Fueling Growth & Inspiring Success with Olivia Lin

Watch or Listen to the full episode

Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the team Lally real estate show home of the guaranteed sold program, or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio, and if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596, or check us out online at Team lally.com

ATTILIO: 
Hey, our guest today is a dedicated real estate professional combines market expertise with a passion for helping others succeed as the director of agent training and buyer specialist for Team Lally, she has guided countless clients to their dream homes, while also mentoring agents to reach new heights in their careers.

ADRIENNE: 
She is known for her commitment to excellence, strong negotiation skills and ability to connect with clients on a personal level, whether she’s training agents or representing buyers, she consistently delivers results with integrity and care. Please welcome our guest, Olivia Lin,

ATTILIO: 
and hello, she has memorized over 100 Disney songs.

OLIVIA: 
That’s very true. What’s

ATTILIO: 
your favorite Disney song?

OLIVIA: 
Oh, I have a lot. I mean, I really like some songs from Lion King, Little Mermaid, all of them. All of them.

ATTILIO: 
So speaking of Akuna Matata, let’s talk about, let’s talk about, hello. Let’s see. Let’s hit them high. Hit them low. Let’s go. Let’s hit them right between the eyeballs. Right now with this first question, tell them about the Hello Kitty training that we have Hello week. Or is it, is it hello week or Hello month? Hello week? It’s Hello week. It just yeah, what is Hello week?

OLIVIA: 
Agents, yeah, are currently going through Hello week right now? Yeah, and it’s basically a week where we’re really pushing limits, right? Getting them out of their comfort zone. They have to do a bold 100 which is 100 contacts in one day. Yeah, they’ll have to make 150 contacts for the week. They have to door knock, attend real estate seminar or a webinar. They have to send out handwritten notes they have to call for sale by owners. Yeah, there is a massive list of things that they are required to do this week.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah? Because in the beginning it, you know, when you’re the beginning of doing anything, it requires a massive amount of effort to get into momentum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and also

ADRIENNE: 
Olivia as the director of agent training. How are you supporting these agents during this Hello, week. What’s your role with them? Yeah. What

ATTILIO: 
are you doing? Moral support.

OLIVIA: 
Yeah, moral support, but also physical support. So I’m in office five days a week. I’m helping them with whatever they need, helping them get lists of people to call, guiding them through, you know, fire consultations, helping them with whatever they need.

ATTILIO: 
I heard too, if they take a call and just get their butts handed to them by by a homeowner or something like that, that you hit them you what you do to rejuvenate them is you do like a mobile karaoke with them. Mobile karaoke.

ADRIENNE: 
You have a Disney song, yeah? Mobile, mobile

ATTILIO: 
karaoke device that you hang around, like, on your shoulder. It looks it’s, if I were to describe it, it looks like, like a, like a purse, but it’s a speaker with a microphone, RGB, purse. Yeah, I think that’s important, because, you know, we’re joking around with it, but it’s like, sometimes you just get your butt handed to you, and you just got to get you just got to be like,

OLIVIA: 
No, without the Disney, you take a break, and then you get back into it,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, and and then you get straight back to it, because That’s the key right there. Because between where we at and where we want to be, if it’s anything worth doing, is going to be some challenges, some challenges. So if you, if you could give like, if you could give 52 pieces of advice to a brand new agent, let’s start with number one.

OLIVIA: 
What would it be? Number one is consistency. Consistency, you can have all the talent in the world, but if you are not consistent, you will not get anywhere.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, consistency will always outperform skill

ADRIENNE: 
Olivia. Consistency with what Yeah, specifically, yeah.

ATTILIO: 
Talk about a talk about an actionable step that they got to be consistent with.

OLIVIA: 
Yeah. Yeah. So something that we do is we time block our calendar. So we teach the new agencies. If it’s not on your calendar, it doesn’t exist, right? So what we want is a stable calendar. So every single day, five days a week, we have time blocks for prospecting, you know, making those calls, connecting with people. Because the more calls you make, the more business you’re gonna get. So consistency with calls is really, really important, because if you’re not talking to people, you’re not gonna get any business.

ATTILIO: 
What about just sitting around all day long, looking at social media? Will that generate business? Nope,

ADRIENNE: 
nope. So, so Olivia, okay, so they’re having consistency with calls. We’ve got the time block, yeah. But what do they say when someone actually answers the phone? How do you make sure that what’s coming out of their mouth is effective? Yeah?

OLIVIA: 
Great question. We actually asked them to come to the office a minimum number of hours per day. Yes, and this is so that we can listen to their calls. We can give them feedback. And you know, people are going to mess up in the beginning, and that’s totally fine, but the important thing is that when they do mess up, they get the feedback for it, so that the next time there’s no more mistakes.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, I know in the beginning, the number one feedback is that the script says your name here, and they’re like, your name here. I’m like, stop saying your name here. You’re actually supposed to say your name, not your name here, yeah,

ADRIENNE: 
Olivia, do you have any funny examples of maybe from yourself when you were first learning Yeah, maybe one of our agents, maybe not one of our now agents, but maybe one in the past, yeah. Can share.

OLIVIA: 
Yeah. I think that some calls kind of throw people off sometimes. Yeah. So when we do so prior to open houses, we do a neighborhood circle dial, and this neighborhood, neighborhood circled out is basically just to invite the neighbors to come by to our open house on the Sundays. Yes. And we have one agent. His name is Alex, and basically he was doing his calls. He someone picked up, and he was like, hey, is this so and so? And the guy was like, No. And he’s like, Well, do you live in Kahala? No, well, let me give you my spiel. Anyway,

ATTILIO: 
you say, Is this so and so? No, do you live in Kahala? No, uh, hold on, a second. Your name here?

ADRIENNE: 
Well, did he end up having a good conversation with this person, or did they hang up on him? Well,

OLIVIA: 
he actually had a pretty good conversation, because it was just so, like, out of the blue. It’s kind of funny, you know? It threw Alex off, but it also threw the guy off.

ATTILIO: 
Like, I was surprised. I’ll be like, You know what I would do? Like, what popped in my head was the bud light commercial. That’s what I would do. I’ll just say that was up, and then be like, quiet and don’t say anything after that.

ADRIENNE: 
They might just hang up on you, though

OLIVIA: 
it’s illegal. Yeah, they might actually just do yeah

ATTILIO: 
and then call them back and go, was no, no. But we, you know, we’re reaching out to serve people. I think one of the key like my piece, let’s do a round robin to help support Olivia in this. My advice is just have the my the mindset that you’re going out there to serve people, not bother them. Have that mindset before you even pick up the phone. What? What about you? Adrienne, I

ADRIENNE: 
would say to, like, have the mindset of that, because these agents are dedicated full time. Yeah, that they are like they’re out there to connect and save that client from having a potentially terrible experience. Yeah, right? With, uh, with maybe someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing,

ATTILIO: 
they’re doing. We know what we’re doing. We do. Olivia, what else? What else? What else you like taught this, it’s like we’re parting the curtain for the Wizard of Oz called Team Lally. What’s behind the curtain? What else they doing?

OLIVIA: 
Well, door knocking.

ATTILIO: 
Okay, let’s talk about that door knocking now, is it, is the door knocking like, or is it like my favorite is I like that one that’s like my signature, not and anyway, so three

OLIVIA: 
very loud bangs, as if we’re trying to break down the door. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
so, and then you’re like, open up. No, we’re not doing that. So what are they? So they knock on the door. They’re inviting them to an open house. Somebody opens the door, what’s what do they say? What are we teaching them

OLIVIA: 
to say? Introduce ourselves as an agent with Team Lally real estate. And hi, your name here? Yeah, hi. My name is Olivia. I work with Team Lally real estate. We have a listing just down the street from you, and we have an open house this Sunday from two to 5pm the owner has personally asked me to invite all of your neighbors to come by and take a look at it.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. I usually throw in like and you too, and especially you, because they heard you, like, really nosy, and they never, you never been inside the house. And you so nosy, like, check out the inside. So I’d say, you know, they told me to invite you because you should come look. But you know, one of the things I always tell people is like, Hey, would you mind helping us pick your new neighbor? Would you mind helping us pick your new neighbor? Her. And, yeah, people love that. Love to be part of the team. They want to help everybody. Like be helpful. We need your help. We’re doing the you know, the kalakauas down the street are selling their home. And can you tell your friends relatives? And can you come by and come walk through the home? Give us some feedback. Tell us what your thoughts are.

ADRIENNE: 
So Olivia as one of our top buyer agents on the team, yes. Like, what kind of advice do you have for buyers out there in this market that are sitting on the fence? Let’s

ATTILIO: 
go like a top five piece of advice for buyers sitting sitting on the fence with all Pukas all in their pants because they’re sitting on one chain link fence. What advice would you give these buyers right now?

OLIVIA: 
Just do it honestly. The best time to buy was 10 years ago, and the next best time to buy is now, right now. If you’re on the fence about buying, just think about it right right now is a slower market. Interest rates are higher, yes, but that means that there’s a lot of leverage for you as a buyer, yeah, to give an example, I actually just helped the buyer get under contract with $55,000

ADRIENNE: 
in credit. Whoa, wow. Okay, let’s see 5000 credit. Let’s, let’s unpack that.

ATTILIO: 
Hey, can we unpack that $55,000 credit? Let’s

ADRIENNE: 
back up a minute. Olivia, tell us more about this. $55,000

ATTILIO: 
Olivia, we have an inside joke. We’re seeing how many times during the show we can say, unpack this. And I want you to when, when you’re at the office, I want you to use that word as many times until someone picks up

ADRIENNE: 
on it. Okay, okay, so, okay, so you’re working with this buyer. What kind of loan do they have?

OLIVIA: 
It’s a VA loan. So this buyer, I actually met him at one of my open houses, very insistent on not being represented by an agent. So, you know, to prove the value of an agent, got him $55,000 in credits in the market for 50 days. Did

ATTILIO: 
you go? Did you like go up to him afterwards? Let’s just call him Charlie. Charlie. I just got you $55,000 in credits on the purchase of this home, of which you didn’t want representation. Boom mic drop. You should do that.

ADRIENNE: 
That is a $55,000 lesson. You don’t

ATTILIO: 
have a question for you. Olivia, what was he thinking that like? Now, I don’t want to be represented by an agent. What was his thinking? Let’s unpack that

OLIVIA: 
for him, I think he just had a bad experience. Agent really didn’t do much understand. Understandable, yeah, so he was pretty confident, because he’s like, You know what? I’ve bought a home before? Yeah, I know what to do. I can just Google or YouTube how to fill out a contract. And I’m like, it’s a little bit more than that, yeah,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, this probably like, you know, I mean, the purchase contract alone is how many pages? 14, 1514.

ADRIENNE: 
Pages. Let’s get back to this $55,000 credit and this VA loan. So, because I know, like, not all loans, can you get that large of a credit and actually use it? So how did you get, like, explain to the listeners why we have such a large credit,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, on a VA loan, on this purchase, yeah, the VA

OLIVIA: 
loan actually has a maximum cap of 4% in credits of the total loan amount. Got around that. I mean, you gotta definitely have a good lender as well. But yeah, we got around that by asking for 4% in sellers credit. So the maximum, yeah, we also asked for a two, one temporary buy down. Okay, cool. So added together, it was about $55,000 yeah. And with that, we’re basically going to pay off his closing costs, get him a temporary buy down, okay, and possibly pay off, you know, his car loan,

ADRIENNE: 
all of his most of his consumer debts, yeah, yep, yep. And what kind of interest rate is he going to be having with all of this finagling that you’ve done as his buyer agent,

OLIVIA: 
yeah. Oh, that’s a really great question. So right now we’re in the low sixes with a temporary buy down. His first year will be 2% lower. So his first year’s gonna be 4% Wow, 5% nice. And then after that, I mean, the rates will definitely fall within the next two, three years, right? They won’t stay high forever, so he can always refinance and bring down his monthly payments permanently.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, I’m gonna tell you, when this guy gives you the five star review, I want him to use the word flubbery. Flubbery. It was like I was gonna have this high interest rate and not be represented,

ADRIENNE: 
and still have my car loan, and it is

ATTILIO: 
just so flubbery that Olivia got me a $55,000 credit, a buy down, paid off my car and like, yeah, it’s just amazing. So what else do we have? Questions for Olivia. Olivia, what else would you like to share with our listeners out there?

OLIVIA: 
Buy a home now. It is never a bad time. You can always refinance right now. You can get into a home. You can get your closing costs paid off. You can buy down temporarily your rate. Talk to me. I can help you get your monthly payments to where you want them to be.

ATTILIO: 
I think it’s like, it’s the saying goes, marry, marry the home date the interest rate. Marry the home date the interest rate. You’re like, match.com for buyers and homes. Yeah, yep.

ADRIENNE: 
And then Olivia as being the director of of agent training. Yeah, we’re talking a lot about the career night. We’re talking about joining the team, the onboarding that we’re having at the end of September for the next group of four. What kind of advice do you have for an agent that may be thinking about joining the team, or someone that’s thinking about getting into real estate in

ATTILIO: 
general. Let them know what we’re looking for. Tell them what you’re looking for. What are you looking for? Olivia and an agent that you’d like to train.

OLIVIA: 
I am looking for somebody who is motivated, motivated, no, wants a career in real estate. Yeah, real estate is, I want to say it’s not for everybody, yeah, it is for people who are motivated, have the drive, have the passion, and are hungry,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, yeah. Because you guys have, we have the formula, right? You’re gonna tell them, on a day to day basis, exactly what you need to do to be successful. Do this and you’ll get that.

ADRIENNE: 
So I want, Olivia, I want you to share with the listeners your background, because you didn’t come from, like, a sales or real estate background, but you came to the team, and you’ve had a lot of success, yeah, sure. So sure. Let’s share your story, your journey.

OLIVIA: 
Sure, sure. So well. To start it off, when I was younger, I did want to get into real estate. Yeah, I used to play this one computer game called The Sims, where you, you know, you build houses and you decorate them, and you, like, live your life. Has a little sin in the game. So that was what really, really got me into just real estate in general. Back then, my mom was not very happy about that. She was like, Well, if you don’t have the connections, you’re gonna fail. Yeah, I got persuaded out of it. I went to college for marine biology, so I actually have a degree in marine biology,

ADRIENNE: 
and that’s how you got to Hawaii, right? You were here in Hawaii studying marine biology, yeah,

OLIVIA: 
so I moved here from California about 10 and a half years ago now, yeah, and graduated with marine biology. I was working in a research lab, and covid shut down my lab. So, yeah, when that happened, I was like, You know what? This is a fresh start. What can I do now? And I figured, like, why not visit real estate again? Yeah, it was something that I was always really interested in. My mom was not happy about that, but, you know, she told me, if I wanted to do what I want to do, all I’d have to do is get a degree. And

ADRIENNE: 
how does mom feel? Now, Olivia, how does she feel?

OLIVIA: 
Mom is happy now, yeah, not very happy when I started because, you know, it takes some time to build up your career. But she’s very happy now that I made this decision, so I don’t hear her complain about anything anymore, by the

ATTILIO: 
way. You know, with a marine biology degree transitioning into real estate, have you ever represented a buyer who looked like a sponge and lived in a pineapple under the sea? By any chance? Not

ADRIENNE: 
yet, not yet, okay, but you’re looking for him. Yeah, I’m looking for him. You’re

ATTILIO: 
looking for him. And so the good news is, Olivia is the only agent in the entire state of Hawaii that can not only get you into an oceanfront property, but she can tell you what’s in front your house on the beach. She can tell you what’s in the ocean

ADRIENNE: 
all the algae, yeah, so I wanted our listeners to hear that because, you know, it doesn’t, you don’t necessarily need to come from a sales background to be successful. I mean, it’s helpful, but it’s not necessary. Yeah, you can come from a completely different industry and have the right mindset of and be around, you know, successful people that also have that same mindset, and then you will be successful too. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
I was like, I’m waiting for like, the we’re going to talk about an open house. It’s going to be off Sunset Beach. Oh yes, it’s a three bedroom, two bath pineapple under the sea. What’s that? What’s that song with the guy? He has like a, he sounds like a, he’s like a, like a shrimp, and he has a Jamaican accent, but he’s under the sea, under the sea.

OLIVIA: 
Oh, that’s a lobster.

ATTILIO: 
What do I know about my Disney songs? Sebastian, see, I went through Disney trivia just like that, and fill the space with me. Meaningless information.

ADRIENNE: 
Okay, so, Olivia, is there anything more for our listeners that you want to share with them before we let you? What

ATTILIO: 
would you like to sing out? Take us out with a song?

OLIVIA: 
No song. Yeah, I can’t let everyone hear my voice. Gotta come in the office. This

ADRIENNE: 
is only you got to come into the office. There you go, Oh, to come to the career night. Come to career night. Olivia will sing you in Yeah,

OLIVIA: 
yeah, no. But if you’re thinking about a career real estate, just do it, yeah. If you’re thinking about buying talk to us. We’ll let you know. You know, if that’s an option for you, and we’ll guide you to get the best deal.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, and you know, Olivia is real honest with you. If she don’t think you can pull it off, she’ll literally tell you what were you thinking.

OLIVIA: 
So right now, then we set you on a plan so that you

ATTILIO: 
can Yes, there you go. I like that. I like that. Okay,

ADRIENNE: 
well, thank you Olivia, for being our guest today. Thank you guys, awesome. Thank you all right.

Follow Us On Social Media