Tanya Cosmini: From Surviving to Thriving

Tracy Hayes  1:05  
Hey. Welcome back to The Real Estate excellence podcast. Your host, Tracy Hayes, this biology teacher from New England has infiltrated northeast Florida's real estate. She has 15 plus year history of matching extraordinary homes with extraordinary buyers. Her LinkedIn brags about her exceptional knowledge of Northeast Florida, her powerhouse marketing strategies to sell your home, strong communication that builds relationships, expert negotiator and, most importantly, making real estate fun. Her brokerage has a goal of 135

Tracy Hayes  1:37  
transactions in 2022 let's welcome the one broker, owner of Realty, one group. Elevate Tanya cosmini to the

Tanya Cosmini  1:45  
show. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. That was quite the intro. Thank you. I

Tracy Hayes  1:49  
always prepare that the day before, so it's fresh in my mind. And sometimes things get in my mind in between. And that was the most smoothest one I've done in a while. I should note how I did that, but you had some good stuff on your LinkedIn, where I do a lot of research, you know, I go to people's website, Facebook and so forth. And obviously, a lot of those, a lot of those lines I took right from your little bio talking about stuff. So Tanya, tell us a little bit. It's just, I mean, really just started, like, we started off the show to get to know someone's background is like, where are you

Tanya Cosmini  2:17  
from? So I mostly grew up in Connecticut, but I was born in New York City, lived on Long Island for a brief period. Of time, but mostly grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut, in a little town called Wilton, like really tiny little town with two acre zoning, and it was dry growing up, you know, a very charmed childhood for sure. New Englander, through and through, went to the University of Connecticut, got a bachelor's degree in, actually, animal science. I thought I was going to be a veterinarian my senior year, I had, like, a huge change of heart and decided to go into education. I took a year off in between getting my degree in education, and I actually attempted to do some medical research at Yale Medical School, and found out that I like to talk to people too much, and medical research was not my jam. I thought that I might actually get a PhD and become a researcher, but not my jam. I like people a little too much, a little too solitude there, but thankful. There's people that do that, but wasn't for me, and got a master's in education. Taught for five years and needed a change. Education is a thankless job.

Tracy Hayes  3:16  
We've treaded over a lot of the same turf because I was actually born in New York. I was born in Peekskill, up the river a little bit, okay? And then I actually grew up on Cape Cod. Oh, so I dealt with a lot of Connecticut every summer. Yeah, they will infiltrate Cape Cod. Sure did. And

Tanya Cosmini  3:32  
then you went to, if I'm not mistaken, Bridgeport, right? My master for your master's degree, isn't that known in the area as, like the teachers college. It does have a really well known Teachers program, and it was amazing. It's your you take classes at night, and you're in a school. I was in high school full time, a lot of shadowing, a lot of helping, a lot of substituting, a lot of just being a teacher secondhand. And I was in the science department because I was a biology teacher. It was amazing, pretty much right away. I mean, you finished your undergraduate, you got hired as a teacher, or you actually just went right to Bridgeport and they put you in that classroom as part of the program. Yeah. So I had that one year at Yale where I did some research, and then after that, I went right in. And so they basically, you know, just are hired by a school right away. And I actually worked at the high school I went to, which is really neat. Oh,

Speaker 1  4:21  
you're standing

Tracy Hayes  4:22  
there with the teachers that you, that you, yeah, hopefully you're a good high school student. I always thought about that because I, you know, going back to my high school, and I was because I was an education major too. Oh, really, yeah. And I was like, Yeah, would they like, want to want me? Can the 23 234, of me, knowing what I was like at 1516, 1718, years old in that high school. Would they, you know, how would those teachers even look upon that? It was

Tanya Cosmini  4:47  
actually pretty seamless. It wasn't a problem. It was funny, though, out of whatever, many teachers were at the school, everyone, but two of them, invited me to call them by their first name. I felt out of respect for them. They were my teacher, right? But just two. Right? And let me know that I should still call them by their, you know, their formal name, which was really weird, right? Yeah, fine.

Tracy Hayes  5:08  
They were remembering, yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  5:11  
it's fine. It's all good. It was a really great experience. And I love to teach. I really do well.

Tracy Hayes  5:17  
We're going to dig in deeper and later in the show, you know your business, and you're recruiting and growing your brokerage, and now that you're out on, you know, out on your own, you know you've been, you've worked with some larger brokerages before in your career. But how, how does that education mindset play into when you're you know, today, you got some interviews with some agents you're going to possibly recruit, and agents you have on, how do you take that background in education and how does it play into your role? Now, as a broker,

Tanya Cosmini  5:46  
you know, I really think that it is the best tool I have. Is what I learned as an educator. I think that I'm able to break down very easily whatever struggle that either agent has that's in a little bit of production, and they're hoping for more or that new agent to tell them that, you know, real estate's not hard, but it's not easy, and with the proper tools and with the proper education they can get there, I tell them I learned the hard way. I didn't have a lot of guidance to help me along the way. And now, as a broker owner, I can take what I didn't have, and give it to them, and everything that I do have, and give it to them as well

Tracy Hayes  6:24  
when you're because obviously, you've had 15 years, you've mentored people before in real estate and so forth. And if I recall, of course, I'm going to my 30th class reunion here in November. So but you know, to reflect back to some of the things that they talk about, and it is very important even more today is the different teaching styles. Yes, so the adults that you're getting, some of them are, you know, are very young, but there's others that are, you know, in their 30s, 40s, that are now transitioning to be a real estate agent. They learn differently. Do you kind of do a little breakdown of who you're going to be across that day? Well,

Tanya Cosmini  7:04  
absolutely. So everything that we do is offered live, streamed and taped, so that if someone's transitioning from another career and they're trying to, you know, they want to dance around real estate and see if it's something they want to do, they have the opportunity to get the training. Obviously, some people learn better hands on. So we have a mentorship program where they can mentor me, or perhaps my, maybe I have another agent on my team that might be a better fit, where they can shadow them and, you know, go on whatever appointments with them that they would like to go. Everyone works differently, right? Some people are so worried about making some of them need all the above. Some exactly right? And so, you know, we just try to fit their education style with whatever they need to ensure they're going to be successful. Because the more comfortable and more confident they feel in going out there, the better they'll do. They'll be off the bat 100%

Tracy Hayes  7:53  
I mean, one of the we're talking we're on this whole subject of education. You know, education is one of those commonalities of everyone that I've had on the show all, every great real estate agent is going to tell you the importance of education. There's so many ways, so many places, that you can get it on a daily basis. Some loan officers giving a seminar, something on loans, you can go down to the board, take more of a structured CE class, absolutely. Or a good broker like yourself, maybe teaching something on the contract, or some other part of it, and all the other vendors are out there, there's education going on constantly. And are you taking advantage of it? And in since we're on that question in your 15 years, I mean, how important, and what are some of the ways that you did to learn some things you didn't know, to give you that confidence you talked

Tanya Cosmini  8:44  
about. So number one, I'm going to piggyback on something you said, is so there is a lot of opportunity out there, whether it's a YouTube video, whether it's through your local board, but new agents or agents that haven't been given that structure, they don't know, they have no idea that they could take, like an accredited buyer, represented representation class through the local board. They've never heard of it, and they might have been a realtor for five years, but no one showed them. Hey, with very little effort, a little time, a lot of knowledge, you're not only going to meet other realtors, but you're going to learn from somebody that's been doing a long time, that's going to give you something invaluable. So I've been again, I've come across many agents who had no idea. I actually spoke to an agent yesterday who is a part of the NASA MLS, which is a small baby MLS, but that's where she lives. That's where her business is based out of and she had never heard of something accessible to her called MLS advantage, which is gives you access to all the MLSs in the state of Florida, and she's been here for two years with another brokerage, yep, and had no idea. No one ever told her that she could access nefar information on there. So,

Tracy Hayes  9:50  
and I don't think it's done with it's not that someone didn't tell her because they didn't want her to know. Oh, it's not with malice, absolutely. Yeah, they just either assume she knew or someone. Else told her no one knows what someone's background is. They may say they took a class on the contract, but then who did they take it from, right? How good was it that, you know, that kind of thing? And, yeah, I mean, it's just they. I think it's important, and I think you would agree with me that, and I wish more real estate agents do because obviously I talked to a lot of them, and I've got some good ones. As a loan officer, I talked to them, they're on top of their game. There's I can tell are not confident, yeah, and it's like, you need to be putting in your schedule on, you know, each week, some sort of educational piece, or maybe on a monthly basis. However, I don't say you do it every week, but we're look out these things. Look search out these things, St John's board, NASA's board. I mean, travel up there and hear what the people from Nassau County are talking about,

Tanya Cosmini  10:45  
absolutely because so what I have found, I've done real estate now in three different areas, is that real estate kind of has a culture. So I was licensed in Virginia, a little bit different than how we do things here. I was a real estate assistant in Colorado. It's only there for two years. Didn't make sense to get licensed there. So, you know, real estate has a culture, so I've been able to, you know, take little pieces of kind of what worked there, what I liked and what I didn't like, and apply it to now. But you know, what you just said is important. I really encourage all the agents to time block, because when you have all day to do all the things, including your spouse's items, your mom tells you to do something, whatever. Everyone's like, oh, you're a realtor. You make your own schedule. You can do whatever you want. You can you're an independent contractor. You can 100% do whatever you want. However. It's very easy to have your real estate work be bottom of the barrel. So I tell all of them to have a flexible, but very specific time blocking schedule. I have five examples that they all get. Some of them might speak to them more than the other. I have an example. We call it the perfect real estate week that shows kind of how you break everything down. And my biggest takeaway from that is something that I need to work on better is to have scheduled, like admin time for yourself, where, you know, catch up on paperwork. I'd say it's probably my least favorite real estate chore, so I don't have it on my calendar, but my goal for this quarter, because, right, we just started the fourth quarter, add more reflection time on that kind of admin systems and stuff. What

Tracy Hayes  12:09  
do you find in the people you've known in 15 years? You know, talking about the time blocking part of it. And I was listening, I was like, how important it is. I would think I would want to schedule, like we're having this podcast early in the morning, because obviously we have other things we need to do about the day, but it's gotten you up, it's gotten you out. Now you're out and about versus, okay, well, maybe I'll go to that thing at noontime. Well, all of a sudden, 1130 comes around, and you're like, you know, I'm still in my PJs. I've been doing this really tough administrative work. I don't have time to drive over there and do that. I'm just going to stay home, and then you just wasted the day correct to schedule those things early in the morning. That would be me. Now some people might say, yeah, yeah, I know there's all there's people like to stay up late at night. There's people like to sleep in and all this other stuff. But if you look at the top in business, not just real estate, but if you know these guys are getting up, I got Billy Wagner's book right here. Billy will tell you he's out 630 he's walking his dog. 630 to 730 he's listening to a podcast or something informational, and then he takes 20 minutes to silence of just letting his mind catch up on things and what he's going to accomplish for the day. So he's already kick started his day. Now, if Billy wants to check out at two, three o'clock because he wants to go watch this kid's ball game or go home and take a nap, he can because he started at 630 in the

Tanya Cosmini  13:33  
morning, correct? I think that what you just described is probably, in my unofficial professional opinion, probably Realtors biggest failure is that they won. They do work too late, right? Because we set ups have to work when other people aren't working, but they don't start and end their day at reasonable times. And I think, and I don't know where this comes from, but I said it for years, is failing to plan, is planning to fail? Yeah. And without that time blocking, schedule has to be flexible, right? Like you might say, oh, you know, I'm going to call people and prospect, as we say, from nine to 11. Well, you know, maybe you want to be the guest reader at your, you know, your child's second grade class, and that happens at 930 Well, guess what? You're an independent contractor. You can make that flexibility happen. You just gotta put it in your schedule. Boom, yeah, you just gotta have in your schedule. And something that I'm gonna piggyback on that you said is that is books and podcasts and the ability to read books while driving, to have that education piece whenever you have time, no one could ever, no one should ever tell you, Oh, I don't have time to, you know, have any professional development time or to learn because, I mean, as a realtor, I literally live in my car. So without the ability to read books while driving, I wouldn't be where I am. I actually, I tell the agents this all the time. Read, read. These people have spent hours and billions of dollars learning things that I could take a class from them and spend money on, or I could buy their $20 book and get a whole bunch of nuggets. I'm

Tracy Hayes  15:00  
gonna do a book drop. Since you're talking about book, I just, I'm almost, I don't often audio listen to it, but I didn't want to wait for the book to come. I've been following this lady called Heather Monahan. She's actually written two books. First one was on confidence. I didn't. I did not. I have not listened to that one yet. But I was like, let me just download her audio book, because I pay that $10 a month for Audible. I said, you know, I haven't downloaded the book in a month. So I downloaded her book. I'm almost finished with it. You know, it basically villains is in the title. I think it's getting rid of your villains. Oh, I love that. And she is a total woman empowerment person, young 40s, got fired from her corporate job, and single mom, the whole story their background, and she leverages that. But this book about getting rid of her villains, I thought of almost every person that's been on this show when I was listening to that

Tanya Cosmini  15:50  
book. I will add it to my list. I'm always looking for for books. And you know what audible or whatever audio books aren't for everybody, and I have a library of books at the office that the agents can check out, because sometimes people like to, you know, paper read which I get it. It does feel good.

Tracy Hayes  16:04  
I have read more books. Well, I tell you, I've read more books in my last year than I did throughout, you know, until, you know, from zero, 22 and graduating college. I mean, you get through college on Cliff Notes, yeah, you know, you know, I just, I did what was, what had to be done. But as an adult, you learn you're in the business, and you're like, I think you'd agree with you agree with me on this one as well. At least I'd hope you didn't mean if you disagree with me, that's good too. We could talk about it. But the only thing in our way, in as even as a loan officer, as a real estate agent, the only thing in our way is ourselves

Tanya Cosmini  16:39  
right here. Yes, I You're 100% right. I spent the third quarter with the agents training on mindset, and we did different exercises, listen to podcasts, listen to pieces of books, YouTube videos about mindset. And I tell them, I go, you are your biggest hindrance. You are preventing yourself from being successful. And I we have little, little pep talks we give to ourselves, you know, like people want to talk to you, they want you to call them because it's hard, right? You're, oh, I'm calling them in the middle of their work day. They probably don't want to talk to me, or they might be their kids sports practice. I shouldn't call them, right? It's, oh, that's

Tracy Hayes  17:15  
you just appeasing your mind. Yeah, you're just call reluctant. Oh, you know, I could just stay home today at that class isn't that important.

Tanya Cosmini  17:21  
No, for sure, there'll be another one. Oh, they do that series every month. There'll be another one next month. I'll take it that time tomorrow, tomorrow, the best time to do everything was yesterday or right now. Every single time

Tracy Hayes  17:32  
taking massive action, you hear that a lot on it. You talk about mindset, and it just triggered me last night. I generally I go to bed pretty early, but I'll turn on the TV. And they were had this the true story of the Los Angeles Lakers. Oh, they were at the point where a coach, Phil, who had, I can't remember Phil's last name, coach, the coach the bulls, too, went out there and they, he's got Kobe and Shaq and that whole crew that they won championships out there with more recently, or at least, you know, a decade ago. Anyway, he had them reading, that's where Shaq gets the Aristotle thing he talks about, because Coach Phil was having him. They were having them reading these Nietzsche books and then doing, like, meditation and stuff so to calm them, the, you know, the anxiety of, you know, another game, these guys are great competitors. Everything's on the line every game. They're putting their heart out there and physically and the mindset, that's what he was going after all the things. To sum it up, you have to see that part. It's obviously on ESPN. It's a series The True Story of the Los Angeles Lakers, but he is. He brought that to these guys who are already playing at the highest level. You're like, Sure. Can I teach them? Right?

Tanya Cosmini  18:47  
No, absolutely. Well, no, it's huge. I really think that if your mindset isn't right, so if you like, you know, we could sprinkle in some stuff about the real estate market. Right now, the media is like, you know, houses aren't selling. We're in a downturn. We're in a crash, or whatever. We're not going to talk about it. But if you tell yourself, oh, it's harder to sell a house now because the interest rates are up and all these kind of negative things, or you remind yourself, you know, people always need to buy and sell. I provide value and I'm going to help them get the best, the most amount of money for their house, or get the best deal for their house, whatever. You know, whether you're recruiting buyers or sellers, and if you tell yourself that, then that's how you are going to your energy is going to give that out, and people are going to be like, Oh, wow, I feel more safe knowing that this realtor feels confident in the market. If you go out there and you're about it. I mean, that's how everyone's going to walk away from,

Tracy Hayes  19:37  
well, my mindset on it is, I, you know, I'm telling myself the truth. You know what's going on, and, you know, I think we've got a perfect storm, and that's a whole nother subject of what's going on. But now is the time knowing I've been in, you know, you've been in this 15 years. I've been doing this 17 years. We went through 2000 we've been there, right? And where you are going? Should I be doing this? But this is the time. Time that we need to be doubling down those things that we didn't do last year. We weren't following up, we weren't acting properly. Now's the time to do all that, because when the dam breaks, there's gonna be a lot less loan officers and a lot less real estate agents to handle the volume when it picks

Tanya Cosmini  20:19  
back up, correct? I keep telling the agents, especially the ones that have started in the last two to three years, they didn't necessarily have what I call, like basic training, right? Because they didn't, not that they didn't need it, but there really wasn't the opportunity. You had so many people coming in, so many people coming in, that they just, you know, skirted by and kind of knowing the basic basics. So I told them. I said, you know, that's what we're working on, is back to basics, like having a real and true time blocking, calendar scripting, you know, conversations, calling Popeyes, doing,

Tracy Hayes  20:52  
showing the basics, the foundational stuff that everyone teaches in, whether it's loan officer, this is the basic things a loan officer is. This is a basic thing. There's real estate agents, you know, getting on the phone, you know, finding, yeah, you're, you've been talking to a lot of agents recently because you're recruiting with your new brokerage and so forth. So do you find that some of them, because I do in the loan officer world, do you find that they kind of have a real short term mindset to it, that they don't realize that, you know, hey, even though there are 35 coming in, for example, coming, you know, coming into this business that are you, there's things you got to do, and you could still be doing this when you're 70, maybe not at the volume, because if you do it right in a short period of time, you'll be making more money than you probably even imagined, if, you know, if we're not in an economic situation, but it will come, it'll come out on the other end. But if you're doing those things, you got to be looking at there's stuff I'm doing today that will benefit me tomorrow, 90 days from now, next year, five years from now, you've got to start building that database, correct Circle of Influence type thing, because you may do something today, you may meet somebody decides not to buy a home. Hey, you know, I'm good with the home we're at. I'm not going to move. But who knows, in five years, something changes in their life, or five years, you know, they get a new job. You're like, you know what? I now want to move out to the beach. I can afford that now, yeah, and because you met them today and spent time with them and built a relationship five years ago, you could chalk up in 2027

Tanya Cosmini  22:27  
you got a deal. You're exactly right. I tell the agents this all the time. They have to serve, not sell. So if they can provide them value, like what you just said, they meet someone that maybe was thinking about selling their house. It isn't the right time now. It'll probably be the right time at some point. But if you're providing value to them, reaching out to them, saying hi, inviting them to customer events, providing them, you know, a complimentary market analysis on their properties, they know the values, the value of it when it is time, you know you've set yourself as an expert. You provided value. They don't think of you as like a salesman. They realize that you're coming from a place of value. You're providing them information that they couldn't get themselves because they're not a real estate expert.

Tracy Hayes  23:07  
You know, you're bringing a thought to mind. I think I should have a pen here so I can write this down, because I'm going to put a book together here. I mean, we're closing down 100 episodes. I've interviewed the all the top agents in very common themes, different stories, common themes. But one of the things I've heard consistently, too, as well, is that what you just said is being that, being that resource. Yes, you're not just that one transaction. Hey, I helped you buy a home, even if it was a new construction home. And I mean, my goodness, last year. I mean, how many times did you get a client and literally had them on their contract with an contract within a couple of days of meeting them? Absolutely, yeah, and or you brought them into the model and the site agent took over. From there, you still are a resource to them, and something will happen. They have relatives, and it's one of the big things. Here in Florida, they're all reaching out to their relatives. In Michigan, going, Hey, if you don't like the snow anymore, I got a great neighborhood you should move into. And if you're really good, they're going, I know a great real estate agent you should be using absolutely come here and you've got you so you've got to work on it. What are a couple things that you like doing, or maybe you saw you think moves the needle for you anyway, because I think everyone's a little different on, you know, running their business and what they do, but that you're doing to stay in front of your past clients, or even just people who you met, maybe showed them houses made to say, hey, we're not ready to move yet. You know, the job transfer didn't go through or something, but you're staying in front of them. What do you are? You got a regular call going. You're sending birthday cards. What are some couple things that you do?

Tanya Cosmini  24:40  
So I know I keep talking about time blocking. I actually have it scheduled. How I keep in touch with my past customers. So once a quarter, everybody gets a phone call. If they're a customer, they notice and like talking on the phone. It's a text, but I touch them in that way. Once a quarter, three to five times a year, we have customers where we get people together, we try to some for some. Them to be a little bit more just adult friendly. Some are for families. So a couple weeks ago, we took, I don't know, 70 people for happy hour at Firebirds in town center. Cool. And it's, you know, it's fun. It's fun for us. We bring, you know, the agents come, they bring all their past customers. This time, I invited a bunch of realtors that I'm hoping might join the brokerage. It's just, it's relaxing a ton for all of us. Yeah. We also took, I think, 125 people to a jumbo shrimp game. Very cool. That was really fun. We've been to the movies. So, you know, we try to include their family, and, you know, encourage them to invite people, because I think that, you know, you spend a lot of time with customers, and so I really think of them as family. By the end, I usually know a ton about them, and they know a ton about me, and I love it, and I want to keep in touch with them. But, you know, when there's been a lot of them, it is hard to think all of them all the time. So that's

Tracy Hayes  25:52  
another common phrase you use, the word family. Yeah, another common thing, again, great agents. They have that, you know, ability. I mean, obviously the understand the relationship part of it, because that's what you could be technical. So I build relationships with them, but you were used the word family, meaning that relationship. You're treating them as if they are a family member or cousin or something of that nature, that you're there for them. You're consistently checking up with them. I imagine you might even have some notes on people so you can keep track, because I the really good people have, like, three by five cards those everyone's kids and dogs name. They're really good.

Tanya Cosmini  26:28  
No, I save notes on them in my phone, so when I call them, yeah, and then, you know, a lot of them, we end up being friends on Facebook and stuff. And so, you know, I might cheat and go up on Facebook and see kind of what's going on with them and whatnot. And you know, because there's a lot of them, and I care about every single one of them, I love when they reach out to me needing help or advice about something that that they feel I can provide information on, because I know that they feel that being a resource, yes, I love being a resource for them and they and sometimes it's like, hey, my neighbor just moved in, and they haven't been out. They closed 90 days ago. They can't get a hold of their realtor. But didn't you say you have a great painter or whatever, right? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm happy to provide it. Because, you know, I've moved quite a bit. I've done a couple of cross country moves. And when you're moving and don't know people, it's really nice to have some referrals.

Tracy Hayes  27:19  
You just don't know when that's going one. You don't know how it can impact someone. Yeah, even just referring a good painter that goes out and shows up on time and does the job, because we know here in Florida, finding a contractor that shows up on time does the job to the satisfaction and everyone happy, it's tough to make that all work, just like a real estate transaction. They never go perfectly. There's always something so but being, I think being the resource, being that resource, is a common thing that should I think I'm going to add that to my, you know, those themes that I have been building the podcast because I'm hearing it all that being a resource all the time, and whether you're sending it out in a newsletter or, you know, again, you talked about touching base with them on Facebook. You see what's going on in their lives, absolutely make a comment on their posts. For sure. They put the post out there for everyone to see. So tell them you saw it. I was listening. Man for talking about Heather Monahan. She was talking about this, if you're trying to influence someone, which is what you're trying to do, maybe you've already had the client, but you're trying to influence that client to stay in their life or state. You know, maybe not. You're going out to dinner with them. You know, once a month, it's not that kind of friendship, but to stay top of mind with them. Comment on their posts, say something meaningful, not just a like but actually say, oh, man, that's great, super man, how's everything gonna get them, get them to interact with you? That's one of the big things, the social media target. We're gonna talk about on October 21 at the social media content thing, getting that interaction with them, getting to respond. That's one of the biggest things in the algorithms, is people actually having conversations on these social media platforms. All right, let's go back, okay, to 15 years ago. You well, what, I guess, what led you to Florida? Because we didn't get that part you were doing. You because You had some different teachings. You were in Virginia. You did mention a little stay in Colorado. Was that husband thing, moving around type thing,

Tanya Cosmini  29:13  
or, yeah? So, yeah. So we started out in Virginia. My ex husband was in the military. We started off, okay, that's explains it all. Yeah. We started off in the military, and then had a couple kids. We're both from Connecticut, and I was like, I just want to go home. Want to be closer to family. So we ended up there, and we were there for four years. And then he got another job opportunity that was very hard to say no to. So that's what led us to Colorado, and we knew would only be for two years. It was like, whatever the I don't it's the contract, whatever, yeah, for two years, and we knew we'd move again, and that's what brought us here. And then we got divorced here in Florida.

Tracy Hayes  29:47  
All right, so you're well, you had already, you'd already done some real estate prior to this, because you had a Virginia so you come here, you get your license. We talked pre show about how important it is for. A new agent, or an agent who's not growing right now, if you hit a lid, define the brokerage that's going to start moving you forward. What? So you had some experience of working for other brokerages and brokers around the country, in Virginia and so forth, when you were selecting your first brokerage. Here, what are some of the criteria that you were looking for to match up with the right person, for

Tanya Cosmini  30:22  
sure. So I think probably the most important thing is to feel that your personalities match. You feel comfortable with them because you're trusting that broker to get you somewhere that you probably weren't before. Whether it means you were a struggling agent, you're hoping to go from surviving to thriving, and you're looking for that, or if you're a brand new agent, you're looking for guidance to surviving

Tracy Hayes  30:42  
to thriving. Can I use it as a title for this podcast? Absolutely. We'll say Tanya. Cause me thriving to surviving to thriving. Okay, all right, got it. That's gonna be Go ahead. I interrupted you.

Tanya Cosmini  30:53  
So I think that's really important. You have to feel comfortable there. You have to feel like it's somewhere you would want to go to work, someone you would want to work for because either you like their training program, you like the way the office looks, it feels comfortable. You meet some of the other agents, and it feels like somewhere you can go. Because if it's brand new to you, it's going to be uncomfortable. And if it's uncomfortable, you have to feel comfortable getting there. So I think that's really important. You know, we spent a lot of time putting together different programs to ensure the agents would be successful. And so originally, we call it an onboarding program, and it's a little checklist. And my business partner, Sam was on submarines, and when he was on submarines, they had this, I'm going to get the wrong word for it, but like a car, they had to check

Tracy Hayes  31:37  
off to make sure those things are checked and verified, and training how to

Tanya Cosmini  31:41  
get it signed off. Yeah, so his idea was to kind of put, take that experience of his and turn it into a check sheet for onboarding the agents. And originally, we were only giving it to brand new agents. And I thought, You know what, Sam, I bet you a bunch of these agents that have been licensed for 357, years have never done some of these things that we know led us to be successful, foundations that like back to basic situation. Love it. So we've been giving it to all the agents, and they have been thrilled. They're like, I had no idea that I could like, for instance, one of the things we encourage them all to do is to buy their name as a URL, and they never thought of it. And I said, we gotta think big. You're gonna be so big that you're going to need your own website? Yeah, I said for now you can you don't need it, but when you do, you're already set up. We don't want to work backwards. We only want to work forwards,

Tracy Hayes  32:31  
just hopefully some Chinese guy didn't

Tanya Cosmini  32:33  
already have it, and you have to, like, buy it from them. Well, I forget

Tracy Hayes  32:37  
how many 1000s they told me, I went to GoDaddy and I paid them the 150 bucks to search it out. They could not get the guy to respond. Who actually owned my, you my? Tracy Hayes, yeah, it drives, drives you

Tanya Cosmini  32:49  
nuts a lot harder. There's not a lot of people named Tanya cosmini, yes, I don't think I have anything to worry about, but I know other people struggle with it. But

Tracy Hayes  32:58  
you should, whether you have a website right right now or not. You can go on on, on GoDaddy is this easy. There's others, but go on there, put your name in.com and see what comes up. If it's available. We're talking dollars a month out of time.

Tanya Cosmini  33:15  
It's super I think one of the one of the new agents, used Name Cheap the other day, and they're having a sale, and she got two years for $13 Yeah, exactly like, that's crazy, yeah. And, you know, it's just setting yourself up for success and being with someone that has sold a lot of real estate and understands and says, hey, it took me six months or nine months to need this, but when I was so busy and I already had it established, I wasn't, you know, running around with my head cut off trying to get it established. Let's do it up front while you're building your business, so that when you do need it, it's just plug and play. And there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Tracy Hayes  33:48  
So we're going into this first brokerage. We kind of we went off on a lot of different things, and we don't have to use names. That's totally up to you. Whether you want to throw the names of the different brokerages that you've that you work with. I leave that up to you, what were some of the because you I looked at, you didn't have all, every single one on your LinkedIn. I only went back actually to like for since you've been here in Florida, you actually didn't even mention the others. But what are some of the things that you noticed in your experience, working under different brokers of their mindsets, the different ideologies. You know, that someone coming into this business has to realize not every broker runs their business the same way,

Tanya Cosmini  34:28  
yeah, and not one way is better than the other, right? It's, I don't I think it's the beauty of real estate is the way I talk and work with sellers is different than you know, John Smith over here works and talks with sellers, and there's not one way to do real estate, but I think it's very important to align yourself with a brokerage and a broker that sells real estate the way you feel is good for you, and talks to you because if you have ownership in it, and therefore confidence, you're going to be able to get there. So when I started real estate in. Virginia, I actually applied to a Craigslist ad. That's how I applied to my first brokerage. And it was a small boutique brokerage. The broker owner was also a builder, so he had so we were able to be site agents and sell resale that's cool. And I think that not I think I know that led me to tons of success, because I was able to sit in new home side a couple times a week all over the between like Virginia Beach and Williamsburg area of Virginia. And if they didn't want to buy new construction, I was able to flip them for resale. So that led to a lot of it was boutique. It was really

Tracy Hayes  35:35  
small, so you tipped on something there. So his value, at least initially, there might have been other things, but his value initially was that he was a builder. He had spec homes that you can sit in, which are magnets for people to come in and meet. So he was providing you, he was providing you lead flow, or giving you the opportunity to be in front of an opportunity to get leads by being in his spec homes, because that's what he did today. You know someone coming to work with you, or any of these brokerages, they're a little bit some people are literally buying leads. I would hope that an agent isn't coming in. You know, they're, of course, they're that is expecting for their brokerage to supply them everything, and they're just going to sit in a cube, because I know there's some loan officers like that. They literally go, well, they want to sit in that chair right there, and they did. They don't call me when there's someone who wants to do a loan and they don't understand. They actually have to go out and talk to people correct and create relationships or works in a call center for 12 years now, obviously, that's the way it did. But obviously you didn't get paid that much. You want to make the money. You got to go out there and create the opportunities yourself. So coming to you. And so just on the subject of lead flow, because I would imagine someone you know, the people you might be you're going to be talking to later today. So you got some interviews if you were in their seat. How would they phrase the question, from the standpoint of, you know, how are you going to help me? How we want to exploit my circle of influence? Sure, how are you going to help me, you know, find new leads that I don't even know are out there. How are you going to coach me? Now? What are you telling them? Super simple. I think that should be a question,

Tanya Cosmini  37:07  
absolutely, pretty much all asking in some way. They're like, how am I going to get leads? Right? Right? And I tell them, Well, you're going to get your own leads. I can provide leads, absolutely, if they want me to. But you know, in order for someone to work with you on generally, their most expensive financial investment, and you're a stranger. You have to they don't know you, they don't like you yet, and they don't trust you. But we know to do real estate transactions, they gotta know like and trust, yep. So if you can get a referral or someone from your circle of influence, or someone you know, they already have some semblance of knowing, liking and trusting you, so that uphill battle is a lot easier. It's a little bit more smooth sailing. They're less likely to be shopping with other realtors, and you to be kind of competing with other agents in the area, because if it's a direct referral from someone from your circle of influence, they're most likely to work from you. So just understanding who is that, who composes your circle of influence, who are the people you should reach out to? And do you do this? You call them and you say, Hey, I'm Tanya. I'm a realtor. Do you want to buy a house that could work? Stop the conversation. I got two thoughts on not the conversation. That's I think the biggest problem is, no one knows what to say.

Tracy Hayes  38:14  
Hold the circle of influence. If I ask you, because I want to make this statement, I may forget that part of what I want to talk about. It's two parts you're 100% on. You get that warm referral, best ever friend tells a friend, hey, you need to use Tanya that you are already are being endorsed. They might not have even said that you're great. They just said you need to call Tanya and that's it. Here's her phone number. You are being assume, the assumption of being endorsed, I see, and I know you are have a relationship with a loan officer and well, at least it's online anyway. Yes, that's correct, but the power that the real estate agent has when referring the other vendors, loan officers, home inspectors and so forth. Would you agree majority of the clients that we deal with, or you're dealing with directly when you tell them, hey, you should use this home inspector. He's one of the best in the area, and I've used him dozens of times and never had any issues. It's a done deal. Now, occasionally someone may say, Oh, he's too expensive. Let me use someone else, correct. But majority, I don't know if it's seven, eight or nine times out of 10, they're just going to go with what you said for

Tanya Cosmini  39:28  
sure. I mean, I always give them, like, two or three recommendations. And I say, you know, these are the home inspectors we use most often. You know, this one does a whole house scan. This one doesn't. So, you know, decide what you want to do, what you need for this particular property, sewer, whatever, inspection as well that other ones don't provide. So, you know, do a little bit of research, you know. And, you know, I bought and sold personally a couple of homes here. And so I'll say, Hey, I used, you know, blah, blah, blah for mine and whatnot. And you're in. I would say the data is pretty confident that I would say 90% of go with who you go,

Tracy Hayes  39:57  
go with who you endorse, and what I. In the very, very top. I mean, I'm talking to top echelon of real estate agents. I'm talking like the better than 1% are controlling the transaction to make sure, as I had John Richardson on here from Remax unlimited on the last show, and he was talking about, he was trying to bulletproof the real estate transaction, which we know is completely impossible, you can't it's to try to have everything just smoothed out, and nothing's going to happen in that 3045, days, you know, from lending to inspection or whatever, is impossible, but if you have the right people in place, any bump in the road is ironed out pretty quickly.

Tanya Cosmini  40:39  
Well, yeah. And I think also he probably has like checkpoints to ensure if you check in at certain course third part of the transaction, to ensure you anticipate the bum, right? That's probably what he's doing. Hopefully, my

Tracy Hayes  40:51  
expression here is, the agents that are listening today, you need to get the relationship with it. Well, one, I hopefully an experienced, you know, person that you're referring whether it's a loan officer, vendor, whatever you got experience, your loan officer should tell you, point blank, they don't do everything, because none of them do all right. And they need to be able to tell you, you know what, I can't do this one. Let someone else do it. Don't make them afraid to tell you to go use someone else for that loan because they can't do it, right? It you can't treat that. Can't go and start using the other guy, because your guy referred you over there. And you're like, Oh, well, he referred Johnny because he couldn't do that last loan. So Johnny must be able to do everything. No, Johnny, there's things Johnny can do. Well, for sure, Johnny does that loan. And so you have to understand that from a building. What I'm saying is building those relationships. Absolutely, I'm off of my channel, my double espresso shots here this morning from brass tax coffee. I will endorse them this morning, but go ahead. No, I think

Tanya Cosmini  41:47  
that you know what you're saying is you need to have certain people in your tool bag, yep, of vendors that are expert in certain things, right? And some loan officers might specialize more in mobile homes, right? Another one, or the doctor loan program or whatever various 100% and you should have those in your little tool bag, right? But you shouldn't not work with someone, because all of a sudden you had a mobile loan thing and you're not,

Tracy Hayes  42:14  
yeah, or you the borrower so crazy we needed a portfolio loan, or you had a non warnable condo that particular lender didn't work with. But you know, when next time you know, when next time you have a non warnable condo, you can, you know, call that other person. But when you we talk about building relationships, and you need to build the relationships with your vendors, it'll only make you stronger. But if you sit there and constantly be waiting for them to build really, you have to open the door to a little bit, I'm guessing, going off on a little, I'm going on,

Tanya Cosmini  42:41  
you're saying is, like, got to be a two way street, yeah? Like, but, and I totally agree with you. Like, I know my loan officer very well and, but there are certain loan programs or certain transactions that he can too, he doesn't want to do right, right? They're just not, you know, like, like, some condos, right? They could be a little sticky, yeah? Give me a little nuts,

Tracy Hayes  43:01  
I always, I tell you, when I get nervous with manufactured homes, I'm I got one in process right now. You know, I've worked at other lenders. Trust me, every lender will, they'll weed out those things. No, we don't want to touch non warnable condos, which most of them don't. But then there may be a way to broker them out. And I have solutions for that. Because I was working saying I seen I own condos in the first unit we bought at that time. That condo unit was non war. Luckily, they got out of their lawsuit. But, but building those relationships with those vendors only makes you work stronger. Now I want to circle back where I'm going to get off that tangent. Okay, because I want to go back so this new agent sitting in front of you, and we're talking about, what are you doing? Because I think they're I believe, and you've done it. I haven't, but I believe there's a reluctancy sometimes with a very new agent to reach out to their circles and say, Hey, I'm being a real I'm a real estate agent. Now, how do you help them break through that? So because that's very important, no, it is. Hopefully their first deal comes from their best friend or the friend or their

Tanya Cosmini  44:03  
mom, right? Like, everyone needs to know they're a realtor. And I think that kind of some, and there's nothing wrong with it. Some, like old school thoughts are to, like, send a letter to everybody in your circle of influence and announce that you're a realtor and throw your business card in there. And there's nothing wrong with it. It's a very efficient and simple way, right? You're just signing them, you're printing them, and you're mailing them off. However, I really believe in serving and not selling. As soon as you say, I'm a realtor, people are like, Oh, I think it's sell me something, and it just, I'm not

Tracy Hayes  44:33  
interested right now, because maybe they probably are. They're like, Oh, that just,

Tanya Cosmini  44:37  
it just doesn't feel good. So instead, you can do things like, actually, just call your friend and say, Hey, Tracy. I know maybe I've been a poopy friend and we haven't talked in six months. I was just calling to say hi, and they're going to be like, Hi. What are you doing? Oh, nothing, you know, just you. I took, I went to Savannah over the weekend. Oh, my God, that's so awesome. And then at some point they're gonna say, Hey, are you still, you know, are you still working at

Tracy Hayes  45:08  
right? Naturally in conversation people what they're doing, yeah,

Tanya Cosmini  45:11  
work or whatever. Yeah, you're not teaching anymore. Well, what are you doing for work? Oh, you're, you know, I got my real estate license and and I work for Realty One Group elevate in Jacksonville, Florida, and they're gonna be like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea that's so cool. And they'll say something like, you know, you have a great personality for it, or, I'm so happy for you. And you're gonna kind of

Tracy Hayes  45:29  
ask if they don't say those things, you don't want to talk to them again, but go ahead or reach out to them. That's the whole thing with Heather mother and getting rid of your villains. That person says, oh, that's tough business. Okay, you probably don't want to hang around with that person, but the person but the person that gives you that support, yes, to say, you got a great attitude. Oh, I wish you the best of luck with that. I think you're going to do great those are the

Tanya Cosmini  45:47  
people you want to keep in your life absolutely and so, you know, you're just going to serve them. You're not going to sell them anything, but you are going to probably reach out to them like every 30 days to let them know that, you know, you are a realtor. Maybe at that point you'll have a great story to tell them about something in real estate, maybe they're already a homeowner, and you can work in that you now that you're a new realtor, you want to practice giving people home values you'd like to practice on them, and you're just providing value, and you're showing yourself as an expert, but you're like, in between pushy and valuable. It's a fine line. You're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some, and that's okay. I

Tracy Hayes  46:19  
always thought about after you just have that basic conversation, is you write them a little thank you card and put a couple of business cards in there. It's a subtle way saying, Hey, I'm in real estate.

Tanya Cosmini  46:28  
I am very into handwritten cards, and write them often. I think that it's a trade that no, no one doesn't anymore, and everyone like, not consistently, who doesn't love to get mail, like real mail, not a bill like real veil, but someone spent those couple of minutes writing you a card. And it's actually one of the ways I keep in touch with customers, is I

Tracy Hayes  46:46  
write them card. It's, yeah, I had an agent a couple years ago because I I send birthday cards out. Yep, I use the service called Send Out Cards. But I go in there and I design the card, I put pictures in it, you know, put their pictures. And he's like, oh, man, this is really cool. This is so old school, and because he actually got mail that wasn't junk mail, yeah, yeah. It wasn't a bill or just advertisement or whatever. All right, so we got, let's try to get back on track. So let's talk about some we're way into this. Let's, I want to talk about Realty. One group elevate. I want you to brag about it. Why did you choose this franchise because there's many others out there, absolutely that you could have gone to. Let's talk about them and the support that they're giving you, which you in turn give, can give your agents

Tanya Cosmini  47:29  
Absolutely. So when I decided to take the broker class and broker test and all those things, I actually had no intention of opening my own brokerage. The educator to me, just wanted to learn more, right? And that was kind of it. And when the franchise reached out to me and said, Hey, you don't know us, but you're a good candidate for what we stand for, and I was like, Okay, bye, that's great. Next, right? Happy where I am cool and they I love to say this, and I can't believe I'm gonna say it out loud that I tell the buyer's agents to be polite stalkers, right? They should know what's going on with their customers, but, like, you can't be weird about it, right? You got to be kind, but you need to know what's going on and what kind of property they're looking at. And that's exactly royalty. One group did for me. They were polite stalkers and reached out to me, often, provided value, invited me some trainings, and they I knew it was a right fit when I found out one of their core values was coaching and education, because it's something I believe in so much that I feel has been neglected in a lot of ways, and like in person, training has been kind of yes to the wayside

Tracy Hayes  48:40  
this webinar stuff I'm telling you, and

Tanya Cosmini  48:43  
it has a place. It does. It has a place. Pair covid With the new generation, I feel like an old person saying that likes to do things in clouds and online, and isn't what I like. I'm happy to we provide everything in a streamed format and tape so people can watch it and have access to it, but being in person and being able to have that interaction, I think, is really important, yes, so the fact that that was one of their core values, was coaching. I was like, okay, like that. Explain more to me. And they literally have an entire platform called one dot you that has franchise training. It has audible books built in. They mention your phones, and now you don't even have to pay for a service. For a service. It's built into their platform. It's just and it's pretty I love what they're

Tracy Hayes  49:28  
you brag about the coaching a little bit. Have you had a coach in your professional in the real estate? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Tell us a little about that. And because I think that's another thing. Again, the top people, not every single one of them, but a high percentage of them, either. Angie Bell, one of the partners with the with the Keller Williams, Atlantic partners, correct. You know, she told me, when she came from corporate America into real estate, she hired a coach right away. How has that coach helped you through? Are you still getting coaching and I mean, how did that change your career?

Tanya Cosmini  50:00  
Year. So I think you can always get better. I think everyone should be a forever learner. And so I have a coach. He keeps me accountable. He makes he is a sounding board on things, and lets me know maybe in an area I could have done better. And say, I think this is what you should have done instead of what you did. He's collaborative, which I love. Collaboration, I think is really important, because the way you interpret something and the way I interpret something is different, and then we put it together, and we have this great solution, right? And so, you know, I'll, I will never say I know everything, but I will help you find the answer to it. And I've worked with many coaches throughout my real estate career. Here, I didn't really have the resources before to do it, but Sam felt it was really important for us to do that, and we've made it a priority to have to work with coaches. I highly suggest it to everybody.

Tracy Hayes  50:48  
Yeah. I mean, whether it's accountability piece, whether you're hiring this coach, like a Tom Ferry coaching group, there's other ones out there. He's probably the most well known in the real estate area, or when, if you're a new agent, and maybe you can't afford a coach, but you're looking for the brokerage, you got to find the broker who either themselves, might have that coaching mindset that you're talking about, or they have top people in that office who are willing to give that mentorship coaching to get you off when you start making the good money, You've got to reach out and spend some on your on

Tanya Cosmini  51:23  
yourself. You do? You have to invest in yourself and in real estate. It can be really hard, right? Because you're really worried about tomorrow, worried about your next sale, but you really need to budget yourself in a way that says, okay, out of each closing, I'm going to set aside this for marketing, and that marketing is marketing yourself and marketing yourself to be better. It's not just flyers or whatnot. So I think coaching is really important. And another part of the brokerage is franchise. Model that I loved was mentorship is built into their core values. So whether you know I'm the mentor or another top agent in the office is your mentor. It's built in a part of it. You people learn the best from other people. So obviously, the agent has some good habits. And I just love that, because I've never really had that

Tracy Hayes  52:08  
before. One of the core things, again, the one of the things we that I hear from, I mean surrounding yourself by the top people that you want to put yourself. And it doesn't necessarily have to be physical, you know, if you if you're moving in, there are some great brokerages where you walk in and there are four or five super agents like consistently in that office all the time. What a you know, that's a place you want to, you want you want to be. Maybe it doesn't offer the other thing. So maybe you find out, when you searching out that brokerage, the coaches and the mentors, whether, again, they're on the phone. I think mentoring, coaching can be done, you know, via zoom, absolutely, I'm more in the training when you're doing actual, like, more like, classroom type training. I'm 100% you guys got to stop doing the webinars. I'm sorry you're not going to make it. Because Number The other thing I'm going to ask you about is, on my list here is showing up

Tanya Cosmini  52:57  
super important. You got to be you got to show up to win. You have to show up to win. And the amount of learning that can happen from being in the office right, seeing the flow, listening to other agents on the phone, sharing what they're saying, maybe saying, hey, it sounded like you got an objection there. What did they say? And what did you say? Oh, I never thought of seeing it that way, that learning that happens is invaluable, like, you'll never get that again. How

Tracy Hayes  53:22  
many times, you know, we get a low appraisal, or there is an issue, and everybody in the office is now going around, hey, we got this issue. How do we solve it? And everyone's talking about it, then you come up with a solution. And everyone goes, Hey, what was the solution for it? This is what we did, yeah, and you logged it in. But I was just, you know, thinking too, we're talking about showing up to a classroom, you go down to the nefar, or where you show up and you're there, you meet some other agents. You never know which one of those agents is going to be on the other side of the transaction. Absolutely. And last year, how important camera there, how important it was for some of these deals when they're looking at 2030 offers to pull out the agents they know are behind those buyers? Well,

Tanya Cosmini  54:01  
absolutely. Because if you know, let's just say you have a listing 17 offers, right? And you're looking through them, and you're like, Oh my gosh. I you know, this offer looks really good, but I don't know that agent at all. But then there's an almost identical offer with an agent you have a relationship with already, absolutely you can portray to that seller. Hey, like, I did a deal with John Smith, and was delightful, you know, and he's professional, and he did everything he said he was going to do. I'm, you know, the lender they work with is great, because they did the lending on the last deal as well. Absolutely, that instills a lot of confidence in you and in your customer.

Tracy Hayes  54:33  
Well, even, just to even simplify that down to you, met them at a training at need, all of a sudden you see the contracts. You go, oh, I recognize that name. I met them. How more comfortable are you as the buyer's agent, or either way to call them and say, Hey, remember we met at that ne far class, that GRI class, or whatever it was, and now, because you have met each other face to face, the conversation just continues, versus you're a little. Or, yeah, that reluctancy. I don't know them. Are they going to rip my head off? Because there are some agents like that.

Tanya Cosmini  55:07  
And you also know that they think of themselves as a professional. They're trying to further their real estate education, and I feel that's great because they're in the minority, yeah, yeah. So I think there's a lot of good stuff to that,

Tracy Hayes  55:18  
all right, one, of the last main themes that we haven't touched on. Well, we, I think we did a couple different ways, but I'll let you bring it out more. What are you doing or you, what do you whether you've been doing it for 15 years or 15 days or 15 months, but what are you doing right now, consistently that you feel moves the needle in your business? It could be a lot of things we talked about, I mean, but what would be that thing you I mean, this has to be done in you're doing it consistently. And you know, because you're doing consistent at this, moving the needle. Sure, you

Tanya Cosmini  55:51  
have to talk to people. You have to get yourself out there, whether you're talking to past customers, if you have them staying in front of them. Especially now, I don't know a realtor out there that hasn't slowed down a little bit. Most of us are pretty excited about it because it's been so crazy, but probably didn't keep in touch with a lot of your customers, especially maybe the ones that closed three or four years ago. So creating a plan to keep in touch with them. It's conversations. The more people you talk to about real estate, the more likely you are to close a deal. It's very simple. So it's just but it's scheduling it back to time blocking, you know, having that prospecting time non negotiable every day, no matter what. And if it can't happen, because life happens, you have to make it up. It's having those conversations and probably showing up in your office. Now, I think that collaboration you're gonna have with other agents is really important, because people have been stuck at home, tunnel vision. Where am I going? What am I doing? Just the habit of being ready. Because I would imagine some agents have been stuck at home, haven't gotten dressed all the time, and they get a call to show property and they're like,

Tracy Hayes  56:56  
Oh, I gotta get ready. It's gonna take me 45 minutes. And you

Tanya Cosmini  56:59  
know what I mean. But like, so if you're not, like, dressed for success and ready to go and you get a ready, willing and evil buyer. Like,

Tracy Hayes  57:07  
yeah, it's, it's funny you say that, because I guarantee I go on my Facebook right now, there are some agents that I see all the time and it, I don't know. They don't make psychologically, they're doing it or not, but they are dressed for success. They're out there doing their selfie of them, you know, just looking great. And they're, it's out there to their peeps. Psychologically. They got up and got ready and got out and started their day. And you have to, you're self employed, you have to keep going. There's something I wanted to thought that came up. Oh, I lost it. It was a good one, too. While we were just chatting there in that last part, maybe we'll come to me here. I'll ask this next question here, as we're gonna round up here, 15 years, you know of your own brokerage, what is the one biggest mistake that you did? And it doesn't have to be obviously, nothing was catastrophic that you're like, a new agent coming on. You're like, if they brought it up to you, like, no, don't do that.

Tanya Cosmini  58:04  
Wow. There's so many things I did differently. You know, I'd probably say buying an expensive program. There's so many that tell you they're going to give you 15 guaranteed leave closings, verified called approved, 100% money back guarantee. Lead sources, yeah, you know they don't know, like and trust you. It's, don't do it, don't it's very expensive. You're going to get all these people, they're going to be they're going to be robbing your time trying to get them on the hook instead of trying to work with people that or that can recommend you in a different way. It's don't believe those systems it

Tracy Hayes  58:48  
takes to know like and trust. That's the bottom line. It's one of the bottom foundations in the it's in, it's in the concrete slab. Know, like and trust. And if you're not doing those things to working towards that, know, like and trust you're trying to shortcut it by getting some flashy service that's supposedly going to give you these home run lay downs. Trust me, if there was home run lay downs, there are people with a lot of money that would invest that money to make 50 bucks off that deal.

Tanya Cosmini  59:17  
Oh, absolutely. And so it there's really just no quick There's no quick fixes in real estate, I guess is really the bottom line is, if someone's promising you a lead that'll close in 30 days, it might happen

Tracy Hayes  59:29  
if it sounds too good. Unfortunately, I

Tanya Cosmini  59:32  
hate to say that, because there are some good programs out there, but usually it's a nurturing, nurturing job. I

Tracy Hayes  59:38  
think most people that's their failing forward. They you fail forward with that. You had to learn that. So you've laid on the grenade for that. Hopefully that real estate agent in the state true. The thought came, oh, here it is, here. So here's maybe I should get excited. We talked about, and you've talked about, a lot of core stuff and stuff that loan officers have to do everyone in the real estate. Any, really, anyone doing business, unless you have a retail shop. But even you're doing things to draw people to your retail shop type thing, okay, but you're calling on past clients, you know, prospecting. You know, I had Brittany Nolan with DJ and Lindsay. They spent every one of their 75 agents from nine to 11 every day has to have calls, and they their goal is to have 20 conversations. There's sometimes, you know, we're gonna have some reluctancy to that, or maybe calling the past client, just saying, Hey, how you doing? Or sending the cards out. You know, every you know, the Halloween cards or the Christmas cards, there are people that can help you with that. Sure, really inexpensively, absolutely, if you don't do if you can't do it, or you it's something you know, you have the call reluctancy. There are people that you can hire to do that,

Tanya Cosmini  1:00:51  
not only that, that you can also train on it. Yeah, I can teach anyone to feel comfortable making calls. It just practice.

Tracy Hayes  1:00:56  
Well, that's a good broker. That's why, then you add value. You add that's why you're at

Tanya Cosmini  1:01:01  
where I would say, unfortunately, if you have incredible call reluctance, it's going to be hard to be a successful realtor. The good thing is, the younger generation, they don't really like to talk on the phone, so you probably

Tracy Hayes  1:01:13  
I've done tire deals over text message. The

Tanya Cosmini  1:01:17  
majority of the conversations via text, which is funny. So we track conversations too, and I've had to change my dialog with myself that I said, you know, you guys are an adult, you need to decide when your text dialog is now considered a conversation, and if you feel it was, you create enough relationship via text into the conversation. We can count it as one, because it's funny. You call the same person every day, they won't answer, and then all of a sudden, you send them a text, they respond. You're like, but I just called you. I know you guys should phone on, yeah,

Tracy Hayes  1:01:48  
exactly 100% but there is help out there, whether you coach through the call, reluctancy to help you through it. Because I think the important thing you kind of hedged on it a little bit I thought it was going to come out was finding what you do best, prospecting, the way you are most comfortable with prospecting, as long as it's bearing fruit. You know, if you're if doing tick tock videos, gets phone calls for you 10x it's tick tock.

Tanya Cosmini  1:02:17  
Video, tick tock. That every day, all that, all day, do all the tick tocks.

Tracy Hayes  1:02:20  
Yeah. So, I mean, if you're good at that, go for it all. Right, here's your spiel. This is the last question, formal question. Last formal question, okay, why should you? Because I think you're more in the leadership role. You're still production, you're still doing your own sales and so forth, but you're trying to grow your brokerage, correct? Why should a new agent? Why should any agent? Let's just put lay late out there. Just give me your 1530 seconds, or your little elevator pitch here of why someone needs to come work for Realty. One group elevate in Ponte Vedra.

Tanya Cosmini  1:02:57  
It's a big one. It's a big one. The opportunity is unbelievable. The platform that this franchise gives us, even if we take myself out of the equation, we just talk about the platform that Realty One Group gives us, allows everyone to be successful because of the coaching, because of the support, because you keep so much of your money, you are able to bring your business to the next level. So that's, you know, it's like a little building block, the support, where, if you learn in person or online, we got you on any level, then you take the support that I can give as well as Sam, because, you know, he is a lender, though we think that partnership really helps people, because he's able to help people on that side, and I'm able to help people With the sales side, you put all those things together, and it's super easy. Like one of my favorite things that we have is I feel we can give people their time back. Almost all agents want more time. We've talked about social media a little bit, right? They have templates that are plug and play. It has content which most realtors are struggling with content, whether you have testimonials or an open house or whatever special day it is today, right? Scream day, coffee day, all those things. You can put those on your social media, but you're not creating it. It's already created. It's compliant, right? We have a lot of clients issues in real estate. It says the franchise of the brokerage, too many lawyers out there. So you know all those things that save your time, save you time. It makes you look like a professional. We have it all well, and we're fun,

Tracy Hayes  1:04:28  
I mean, and just our conversations. I did not know Tanya before. I mean, I did my research on her, and obviously today was first day we've met. But to sit down, I can tell your passion is into it. This is fresh to you right now, you have 15 years experience. There's a lot of brokers out there that don't have that kind of experience. They are. There's a lot of flash, a lot of the things like you were talking like, buy, let's buy the shiny object and or change our business. But you've actually been out there for 15 years, and I'm sure a lot of times you. Know you've fallen on your face and you've gotten back up and you've gotten to where you're at. And because, I mean, I if no one failed forward, they're not moving forward. Yeah, we've all done that. So just the fact that you have the reps of the transactions and going through 2007 eight and nine and 10, and now, you know what we're doing now, let alone, I mean, last year was a positive market change, but there was a lot of agents didn't know what to do. They were complaining because they were getting too many offers

Tanya Cosmini  1:05:28  
on a house. You know? It's like, there were a number of agents that weren't coached on how to win offers, right? So, yeah, so they, they, even though it was like the best real estate market ever, they literally made no money because they literally won no offers, right? No one was there to help them, because every was too busy to help them. We literally did a two hour training one day. We all sat down and said, Okay, what can we put in offers to win? Like, like, whatever we were doing today is canceled. This is the most important thing right now, because if you don't win offers, then you don't get paid. What do we got to do?

Tracy Hayes  1:06:02  
And that doesn't come from a book. You've got to get around experienced people that have done enough offers and again, educate to know how you could structure that deal a little differently than the last guy to hopefully appease the seller or the agent, who might be really the gatekeeper a lot of times. But we had, you know, there was complaints from agents who weren't prepared to take mold all these offers. They almost got nasty on the phone. I heard from some agents you'd call the selling agent. They're like, I got so many offers, you know, like, now they have to actually work and go through those offers their clients, and then obviously, how to make the offer correctly, to get on top of that. And obviously that was a market any agent you would think would love to be in. But there was trials and tribulations to that, absolutely and how to win. And then obviously, when you have downturns, or, you know, the different obstacles, the headwinds that we've got right now versus, you know, 2000 but the bottom line is, what some Tanya has, the experience she has right now. She has the, hopefully, the I know she has the passion, and I could sense the energy, and she continues that that get on her wave right now. Oh, I appreciate. Noah, hopefully you ride it for a bunch of years, but just get on it right now. I truly

Tanya Cosmini  1:07:13  
do love what I do. I feel lucky every day to be doing it, and I really look forward to bringing you know Realty One Group elevate to new heights here in North Florida, it's gonna be awesome.

Tracy Hayes  1:07:23  
Excellent. All right, I call these my two minute warning questions. I officiate the high school football, so not that they have a two minute warning in high school. But what is your favorite thing to do here in Northeast Florida? Because I think we sell lifestyle here in Florida. Oh, sure. So I like to ask this question, what you know? What's your lifestyle? What do you like to

Tanya Cosmini  1:07:41  
do? So my you're not selling real estate, but not so I actually ride horses. Oh, so I ride Hunter jumpers, which is writing English. I tell people I jump over things on purpose. Usually when you explain that, people know what it is. So that is, that is my jam. That's what I do in my heart. So

Tracy Hayes  1:07:57  
someone who might be listening to this now or year from now, whatever on YouTube. And you there is a little equestrian community here, right? There is a lot of other horse lovers. Oh, absolutely in the region.

Tanya Cosmini  1:08:10  
And very close to us is some really beautiful show show facilities and Ocala. So it's a pretty, pretty strong horse community in the area. So it's and plus the weather is great for horseback riding. I mean, I moved here from color. Here from Colorado, where we spend six or seven months of the year riding indoors, and here we almost always ride outside, which is much nicer. So, yeah, so a few days you got to

Tracy Hayes  1:08:31  
wear gloves, or your knuckles are going to freeze with Yeah, we probably wear gloves all the time. But anyway, all right, last question asked every one of my 97 this is 97 is it more important who you know or what you know and why?

Tanya Cosmini  1:08:45  
Oh my gosh, is it more important who I know or what I know and why? Probably what I know. I think having okay? I mean, that's really education. I mean, I don't really, yeah, definitely what I know is more important the who will come, the who will come based on what. Okay, I disagree with you, but I

Tracy Hayes  1:09:03  
mean, you obviously have your reasons. You felt your education and your own drive to learn, the business and so forth created the opportunities that the path and doors that have opened and closed for you to get to where you're at. Okay, for sure, I'll accept I'm a who, you know person, because not that you can't be and people when you're sometimes, when you ask that question, people go, Well, if you don't know something, you're, you know you're no, we're not talking about incompetency, sure, but you know you know some stuff about real estate. We talked about relationships. Knowing other people. You don't have to know everything there. I guarantee I know. You know people. You've been doing this long enough that if a situation came up, you're like, you know what? I know this broker Nassau County, let me call her and see what, hey, what's going on out there as far as pricing for you know, maybe you got a listing and you're trying to price it right, or whatever. You know, you know who to call. And then I think all of us, you know, we. Do everything ourselves. We'd like to think we do there. Fortunately, great people come into our lives at different times and how subtle or direct they may be and give us the right information to continue to go get the No, I get it. Yeah, that's my opinion.

Tanya Cosmini  1:10:15  
We all have different they all have different perspectives. Amazing.

Tracy Hayes  1:10:19  
Yeah, I appreciate you coming on the show. I wish you best of luck here with your interviews this afternoon. And I think, you know, I sense the energy with you. And like I said, if you're listening to this right now, if you've listened to the end of the show, you need to call Tanya if you're considering changing brokerages. She's got the energy, the knowledge, the experience, there to help you out. And it's so important, I think, in your real estate career, talking to all these great agents from all different brokerages, you've got to match the brokerage that matches you absolutely has the ideology. Can find out what you're good at prospecting. It can help you 10x that, that angle, whatever it is, but you've got to mesh if you're unhappy going in that brokerage or that brokerage isn't really good with like green agents, you know, brand new, and they're not really good at that. You're going to be lost in that. There's brokerages that cater to the high end, you know, agents that have experience, other brokerages that really cater to the true green. You know, fresh out of the testing class, you've got to find the right one that matches, giving a Tanya a call and sitting down and chatting with her and see if she's the right fit for you. Is for you is highly recommended. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on. Thank you.

Speaker 2  1:11:29  
This may be it for today's episode of Real Estate excellence, but we both know your pursuit of excellence doesn't stop here, to connect with the best of the best and really take your skills to the next level. Join our community by visiting Tracy Hayes podcast.com where you'll meet more like minded individuals looking to expand their inner circle and their personal experience that's available at Tracy Hayes podcast.com

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