative as you want to, and, like, acquiring these clients and so forth, your your freedom versus, you know, having to work through a corporate Yeah, you know, you know, this is the way we're marketing, and this is how we're even as they're giving you leads. This is how we're doing it. You're like, I don't like that, yeah. How much is that creativity part? Because that's, that's how you have that in you, because you're obviously, you've been doing social media marketing, so you've had to be creative.

Sara Gentry  1:00:27  
Yeah, no, I definitely, honestly, I've kind of switched it lately in the last couple years, and I touched on it a little bit a second ago. Event, I'm making creative events. I do these massive Halloween parties. I have a Valentine's Day coming up. I do the vision board parties. I get to be creative in that aspect. And it People don't just come to my house to hang out, like there's something that they get out of it also, so being able to turn something into that aspect where it's like, I'm giving you something, and I also get to build this relationship in the same sense, like, that's how I've turned it creatively wise. Social media. I mean, I essentially, to be honest, I do mostly what a lot of the other agents do. I sit there, I get on and I be present, and I show my face and I interact with them. I mean, that's what they should be doing, but I feel like a lot of them do so, but the events is where all the creativity comes in, alright?

Tracy Hayes  1:01:12  
So the laughter part. So you expressed, you know, a similarity to Stevie Hahn hitting that rock bottom as a young person. You know, you're, you're bouncing around some different jobs, like you said you came here to Jacksonville with, like, didn't have a job, lined up your luck, your friend, you know, gave you a bed to sleep, so you've been there, you know, imagine the checkbook didn't have a lot of money in it.

Sara Gentry  1:01:37  
$300 $300 and a trunk full of stuff, because I can

Tracy Hayes  1:01:40  
fill my car with everything, right? So, no job, yeah. So now today, you know, you're throwing that curve ball this morning, but has there been something since you've been doing real estate, maybe in the last couple of years, something that's really, like, hitch in the gut, and you really had, like, septic am I doing right? Should I be doing real estate? You know, just kind of do that checkup. But then look back and saw where you're at versus where you were, and just press through it.

Sara Gentry  1:02:06  
You know, a big thing on looking back, Mike had me read this book called gap in the game, because I'm constantly looking at the next goal post. Next goal post. We're on the hamster wheel. Yeah, we closed five deals, but where's our next one? Yeah, you know, we freak out.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:18  
Do you have any in the pipeline? You close the last one. What's your next? Yeah, yeah.

Sara Gentry  1:02:22  
So I since reading that book, and it really has changed my perspective as I'm more looking so in the game, god, look how far I've come. I mean, I, when I started here, I was in a really, really tiny apartment off Merrill road that was dark, and I never wanted to leave and didn't want anyone to come over. And now I have a home, and my family's doing great, and we're going on vacations, like, it's crazy, yeah? Like, how much a life that you could be built. So I always look back and be grateful for everything, grateful for every single client and opportunity. But the times that I question myself is I am such an empath, so it's really hard taking emotion out of this business. Because when you have someone going through a divorce, or you have, like, a family that is having a baby soon, and we're just doing offer after offer and it's just not matching. And they're upset, I'm upset, and it's hard to untie those emotions. So and that's what I do, lean on Mike for because I there's many times where I'm in his office and I'm like, I don't know what to do. I feel terrible.

Tracy Hayes  1:03:16  
Sometimes you can't do anything that's obviously on the lending side is, and sometimes we have to just tell ourselves, they put themselves in that position. We can try to tell them, here's a possible path out. Yeah, but it's up to them to take it.

Sara Gentry  1:03:29  
And that's so hard. Yes, that is so hard, because I just want to make them happy. I'm a people pleaser at heart. I'm very type A and I like to be in control. That's why I like working for myself in that sense, and the fact when I can't control that situation in that sense, or I can't please them, there's just no good outcome of the situation. And there's a lot of emotions involved. I'm emotional as heck. Yeah, there's many nights where, like, I'll be sitting at home and Chad will just be like, You need to go sit alone for a second decompress. I got this hard, yeah, really, really hard. So that's, that's the hardest part

Tracy Hayes  1:04:02  
is the emotion keep, keeping the emotions from, from taking you down.

Sara Gentry  1:04:05  
But I also don't want, you know, I've encountered some agents that have been in the game for a long time, and there's just no emotions. I mean, it's almost robotic at this point. I don't want to turn into that either. You know I care, and I want you to know that I care. So I think there's just finding that line and boundary that I'm going to be in, and I'm still navigating

Tracy Hayes  1:04:26  
that sneeze came up on me. Sorry. Thank you. Consistency. What are you doing today? And maybe it's evolved over the last 34 months. Basically, you've been in the business. What are you doing consistently today? In your business that you think you know something. Hey, I've got to do it. What you know, I don't know if it's daily, weekly, monthly, whatever it is, or something, stuff that you're doing that you feel you I got to do this because I know it's going to bear fruit tomorrow, three months from now. This is what

Sara Gentry  1:04:56  
we're doing. Yeah. So definitely my touch points with it. Social media, calls, drop bys, anniversary cards, all that. Like, I will do that no matter what. And there has

Tracy Hayes  1:05:06  
been times you schedule time to take and

Sara Gentry  1:05:09  
then I have a system set up. So, like, I have a file folder of all, like, 12 months, and I just immediately put their cards in, so I know that month to take the cards out, and then hand write them and send them out. So it's just easier for me to remember that's a big part. And there's also some times where I have no business going on and I'm really freaked out, and I just want to crawl in a hole and not do anything. Well, then you're not going to drum up business three months from now. You have to do it, or else it's not going to come. So learning to continue to do touch points, continue to show up on social and be present. So even if I'm not doing business we mentioned earlier, like I'm at broker caravans, or I'm at open houses, or I'm doing something, taking films, and being out there doing stuff. So those are all really important. And then I don't stop learning. There's so much to learn, you know, from the change of contracts to different negotiation tactics to, I mean, real estate. Now, I'm sure I've only been in three years, but I guarantee you, 10 years ago was way different than how it is now. So I think when you stop learning and stop evolving, then you're not going to be able to push forward and continue to get all those deals, because there's going to be someone that is way more knowledgeable about the current market and the current way to do things versus something 1020 years ago.

Tracy Hayes  1:06:19  
You know, you just gave me a thought about the learning in we were talking about the situation. New rise to you this morning. Yeah, and hopefully we will have a good I'll recap you later, yeah, but that is a great thing to document. You know, we talk about social media, document on your YouTube, and then, like, when I put this, because I feel YouTube's like a library, yeah, you know, if you're searching something in particular, or, you know, maybe, maybe a client's looking you up, as I think a lot of them do. I think if we surveyed 10 buyers right now that did not know there and weren't referrald referred directly by somebody, or even if they were, they're still going in and they're still going well, who is this person? Who is Sarah that this my friends, referring Yeah, so to have on your YouTube page, you know, what do they call the different not channels, but within your YouTube playlist, yeah, check my real estate challenges. Yeah, in the take two or three, four minutes and tell that story, and obviously how it resulted and how you overcame it, just to log it.

Sara Gentry  1:07:31  
See, that's really smart. I actually struggle being on camera. It's the funniest thing. I'm so used to being behind it, filming people that being in front of it is terrifying, right? Like, I just

Tracy Hayes  1:07:40  
you're not facing it right now. I'm sweating bullets.

Sara Gentry  1:07:42  
Yeah, no, and Mike will tell you too, like we do intro videos, and we have the Florida man Lane Pittman comes and films our intro videos. I literally have to read line by line and him edit it to look seamless, because I'm freaked out the entire time.

Tracy Hayes  1:07:58  
But I think if I you know when the story concludes, and you can come back in and sit down, say, and we turn on the camera, say, Hey, tell me what happened with that yeah, situation. You would just rattle it off and not even

Sara Gentry  1:08:10  
that's true. Yeah, this is way more comfortable though. You know, feel like all the pressures on me, well, that's, that's what the friend,

Tracy Hayes  1:08:16  
that's what I think people don't understand, is you got to put yourself in that comfortable position when you are doing videos. You don't want to be uncomfortable to make the leap to actually do it is the uncomfortable part, but there's some great agents on and I can show you after a show where they set themselves up as if they are on a podcast, okay, but I I'll show you why they're clearly not on there, but that's their casual way. And what they do is they put the camera over here, so it's not even, like straight on, like this, it's over here on the side, and they're just, they're answering as if they're talking to somebody that's smart. I like that. Yeah, and you, because I think that would be such a great one is someone's looking you up and go, Wow, she's had all these challenges and overcome this agent knows what they're talking about. Yeah, they've got some experience, right? Yeah, all right. Take that one from her nugget. Yes, yes. What are you guys talking about? Right now, we'll finish up here, less, less couple minutes here, 2025 Yep. What, you know, what is Mike, got you guys focused on, what is real, talking about things that you guys, that agents, should be doing in 25

Sara Gentry  1:09:31  
so right now, on the team, we're driving in on market stats. I mean things, it just, it's changing. Everything changes all the time. So the seasonality of, you know, the peak market and spring market and whatnot, like right now we're drilling, if you are listing right now, it's because you need to list, not because you just want to just try the market

Tracy Hayes  1:09:52  
move to nakati, not doing that. No, absolutely not.

Sara Gentry  1:09:54  
I mean, we just had someone, a client of mine, had to list her home for $35,000 less than what she bought it for. Her, that's a hard pillow. Yeah, but she had to list, and we're under contract in two days. So like, those are the conversations we're having. We're doing a lot of role playing, also with our listing presentations and presenting these market stats. Market dwellings is such an amazing program.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:14  
How many in the office? Because you might have a couple, but I'm sure somewhere in the office, you guys got a handful of these listings, whereas people bought in new home construction and whatever year or two, they're having to sell or they want to sell, yeah, I think, hopefully, I I'm hoping it's just because they have to, because I can't believe anybody to try to sell in a new construction neighborhood, still having homes being built and competing against the builder, who's giving all these incentives well.

Sara Gentry  1:10:39  
And that's something also even on the buyer side, like, hey, I'm interested in like, Rivertown or whatever. Okay, are you planning to be here longer than five years? Well, no, we need to move in two years. Then this is not a neighborhood

Tracy Hayes  1:10:51  
for you, not unless you don't mind possibly throwing some money away that.

Sara Gentry  1:10:55  
Yeah, and I actually have been on quite a few listing consults lately, at a NEW CONSTRUCTION COMMITTEE is having these conversations, and they're not in a need to sell basis, and they're not, and I'm like, I'll check back in with you. I'll check the inventory, and then we could circle back a couple of years now, but right now, it's not, yeah, it's not right. So the people that are selling, the new construction communities are the ones that need to sell and having that conversation that they're gonna have to list for less than what they bought it for. And it's, you know, she bought it for 635, she's listing for six. She's not just losing that 35 like, there's commissions, yes, fees, and there's so much more that goes into it. So you those are really hard ones to navigate, which is awesome to, like, lean on Mike in our conversations and role playing, explaining that. So, yeah, they have to sell,

Tracy Hayes  1:11:34  
but those are the heart to heart conversations you have to have. And, you know, let alone whatever she put in the house. Yeah, you know, whether she put a change to flooring or just whatever, painted whatever. You're only there for a brief period of time? Yeah, I think more agents need to ask that question up front. And I don't think they're doing it, yeah, that they you're buying a new home construction right now. You really need to think deeply, unless you're buying the last house in the neighborhood, and you don't really need to have that conversation. But if there's still years to go. Yeah, you got

Sara Gentry  1:12:02  
to have that price. You know, Mike said something at one of our listing consults the other day. He said, You need to be at this price point, because it's like, kind of like, right below where we're at, like, where the markets at, and that's going to get you the traction. And he was like, I understand that yours is $70,000 more than what I'm saying. I can get a line of agents out the store that will list it for that much, but you will, like, I'm pretty confident you'll sit on the market. I hope you don't, right, but you will, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:25  
statistic, yeah. Statistically, it's out there. It

Sara Gentry  1:12:28  
was eight months ago. Like, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:12:33  
alright, so that's what Mike's talking about. What's what's real from a national standpoint, you guys, I assume you are in on their trainings and chats, yeah.

Sara Gentry  1:12:41  
So we hone in on technology for sure. It's definitely a technology forward brokerage, which I really love. So I went from Cloud brokerage to cloud brokerage. I don't have any experience at a brick mortar, right, which is interesting. But although the

Tracy Hayes  1:12:55  
904 home guide office is really nice, it's right out the beach. Come on.

Sara Gentry  1:13:00  
Man, that's nice, yeah, but yeah. So we're just really technology forward, social media forward, and just conversations. They train us on the same conversations that I just spoke about and the contract class, when we switch contracts like that was so eye opening. It's like we have the same destination. It's just a different route we're going to get there. So they really kind of drill into that, and then just leaning on each other,

Tracy Hayes  1:13:25  
having the little bit of the national perspective. Did it get you through? You know, I can't remember if you were at the there was the mastermind that Gigi and Mike put on over at Landmark. I'm sure you probably sort

Sara Gentry  1:13:38  
of, we still talk about

Tracy Hayes  1:13:40  
that, yes, yeah, but,

Speaker 1  1:13:42  
but it was because

Tracy Hayes  1:13:45  
it's time. There's so much local in, in breeding in that conversation that, as you know, I talked to guys that like, get asked to talk or whatever, and it's like, here in the local market, you're not seen as anyone. But if I contacted Tampa and said, Hey, I want to come over and talk. They'd be like, Oh, you'd be walking like you're a superstar. And when you get a room like that of local people, they weren't opening their ears to what was being said and where I imagine real when they kind of gave you the national perspective of what was going on, you were able to kind of get a little bit bigger vision and get your

Sara Gentry  1:14:21  
arms around it. Definitely, I think it's also was more collaborative on that sense, because we all have the same destination. We all just want to close transactions and continue our business and grow right like, that's it. We're all in the game together, but we have to evolve and grow and change, and that either that's law changes or market changes or whatever. And I think some people, again, like I mentioned earlier, are just so stuck in what they've been doing for this many years that they don't want to change. I was like, hey,

Tracy Hayes  1:14:55  
yeah, yeah, like that the conversation that was going on at that. A mastermind. It was like, think about it. We got to change. They're making us they're real estate agents who were actually involved in creating it's not like they were hired some law group out of DC knows nothing about real estate to create that. Now, obviously people different real estate agents around, you know, do things differently and but you know it was, it was put through a thought process, not saying the thought process is finished, because I do believe that will still evolve, especially now with the new Department of Justice, when they, when finally, they get in there and get their grasp on what stuff that was going on, because I believe the DOJ was deeply involved in, in causing a lot of chaos in that area for whatever, whatever their ideology is on real estate agents, but there's so many different ways to skin the cat. And I think these people you and thank God we have a lot of citizens that, hey, there's laws, and a lot of our laws are just based on our morality that we're going to do. We do the right thing. We don't, you know, there's always someone that's going to try to, you know, circumvent the system, like they're trying to get something out of it, which, I don't know what they would but in that discussion about the open house, and it's like, let's if you listen to the legal jargon, if you listen to the legal jargon now, as it can be interpreted in different ways, but until you start representing them, you're just representing the seller.

Sara Gentry  1:16:24  
Yeah, you know, yeah, big time. Yeah. And I think these conversations come up. That's whole point of the mastermind. We want to sit there, and we want to have different opinions, and we want to have different outlooks, and we want to get help. And, hey, listen my pain point. Let's talk about it, but you have to be receiving of that information as well. You know, you know, you don't go into these things to say, here's my pain point, but I don't like your suggestion. That's not what this is for. Like we just want to talk it out. Like no one's trying to one up you or critique you in a way of a malicious manner. It's like we're just trying to

Tracy Hayes  1:16:53  
help what it did for me. Because I obviously, you know, being in the position that I am with the podcast, I talked to a lot of different people every week I'm bringing the different different brokerages, but it just exposed to me that there was either people forming their own opinion or and I'm always big on finding brokers or team leads like Mike, who are out, stay out in front of their people. And I think there's a lot, you know, the importance of finding brokers that are going to stay out in front that's their success if they're not out in front of their people adding value. Like, how are we going to conquer this buyer broker, and how are we going to handle this? How and gumplifying it down, simplifying it down to, you know, to actually, how the rubber meets the road. How are we going, what are we going to say, and how, you know, role playing and all that kind of stuff. I think a lot of these people, especially ones that don't come in the office, the 70% that didn't write a deal last year. I mean, you know, I'm sure you've gotten contracts from some of these agents are like, we're now using the Florida contract, and you need to fill this in every year.

Sara Gentry  1:17:59  
Yeah, I got a repair, like, an RTA, but it was on the old knee perm. Like, we need the far bar. Like, let's switch this. Yeah, that you

Tracy Hayes  1:18:09  
probably go into stock on. I know, I know some agents that do. They go in and stock and see what kind of productions this person do.

Sara Gentry  1:18:18  
Sometimes it depends. But, you know, I've talked to a lot of other, mainly listing agents too, that are talking like their sole focus is listings, how many contracts they have to write for the buyer's agent. So that's almost scary. Yeah. Why are you in these classes?

Tracy Hayes  1:18:33  
Like, have you found as as good group of agents? Have that actually, now that you're doing the buyer broker agreement. And actually, you may, I know, did you do any form of it before? No, no. So this was you. Now you're sitting down and have or having this conversation, they feel they're actually making more money, yeah, or a lot of, lot of agents do.

Sara Gentry  1:18:55  
I mean, I, I don't know if I would say more, because I've actually had buyers agents who turned down an entire deal with me because I wouldn't give them a full, like, certain percentage. So that's crazy to me. I wouldn't do that. I mean, my sole focus is

Tracy Hayes  1:19:13  
mine because of the agreement, the agreement you had with the listing agent, yeah, so it

Sara Gentry  1:19:17  
has to be up like you have your listing agent. So it's like, Hey, this is what I'm making. And then what we put in our contracts is the buyer's agent will make up to this

Tracy Hayes  1:19:25  
amount, or the seller is willing to give the buyer's agent.

Sara Gentry  1:19:30  
So we always put up to so this is negotiate like we can negotiate up to this. And it depends on the agent. If this is someone that I have to write their contract for, and I'm knowing and I have to hand hold through that you're probably not going to be making at the highest max point, because we're going to be doing a lot of the work, and it's going to be a lot of

Tracy Hayes  1:19:46  
stress on the transaction. Do you and Mike have kind of the same ideology on this? I'm going to ask this question, and you could tell me, if you guys, there's some agents who, even though the seller may say, I'm going to give x or up to no. X for the buyer's agent that they don't like. If that buyer's agent calls you and says, Hey, is there any buyer compensation? You're like, hey, yeah, it's x. Or you say, make an offer.

Sara Gentry  1:20:11  
We say, put it in the offer with compensation addendum, absolutely. Because our we're looking out for a seller. We're trying to make them as most much money as possible. If we're willing to go up to this point, and this point, and this person only does this point, all right, then just good price point. Cool, let's go for it. Like, why lose them that extra amount of money? And it just,

Tracy Hayes  1:20:29  
I don't even, I think it makes it healthier. You know, there was a study done years ago. It's one of the reasons. Like, you know, if we give a pricing exception in mortgages, yeah, you know, at the rates, you know, supposed to be a point. We only charge them half a point. We have to give a reason. Okay, we had to. And here's, obviously, we could put win the business on every one of those. It's one of these government things that like they want to read. Why did you give them a pricing exception? Because I felt that was going to seal the deal. They're shopping, right? Yeah, if they want a lot, and I can't actually do it myself, you know, they it's a crazy request. Uppers in any mortgage company, they're going to ask, well, give me, give me the offer from the other company, and that someone else is actually offering you that crazy price. That's because they think someone has money cheaper than somebody else. It's not reality, like it's whether or not they're going to do it cheaper, and then whether or not their lights are still going to be on. That's what you have to think about. You know, yeah, type of thing. It's why some people go to public first win Dixie, because, you know, the service, right? Or the nicer decor, whatever it is, actually. But we have to put a reason in there for for giving that, that pricing exception. And I think now with the buyer and seller interaction where, like you're saying, make the offer. So obviously, if you know, let's just use three bananas as Patty catching, and you're the sellers want to give three bananas, and the buyer's agent, when he asked for two bananas, well, the seller just saved himself a banana. Yeah, and it makes it healthier that this, that it was the buyer in the seller that actually did this. They just are giving you the permission to go to three bananas if you have to to close the

Sara Gentry  1:22:21  
deal, or if they're, you know, offering a purchase price that are lower than what we were expecting then that, I mean, it's always been negotiable, yeah, like, we're just, it's more hard in the print now that we're doing

Tracy Hayes  1:22:31  
it and but I think this is where great leadership, and obviously savvy agents, some people catch on a lot faster than others. And this thing that we're talking about, yeah, you know, and understand that this, this may go back a couple times on it, you know, to it, but it's just makes it a healthier thing. It doesn't make it look like it takes a it makes it the appearance that the agent is not as much of an influence on it. You're just facilitating the negotiation

Sara Gentry  1:22:57  
100% Yeah, well, and you know, I'm currently, I put an offer on one of gigi's meetings yesterday, and the only thing we weren't agreeing,

Tracy Hayes  1:23:05  
Well, you asked her for twice the buyer than you normally would. Well, we

Sara Gentry  1:23:09  
put, we put that sure enough, like it was us going back and forth. And it's funny, because we're all in the same tribe. We all think the same way, so we all have the same negotiation. It was almost funny. And not the end of last night. We're like, all right, like, Chop House after this deal is done, yeah, it's fun. It really is, yeah. And you know, again, we all have the same goal. It's just getting us there. And we all have certain nets that we have to hit for our sellers and certain things that we need for our buyers, and it's just trying to find that match and fit in the the whatever, like just being able

Tracy Hayes  1:23:42  
to make the work, yeah, alright. Last question is, finish up because we were going on. Sorry, no, it's great. No, it's been a great podcast. Three things that you feel in your experience, maybe whatever you believe Real's teaching, whatever you believe Mike's teaching. Maybe you've picked up from Gigi, whatever, three things that you think agents should be doing right now to be successful in 2025 with the current market, collaborating, collaborating, collaborating with other agents.

Sara Gentry  1:24:10  
100% I don't care if it's at your brokerage or not. I mean my closest people that I talk to, I do an accountability meeting with someone who owns his own brokerage and people England brokers. It's not real. You know, I have people that I sit with at real where we can talk about our brokerage and the trainings and, I mean, just the culture is just unmatched. I absolutely love it. We're a really heavy tribe. And then so collaborating at just the classes and the masterminds, I've learned so much from other people, not just Mike. You can only learn so much from someone you're with every day. Also, you know, they have certain boundaries, and then it goes into like, oh, well, they're dealing with this deal and whatnot. We just talk about it. I've learned a lot. So that's number one. Number two is learn how, if you're a new agent, that you have to put money away for taxes and your business, yeah, because you just.

Tracy Hayes  1:25:00  
That's, that's a one, one of the top whatever on the list of killing agents is tax bill

Sara Gentry  1:25:05  
comes completely vulnerable on that sense and and learning the seasonality of the business. Because for me, when things slowed down, I didn't realize. I was like, Oh, I have this many deals, this many deals. Well, why are they slowing? But I was so used to this, and now I've accumulated bills to that it's trial and error percent, yeah, so yeah, being completely transparent and vulnerable. That's been a really weak point of me that I've been navigating, and I'm still navigating to learn to get through.

Tracy Hayes  1:25:31  
So because I think that, you know, up north, it's a little more direct snow and ice, slow down. Yeah? Here we, I think we, yeah, we more. If there's a distinct change in the market. Was back in May of 2222 22 is when the rates started to go up quickly all that's when all of a sudden, you know, things started to change. 2022 was good. But then 23 and then, you know, then we know, in 24 was the slowest year that, supposedly, nationally, in 30 years, or whatever, in house sales, that we're market, we're more of the financially market driven thing, versus the weather, which I'm sure up there, it's weather and market. So you have, it's even tougher well,

Sara Gentry  1:26:17  
and it's needs to, you know, yeah, like summer for the school being out and Christmas is kind of slower, because no one wants to move to one wants to move during the holidays. So like that all plays into it as well. Luckily, I started in May of 2022, so I started right when it was like the rates are going high and things were slowing down. Because I wonder how I would have adjusted to starting into that crazy market where it was just offer, offer offers, and then adjusting to that type of slowdown, like how I would have reacted, in that sense.

Tracy Hayes  1:26:43  
Well, I think it says a lot to you and what you've accomplished, the fact that you had a really good 24 and you did start, literally when, as rates were starting to go up. And, you know, some agents got fortunate. They got in in 20 and they got a lot of at bats, learned a lot of you know, if there's anything why they might be successful today is because they had a lot of at bats in 2021, they may not have been very good, but because they had so much experience. Now, their experience got their momentum going and going where you really, you really did start on from an uphill battle. And that says, it says a lot about you.

Sara Gentry  1:27:19  
Yeah, no, it's funny, because Mike tells me that all the time too. He was like, You don't understand, like, you started in a market that was not an easy market. Well, I did pretty good in 2022

Tracy Hayes  1:27:28  
well, 22 was better than it is right now, I think 2023

Sara Gentry  1:27:32  
I did even better. I've just been getting better every year. So it's like, I mean, as long as we keep this momentum, and I'm sure it's not, there's gonna be years, that's how it is, yeah. So yeah, that's two. That's two. And then I think just learning get in those classrooms, yeah, whether that's like the landmark title classes or markets or ne far or whatever, get into those

Tracy Hayes  1:27:54  
Well, there's no doubt that your little your tribe, the 904 home guide, Gigi, and, you know, there's a core group of real people. You're all independent, you're all virtual, you know, independent real estate agents. But you guys are at a lot of different things. You're collaborating, you're creating ones, you know, you're, you're it, I think it's, there's a lot to the momentum to that you have to touch other real estate agents, because otherwise, I think a lot of agents get out because they feel like they're on an island.

Sara Gentry  1:28:27  
Well, it's not fun doing this alone. Yeah, it really isn't. I mean, I don't know how far I would have made it if I did, to be perfectly honest, whether that was being on a team or just like showing up and having these like events or whatever, these learning opportunities with everyone in the room. We all have the same goal. We're all driven, we're all motivated, and we're all open minded, and that is so empowering to be around. You know, you're only, you're only as good as the people that are in the room with you. And I don't want to be the smartest one, so I just think it was really important to immerse myself into that situation with a bunch of other agents from all different brokerages and learn all different things, and a brokerage isn't, you know, and all like a one fit show. Not everyone fits into real not everyone fits the color. Like we all have different matches and certain things that we like, and I think that's really important.

Speaker 1  1:29:10  
Well, I appreciate you

Tracy Hayes  1:29:12  
coming on today, Sarah, anything you like to add? No, that's it. I appreciate all your all your social media links will be in the show notes for those who want to reach out and talk to Sarah, obviously, she's on social media. Talk to her about, you know, social media maybe, I mean, you're still doing that on the side for a few clients. I think you

Sara Gentry  1:29:27  
said I cut down. I only have two clients now, okay, yeah, a full time job to cut that. So I'm just straight real estate and a couple of clients. But I'm always happy to sit down and meet people for lunch I do to this day and talk about marketing.

Tracy Hayes  1:29:38  
Some advice. Yeah, 100% Yeah. Appreciate you. Thank you. Applause.