”You don’t need a Cheerleader, YOU NEED A COACH. You need somebody who will take your ideas and help you EXECUTE ON YOUR IDEAS.” –Eric Thomas
According to the National Association of REALTORS, they’re predicting that 200,000 real estate agents in 2023 are going to get out of the business. They also just released their forecast for transaction sales in 2023 and expect it to go down almost 7%. So it’s a tough and challenging year ahead. Plus with the inflation, interest rates, and home prices going up, we are going into recession issues. The coming year will be way tougher than the last 2.5 years, and in order to survive in Real Estate as Agents, we will all need to sharpen our skills and get a predictable and comprehensive plan for 2023.
In this week’s episode, we’ll be joined by Scott Comey, Speaker, and Podcast Host of Turn the Dial Coaching. He’s an entrepreneur and authored the book “Are You a Manager or a Leader?” a book written to help leaders achieve more by inspiring others. He is co-owner of 4 RE/MAX offices and a Motto Mortgage office in Snohomish County, Wa and dedicates himself to his Real Estate Agents & Loan Officers, pouring himself into helping them achieve their life aspirations.
Scott will dig into his overview of the current real estate market that we’re in now, the struggles and challenges most real estate agents face, and the things they need to understand and learn that could be beneficial in setting up their success for 2023.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
- Scott and his wife’s real estate journey, their coaching business, and its ultimate mission
- Scott’s overview of the current real estate market that we’re in now.
- Importance of having a business plan, having a mentor, showing up, and listening to your broker.
- What are the unique things that Scott and his wife do in their coaching business?
- Scott’s advice for consumers waiting for home prices to fall before they buy.
- Understanding why the home price today will not be the price tomorrow.
- How can you get into the home you want at a slightly higher interest rate?
- Investing in yourself in learning is the best investment you can make.
- Scott’s advice for real estate agents (new or veteran), how to get started, and how to be on top of the game
Connect with Corwyn @:
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exitstrategiesradioshow/
- FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/exitstrategiessc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxoSuynJd5c4qQ_eDXLJaZA
- Website: https://www.exitstrategiesradioshow.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmelette/
- Email @: corwyn@corwynmelette.com
Connect with Scott Comey @
- Website: turnthedialcoaching.com
Episode 68: 2023 Real Estate Agent’s Guide to Success
CORWYN:
Good morning, good morning, and good morning. Welcome to another fabulous episode of EXIT Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host, yes your host, Corwyn J. Melette, Broker and Owner of EXIT Realty LowCountry Group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, if this is your first time listening to this show, you are most certainly in for a treat. Because our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy and real estate education. We’re a legacy building. That is what we do. Now, look, if you’re listening to this show, you know what that means. That means that you have made it over. Yeah, if you’re listening to this show today, you have made it over. You have made it out of 22 into 23. You are looking forward to a bright glorious future. You believe that God will carry you forward, and you are taking the steps that he has ordained. I ain’t thought about saying that before. But I’m gonna say it right now. Again, you believe God will carry you forward, and you’re taking the steps that he has ordained. So thank you all so much for tuning in. Thank you for being a part of the EXIT Strategies Radio Show family. Y’all know how we do..And you know what we got. Yes, yes. Look here. We went to, so I had this vision, we always talk about success and all that stuff, right? And life has become kind of this participation award, right? It has become, well, if you get to the base of the mountain, you’re successful. No, success awaits you at its peak. The journey, the journey up that mountain is your journey to success. So look here we have with us today. The guy that agents and people in the industry need to talk to when they are ready to climb the mountain. He is your Sherpa, up on that mountain to success in this industry. We have with us none other than Scott Comey with Turn The Dial Coaching. Scott, man, how are you this morning?
SCOTT:
I’m great. And that’s the first time I’ve been called a Sherpa. But I love it. I love your analogy. And hey, I’d be happy to be anybody’s Sherpa. You can jump on my back.
CORWYN:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that’s the thing. We sometimes forget that people, there are people who need guidance and be a mentor. So Scott, look, I don’t want to steal any of your Thunder Man. I want to make sure that I gave you the drum roll that precedes it. So tell our listeners who you are.
SCOTT:
Yeah, first of all, thank you so much, Corwyn for having me on your show. You know, I’ve had the privilege of listening to several episodes of yours. And one thing I’ve got to say is I love your energy. It is so contagious. And even just now, I was kind of having a little bit of a slow start to my morning. And now I’m pumped up. I’m pumped up. And here, I’m just the guest, I’m not even the one that’s gonna be listening to this. But yes, thank you so much Corwyn. That was an awesome introduction. Yeah, so we, my wife and I, I’ve been licensed since before the Great Recession, so that first big downturn that really affected the real estate industry and a lot of consumers back in 2008, 2009. So I’ve been licensed since before then actually started a real estate brokerage in 2008. The best time to start one is not really. And so we struggled. We struggled for a few years there but I sold the whole time. So I sold real estate. We got through that great recession. We ended up buying into a franchise. We had an independent brokerage at the time bought into a franchise. Long story short, my wife joined me on this journey. We became a husband-wife team. We ended up making it to the top 1% in the nation among real estate agents. We don’t currently sell anymore. We take that experience and share it with our coaching clients and with the people that we train. We also own a brokerage that has about 100 agents in the Seattle market and currently living most of the time in South Carolina and Myrtle Beach. And we’ve got our dog, and we love to travel. So that’s a little bit about us.
CORWYN:
So, Scott, you touched on so many things, and part of this is probably gonna be an offline conversation. But it’s interesting. So I went into brokerage, I’m running a brokerage, the same time in 2008, right before in that climactic phase, of, hey, we’re actually in the recession. So, similar and then later did this summer as far as a franchise goes. So that’s interesting that we have such a parallel in as far as careers go, but tell our listeners, you now coach, again, you’re that Sherpa, you’re that person? Sure. Hey, you, you decided you want to stand at the base of this mountain, which is real estate, the real estate industry profession? And how do you find your success? How do you climb to the top, and you got agents through that process, as you found your own way through it a number of years ago? So tell us first of all, this market, this time that we’re in, this season? What does it look like to you?
SCOTT:
That’s a great question. It’s 2022 for real estate agents, and even for some consumers was a challenging year, right? I mean, we had a lot going on with inflation. And are we in a recession? Were we not in a recession? Are we going into a recession? There are lots of questions like that, that have been floating around, and transactions in 2022 have been pretty significantly down in most markets across the country in 2022. And so what we have done is thought of and created different ways to help agents not kind of take what’s coming to them, right? If the industry is going to be down in transactions, we don’t want our clients to be down at that same level, or hopefully not at all, right? Hopefully, we’re thriving, and we’re still up, and most of our coaching clients are up over 2021 even. And so that’s kind of our purpose is to really focus on how we can take this market and make it an opportunity because there’s a lot of agents that are going to get out of the business. A lot of agents have already gotten out of the business because you know what happened, the last few years have been mostly easy for a lot of agents. But the second half of 2022 exposed a lot of agents. And it really kind of showed their weaknesses, their shortcomings. And those agents didn’t plug into the proper training, they didn’t plug into coaching, they didn’t really have too much of an understanding of how to properly run this as a business. And so they’ve gotten out of the business, or some of them are contemplating getting out of the business. I know, the National Association of REALTORS is predicting that 200,000 agents in 2023 are going to get out of the business. So from a real estate agent perspective, if you got any of those listeners here, if you’re going to stay the course, and you’re going to know it, it’s gonna be a challenging year. But you’re still going to be around in 2023. And you’re gonna do what it takes to succeed and maybe thrive in 2023. Understand a lot of your colleagues are going to be getting out of the business. So there’s an opportunity there to take market share during this next year. So I think NAR just released their forecast for transaction sales in 2023, they expect it to go down almost 7% again in 2023. So, it’s gonna be a challenging market. I think interest rates, they’ve climbed up. As you know, most of us are anticipating that by the middle of next year, they’re going to come down a bit. And that will help. But transactions in general will be down. So what’s your game plan? Right? That’s what you have to ask yourself if you’re an agent, What’s your game plan? Do you have a business plan? Do you have a coach? Do you have proper training and a mentor to guide you through this next season?
CORWYN:
So I’m gonna hit a couple of things on that, and then I’m gonna kind of smooth this out a little bit. So one, do you listen? That one is a big one, Scott, right? You listen, because you may have, but many agents, do have their broker or someone else in their office whose offering, is willing to assist them in growing and building a business, but then they won’t listen. They won’t show up for training. You know that, and this is interesting. So, this is something that I find very, very, very intriguing to me. So Scott, if they pay you every time that you have the training, what you’re gonna do when you open an audience, you’re gonna see them right there because they paid you to be there. Right, Right. Right. When it comes to their broker, providing them training, they don’t show up. They don’t.
SCOTT:
Yeah. And you know what’s interesting, Corwyn? What’s interesting is our message is probably not that different. I mean, we’ve definitely had some unique things that we do in our coaching business that we train our clients. But a lot of what we coach on are the same messages that a lot of broker-owners tell their agents as well. But it’s kind of like I summon this too, like, a marriage, right? Because I know, like my wife sometimes, like you and I can be talking. And you’ll say, “You know what, it would be cool Scott, if in real estate if you did this,” And then I go to my wife later on, and I so you know, I was talking to Corwyn when he said, “We should do this.” And then she goes, “Are you kidding me?” We had that conversation. Like two months ago, I told you that, right? I gave you that idea already, right? So it’s just one of those things where we sometimes are challenged to listen to the people closest to us. So having kind of a neutral third party, like a coach that’s maybe not in your brokerage, is going to help you achieve a lot more success, even though some of the messages is going to be similar to what you’ve already heard.
CORWYN:
So I’m gonna change, I’m gonna change the narrative. I’m gonna change the book. I’m gonna keep the same narrative. So here we are over here, we’re telling the consumer, hey, look, you might, this might be the one that you might need to, or you may need to consider doing this, or this is probably going to be the better avenue to get this accomplished. And you tell them, You tell them in a rejected, rejected, rejected, I’m going through that now with a couple of people, that really their situation, they just need to start liquidating. So they can restructure, but they don’t want to let anything go, anything goes. And I’m saying it, and now they are hearing it elsewhere in a couple of other places. But what it’s going to take in those instances is someone else further away from all of it, to say the same thing, and then all of a sudden hit and go. So the consumer does the same thing, won’t listen to real estate professionals telling them, hey, look, this is what you can do. And then when they missed the boat, then they come back, and they’re quite challenged and more challenged. We have people that didn’t buy because they were concerned with home prices. when I’m waiting for home prices to fall. Well, newsflash, there ain’t falling. Right, exactly. And now rates are up. So now you don’t even qualify for what it is that you could have bought four or five months ago.
SCOTT:
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, we first started hearing about this bubble bursting in October of 2021, right? So this is going back a year and two months ago, we had a lot of our consumers of our coaching clients that were saying, “You know what I’m going to hold off, I’m going to sit on the fence, I’m not going to buy right now, because I hear that the market is gonna crash, there’s gonna be a bubble that’s gonna burst. And I want to snatch up those homes when they’re cheap.” And here we are, a year and two months later, and prices nationally have only gone up, they’ve only gone up and to your point, plus, and on top of that the higher interest rate now it’s like, “Man, I should have bought over a year ago,” yes, you should have listened to your real estate agent. But here’s the thing, Corwyn, those 200,000 agents that are going to get out of the business in 2023, they really should, they really should because I know that you’re very much connected with your local Realtors Association, and I love that. I have a big heart for professional agents who are really treating this industry the way it deserves to be treated. But for years, so many agents have not treated it that way. And the consumers know that, and so there’s a lot of consumers that go through life and they see these posts on social media, “When is a good time to buy? Now is a good time to buy,” but with no explanation. And meanwhile, rates have gone up. So in their minds, they think of the agent, because they’re only remembering history and what they’ve seen from other agents that maybe aren’t as in this business, right? They just believe that we’re only in this for a commission check, right? And we’re going to tell the consumer anything they want to hear. And I know that because I work with a lot of very professional real estate agents that is not true, that we are put on here that the same reason that kind of the mission statement of your podcast even is to help kind of build that legacy for the consumer, right? So that they can retire and feel like they’ve got enough financial, Being, to have a good life and to leave something to their kids or whoever that might be. Well, the only way to get there a lot of times is through real estate, and those of us that are in this business and have been in it for a while. We study. We know the stats. We know the data. We know if it’s right for you and if it’s not right for everybody to buy right now. But for a lot of people, it still is even with rates up.
CORWYN:
And you know, so you’re right about that. So for consumers who may be listening, and watching this show, you need to understand something so when you know your agent is thinking okay, they understand that real estate, one is cycling don’t get me wrong, but traditionally and historically, it appreciates. So the price today will not be the price tomorrow. Now if we believe that prices are going to fall, then hey, let’s wait till tomorrow, we’ll get you a better price. But knowing and seeing what we see, okay, you need to get your position now. Because as prices increase, you’re now pretty soon as evident if you go back and look at a home price, or average home price and median home price from October ’21. And go back and look at those same numbers now. Oh, my God. And for many people, you probably, I mean, literally, it’s like, okay, hold on, let me just go ahead and, and just walk out in the middle of traffic at rush hour. And just let me just go. And then on the other side of it, when you couple that with an interest rate increase, I mean, we saw rates go up from three to seven, it seemed like it was overnight. But I saw a chart recently as I’m watching forecasts for ’23. And as a recap of ’22, when you look at the interest rates, it’s like, it was like, boom, boom, boom. And then, over a very short period, it just seemingly went straight up to like seven. And people miss that. But as agents, as practitioners, as dedicated professionals, those are the things that we see going on. And if we believe rates are going to come back, then we say, okay, hold on, wait. But we’ll tell you, Okay, well, we don’t see these rates coming back, you need to get your position on the house now. If rates do improve, then you always can restructure and lower your payment. But if you don’t buy now, and prices continue to go up, then you can’t buy at all. And that’s what a lot of people are challenged with right now. Scott, you know they can’t buy at all.
SCOTT:
Yeah, yeah. And you know what, here’s the thing for those that maybe do still qualify, but they are sitting on the fence. The thing is, I know it’s tough when you see rates in the threes, right? I know, that’s tough. And to your point, Corwyn, that was just earlier this year. So here, we are basically mid to upper six is where we’re at now roughly, so it’s a tough pill to swallow. But a lot of you don’t necessarily live in the rate percentage as much as you live in the payment. And here’s the other thing is the house that you could have gotten, let’s say a year ago, okay. Last year, homes were moving quickly, were they not? Yap. They were flying and a lot of times multiple offers several offers, and homes were going for over the asking price. And so a lot of buyers, after losing out on multiple homes and ended up settling for not the perfect home, for not the right home for them but because they had a good interest rate, right? So here’s the opportunity for you now that you can get into more of the home that you actually want. And maybe you don’t love the interest rate. And I totally get that. I can respect that. But to your point, Corwyn, if things do change, and they are predicted to, then you can restructure at a later point. And this could just be a temporary setback. Exactly. And a lot of times, by the way, I know in our markets, a lot of actually I don’t know about in your market, but in the Seattle market where we have a brokerage that we own, there’s a lot of sellers and listing agents getting very creative with helping to buy the rate down. So that’s an option. If you’re a real estate agent and you’re listing a home, that’s an option, that’s a solution that could get more eyeballs on your property. Because more buyers might be interested if you can kind of help them a little bit with getting that rate down. And then sometimes sellers are given concessions, even like helping towards closing costs. So there are ways that you can get into the home you want, maybe at a slightly higher interest rate, but then maybe restructure it later on.
CORWYN:
And you’re right about that. And that’s one of the things that, there are other things such as assumptions. So if you have an old FHA mortgage or one, there was a gap in it, where you couldn’t, but if you can assume it. VA if you happen to be a veteran, and you’re buying a house from another veteran, that assumption and being able to assume, that lower rate, and then just blend in the back end. I mean, those things are most agents, most agents, as a matter of fact, this is a concept Scott, you look here, an agent that has been in the business who got into business anytime after 2012, 13 or so. Yep., they’ve never had to do things like price reductions. They’ve never had to talk really and really understand how to price. They’ve never had to do any of those things because the market just was going and essentially running away. So now they have to either learn and many of them won’t don’t learn. They don’t understand. It came with a phantom that wait a minute, I got to talk to the seller about lowering the price. I don’t understand And do we have to write in private? You know, well, why people aren’t buying a house? Well, do I just let us what? You know, they’re not having those conversations, they don’t know how to. Right. The people that have been through changing markets, those people knew how to work. You know, Scott 2008 Oh, my God, I got my license in 2004. You know, 2008, you know, I went full time in the business, December of 2006. So, here I go, I’m a year I’m thinking, Okay, well it’s all good. It’s all amazing. And then all of a sudden here come 2008. And I’m like, “Oh, no, what’s this?” And, but what we did was, we buckled down. And we went to work, we learned law. And I got, so I got a whole, I ran across a large band, in my garage from our, from where we moved our office. And it’s like, certificates and plaques, and all this stuff, all this training that I did because during that time period, I learned everything. Okay, short sales, foreclosures, how do we do this, how to do that, all this education, all that investment, at my expense, to be able to better serve the consumer, and educate them through and work through that market. Agents now, don’t train anymore. Right. They just, that’s it, they don’t go to conferences, they don’t net where it’ll do any good things, and to quote unquote, and improve and build their business, then again, as we talked about a little earlier, don’t even sit in a broker’s office, to try to get help, and try to get a better understanding of how they can better serve their consumer. That right there is one of the things that I know, that we’re trying to impact.
SCOTT:
Absolutely, yeah. And investment in yourself is the best investment you can ever make. And that’s true in any industry, you really need to pour the education into yourself, listening to podcasts, which don’t cost anything, right? It doesn’t cost anything to listen to a podcast. Read a book or listen to a book, if you’re not a reader, then and all these conferences. I met you Corwyn at the National Association of Realtors Conference. And I have a lot of respect for people that invest in stuff like that because I know that you know, you know, I don’t, I don’t feel like I’ve changed the word spend to invest, right? Because it’s like, you’re not going to the NAR conference to spend time at a conference, you’re investing in the conference. So that’s like, my keyword is I expect to return right? When you invest, you expect to return and so. So you have to, if you’re an agent listening to this, you have to think of it from that context, if I invest in a coach, am I gonna get the return on that investment, everything we coach is you have to get a 30% minimum return on that investment. So trust, trust me, when I say, as a coach, whenever a broker-owner hires me to train their agents in like a class setting, or whenever I get a one-on-one coaching client, I know how much they’re investing in me, and I’m gonna feel horrible if I don’t get them that 30% minimum return on that investment. And so, that’s what it’s going to take for a lot of you if you and you got to do something different to thrive in 2023, you got to do something different. And a lot of it is gonna be, probably education and coaching.
CORWYN:
Exactly, exactly. So Scott, tell our listeners trustfully I know somebody, there are people out there who are thinking about getting into real estate. You know, we have a school, we refer people off to our school all the time, people are looking to get started, and they don’t understand the relevance of what it is that you do. I do. You know, I have a business coach, not a specific real estate coach. I’ve had some coaches for real estate in the past, I will bring another one on, but I have, looking at a larger corporate structure. So that’s where I’m coaching out on a larger corporate structure piece of it. But long story short, you are invaluable. You are quote, unquote, that gateway to an agent’s greatest success. Again, as we’ve talked about the mountain and the Sherpa, you’re the person that knows how to navigate and got to get others to the top because you’ve been there. A Sherpa can’t get someone to the top of the mountain if they’ve never been there themselves. Right. So understanding that okay, this, forgive them, I’m looking at Scott, I’m very open. You know, I’m a big guy. So you can take me in the same direction up the mountain that you take the skinny person. Yeah, it might not fit on that ledge, or my belly may not get in that crevice. Do you see what I’m saying? Everybody’s different. Yeah, exactly. But you know how to because you’ve been up and around and all over that mountain. You know how to guide an agent on that path. So if you don’t mind, share your contact, how can our listeners, how can prospective real estate agents get in contact with you to get more information on how you can help them grow their business?
SCOTT:
Yeah, so first of all, real quick, I know I mentioned 200,000 agents are predicted to get out of the business in 2023. There are a lot of people that may be listening to this, like, oh, shoot, I was thinking about getting in the business, should I not? And only you know the answer to that. And I say that because I wouldn’t stop anybody from getting into the business in 2023. Or even right now, even though it’s a little challenging but you have to know your work ethic. This is you know, being self-employed and not having a guaranteed paycheck is challenging, it’s risky. But with big risk comes big reward. But you’ve got to set the tone for your business. You’ve got to set your own hours in your business, right? Corwyn is not going to tell you to get in the office at 9 am. I’m not going to tell you to show up at 9 am. You’re going to do your own thing. All we can do is guide you to our best knowledge and hope that you follow some of that advice. And so what I would tell you is this, if you’re new, if you’re newer to the business, start off with anything you can plug into that’s free because you got to keep your overhead down that first year, year and a half. So I’m probably not a solution for a brand-new agent. However, if you want to just see what we do offer, you can go to turnthedialcoaching.com Most everything that we offer, we offer several different training programs. One of them is I’m a certified trainer of The 12 Week Year, New York Times Bestselling Book, and that’s I’ve got people that take that and they’re in all kinds of industries, not just real estate, you might be able to take a bite-sized piece of what we do, and jump into one of those training instead of getting into one on one training if that’s not quite in your budget yet. But you’ve got to have a plan that to your point Corwyn, you’ve got to have a plan in your business, we are a solution. There are several good coaches out there. I’m just one of many, I’ve always been coached myself, and I believe it’s an absolute necessity to get to where I want to go quicker. You know, like you to your point, you might eventually get to the top of that mountain, but you might be past retirement age, by the time you figure it out. Right. So our job is to guide you quickly and get you up there before that oxygen tank runs out. So yeah, turnthedialcoaching.com you can find us on social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
CORWYN:
Look here, I like that, that referencing that when you said TikTok out, it turned the dial, I’m thinking about the clock. You know, I mean, you turn the dial and TikTok, I’m like, Oh, that’s it right there. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about. Well Scott looks, we’ve had, time flies, man, when you’re having a great conversation, talking on subjects that you love. So it seems like it does not work, it’s really just having fun, and I’ve had a great time with you today. We got to get you back in the future. For our listeners, guys, Scott Comey, he’s the man Turn The Dial Coaching. You guys need to plug in and follow him on social media. He has a wealth of knowledge in The 12 Week Year. When I saw that, I think I said this to you at the conference. But I listen to books more than I read just because I can listen everywhere. Yeah. And that was one that I listened to. And I think I actually, usually give my agents a book to read every year. And if I’m not mistaken, I think I gave that book to them maybe about two, or three years ago, when I listened to it. And we started at that point in time focusing on shorter clips, which is what the book is about. Yep. The year model, trying to plan the entire year, just is not as effective as planning a quarter at a time. And in turn, I believe it made an impact and caused a shift in my own business. You know, as we started to look at things a little bit more defined. So definitely, one of the things that, I mean as you coach from that, I know that it’s making a difference in the people that you’re touching. So Scott, thank you so much for being on our show today. Thank you for being a part of the EXIT Strategies Radio Show family. We appreciate you. We really, really, really, really do. Yeah. For our listeners, guys, as we wrap up today’s show, I want to say something very, very special to you, which is I love you guys. Again, as I said in the beginning, we have made it over. We are into 2023 We are off to an amazing start. And I do not want you to lose momentum. I want you to make sure that you keep tuning into this show. I want you to follow us on social media because we’re going to be exposing you to a lot more this year. Because we intend to give you a lot more. So guys, I always say to you in closing, guys, I love you. I love you. I love you. And I’m gonna see you guys out there in the streets.
