In this episode of the Team Lally Radio show, we are all happy to have our special guest Nick Krautter. Nick, author of the best selling book “The Golden Handoff”, shares with Adrienne, Attilio and our listeners key steps to grow your business as a Realtor up to retiring successfully. You will hear and understand how growing and proper handling of one’s database of clients can help businesses succeed.Nick also shares the importance of having excellent business contacts, good referrals and a network for acquiring others’ client database to grow one’s business as well.
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Read word for word of our real estate episode with Nick Krautter:
Announcer: It’s time to enter the world of real estate in Oahu with Hawaii’s only true real estate radio show: the Team Lally Real Estate Show. Grab a pen and get ready to take notes. For the next full hour Hawaii’s premiere real estate leader Adrienne Lally and Attilio Leonardi will bring you the latest in real estate news and real world strategies on how they can guarantee to sell your home at a price and deadline you agree to – or they’ll buy it! Now here are your hosts Adrienne and Attilio.
Adrienne: Welcome to the Team Lally Real Estate Show home of the guaranteed sold program – or we’ll buy it! If you have any questions you can reach us 799-9596 or check us out on the web at teamlally.com.
Attilio: Well hey everybody this is Attilio – I was knitting a sweater the other day. This lady came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and started asking me a bunch of tax and legal questions. I said “those are great questions. Highly recommend you seek the appropriate licensed professional,” and then I said “but mom what other questions do you have?” So if you hear anything on the show that sounds like tax or legal advice go see the appropriate people.
Adrienne: Did you finish the sweater?
Attilio: No I’m only halfway through it.
Adrienne: What color is it?
Attilio: It’s purple for bold. It’s a bold purple.
Adrienne: What’s bold?
Attilio: Bold. Bold is the logo that’s on the front of the sweater.
Adrienne laughs.
Attilio: And on the back it says “Well we focus on expanse.
Adrienne: Okay.
Attilio: Yeah.
Adrienne: Okay so I have some quotes courtesy of Hawaii Pacific Property Management.
Attilio: Okay!
Adrienne: This first one is from Robert Schuller: “Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure. It just means that you haven’t succeeded yet.”
Attilio: Mhm.
Adrienne: The next one is from Jackie Robinson: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” And then our last quote is from Robert Brault: “Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were big things.”
Attilio: You know we follow a format on our radio show and I pulled out one of these pieces of paper. I thought it was our format for the radio show but it was actually a script and that prompted a thought in my head. Listen up folks, agents, people in the sales industry, Brad Pitt if you want to go film a movie. Adrienne quick question.
Adrienne: Yes?
Attilio: How much do you think Brad Pitt gets paid to do a movie?
Adrienne: I don’t know like millions of dollars? $20,000,000? $15?
Attilio: 20, 40.
Adrienne: I don’t know a lot of money.
Attilio: Let’s say it’s $20,000,000. Let me ask you a question. When he shows up for the first day of shooting is he yelling out “Line! Line! Line!” or has he memorized the script?
Adrienne: I would be confident that he has it memorized.
Attilio: And is his script probably the size of a skinny phonebook?
Adrienne: Maybe like a large-
Attilio: He’s a lead actor.
Adrienne: Yeah I feel like a large phonebook.
Attilio: Yeah. Alright. It’s a lot of lines. So this is what we tell people in our industry and I don’t know why 98% of them refuse to do it or don’t want to do it or get lazy about it. Memorize scripts. Internalize them. The reason being is that you can make your conversations more efficient. Can people in Hawaii talk a lot of? Can we talk story and not make any money?
Adrienne: Yeah you can talk a lot of story and not really-
Attilio: Talk story!
Adrienne: -just get to what you need to do.
Attilio: But again folks no matter what industry you’re in, if there isn’t a script write one, memorize it, and have it up in front of you every time you’re prospecting because it’ll make your conversation much more efficient. Speaking of being efficient…
Adrienne: We have Duke Kimhan on the line from Hawaii Pacific Property Management.
Duke: Hi!
Adrienne: Welcome Duke!
Attilio: Hey Duke! Welcome!
Duke: Home of the rent guarantee.
Adrienne: That’s right.
Duke laughs.
Adrienne: So Duke what’s the tip of the week for our listeners.
Duke: The tip of the week is if you’re an owner and you do not allow pets into your unit that’s totally fine but you’re negating 80% of the market so we’ve seen in the last five years a real uptake in pet ownership by tenants.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Attilio: Wow.
Duke: Especially tenants coming in with the military that are higher ranking, that have a more mature family, so they always have a pet. I mean I’m saying it’s almost 100%.
Attilio: Yeah.
Duke: We even started advertising on a website called petsok.com.
Attilio: So what is that site?
Adrienne: But why would an owner not want to allow pets in their rental?
Duke: Well a couple of reasons: 1.) If they have allergies and they don’t want that pet to bother them when they return back into the home. Or if they’ve had, you know, traumatic events with pets when they were children or their children have had. Or they carpet. Carpet and pets are opposites. They’re like oil and water. They just don’t do well together.
Adrienne: So they may be though alienating about 80% of the rental market.
Duke: Well it just takes a little longer because if you’re going to have 10 showings a week in the house, with pets you’re going to have a higher income family, probably more mature, you’re going to have a lot more choices to choose from as far as occupations and if you negate pets into your homes you’re going to have a limited amount of showings because those people aren’t even calling on showings because the fact that they have a pet. If it’s pet negotiable even, and at all times owners can be discriminatory about what kind of pet, if it’s a dog or a cat or a bird or a fish or whatever. You always can discriminate.
Adrienne: Or like the size of the animal.
Duke: Size, weight, breed. And then we can also discriminate on the security deposit up to 1 whole extra month now is legal.
Attilio: That’s the law. Yeah. So be careful of the name because I had a parakeet and his name was Bruiser.
Adrienne and Duke laugh.
Attilio: You’ve gotta ask what kind of pet. He was a blue parakeet. Bruiser. He flew away.
Duke: He flew away.
Attilio: He flew away. We were cleaning his cage and he snuck through one of those little doors there. He opened the door, he said, “I’m out of here.”
Duke and Adrienne laugh.
Attilio: So again opportunites. Our advice is “Hey, be pet friendly.” Correct me if I’m wrong if it’s an emotional pet you can’t stop them from being the pet in the home or how does that work?
Duke: Yeah the emotional pet and the service animal are two entirely different things. The service animal has a specific task that they provide for the owner.
Attilio: Yeah.
Duke: And they’re limited to a miniature horse or a dog. But the emotional support animal is not limited to any breed, type, weight, or anything.
Attilio: Oh wow.
Duke: They call that comfort animals, emotional support animals, and those are to help the owner through some kind of trauma disability and they may not always be visible so it’s a very tough thing for our industry right now. We’re having to try and ask questions that are right on the borderline of intruding on privacy but we have legal rights to ask, “What service does your service animal do?” or “What task does your comfort animal do and do you have legal documents to show that the emotional support animal is legal.” So that’s all. It’s not applicable to pet deposits or anything.
Attilio: Gotcha. If you ask them point blank, in person, over the phone, or in the application, “Do you have a pet?” and they say no and they sign the lease and then you find out they have pets. There’s really nothing you can do at that point correct?
Duke: There’s nothing anyone can do and our court says, it’s very clear on the fact that an emotional support animal and a service animal are treated not like a pet.
Attilio: Gotcha. So anyway that’s just one thing. There’s so many things to know. Hire the right property management team.
Adrienne: Don’t try and be an expert at this – it’s a lot.
Attilio: So we always like to found out – you talked about it in the beginning. People hear that and are like “What is that? That sounds crazy.” Your rent guarantee what’s that about?
Duke: It’s based in our property management agreement that if we don’t rent your home for an agreed upon price for 30 days on the 31st day we pay you that amount of money and we continue to try and rent your home. So with our advertising and all of our screening processes we have become experts in the field of putting the right candidate in your home.
Attilio: Yes. The best tenant.
Duke: But that’s something that I do really well. Another thing we do really well is answer the phone.
Attilio: Awesome. Okay.
Adrienne: Alright so thanks so much Duke. Great tip. If any of our listeners want to get a hold of Duke in Hawaii Pacific Property Management you can give him a call at 445-9223.
Duke: Yep. 445-9223.
Adrienne and Attilio: Alright.
Duke: We’re on the internet – hipacificpm.com
Adrienne and Attilio: Thanks Duke.
Adrienne: Alright so again that was Duke Kimhan of Hawaii Pacific Property Management home of the rent guarantee. We actually have another tip of the week.
Attilio: Oh wait before we go to this break we got another tip of the week.
Adrienne: Yes.
Attilio: It’s about pests. You know those people like to come to you and talk to you a long time and they’re not really aware of your time and they’re talking about topics you’re not even really interested in. You know those types of pests?
Adrienne: No!
Attilio: No that type of pest?
Adrienne: Not those types of pests.
Attilio: That’s a two legged pest we’re talking about a multi legged pest – what do you call those – arthropods. I don’t know what they are. Insects.
Adrienne:The gross kind of pests. We have John Speed.
Attilio: John Speed come on in.
John: Hey how’s it going guys.
Adrienne: Aloha.
Attilio: Welcome to the show.
John: Aloha.
Attilio: Aloha. So what’s your pest tip of the week?
John: Pest tip of the week well I think the last time I talked about how we have a home warranty that we give you free for each termite inspection report that we do on the houses.
Attilio: Nice. How does that work?
John: We just give you one free year of drywood termite warranty. We’ll come back any time in the year if there’s anything that comes up. I kind of want to expand on that with the home warranties we provide. We’ve done pretty darn good at inspection and treatment and so a lot of times people, if they see termite droppings, they’ll call a company out and that company does tenting and they want to get it tented. Sometimes they need it tented, sometimes they don’t need it tented, and there’s a lot of grey area in between so we just like to know that there is an alternative to tenting and then sometimes we’ll tell people “hey you really need to get it tented” and they’ll say “hey we don’t want to get it tented. We want your home warranty and your spot treatment warranty” because of whatever the case is. Sometimes it has to do with the roof or they just don’t want to leave. They’re concerned about the chemicals. That sort of thing. So home warranty there is an alternative to tenting and it’s pretty good.
Attilio: Now hey folks listening in we highly recommend Kilauea Pest Control not only for termite situations but-
Adrienne: The maintenance.
Attilio: Yeah the monthly.
Adrienne: Just keep the bugs away.
John: Yeah! Pest control or even weird stuff – bed bugs, carpenter bees making holes in the wood, or ticks on your dog and whatnot we take care of it all.
Attilio: Hey real quick we haven’t had you on the show for a while. Can you describe to us top 3 things you do to get rid of bed bugs?
John: Bed bugs you know inspection, inspection’s super important. You have to really get in there and it takes a lot of time. That’s why bed bug treatments are more expensive. The biggest thing is contacting a professional and to not try to do it yourself. You can really mess things up. If you treat yourself you may kill all of them but most likely you’re not going to know all of the places to check and they’re going to scurry off and then instead of having them in your bed you’re going to have them in your closet and anywhere else and it can get pretty bad. Then the other thing is you kind of have to know where they’re coming from because no company is going to warranty bed bugs because you can do everything – you can get rid of them 100% – but they came from somewhere and it wasn’t the outside. It was from aunty’s house or the neighborhood kids come over and they have them or whatever it is. Yeah locating the source.
Attilio: Alright. Okay.
Adrienne: Okay thanks so much John those were some excellent tips.
John: Yeah thanks so much.
Attilio: So guys if you’re listening in you can get a hold of John at what number Adrienne?
Adrienne: 236-2847 or 236-BUGS.
Attilio: BUGS and you can check them out on the internet at where?
Adrienne: Kilaueapest.com
Attilio: Alright. Stay with us.
Adrienne: Stay with us.
(Break)
Announcer: The Team Lally Real Estate Show continues.
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.
Attilio: And I’m Attilio.
Adrienne: And if you have any questions you can just give us a call at 799-9596 or check us out on the web at teamlally.com
Attilio: That’s right. Alright so we’re going to get Janyce-
Adrienne: Janyce on the line.
Attilio: – on the line from Dream House Drafting. What’s her number again?
Adrienne: Her number is 371-8031.
Attilio (off mic): 371-8031 for Janyce.
Attilio: Alright so speaking of Dream House Drafting so she’s going to be sharing with us a permit tip of the week.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Attilio: And she’s awesome! If you’re thinking about doing an accessory dwelling unit this is the lady to call. You need a permit after the fact? Same lady. Give her a call.
Adrienne: She does it all.
Attilio: So anyway I was talking about scripts. Scripts are an efficient way to keep our conversations narrow and focused and you should have a script, if you’re a property management company you should have a script, if you’re working with buyers, sellers, you should have a script on your conversation. They make your conversation efficient.
Adrienne: If you’re working with anybody. You have a voice mail script, you have an answering the phone script. There’s all sorts of scripts.
Attilio: Practice using that script everyday.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Attilio: First thing in the morning would you just run out the door and run a 5K race with no preparation dressed the way you are with the shoes you’re wearing right now would you run a 5K?
Adrienne: I could.
Attilio: Stop obfuscating – yes or no.
Adrienne laughs.
Adrienne: It wouldn’t be easy.
Attilio: Yes or no.
Adrienne: It wouldn’t be my first choice.
Attilio: Yes or no.
Adrienne: It would not be my first choice.
Attilio: Yes or no. See how persistent I am?
Adrienne: I could do it.
Attilio: Okay. 26 mile marathon-
Adrienne: No.
Attilio: – dressed the way you are –
Adrienne: No.
Attilio: – with the shoes you’re wearing.
Adrienne: No.
Attilio: No!
Adrienne: No thank you.
Attilio: It takes preparation is my point.
Adrienne: Okay.
Attilio: So you have to have a script and you have to practice it everyday before you get on the phone with your clients. If not you’re practicing on your clients.
Adrienne: Don’t practice on your clients.
Attilio: That wastes money and time.
Adrienne: Okay so we have Janyce from Dream House Drafting.
(Fairytale music plays)
Janyce: Good morning Adrienne how are you?
Adrienne: We’re doing great thank you for joining us.
Attilio: Alright what’s your tip of the week for us?
Janyce: Well you know I’m kind of inspired by the Team Lally 10 Commandments for Home Buyers so I’m doing a drafting one for people who are homeowners looking to remodel and due to the fact that I’m a Bible reader I thought I’d start off not with the “thou shalt nots” but a positive one that was the beginning of the list of ten commandments in the Bible. It was not a “thou shalt not” it was a positive one. So I’m going to say the positive one for today is you should definitely research and diligently do your research to make sure you are protecting your family in following procedures to be in accord with building codes and city ordinances.
Attilio: Sounds like that’s a big first one.
Adrienne: To do their research, yeah.
Janyce: Basically yeah you want to do the positives. Take the due diligence. Do what’s best for your family. Make sure that there’s not going to be any problems. Make sure that your place is going to be safe and this is all accomplished by getting your building permit, having the proper reviews, before the work is done.
Adrienne: Could they just call you and you could do all of that for them?
Janyce: Well yes I mean we only do permits for people are getting their building permits. If they’re not doing that we’re not going to do a drawing for them or any design. So I have people calling me on a regular basis “Is this something I need to get a permit for yes or no?”
Attilio: The permit process so people know is not just to be a pain in the butt and a whole laborious red tape process. Its ultimate goal is public safety correct?
Janyce: Exactly that is why building codes are drafted, they update and changed periodically, based frequently on events, so when you have your Fukushima in Japan earthquake, you have your Haiti hurricane, all of those things affect the newer building code because all the people look to see what happened, what failed, why, and how can we work against it. So as you move down through the years each building code is going to be stricter and tighter but it’s going to be because of learning life’s lessons that have already happened to to other people.
Adrienne: And you’ve helped a lot of people, Janyce, in your time. How long have you been providing this kind of service for Hawaii residents here?
Janyce: Well I think I did my first after the fact building permit in 1997. So that would be 19 years.
Adrienne: Oh wow so you have just so many years of experience. It’s better to just give you a call. You’ve seen it all.
Janyce: I don’t know if I’ve seen it all I keep seeing more strange things and you keep learning new stuff every week.
Attilio: Alright so if you want to get a hold of Janyce you can reach her at what number Adrienne?
Adrienne: That’s 206-7107.
Attilio: And on the internet at what website?
Adrienne: Dreamhousedrafting.com
Attilio: She’s awesome give her a call. Alright next up is our guest. His name is Nick Krauter. We have a little intro.
Adrienne: Our guest this week is the author of the book The Golden Handoff: How to Buy and Sell a Real Estate Agent’s Business which debuted in #1 on Amazon for Mergers & Acquisitions.
Attilio: His goal is to teach real estate agents how to grow their business and to help them later retire and benefit from their years of hardwork.
Adrienne: He’s also the owner and principal broker of Keller Williams Portland Central. The last decade Nick has been a retailer in Portland, Oregon where he leads a team and frequently serves as a real estate expert for the media.
Attilio: Let’s welcome to the show live from Portland! He just walked in the door. Nick Krauter. Nick are you there?
Nick: I’m here. Thanks for having me.
Adrienne: Yes welcome to the show thanks for joining us.
Attilio: So we’re like huge, huge, huge fans. I don’t even remember how we came across Nick.
Adrienne: It might have been like a social media posting or an email and we just started clicking around like, “Wow!”
Attilio: “We should do that!”
Adrienne: “This is really like a great strategy that he’s mastered.”
Attilio: Yeah. You know, Nick, you were in this Conan movie and there was a line in the Conan movie. Conan was asking his teacher how to become a good warrior and you know what Conan said?
Nick: What did he say?
Attilio (impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger): The law of the warrior is to find the retiring agent and adopt their business.
All laugh.
Attilio: Anyway so tell us about your book. What can a realtor who’s either looking to grow their business or looking to retire, what are they going to get out of this book?
Nick: Well anyone who is looking to grow their business is going to find a way to grow exponentially and also by referral and for people who are looking up to scale up their businesses I think that the model so far has been focused on advertising and calling and marketing. Those all work and I think those are great programs but we all know that working by referral is the easiest and most cost effective way to work. So the problem has been that there’s no way to do it in a really big fashion and now there is by adopting hundreds or even thousands of clients at one time. For agents that are looking to have an exit strategy of what to do with 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years of hard work and relationships and trust that they’ve built, this gives them a way to choose an agent that is going to take care of their clients and continue on kind of doing the work that they’ve done and benefit from referral income. Because if you don’t pick someone to take over for you all your clients are going to pick a different agent and you’re not going to get any benefit from that at all.
Attilio: Gotcha.
Adrienne: So Nick how important would you say is a good database?
Nick: Well the database is really the evidence that you have a business and so I would say it’s very important. I go over in the book quite a bit about database building and management and I think that the more accurate the database and the more consistently the retiring agent has been in touch with their clients, the more success both the retiring agent and adopting agent are going to have when they do a handoff when the agent retires.
Attilio: You mean like a bunch of Post-It notes, yellow note pads with coffee stains on them, and bubble gum wrappers with names and phone numbers written on them? Is that a database?
Nick: You must know some realtors.
All laugh.
Attilio: “Oh yeah I couldn’t find a piece of paper. I wrote his name and number on my dash so let me go get that.” So yeah here’s the saying we always run our business by: “Start with the end in mind.” I think Day One of a brand new realtor is think about what’s the end going to look like when you’re getting ready to retire and think about how you’re putting your database together from day one.
Nick: Yeah no I think that’s great advice and I would say luckily for folks out there that are starting now or in the last five years the options of databases have gone up tenfold. If you’ve been doing it more than 15 or 20 years you might have not had an online MLS system when you started and people were not using – well there was no social media. People were sometimes using email but it was still very much an in person and on the phone business. And that’s really changed and so with it, luckily, the different systems out there and software tools, and platforms to collect information and to organize it have gotten much, much better. So I would say if you don’t think you have a database you probably already do it’s just hidden in your contacts in your phone, it’s hidden in your Facebook friends list, and it’s hidden in your history of sales in the MLS in your region and that’s a great starting point if you haven’t got a database. It’s really important to start now to build it even if you’re thinking you’re going to retire in 3-5 years or 10 years, start now building that database it’ll help you make more money in the interim and it’ll make your business much more valuable when you decide to hand it off.
Attilio: Now Adrienne we learned this. We’ve spent thousands of dollars, spent years researching this.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Attilio: And what is the best CRM or database software out there period?
Adrienne: It’s the one that you use.
Attilio: Bingo!
Adrienne: Just use it.
Attilio: It’s the one you use!
Nick laughs.
Attilio: There’s so many out there and we are not going to recommend, even tell you what we use, but just have one and use it is the number one advice we’ve ever heard regarding databases.
Adrienne: So Nick how much money do you think you could make with the golden handoff if you retire? Like what have you seen on average?
Attilio: Yeah.
Nick: So I would say one of the businesses we took over was doing $6-$8,000,000 a year in volume and in Portland that’s a decent amount of sales. Our averages sales price now is $400 (thousand). I think at the time it was probably $350 (thousand.) Or it would be even less than that and so with that in one year I sent $50,000 in referral income to that agent.
Attilio: Wow!
Adrienne: Mhm.
Nick: I’m really glad that this book is out there for people because what I’ve seen work better is when someone has a plan and they transition out of their business intentionally. A lot of the folks I’ve helped have already kind of retired or lost the business and I find them or they find me six months, a year afterwards and we can still make quite a bit happen with that but if you have the intention – like you said start with the end in mind – if you have the intention of finding someone to take over and making sure they can do good work with your clients then I think your results are going to be very, very good and I would tell agents who are looking to adopt business, and databases, and grow that they can expect to have the same additional added revenue of what that volume was the retiring agent was doing. So for retiring agents doing $5,000,000 or $10,000,000 a year you can probably expect, if you do a good job, that you’ll do $5,000,000 or $10,000,000 a year extra just off that database alone.
Attilio: So you said this retiring agent, he had an income at the end of the day, end of the year for $50,000 and the most exertion he did to get that was jog, maybe a light jog, to the mailbox to get the check?
Nick: He didn’t even have to do that it was all direct deposit.
Adrienne: Nice.
Attilio: He got a callous on his finger.
Nick: Basically the way the system works is that there’s an endorsement letter and I ask the retiring agent to call their top clients, their A+ people, the advocates in their sphere, and let them know that they’re retiring and that I’m going to be taking over for all of the kind of B clients or leads. People that they didn’t have a real strong relationship with yet. You know we basically do an email and a letter and then I follow up and me and my team call everyone and introduce ourselves and then we treat those people just like they’re our clients going forward. So for the retiring agent if you have a database and you can sign a couple hundred letters that we mail out and pay for it’s very little effort and it’s a lot of reward.
Adrienne: So Nick how many databases has your team adopted since you started this?
Attilio: Yes.
Nick: We’ve taken over seven.
Attilio: Seven. Wow. So we talk about it. There’s two ways to grow your business. You can do it organically one client at a time or you can do it through acquisitions and that’s basically what you’ve done. You’ve done what actually corporate America has been doing for years. Acquisition.
Nick: Yeah and at the brokerage level brokerages have been buying smaller boutique brokerages or kind of recruiting whole small brokerages or teams to the bigger brokerages for a long time and this is a way for an individual agent or team to do that on their own now.
Attilio: Yeah.
Adrienne: So with these seven databases Nick were they all older agents that were wanting to retire or were these people that were wanting to just change careers?
Nick: That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked it because the types of peoples out there that are getting out real estate they’re all a little different. I think a lot of people think that it’s just the baby boomers who have been doing it for 40 years but some of our most successful handoffs have been with younger agents who have taken sabbaticals, where we’ve taken over for a year or two, they’ve been with people that have just changed careers for family reasons or personal reasons that they wanted a different lifestyle. They didn’t want to have to answer the question at 10 o’clock at night on a Friday.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Nick: And so you don’t want to just focus on the older agents, it’s sometimes agents that have been doing it for five years and decide they want a change or for agents that make a move to a different state and have a great business and because of family or work relations they decide to move. Those can be really lucrative agreements and well worth the effort. So it’s not just the oldest person in the office. It can sometimes be across the whole spectrum of agents there.
Adrienne: Now Nick you also mentioned an agent taking a sabbatical. So what you guys would take over their business for a couple of years and then get back?
Attilio: Yeah an example where the guy wanted to go off to do acting – pursue acting in your book?
Nick: So there was a gentleman that is about the same age as me. We started the same year in 2006 and he got an opportunity to get involved with a really major creative project that was kind of his life’s dream and he got an opportunity to kind of go to the big leagues of it were in that world and he knew that it was gonna be 14, 16 hours a day for 7 days a week, for however long it took and he was very passionate about it. He definitely wanted to do it but he knew he couldn’t, in anyway, do real estate and he was moving out of state to take this position. So I reached out to him and offered to help by taking care of his people. I knew him by name and reputation but we had never met even though we kind of ran in the similar circles both being kind of the creative world of music and art and theater before we got into real estate.
Attilio: Yeah.
Nick: It worked out amazingly well. Basically I took over his business while he was gone. We ran it, essentially, at the same level he was running it and a year and a half later when he came he had appointments queued up, everyone still kind of together, excited about working with him and excited about hearing what his adventures were and it was a huge win for me and my team and it was a huge win for him.
Attilio: Alright. Hey so if you’re just tuning in you’re listening to the Team Lally Real Estate Show home of the guaranteed sold program – or we’ll buy it. I’m Attilio.
Adrienne: And I’m Adrienne.
Attilio: And we are talking to Nick Krauter. He is the author of the book the Golden Handoff. You know just thinking about it you know all of these systems and this game plan could be true for other industries too, right? Not just real estate? Maybe like an insurance or-
Nick: Absolutely. You know it’s interesting I talked to a couple of dentists which seems like it’s pretty far away from real estate but in the dentistry world this idea of bringing on someone to take over your business and help out your patients has been around for a really long time. So I looked at a couple of other models of how people do that and adopted it to our industry of real estate. I think that – I know that other people are using this in other industries the way you basically pay for it or you share the money is different in different industries but there’s no reason at all why this idea can’t work for any service business and anything where trust and relationships and reputation manner. That’s really what this is about, the person that’s retiring picking someone that they trust and endorsing them to their clients and it works very well, and it can work in other industries for sure.
Adrienne: So Nick what would you say is your team’s value proposition to the retiring agent?
Nick: Well I think that for me, I talk about what to look for when you’re picking someone to adopt your clients and the really important thing is that they have the capacity to truly care for those clients, to treat them in the same way or better than the retiring agent did and that means being available to answer questions, making sure you have the time, and resources, and money to do additional marketing, to make calls to check-in, and mail out newsletters, and manage a bigger database which in of itself can become very cumbersome the bigger it gets. I mean our database has over 12,000 people in and I would say you know 3,000 to 4,000 are people who know us by name and would work with us, and to try to maintain relationships with that many people takes a lot of work and effort and as you scale it up it takes money because it takes more people and bigger systems and better systems. So I think that our promise is that we will truly do our job by staying in touch and keeping people up to date and making the calls and treating them just like they were our own clients because once we adopt them they really are our clients and we treat them that way.
Attilio: Hey Nick you know I had a question. You know you’ve got some of these old school realtors and I’ve heard them tell us this before: “I don’t want all the liability of somebody messing with my clients. I’m just going to shut her down and ride off into the sunset.” What would be your response to that liability concern?
Nick: Well I mean I don’t know of any – consult your local attorney because in Oregon from at least what I’m familiar with I don’t believe there’s any liability once you refer someone to an agent.
Attilio: Mhm.
Nick: Because that relationship on that transaction is with the agent who got the referral and in this sense that’s exactly what this is. It’s just a very large referral agreement for someone’s entire database. So you know I actually personally I haven’t had that be an issue. I would say that most people don’t believe that their business is worth that much and I would say that the other thing is people that haven’t put a database together – they haven’t done it because it seems big and scary to them and to do it at the very end of a career seems overwhelming so we do a lot to help people put together a database and make it easier for them to kind of put everything all on one system or one package and it doesn’t need to be fancy, just like you said. The system that you use is the one that you should work with and it can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t have to be anything more advanced than that.
Attilio: Yeah.
Adrienne: So I like that – how you not only are going to work with the database but you help that retiring agent to organize and put it together because again that could be very overwhelming for someone.
Attilio: Yeah they might be focused on planning their Mediterranean cruise and trying to fiddle with databases might be a bummer but you’re going to help them.
Nick: Absolutely. It is a bummer. No one likes to do it. If you know anyone that loves working on those, hire them because that is a very rare thing and the more you can help people with that transition if you’re looking to grow your business make it easy. Just like you make it easy for your clients to list or buy. You don’t want to make it overly complicated you want to make it as easy as you can to help them and if the database is the hurdle then helping them with that is a great way earn their business and their trust and their endorsement.
Attilio: Alright so we kind of want to wrap it up for listeners here. I want to get some people going to your website or whatever and ordering cases of your book. Your book has a certain format. Describe it where there’s chapters and how it’s broken up for the different agents. Talk about that.
Nick: Yeah so when I started writing this I really struggled with how do I explain to a retiring agent the best way to do this and also in the same book explain to an adopting agent how to do this so there are chapters that are labeled basically for the retiring agent only. Now if you’re the adopting agent you can still read them the book is only I think 155 pages long and it’s meant to be readable so you can get through it pretty quickly but if you don’t have a lot of time you can definitely pick up the book and focus on the pieces that are the most important and get through it very quickly. I really went to great lengths. I had a very good editor that helped me as much as possible make this so you can literally take the book, read it one time, and implement this system successfully however you see fit and however big or small your business is.
Attilio: You know what there’s a phrase I finally get to use – you’ve created the soup to nuts on how to-!
Adrienne and Nick laugh.
Attilio: I don’t even know what that means. Why do soup and nuts have anything to do with each other but anyway this is a soup to nuts book on how to acquire a retiring agent’s business. Great recipes in the back for tomato basil soup – no no no.
Adrienne: You know what – one of our new team members who relocated here from the mainland.
Attilio: Oh! We sent her the book and she didn’t even know about you and I think she lives where you’re at.
Adrienne: Like Vancouver.
Nick: Oh yeah sure.
Attilio: And she used the book. Great recruiting tool. We’re using it. We’ll drop one in the mail every once in awhile to an agent we’re thinking about and say “Hey! You mind if we give you a call to talk more about this?” But you know for our listeners out there who wanted to utilize the book what would be that opening conversation they want to have with that retiring or sabbatical agent?
Nick: Yeah so first of all thank you for mentioning that. You know the book is a great way to open that conversation in a really kind of soft and valued way. I would just say, you know, “I really admire your business and I’m curious what your plans are for when you decide to phase out of actively selling.”
Attilio: Okay.
Nick: “And if you don’t have a plan I’ve read this great book and I’d love to talk to you about it and give you a copy because your business is worth a lot more than you probably think.” I would just use that and that starts a conversation and you go from there.
Attilio: I think your book is definitely needed. We’ve been to seminars for talking about succession planning for business people in general and I think you come across the industry very rarely the people that put together succession plans and I would say in the real estate industry that it’s probably slim to none that people – unless they have large teams like ours – that have created any kind of succession plan. Thank you very much on behalf of all these retiring agents who are not going to be eating cat food.
Adrienne and Nick laugh.
Adrienne: No you can’t have them eat cat food.
Nick: I want people to eat well!
Adrienne: Yes.
Attilio: They’re not going to be eating cat food and clipping coupons. Now they’re going to have a little bit of residual income and you’re going to help them go on that cruise.
Adrienne: Okay.
Nick: That’s great thank you guys so much.
Adrienne: Yes thank you Nick for joiing us.
Attilio: What’s a good website? Where can someone go and order a couple cases of your book?
Nick: So you can get it on Amazon.com and if you want to order it directly from you get bulk discounts and that’s goldenhandoff.com just like the title of the book and we’ve got a simple order page. You can use your credit card. I’ve had a couple that wanted to send checks. I will gladly accept checks from realtors I trust all of them.
Attilio: What about cash? You take cash?
Nick and Attilio laugh.
Nick: Just shoot me an email and we’ll figure it out.
Attilio: Alright and then if anybody – what city are you in if people are listening and they want to send their awesome referrals to you what cities are you in?
Nick: I am in the Portland, Oregon area and if you have any referrals to send our way we’d be grateful to take them and take great care of them and our main website is sellpdx.com and you can reach all of us there and our number and email is right on the front page of the site.
Attilio: Alright so that’s sell and then paul delta xray dot com?
Nick: That’s right.
Adrienne: Thanks Nick.
Announcer: It’s the Team Lally Real Estate Show. Here’s Adrienne and Attilio.
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.
Attilio: And I’m Attilio.
Adrienne: And if you have any questions just give us a call at 799-9596 or check us out on the web at teamlally.com.
Attilio: Alright awesome. Who we got on the line? Who’s first up? Is it Brooks?
Adrienne: We have Brooks on the lines.
Attilio: Brooks are you there? Tell us about your – come on in! – tell us about your coming soon property.
Brooks: Thank you for the intro. We’ll do that. Very new home, it’s just three years old in Kopalei the Mehana Kokuna development. It’s a single story home and it’s buffed out to the max. These guys put in brand new luxury vinyl flooring, brand new carpet, with upgraded padding recently, new seating stands, plantation shutters throughout, brand new split AC. This is such a turnkey property. It’s going live on Monday and there will be a grand opening event on the 23rd.
Attilio: Awesome.
Adrienne: Nice.
Brooks: Or is it the 26th – I’m sorry the 30th
Attilio: Sometime in the near future.
Adrienne: The 30th. Yes.
Attilio: Check out our website if you want to get the details.
Adrienne: Mhm.
Attilio: Alright. Thanks Brooks!
Brooks: Thanks you guys.
Adrienne: Alright next we have Michael to talk about his open house.
Attilio: Michael! Welcome, come on in.
Michael: Hi guys! Great show.
Adrienne: Hello.
Attilio: Alright. Tell us about your open.
Michael: It’s a grand open. I have got to share this with you guys. We’re going to be out in the Palm Grove subdivision of Maili at 87509 Kula Aulani Street out in Hawaii. Beautiful. There’s over 5,600 square feet of area. It’s a three bedroom two bath. Come down and visit me you guys. Grand open house! Grand! Open house.
Attilio: Nobody’s seen it before. Got like velvet ropes. Can’t get in.
Adrienne: I love the enthusiasm.
Michael: The best part about this place guys – virtually only one neighbor to the side of you!
Adrienne: Ooh even better.
Michael: Yeah because there’s also something behind you that’s very unique!
Adrienne and Attilio: What is it?
Michael: The French call it a canal.
Adrienne: Oh nice.
Attilio: That’s French for river. Canal. Alright.
Adrienne and Attilio: Thanks Michael!
Attilio: Oops he’s gone. That’s okay.
Adrienne: We got Abby.
Attilio: We got Abby next. Hi Abby. Come on in. Tell us about your open.
ABB: Okay yeah so I do have a grand open house in the country. This is a nice, beautiful, big house. Five bedrooms three baths and one thing about this home is that it has this nice master bedroom and has got this beautiful mountain view and it’s perfect for unwinding after a long day. So come down, see me. No showings yet just a grand open house for showing on Sunday from 2-5 o’clock.
Attilio: Alright.
Attilio and Adrienne: Awesome thanks Abby.
ABB: Thank you!
Adrienne: So we have Kapono to talk about his open houses.
Attilio: Kapono tell us about your open!
Kapono: So I’ve got three open houses. Saturday at 3 PM and Tuesday from 3 to 7 PM. I’m going to be sitting in the country club village complex. It’s a move in ready condo. Comes with two bedroom, two bath and two parking. And then my Sunday open house is a grand open house in Kailiki. Come check out the mountain and ocean view sunsets. There’s so much in this home you have to come check it out.
Adrienne: Alright.
Attilio: Alright.
Adrienne: Thanks Kapono. So if you want to check out all of our open houses you can go to our website teamlally.com. So thank you for listening and thank you to our sponsors.
Attilio: Alright Gabe and Jim Owens of Hawaii VA Loans.
Adrienne: Bradley Mariama of All State Insurance.
Attilio: Jodie Tanga Derrick Tanga of Pacific Rim Mortgage.
Adrienne: Nathan Baker of Pillar to Post Home Inspections.
Attilio: Ben and Tony of AAA Roofers.
Adrienne: Janyce Merlynd, Dream House Drafting.
Attilio: John Speed with Kilauea Pest Control.
Adrienne: Duke Kimhan of Hawaii Pacific Property Management.
Attilio: If you want to get a hold of any of our sponsors just go to teamally.com.
Adrienne: We also want to give to a big thank you to Steven our producer here in the studio.
Attilio cheers.
Adrienne: Make sure to tune in next week we’ll have one of our awesome guests talking about something that’ll change your life-
Attilio: Forever! This is the Team Lally Real Estate Show home of the guaranteed-
All: SOLD PROGRAM!
Adrienne: If we can’t sell your home at the agreed upon price and our timeframe we’ll have it bought for cash.
All: THANKS AND ALOHA!