How To Win In Your First Year In Real Estate | Bethany King: Real Estate Episode #12

Casanova Brooks:

What’s up DreamNation. We are back again, and we have another Real estate episode that I am excited to share with you because I know that it’s going to impact, it’s going to inspire, and most importantly, I hope that it will make you have some change in your life, because if we can change the way that we do things on a day to day, I think that will impact our future. Without further ado, please help me in welcoming my sister, Ms. Bethany King to the show. Bethany, you want to go ahead and say what’s up to the DreamNation tribe?

Bethany King :

Hey DreamNation. My name’s Bethany King. I’m a real estate agent and team leader based in Canada, actually just outside of Toronto. And I’m really excited to be here and, talk to Casanova. And we’re going to talk about how to win in your first year of real estate.

Casanova Brooks:

Absolutely. So I always love to make sure that we give the proper introduction and for anyone who doesn’t know the way that I do it is that always compare us as entrepreneurs and I feel like a real estate agent or broker is definitely the truest form of an entrepreneur because we were so many hats, but I love to compare entrepreneurs.

And thought leaders, just the superheroes and the reason being is because we’re constantly, we’re putting on a cape, we’re flying around the world and we’re trying to solve the biggest problems. And so the way that I also think of it is behind every Superman, there’s a Clark Kent or in your case behind every wonder woman, I believe that her name is Janine, but tell us for people who don’t know, who is the Janine behind Bethany King.

Bethany King :

The Janine. So a little bit about me, I actually went to school for fashion years and years ago. And I did really well in the fashion retail industry. I worked my way up the corporate ladder.

I moved into buying in the food service industry. I bought chocolate for the biggest Canadian retailer and it was about a $10 million business weekly, so it was massive amount of business. Then I moved from there into the federal government where I handled different programs and grants and administration.

So after all of that long job history, I went into real estate, I put it all behind me. I took the leap. I went in full time, laser focus into real estate, being a self employed person. And I haven’t looked back. I’m also a single mom. I have a beautiful six year old daughter at home who is my best friend.

She’s my confidant, she’s my business partner. She gives me lots of business advice and, on top of all that, I’m a millennial. I’m within that generation of, what do they call us? Ungrateful millennial? That’s me. So I love working in real estate. It’s completely changed my life.

Where I live in Toronto, we live in a housing crisis where the homes are way too expensive. Like the affordability is through the roof. And every single one of us who own homes are often over leveraged. My market is really interesting and different. It’s really tough for my generation to break into it.

And, I think there’s a lot of people that I meet. And a lot of my clients who feel the same way where it’s like Beth, I went to school, I got my degree, I got a job out of school. People think I’m so successful. And yet we’re still living paycheck to paycheck and we still can’t afford to just have a roof over our heads, Level pricing up here in Toronto, you’re looking at entry level anywhere from 500 to $600,000. And we’re talking for maybe a one bed two bed condo. So trading where I live is a completely different ballgame. And, as a team leader, I get a lot of agents that come to me that, they maybe want to interview to be on my team and they ask me, how did you become successful in this industry?

Cause I’m only been trading real estate for a few years and, I think it’s really important. And the stuff that I wanted to talk about today is stuff that I feel like is not said enough, especially to real estate agents, especially to new agents.

Casanova Brooks:

There’s so much to unpack there and for anybody that’s listening, I’m sure they have a lot of questions. So we’ll definitely get into what is not said, because we want to know how we can, avoid these obstacles, especially in our first couple of years in real estate. But the first thing I want to know you had a successful career. You’re helping people shape chocolate, $10 million a week business. You’re the gal. Why real estate? Why did you get out and real estate of all things to jump into?

Bethany King :

That’s a really great question and I decided to go into real estate because no matter what I did, I still couldn’t afford to live. And it’s crazy because people would look at me like, Oh my God, she’s so successful.

She’s got a government job. She’s got that golden pension, she has job security her whole life like it’s a really hard to get into the government at that level. And yet I was so depressed and I was so broken internally and I hated my life. I hated my job. I had to wake up at 5:30 every morning, drive an hour.

And I managed, maybe 800-900 projects simultaneously, single-handedly. I can appreciate all the skills that I’ve learned from my previous work experience. But when I had to take the leap to go into be self employed, to be an entrepreneur, it was probably one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make.

Especially just being a single mom and not having that financial security, and not having that level of comfort, but you have to trust yourself and you have to always think like these companies, in these industries, in these organizations, you’re an employee for them. They don’t care about your home life.

They don’t care if you have kids. If the numbers don’t add up, then you’ll be gone for the next day. We saw this a lot when this pandemic started. I don’t know if you noticed, but I saw a lot of those real estate companies that are really tech companies. As soon as this lockdown started in Canada and in US and the market started to crash, there was like thousands of layoffs.

And those were all real estate. They’re supposed to be real estate specialists or agents working for these tech companies. And in that moment, when you, as an employee need your employer the most, and our real estate clients needed us the most, they just cleaned house. So it became really important for me to be able to build something for myself that was mine. And I was so tired of making big corp and like “the man”, money. And I’m like, how can I take everything that I’ve learned and do it for myself and build my own legacy.? So that is my reasoning for doing it. And honestly, I don’t even look back. My life has completely changed.

Casanova Brooks:

I love it. And just like you said, you are a number and most corporations, it’s not to say all, but for a lot of inner, such a hierarchy, if you’re at a big corporation, so even to your manager, you might be an actual human being that they might care, but they might not have that pull depending on how low on the totem pole that you are, that your job can be gone right with their job. And so there’s always people say that there’s security, but the only security you really have in just like you said, is betting on yourself because at the end of the day, that company could be sold. Brokerages are sold all the time. Brokerages are partnering with. other brokerages, doing a lot of things that are out of your control.

So a lot of the times, if you don’t have any ownership, then you’re the one that will be asked out in the end. So you have to make sure to protect yourself, especially if you’re a single mom or a single dad, or you’re somebody right now that have other people that depend on you.

That’s very important. So I love that you brought up that point. My next question though, is Why real estate? Because it seems like you, again, like you said, you were living the dream you could have started a sales company that had nothing to do a real estate. I’m sure you could went out and get insurance or investment. Why real estate?

Bethany King :

I’m going to be honest with you, it was for the money. To be honest, that was my main motivation. It was for the money. I am a natural born salesperson though. I sold vacuums door to door to put myself through college. I sold wedding dresses on the sales floor when I was pregnant.

So I’m a natural born salesperson. I love connecting with the consumer. One-to-one. I love talking to people. I get an immense amount of satisfaction from helping people in their day to day lives. If I can take my skills, and change someone’s life with it then I’m living my purpose genuinely. And I get a lot of satisfaction from that.

So the initial pull was I need money and I know that there’s money in real estate. And it’s so ironic because I was so trained. I had so much education, they train you to really be an employee and then you’re on your own and you understand how to run a $10 million business, but you don’t understand how to do a personal budget.

You don’t understand how to get a mortgage. And these are the basic things that they should have taught us. And I think where I live, they’re changing the education now, but that’s why I went into it and after I got into it and I got to be in a job where I was, one to one with the consumer again, and I was able to make an impact.

Then that is like a drug to me. That is makes me so happy. It’s fulfilling. I love it. And that’s why I expanded my business not only to help my clients, but to have a team and to train other agents. My other team members that are on my team, and other women and other black women, which is also really important to me as well.

I think that a lot of agents though, they don’t come from background of mine or yours. I know that you growing up in Chicago, you’ve faced a lot of hardship and there’s something really special that happens when your back is up against the wall and you have to figure it out.

So you may understand it, but there’s a lot of people that, there maybe don’t have that mindset yet. They maybe haven’t hit rock bottom but I try to let them know, if you just take that leap and trust yourself, you can do this, right? It’s not rocket science. You can totally do this and I’m going to show you how I’m going to show you how I do it. I spend a lot of time training my agents on the topic and we have a lot of fun.

Casanova Brooks:

I love it.

Let’s walk through for a lot of people that are listening to this, they are either thinking about getting into real estate or they just got into real estate. But just like you said, even when you get into the real estate world, they don’t really train you, especially here in the US. I can’t speak for Canada, maybe you can, but in the US, in Nebraska, especially, the schools that you take to get your license that only teaches you how to not go in front of that state real estate commission. So in our case is the Nebraska real estate commission to get that license taken, or, you to be on suspension. But what they really don’t do is they don’t nurture you.

They don’t teach you about how exactly you can succeed in a world that’s growing so fast every day with technology, with different relationships. So for you, what was that first six months, did you break through really easily? And you got a couple of deals that popped off? Was it tough for you? So you had to figure out how to do something that everyone else wasn’t doing. Walk us through that first six months of how you got the train rolling for you.

Bethany King :

So my first six months was a little bit with different cause I was still transitioning from full time and I had, I almost had and one foot in my full time and then one foot in my real estate.

So I would do both. And it was so exhausting. I was working like 19 hour days and I started off with a different brokerage than what I’m with now. So my first six months, I was one of those new agents that was like falling down constantly and making mistakes. And I had no guidance and I didn’t know what I was doing, but I also wasn’t full time locked in on it.

Casanova Brooks:

You’re new the team when you first jumped in?

Bethany King :

No, I was completely on my own and I was still like working with clients, doing deals, but I think after I hit that six month mark, there was something that changed in me. I spent the first six months really like understanding the market and understanding the numbers because I come from a very analytical job background. So it was important for me to understand what is going on. Like how can I actually come to the value? How do I know how this area is trending versus this area? So I definitely recommend for all new agents to understand the market, that part you can’t fake the funk when it comes to the numbers and it directly relates to your ability to do a good job.

And after those first six months, I made some changes in my business. There was like this moment where I’m like, you know what, this is it I’m going in full time. I’m getting locked in. And I had those first six months to make these mistakes. And I realized that what it takes to do well in this business is to build relationships.

That is what it takes. Obviously you have to know the market, you have to know what you’re talking about, but as a real estate agent, I feel like you are just preyed on by so many different industries, marketing, leads, website, business, whatever it is. There’s always somebody spamming you it’s like predatory.

And I have these new agents that come to me and their self confidence is just so low. They spent a thousand dollars on a stupid cold call script that some guy out in a completely different state or country sold to them, but doesn’t even apply to their business or they subscribe to this thing that the guy said it’s going to bring them to the promised land.

And I promise you, it’s only going to bring you into debt. All of these extra little bits, you need to find a way to cut them out cause as a new agent, you are prey, you are a fresh meat. And what you really need to focus on is know your market. And know how to build a relationship with someone, know how to walk into somebody’s house, who needs to sell and understand their motives and genuinely do a good job.

if you have a client, for example, I had a client who had dementia and she invited me into her home. She needed to sell cause she was transitioning into an old folks home. And this poor woman had no idea what was going on. And instead of me just preying on her to get the client, to get the deal, I consulted with their family in a really polite and humble way to let them know, this client, your sister, she doesn’t have the level of understanding to really know what is going on right now. So you guys need to get a power of attorney. And I also recommend that, and I made that connection with that family and that family, I instantly built trust.

And that family loves me. They love on me. They send me referrals because I genuinely was out there to help this poor woman. And, I think it’s really important for new agents to understand that people are not going to hire you because of your fancy business card or your fancy car actually. They’re going to hire you because they like you and they trust you. That’s it.

I feel like we don’t get that enough in this industry. When we start out, “you’re a piece of shit. You need to buy this. You need to buy that. You need to buy this. You need to buy that”. And it’s not the case.

Casanova Brooks:

I definitely agree. There’s two things that come to my mind. First off, when you say, people aren’t gonna do business with you because of your fancy business card or all of that, it really is the saying that people don’t care how much, and so they know how much you care.

And I think it was Maya Angelou who first said that quote. As black woman, I gotta make sure I give her a credit, but I’m pretty sure that was Maya Angelou who said that, but anyway, that’s so important. The reason why I say that is because when we first do get into the business, we’re trying to figure out how we can get some money that’s coming in. And for a lot of people, if they jump in cold turkey, they’re afraid and every day that goes by, especially if their activity is not ramping up every single day to say, Hey, it’s right around the corner, they can all of a sudden looking at other people who are like, yeah, just got this sold in one day or yeah, these clients love me. So now they’re feeling like real estate is not right for me but understanding that everybody is at their own pace. Some of those people who you see right now that says this client just did that business with me, understand that that person might have been in $40,000 worth of debt where you do not have that debt.

Understanding that person might be on their last leg, out of the business so they needed that one deal where now you’ve got a pipeline getting built up of the next 10 to 15 deals that you’re about to pop in these next three to six months. And so I think that’s very important to really talk about the relationships part of it, because a lot of people, I think that they have good intentions. When they first get in, but they don’t have coaches. They don’t have mentors. They don’t have people in their corner just like you that says, “Hey, let’s slow it down because otherwise we can be out of this business just as fast as we got in this business”.

Bethany King :

Absolutely

Casanova Brooks:

that’s a critical piece. For you, you’ve built it on relationships. Was there ever a point or even now, do you invest in Zillow? Do you invest in a realtor.com? Do you invest in any of these things to try to be able to scale up your business faster? Or are you anti all of those lead generation systems?

Bethany King :

Good question. No, I’m anti lead generation, but even when you get leads, how do you convert them? You could get a whole lead, you could get like hundreds of leads of people who don’t know you, love you, trust you. And they’re useless to you if you don’t know how to build connections. We don’t use Zillow up here, but we do have a lead generation marketing funnel that I built personally.

So I don’t invest it outside again. I was able to take my professional background and my tech and my analytical skills into a 14 step funnel. So my agents are always eating. There’s always business on the table for them and on top of that, we work their own databases. But if we don’t know how to build connections and build relationships with people, that’s useless to us.

Casanova Brooks:

Let’s break that down because I feel like a lot of people that are listening to this right now, and they’re say, all they’re saying is relationships and connections. “I’m an introvert. How do I build relationships?” How do I work my database? What does that look like?

Bethany King :

Okay. So you build relationships by connecting with your lead or your client about something that is 100% not real estate related. That’s how you do it. You have a lead that comes in and I coach my girls on how to do this, say that like someone gives us a call and we’re talking to Sally Sue? That’s always my name that I use. And we’re talking to Sally Sue and Sally Sue needs to move. She wants to buy a house and we hear her kids in the background.

Sally sue has two kids. I’m like, Oh my God, Sally, I have a kid, my daughter is six years old. How old are your kids? Oh, your daughter’s six. Oh my God. What do you think about the school opening with this whole pandemics? Oh, Bethany, it’s so scary. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know, my daughter’s just at home, she’s listening to paw patrol 24 hours a day.

It’s driving me crazy. Sally’s was like, hahaha Bethany, you’re so funny oh my god, we have to grab drinks some time. It’s so simple. It’s so simple, right? Or you’re calling buyer Bobby and buyer Bobby’s got a dog barking in the background or buyer Bobby, works weird hours. It’s Oh yeah, buyer Bobbie, I can relate, I’m in real estate.

My hours are all over the place. And you break it down to really simple things cause you also want to have an image of who this lead is. So even if you do invest in cold calling or lead generation or Zillow, how can you service your client if you don’t have a picture of them in your mind?

One thing though, that really accelerated my business recently, I was really being outspoken and talking a lot about black lives matter in Canada and how it relates to the real estate industry and how come, all of my clients who are buying, obviously in our housing crisis that we call it, are often not black. And I’ve spent a lot of time about some notoriety about just speaking out about things that I’m passionate about, like racism. That is a really, unsavory topic, especially in real estate. I think all real estate professionals, we try to be like really professional and safe, and have their professional scripts and be really rehearsed.

But I’m telling you, it just doesn’t work. People want authenticity. They crave realness, especially our younger generations are millennials or gen Zs. If they see you from afar as a salesperson, just walking up to them and they can already tell that you’re like coming to sell them something, immediately they’ve got their back up and they’re like, get away from me. But if you share the same morals as them, if you guys have the same vision, that’s how you get the listing.

Casanova Brooks:

I love it. And that speaks to just being vulnerable. I think that’s something that we often struggle with, but obviously our generation, and I think social media has helped for more people to come out and given them a platform to be vulnerable.

But as a real estate agent, if you are vulnerable, if you are saying, Hey, you know what, I’m going to work twice as hard as the next agent, but I do need you to know my schedule is crazy because I’m a single mom or because I’m a single dad , or something like that. people are going to respect that so much more than if you always try to be, like you said, PC, and try to put on the front. And then all of a sudden you had this blow up. You never set the right expectations up front, so they had this image of you that wasn’t it, because eventually we can’t fake the funk and that’s going to come out at some point.

And that’s when it feels like, Oh man. And a lot of the times what I take that back to what you just said is communication can solve all. Whether it’s our relationships with our spouses, with our kids, if we just communicated upfront, especially with clients, because a lot of the times where I’ve found, and even in my first couple of years, the reason why you’re working till 9:30-10 o’clock at night is because you never set the boundaries or the expectations upfront.

Bethany King :

Yeah

Casanova Brooks:

And you can do it in a meaningful way. Co you ever struggle with that? I know I did. I’ll be honest. I struggled with that heavy. Did you ever struggle with that or was that always something you learned from the beginning coming from that? they’re like at five o’clock don’t reach out I’m out.

Bethany King :

No, that’s something I definitely struggled with in those first six months. And when you don’t have the money, you’re like desperate and you’re going to take every single deal. And I’ve had clients use and abuse me. Okay. Like I’m there. I call them. I say, they’re making me their dirty servant, but I tell my girls, I say, listen, I’m going to give you this much business but it’s up to you to sift and sort through and pick the ones that you want to work with. When you’re self employed and you don’t have that other deal coming, your mindset is in the scarcity and the lack, right? So you’re willing to accept things that you normally wouldn’t. Maybe it is taking calls maybe at 10, 11 o’clock at night, or maybe when a seller wants you to do 100 open houses every single Sunday until the cows come home, or maybe they want you to do this for a 1% commission and, I tell my girls, we don’t do that.

If somebody is using an abusing you that’s the term that I use, than to walk away from it, but it’s different in my team, because I can support them and give them the business. But for any new agents coming out, you really do have to find a balance, and you have to understand that as much as you’re self employed, your work is valued.

Your intellect is valued, and I want you to consider yourself at the same level of a doctor or a lawyer, right? You wouldn’t call your doctor at 10 o’clock at night or your lawyer. Your time is valuable, even starting out in this business and you need to pick the clients that you want to work with.

Not just anyone. You want to pick the ones that are going to give you a good work life balance and a value of life and satisfaction because those clients will refer you to more clients like them. If you work with a shitty client and you get the job done, and God forbid that shitty client gives you more referrals, those clients are gonna be just as shitty, right?

They’re going to use an abuse, you, or they’re going to want to cut your commission or they’re going to have, unrealistic expectations. It’s very different going from being an employee to self-employed. But regardless of the journey that you take and all the bumps in the road, there is an immense amount of satisfaction.

And it’s totally worth it. So for anyone who is listening and they’re not really sure about taking that lead, now is the time. You really have to trust yourself though and make sure that you’re not having these subconscious limiting beliefs inside of you, because you can do it.

Casanova Brooks:

First off you said you came in from the corporate world and for about six months you did them both. What are your thoughts on other agents that are getting in? Because some of these people right now, same thing, because of the pandemic, they’re half into their jobs still, but because of the pandemic, this is allowing them to work from home, which now they’re feeling like, okay, this is that time that I can really get learning on my real estate. I can jump all in. I can make a change, because I don’t have to be in this office every day.

Do you feel like somebody that’s really looking to hit the gates running, hit the ground running, do you think that they could do it, part time or do you think that they have to jump in and burn the

Bethany King :

boats?

Based on my experience, you definitely have to jump in full time 100% and especially with this time where we are with this pandemic, a lot of agents are afraid and when this whole lockdown starts back in March, a lot of them were like, Oh, I’m taking a step back from my business.

I’m going to work on my presentations. I’m going to work on my CRM, my database, my mailing list. Whereas my team I’m like no, we’re pushing full forward and right away immediately, we were delivering groceries to any of our clients who were a little compromised. I do have quite a bit of seniors. So checking in with them, checking in with their families.

I have seniors who are here, but their family live hours away. I have one lady who has leukemia. So we were delivering the groceries to her, the hand sanitizer. We were offering to deliver to anyone who needed help because we were deemed an essential business. Whereas a lot of places is closed down.

And for my first time buyers, we saw a significant drop in the list, price and sale price. where I live, I’m talking 50 to a hundred thousand dollars in one month drop cause no one knew what was going on. Everyone was scared. So all my first time buyers, I was like, Hey Jeff, you still got your job.

Okay. You need to buy now. Cause otherwise you won’t be able to buy when this market picks up. and it’s an interesting time being in real estate. And I tell this to the agent that interview with me, cause they’re like, “Oh. I got into this business, at the worst time ever now. There’s gotta be a pandemic.

How do I even start my business?” And I tell them, this is the best time to get into this industry because now the real players are going to shine. A lot of people are sitting back. It’s easy to sell real estate in a good market. In a good market, it’s easy. Sell the house, buy the house, anyone can do it .

But the true Testament to your skills is if you can do this in a bad market, and I love the adrenaline, I love a challenge. And like I said, we live in a housing crisis, where we’ve been waiting. My generation, we’ve been praying and hoping for the bubble to pop for several years. So the idea that there may be some opportunity, is really exciting.

I have all of my buyers locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger when the time comes. So for anyone who is starting out, go in full time, don’t be afraid of this pandemic. And every recession, there are winners and losers, right? This industry allows us to be winners like you. There’s a huge opportunity.

There’s a major shift in wealth happening. So I wanted to excite you. I want you to feel motivated. I want you to feel powerful because now, you can make that relationship with someone, now is the time where you can really make a meaningful connection because a lot of other agents are not doing it.

Casanova Brooks:

I love it. That is so true. Do you work with any investors?

Bethany King :

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Casanova Brooks:

Yeah.

The reason why I say that, cause I told every people who ask me about building wealth through real estate. I always say you make your money when you buy, not when you sell.

And when you buy, it’s gotta be during the hard times when everyone else is selling, you gotta go against the grain, right? Because most of the time, once it already pops off, that it’s a great market, all of the juice for the most part has been squeezed. So you gotta be willing to go against the grain, and in the beginning it’s like this, you’re starting a business, whether you’re in real estate, never in the beginning, they’ll ask you why you’re doing it as, why are you getting in a real estate right now? It’s a pandemic going on. But in the end, they’ll ask you how you did it. And they’re like, Oh my God, how did you become successful? And those are the times we all live for.

And I think for somebody that’s listening right now, it’s just like what you said. You gotta be able to look at things in a different perspective, a different manner, to understand that this is when characters are truly built through times of adversity. That’s what we see in the movies.

Anything that we watch, we love to see tests of character and they come out even stronger because that’s when you show that you’re a warrior. And so I think that’s a phenomenal way to put it, and I hope that somebody really listens to that and they look at it, hey, I can go full time.

I think that the reason why a lot of people are afraid to go full time is because it feels like everything’s getting more expensive. And if people don’t necessarily know how to manage the current money that they had or have so they really don’t feel like they can grow their money to when they don’t have a consistent income.

Have you found any hacks or anything that’s worked for you or even your agents as they’ve gotten up and running to generate a little bit of income on the side until their business takes off?

Bethany King :

Good question. And I played around with that. I remember when I first started, I was thinking, Oh, maybe I can just do this little thing here and this little thing there.

But it’s tough because every moment that you spend on something else is a moment that you’re taking away from real estate. And because we get paid in such large amounts, my best advice is to literally cut out everything else and laser focus. And if you focus, you will get the deal. But again, it comes back to your own self limiting beliefs.

And when I talk to my agents and, nervous, or they don’t have the confidence to get something done, I say, are you the best agent? Do you believe that you’re the best one for this job? Cause if you don’t believe it, then you have no business servicing this client. Do you know what they want?

Do you know how to sell their house? Do you know how to buy their next house? Do you know how to alleviate any legal problems that we might have to deal with on the way? And they’re like, yeah, I know. And I’m like, then that’s it. And then you’re the best one for this job, that’s it? I think we just get in front of ourselves a lot, and I know that you can relate to what I’m saying because you faced your own struggles, right?

You’ve hit rock bottom. You’ve faced your own hardships. And like me just, my own issues that I’ve dealt with over the years and leaving my job and being a single mom, like when your back is up against the wall, you will find a way to get it done. And I think when you have that other job, your back is not up against the wall.

You have that comfort and not to say that you won’t grow, but your growth will be significantly slower. So my best advice given the circumstances of the current economy and the markets, is to lock in and understand what is happening in your direct market. How does this pandemic affected business where you live or where you trade and how can you capitalize on it?

And it comes down to doing good work. There is no secrets script. There is no secret formula. People are in distress and they need help and they need help with their investments, whether they need to sell or they need to buy. That’s it. So do your research and understand how can I help someone in this pandemic?

How can I help them with their largest financial investment that they probably own and make a difference in their life and allow your clients to come out of this pandemic stronger, right? To ride the wave of it, rather than have this pandemic run them over.

Casanova Brooks:

Wow. I love it. You are paid in direct correlation to the amount of tough conversations that you can have and the amount of problems that you can solve.

I guess in a better way to say the second bar is the bigger the problem that you can sell, right? Because just like you said, people are distressed. Neighborhoods is distressed. We see that all the time, houses are distressed and we see that all the time, and it’s always been this way, but now more than ever.

People are distressed. And so it’s still, if you could solve a problem for them, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to sell the house right now. But because you solved a problem for them could mean that they will refer you to someone else, which is the same thing. You’re still going to get that deal. So I love the fact that you brought that part up and there is no secret sauce. I tell that to people all the time. When I first started, people are like, how did you get your business going so fast? I was doing three to five coffee and lunches every single week I was in BNI groups.

I was in anything that I could to allow somebody to just say, “I love his energy. He’s excited about real estate. All I know that whenever I got a question about real estate, I got to go to him. I might not buy a house for 10 years, but that energy was infectious”. And I think that it doesn’t have to be right.

It could be just like yours, where it’s cool, calm, collected, but as long as you’re authentically you unapologetically you just, like you said, people love that. And people will always be able to respect that because they know what they’re going to get and they know who you truly are.

When you first got started, was there a book, was there a podcast, was there a blog that really helped to accelerate your growth in terms of your mindset? Because you brought up the word mindset a couple of different times, and I know that people right now they’re searching for what they can learn and how they can make that shift.

Bethany King :

Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I’m glad that you asked me that because being a woman in this industry, it’s a male dominated industry and where I am, it’s a white male dominated industry. So was there one book? No, I read several books and they were all about white men in their middle age which did not apply to me that doesn’t apply to me. For example, there’s a lot of people who say you got to go door knocking, you got to go door to door, knock a hundred doors a day. That doesn’t work for me. I’m a woman. I need to protect myself and the women on my team as well.

I said, no, you’re not doing it. I would never put you in a situation where you’re exposed to anything. When my girls go to their presentations, like last night, one of my girls had a listing presentation and I have another manager, who’s a man circling the block to check on her cause you’re walking into a stranger’s house. Its a huge issue that as women realtors, you need to protect yourself.

And when I would read books from other leaders, it just didn’t apply to me. A lot of it didn’t apply. It’s great advice maybe for somebody else, but they don’t tell you how to be successful and be a single mom. They want you to be presentable and sexy and attractive, but they don’t tell you how to fight off weirdos, who I still get DMS. I get FaceTime calls from people I don’t know, from weird men because our face is there our phone number’s out there. So I don’t have somebody who’s a public figure that I can go to and really follow their advice. I really spend a lot of time, looking at an, a number of different sources and picking and choosing the pieces that apply to me and creating my own.

Casanova Brooks:

There’s a woman right now that’s saying absolutely Bethany, I feel the exact same way. We got the Gary Keller’s out there and but no knock on them but we we respect what you were saying. You got, Mike Ferry and Tom Ferry and Kevin Wharton, a lot of these guys, but just like you said, that it wouldn’t resonate with you because their lifestyle, their situation is not your work situation, but there’s someone out there right now that says, you know what girl, I can absolutely identify with that. Where’s a couple resources that I could at least get started and then start to pick up my

nuggets.

Bethany King :

So I did read Ryan Serhant’s book. I think that again, I was reading it, getting frustrated, but there were some pieces in there that talk about people don’t like being sold.

They like to go shopping with friends and he does talk about being able to build relationships because his story is that he moved to New York and he didn’t know anyone there so he would challenge himself to have five meaningful conversations every single day. I tell my girls that as well, I’m like, you need to talk to people.

If you’re at a kid’s party, you need to talk to the other parents and find out are they planning on moving? Oh, they just had a second baby, maybe they need a bigger house, or talking to your old coworkers while they’re at home on this pandemic and you make a joke about, Oh, you’re stuck in your house.

I bet you wish you had that bigger house with the pool in the backyard. Don’t you? And you find ways to fold it in there. But at the end of the day, what kind of like a mantra that I tell myself and I have it on my whiteboard is that Bethany, you are coaching yourself, you are the leader of yourself.

And because I’m also a team leader and I have people that rely on me for information and for guidance and leadership, I had to put myself in this position, because I often don’t get the level support that I wish I had. Somebody who worked corporate and always having somebody, my VP or my DPM to report to you and take guidance from now that I’m in real estate, I don’t have that.

So I’ve become that. And I want everyone else to read the book, take your little snippets, but at the end of the day, trust yourself. And know what you’re doing and understand your why cause there is no book that’s going to give you the secret sauce. You gotta get out there and do the work, but you can do it.

If your end goal is to genuinely do good work and help someone and change their life in a meaningful way. That’s how you get it done.

Casanova Brooks:

We just got a couple more times questions left that, I’m excited to hear your answer for the first one is you’ve now built a phenomenal business, right?

You’re now leading ladies. You’re your daughter. I’m sure, she’s so proud of you, every single day. but there’s somebody out there right now that has that little voice in their head. And that little voice says that they’re not strong enough. They’re not smart enough. Or maybe they just don’t have enough resources. What’s the one thing that you would say to that person to get them to just take action?

Bethany King :

The one thing that I would tell anyone who believes that they can’t do this, or they have low self confidence, or, this is so scary and they don’t believe in themselves would be that you have successfully won 100% of all of your bad days.

I think that we need to give ourselves a little bit more credit. And yeah, it is scary being self employed and putting yourself out there, like how you have to do in real estate. But the fact that you’ve taken this step to get into this industry, and you’ve acknowledged that you want to make a career in your own business and to be self employed.

That is enough. That is genuinely enough. This is advice from your big sister. Now it’s time to just do the thing. Stop worrying about all of this fluff and just do the thing, and be you and don’t copy someone else’s script or don’t follow someone else’s story because that’s their story and you have to figure, grow your story and own it.

And you will be fine, you will fly If you jump, you will fly. So that would be the advice that I would give them is to just do the thing. Do the real estate thing, that’s it.

Casanova Brooks:

I love it. Do the thing. And the last one is looking back on your journey and you still have so much to grow, and we’re all excited to watch your growth and see how many more women that you can empower and just agents in general and business owners.

But Looking back on your journey thus far, what’s the one thing that you wish you would have implemented sooner to accelerate your dream?

Bethany King :

One thing that I wish that I implemented sooner, to accelerate my business, definitely would have been trusting myself, the authenticity component, because I started off like every other realtor trying to put on this really professional and rehearsed facade.

And it didn’t get me any business, but once I started speaking out about black lives matter and racism and calling out people in my own industries and demanding better from our boards and really just being authentic and where that came from was being a good example for my daughter, because when all of this, black lives matter and George Floyd was brutally murdered, it was almost right after our pandemic. And I used to wake up and just watch my social feeds and just cry. I would start my morning, with a good cry. And what had happened was I was in a mandatory zoom with my brokerage and it was mandatory, and they were teaching us about some new MLS system about that no one’s gonna use. It’s just another new system that they’re trying to get you to buy into. Meanwhile, there is a civil war going on and I’m like, hello, does anybody see what is going on? Are we not going to acknowledge what is happening here? When I actually called out my leadership and my management and my brokers, and I said, this is complete bullshit.

How can you have this mandatory zoom meeting when this is going on. And a lot of the responses I got was that Beth, we don’t deal with political things. We don’t talk about things like that. And I’m like, excuse me, sir. My life is not a political issue, right? It directly affects me.

This is me. When, and I kept comparing it to COVID-19 and I said, when COVID-19 hit, there was all these resources for us. It was like, Oh, are you okay? Let me check in with you mentally. Do you need something? I’m here for you if you need something. But when my people are being slaughtered in the streets, where is my support.

I went off on a rampage and I’m so lucky that my team members just have my back 100%, but I really just started just going off on people in a professional way, but that fear of seeming unprofessional or that fear of maybe potentially losing business or that fear of my peers looking at me a certain way went completely out the window, because I was like, this is the problem.

This is going to affect my daughter’s life. This is a problem here and if you as my leadership or you as my colleagues, don’t have the same morals and values that I do, then I don’t want to give you any more money. So I started having conversations with the board. I talked to our Canadian board at a federal level.

I said, this is what is going on. There’s a problem. We need to implement training. We need to collect race-based data. We need to understand the effects of gentrification. We need to protect people of color from predatory tax hikes and unfair land assembly. And I started being very calculated and tactical with my words, but it came from a place of true passion.

And that’s when I started getting a lot of notoriety and people started seeing who I was. So in that moment when I was so authentically myself, that is what accelerated my business. Not because I had a perfect script or because my CMA was, not to mention my CMAs are beautiful.

When I was standing out above the crowd, that is what accelerated my business. And that is what is important to me and my team. We have a lot of philanthropy initiatives that we’re working through. And we do that out of satisfaction. But on top of that connects me with more people, more of my people, and those are the people that I’m going to work for.

And I want to be able to build black wealth and I want to teach black men in my communities, how to build black wealth, and how to fix their credit. And I want to teach other black single moms like, listen, I know the bills are hard. I know things are tough, but I’m going to help you, That is when I’m truly in my living my purpose and I have satisfaction and alternatively it’s drove it’s grew my business significantly.

Casanova Brooks:

There, you have it. That right there is a whole sermon in itself. And I pray that there’s another agent out there that listens to this, that watches this, and that says, you know what?

I do need to speak up more and it doesn’t necessarily have to be about color, but it could be something about, gender bias. It could be something about disabilities or whatever it is that you’re listening to right now, that you’re thinking that, listen, I need to speak up because my people need me, my tribe needs me.

My community needs me. And I’m very proud of you if no one else has told you for going through that tough time with yourself. Because again, the way that we’ve been trained is you have to be PC, especially in the real estate business, because you’re helping people with such a, a large financial transaction that you have to look a certain way.

You have to act a certain way. And I think that’s obviously bullshit. And even for me, I live in Nebraska and I see it all the time. I told me live in a rich white, Catholic state. So even I’ve had people that have be like, Oh, you’re going to take your earrings out. And it’s no, I’m me.

People know my work ethic. People know the way that I build relationships. I shouldn’t have to conform who I am. Are you hiring me to get that the job done? And if I get the job done at the highest ability for you. And I get you the maximum amount of value while making sure that I did it with integrity.

What are we really judging on? And so fortunately enough, again, I can articulate and you can articulate, but I think that there’s somebody else out there right now that maybe would struggle with articulating themselves. And hopefully this gives them that, you know what I am me and I’m unapologetically me and the people who love it will do business with me and the people who don’t, they weren’t for me anyway.

For anybody who wants to stay connected with you, and I’m sure there will be hundreds and thousands of people who want to, where can they find you at?

Bethany King :

Definitely connect me on Instagram. On my personal page, I want to connect with people on my personal page. I want to learn about them. I want to make that one-to-one relationship with them, even if they’re not in my market and not a potential client, connect with me on a person on my personal page.

Casanova Brooks:

Got it. We’ll make sure that we put all of those links in the show notes. Bethany, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. I can’t say thank you enough. And I look forward to hearing the feedback. Remember DreamNation. You must take action. If you do not, it will only merely be a fantasy, but just as Bethany said, go do that thing.

We’ll catch you on the next one.