Ep017: Meet Tayler Kohl – Director Of Business Development ROOST Real Estate Co.

Chris: Hi all Chris McAllister here with Connect, Practice Track and Grow podcast, where it’s my job to make your business better and your life easier. I’m back today with my podcast collaborator and our digital marketing director, lacey LeBlanc, and our special guest, Tayler Kohl. Tayler is our newest realtor and she’s based in Columbus, ohio, and she’s got a big director title too, just like Laci, and she’s our director of business development, so thank you both for being here and welcome.

Laci: It’s my pleasure.

Chris: So one of the things that we brought Tayler on for is, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably also getting information from the new real estate professional and Roost real estate company weekly, even in the form of an email, and possibly some postcards every month or so with some hopefully valuable information.

Or maybe you’ve downloaded, you know, a couple of the books that we have advertised out there on social media and we’ve been doing that for real estate agents for probably gosh going on two years now and we’ve had I think I’d have to look closely, but it’s close to 700 people have downloaded the book and have opted in to our database, and the one thing that we had never done is try to make contact or engage with these folks who are actually looking at the content, reading the content, and every once in a while I’ll hear from them. So what we wanted to do today and Taylor has just been in position for about I think this is her fourth week, but she’s already started making calls to the database and specifically to people who have recently opened one of the educational emails, and we wanted to talk to her about that process and the questions that she’s asking and what she’s hearing from the people that she’s been able to connect with.

Laci: Yeah, I’m excited it is. The number is around 700, chris, so that’s 700 pieces of free education that you’ve sent out, and obviously this is all marketing roost in a specific way, but it’s done with a pure heart, is what I would like to point out. This information is from you and your brain and your experience and the people, the agents that roost their experience. So so it’s offering up this information to any agent who feels like they would benefit from it, and I’m excited to hear what those conversations with those agents look like from Taylor.

Chris: But then, you know, here I am interrupting already, but you said something that’s very important. We are putting this out there from a pure heart. You know, everything that goes out is what I’ve learned from, you know, being a broker in Ohio, florida, for the last 20 years, and you know it took me 20 years to get it right and I’m a bit of a slow learner. So here we are, you know, but it’s not entirely, of course, you know, altruistic either. You know, we hope that the way we do business or the way that Bruce approaches the business resonates, you know, with the people who enjoy the information. So, without putting too fine a point on it, you know our goal is that, by staying in front and staying top of mind with these folks, that when it does come time for them to consider a new brokerage or make a change in their business, that you know they’ll consider us. So that’s what’s in it for us. But, yes, it is definitely from a pure place and I appreciate you saying that. Well, taylor, it worked for Taylor.

Laci: Right, she saw something in Roost and joined us. Taylor, what did you see and how did you just? You know, I know that’s not the bulk of what we’re going to talk about today, but I think it’s important. What did you see, taylor, and in Roost, that compelled you to look into it and then ultimately kind of join the team?

Tayler: Yeah, so after Chris and I’s you know first initial meeting, I went into it with an open mind, not really 100% sure what to expect, but what I really liked about Chris and his vision for a brokerage for real estate agents was a place where agents could really feel supported, and I think that’s one of the most important qualities that you could find in a brokerage, especially with my personal experience I’ve been a part of a few and what Roost gives its agents is that support.

Chris: Yeah, so it’s interesting, you know. So, taylor, when did you get your license at first?

Tayler: I was licensed in 2018.

Chris: Okay, so 2018, so that’s five years, and you know, obviously we had pandemic time in there. But what’s interesting and I you know I don’t want to put words in Taylor’s mouth, but you know, one of the one cohort, the one group of agents that we’ve always been successful with are for lack of a better word they’re the group of agents that we call the disillusioned, and these are folks who have had their license two, three, four, five years but have never quite gotten traction. And you know they’re in a place where you know they’re a little disappointed that real estate isn’t what they were promised and maybe it’s time to have a serious think about whether they made a good decision or not, if it’s time to cut their losses. But the beauty of the reason I love the people who are somewhat disillusioned is that Taylor is a perfect case in point. They’re not ready to give up, so they have this faith that they made a good decision In their heart. They know it was the right move, but they also know it has to be.

You know a better way and you know my primary goal for Roost is to make sure that Taylor and every other agent like her has everything they need to build their own personal book of business.

We want to be behind them, we want to be supportive, we want to be partners with them, we want to invest in them. But this is their business and we want to make sure that they’re successful, because we don’t succeed unless our agents succeed. And you know, quite frankly, you know, agents that come to us, brand new, are great. We have, you know, we have good success with new agents. But then what often happens is, you know, after two or three years of super success, they start to stand out in the market and suddenly they’re being recruited by every brokerage in town and sometimes, you know, we lose a couple of those people because the grass is always greener on the other side. So it’s, it is a target market for us, it’s an agent group that we really want to focus on as the people who have had their license for I’m just going to say broadly one to five years.

Laci: Yeah, that’s interesting. That has to be kind of what you some of the conversations you were having, taylor, with these other agents. So they’re, the conversations are valuable obviously to Roost, but I feel like they’re really valuable to the rest of the market, right, because we’re in a in an interesting time in real estate not something that maybe no one has ever been through before and, with COVID being right in our rear view, certainly it’s not the first interesting time that we’ve seen in real estate recently, but every one of these tumultuous times is a little bit different. So, hearing from actual agents in the market outside of Roost right, you do a great job communicating within Roost, but hearing from these actual agents who are outside of Roost on what’s going right, what’s going wrong, what they’re frustrated with, what they’re happy with, what their goals are, where they’re struggling and where they’re succeeding, has to be super valuable information. So, taylor, what were you hearing, what kind of questions were you asking and what kind of responses were you?

Tayler: getting On the agent side. It was really easy to connect with agents talking about how tough the market is. I mean, we’ve seen such a shift that everyone’s talking about. It’s the shift in the market and you really have to adapt and kind of move in different ways that you really weren’t having to move when the market was 100%, you know seller’s market, when you could list anything and it would sell, you know, the next day, you know. So really just kind of bonding in that way with agents and kind of really you know being able to say wow, like it is tough, and to talk to somebody who really understands how that is.

Chris: The beauty of it is Taylor’s starting to talk to people and we start to get into some deeper relationships with these folks. You know, making that name in the database a real person and vice versa. You know, I think we are going to learn a lot and we’re going to learn more about how Roost can help these folks. So what was your Taylor? What was your favorite conversation or what was the conversation that went best? Who was that with? And I know you ended up talking to a couple of people. One was a mortgage broker, I think, and one was a business coach. But what? Why don’t you pick a couple of your favorite conversations or pick a favorite one and tell us how that conversation went?

Tayler: Yeah, so I had a few really good conversations actually on the very first try, my very first connection with an agent out of Fort Myers. He was a restaurant owner, business owner for 30 years, and it was really cool to chat with him about how he was able to, just from being a small business owner, meet so many people throughout, you know, having the restaurant.

I mean you think about it, how many people are you meeting on a day to day basis? And he was really able to grow his real estate business in that way, which I thought was really cool. We talked about that for a while. Let’s see here Talk to a lot of people who are a few people, a few agents, who are currently studying for their broker license. It was cool to talk to people about you know their goals. They saw success as an individual agent and they, you know it was really cool to talk about how they were kind of moving on to something a little bit better, or not better, but a little bit bigger. I talked to a lot of people who were in the industry, but not actual agents. I talked to insurance agents, life coaches, and these people were reading you know, Chris’s Chris’s pieces of information to send to agents who they work with.

So that was very interesting to find out as well.

Laci: Pat on the back of the grid. Yeah, so that was cool.

Chris: So the first week, I mean, I think Taylor made I don’t remember what it was, I had to go back and look, but it was 40 some calls the first week. And you know, these cars, these calls aren’t exactly cold calls but they’re darn chilly, you know. So what we’re doing is we’re, you know, we’re calling people who have downloaded the books or opened the emails last week and it can interrupt me anytime, but it’s basically hey, this is Taylor, I work with Chris and we’re the ones sending you the information you know from the new real estate professional. You know, are you an agent now? So you know, not exactly cold. We know they’re interested in real estate, we know they’re interested in being an agent. But these are initial introduction calls, just trying to make a connection.

And I do think it’s cool because I think you had a mortgage broker and a coach and Dayton, and it is gratifying that you know we have these people out there that are sharing this information that we don’t even know about. So that was kind of gratifying. And you know, the whole concept of connect, practice, track and grow, promote and enhance, support and coach, I mean that does sort of. I think it does relate to more businesses and just real estate. So it’s cool to hear that you had some insurance agents and stuff. When people told you that they were having, did you hear anything specific about what kind of success they’re having out there right now or how their career had, what the tipping point was that they felt successful?

Tayler: So I’d say collectively. A lot of my conversations with agents really came back to working by referral. You know a lot of these people who I spoke with. They had a book of business by doing other things unrelated to real estate. That was so useful in the success that they’re seeing in real estate. I talked to a school teacher who has, you know, a list of people parents, coaches, other teachers that they work with in the school. So I’d say, collectively, networking and working by referral is such an important piece to real estate that not a lot of people really think about when they think of real estate agents.

Chris: You know that’s interesting and also somewhat selfishly validating. You know everything that I’ve done over the years. You know whether it’s the books, you know how to make it. You know eight success habits of the new real estate professional, how to make it in the new real estate business. Everything that we’ve done at Roost, everything I’ve done my entire career, is from the perspective of working by referral. You know, and we talk a lot in eight success habits.

That’s who we cater to, that’s who we want to attract, that’s how we do business, that’s who we want to support and quite frankly, you know every piece of marketing we’ve done is designed not to appeal to people who don’t see the world that way. So actually that’s kind of a giant win. I didn’t consider is that these people you’re talking to understand the value of building their own book of business and soliciting referrals? That’s very cool, whether it came from the restaurant business or teachers and so forth. So as a new agent with us, you’ve got your first weekend taking Brian Buffini’s 100 Days to Greatness class. How does that first week or two weeks of training about the value of the database and making connections? How can you relate any of that to what you’ve heard from this first batch of calls with yeah, absolutely.

Tayler: I think the foundation of Buffini, the 100 Days to Greatness, is all about your database, constantly adding people to your database. It’s so important and it’s very difficult to sit and try to think of everyone that you know, everyone that you meet, but it’s so helpful to have one place to go, to have everybody there. So important to constantly be in contact with those people, to think about everyone you know in life and just making those like catch up calls, calling your client that you worked with three or four years ago, which is calling them up and saying, hi, I was thinking of you, how are things going, and just letting the conversation kind of flow naturally. And then if you get a referral out of the conversation, great. But it’s almost better to make those people think, wow, she really just did wanna check in with me, she really does care. So doing the 100 Days to Greatness for the first week really hones in on how important that database is and how important again it is to be constantly reaching out and connecting with people.

Laci: And it’s cool I was gonna say, y’all are really putting the connect and connect practice, track and grow here.

But from a marketing perspective, I think that you know I love marketing real estate, but that’s not all I market.

I think the most successful people in any business are the people who work by referral, whether you’re a hairstylist or, you know, a restaurant manager or you know.

I think that’s really a true statement that applies across industry, across verticals, even in life. Right, like if you get a new medical diagnosis and you happen to have met somebody at your kid’s soccer game that’s a doctor with that specialty, you know, then how impactful is that to your life to be able to call somebody up and say or if you wanna cake for your daughter’s wedding shower and you met somebody, you know that you’re a real estate agent and you have a client who is, you know, makes wedding cakes, then how impactful is that to your life? So I think it’s just, you know, at the risk of sounding kind of touchy-feely, it’s a way of life that improves life and business as a result, and I think that’s what really, when I look at clients, I wanna work with in marketing. I want to work with the people who value those connections and who value that personal aspect of their business as much as they do the bottom line, because that’s a true statement across all industries, and you guys are really proving my point here, which I love.

Chris: Taylor, if you had taken 100 Days to Greatness, you know, in 2018, when you first got your license, do you think you would have had as good an understanding of it as you do today?

Tayler: Yeah, it’s kind of crazy to think if I would have gone in with this mindset back in 2018, how much of a difference that would have made for me. I did have a database, but I wasn’t regularly, you know, following up or writing, you know, handwritten notes to people. It wasn’t calling clients, just to check in. And I keep thinking, wow, if I had done that, how big could I have grown my business but I’m not thinking of it, as you know. Could I have showed a what? I’m excited to start implementing that now in my personal?

Chris: business. Well, the cool thing is, you know, we send out Rooster Amblings on behalf of you and all the agents every month from the agents and that’s great. It does keep one ore in the water, so to speak, and helps keep you top of mind for that few minutes when they’re walking from the garage, you know, to the trash can or from the mailbox to the trash can. But the only way that really works, the way you get the full benefit of it, is when you’re following up with those personal connections and that’s the thing that’s key, how I think we both kind of got clear this week as we work through what our process is gonna be to connect with you know agents. It’s almost like everything that you’re learning in Bafini, everything that I’ve learned from Bafini and fallen out of practice with you know. We want to use those exact same strategies and tactics on you know building up a database of agents that see the world the way that we do. And you know, just like you know we tell all of our agents that, just like, if you get 150 people in your database right, 150 people that you would recognize at the grocery store and be able to have a quick conversation with any agent, I don’t care where you are, that gets 150 people in their database and you know actively works by referral. You know they’ve got a hundred hundred and fifty two hundred thousand dollar a year business there, depending on where they are, and I think our goal has to be the same, that my guess is we’ll start to get traction once we let 150 people that you have a relationship with, or both of us have a relationship with that know about Roost, because I’ll tell you one of the cool things about you know recruiting new agents and going through that courtship process with new agents is you know you will have, I think, what you’re going to find and we need to have these conversations, you know, probably every few months with Lacey. But I think what you may find is you may make some friends with agents that will never come to work at Roost. But I guarantee you you will find agents that never come to work at Roost but will tell anybody they meet that they should go. Talk to Taylor and see what Roost is all about.

You know it’s an interesting thing that agents who may be successful don’t want to rock their business will never leave. Aren’t necessarily the same agents that you know have so much faith in their brokerage or their broker or the broker’s business plan that you know they think everybody will be successful. So you know it’s just like working by referral. You know the idea is we build relationships. Hopefully we earn referrals from these professionals out there. You know we have contacts, we have, you know, co-op partners and all that. But I think that the minute we take the approach that we’re trying to and you don’t do this, I know that, but we’re not trying to sell everybody that picks up the phone. But I really would like to be able to help or provide value to everybody that picks up the phone and if that turns into referral or a relationship down the road, then I’m the happiest guy on earth.

Laci: What a mindset of abundance that you’ll have in this, that you know everybody’s not for Roost and Roost isn’t for everybody, but providing the cheese without whiskers, as Dean Jackson would say all cheese, no whiskers. Just this really valuable information and this really valuable relationship and how that inevitably will lead to more success for everyone involved. There’s enough to go around. So I think that’s a really good point to make about the people you keep. The company you keep is who has a mindset of abundance.

Chris: Well, it’s interesting too, as we talk about connect, practice, track and grow.

You know, in terms of what Taylor’s doing right now, aside from her personal business, you know she’s making connections right. We’re trying to put some good stuff out into the world that people are going to be interested in, so it makes it an easier call to introduce ourselves. So that’s the first connection. And then you know the practices, like kind of what we worked through yesterday was what is our for lack of a better word what does our recruiting practice look like and what are the steps and where can we add value along the way and where can we show appreciation. And you know what was interesting is, you know the first week of the meeting is all about personal notes and you know following up. And you know one of the things that seems like a no-brainer and I’m sure Taylor would have gotten to it before me. But you know, every time she gets off the phone with a new agent like this, we’re going to send them, she’s going to send them a personal note that says thank you so much for taking the time right. It’s another chance to connect. It’s another chance to show that we practice what we preach, that they matter as a person and as a professional.

And then the third thing that’s just critical in this is tracking everything we find and you know when you’re working by referral, just like Brian Baffini teaches. You know you want to track the behaviors that generate productive, referral-based relationships. So you know, you want to have an idea in your mind that you know I’m going to make. My personal connection standard is going to be I’m going to make five calls every week to my database, I’m going to write five personal notes and I’m going to add at least three people to my database, no matter what every week and no matter what else happens in the week. If I do those things, I win the week.

Right, it’s not about did you get paid, it’s not about if you had a closing, because if you win the week, the money’s going to come. I guarantee it. And it’s the same sort of process that you know we’re going to take here. But the key is that, just like for buyers and sellers, you track those behaviors, you track those conversations, and I know Taylor’s really been getting into a groove about documenting everything that you hear in GoAgent, the CRM we’re using for this project, and just making sure that we know where each of these people are coming from, whether in their business or are they a happy face? Are they willing to engage? Are they somebody? Tracking is key because once we know who we have in the database and so forth and we push towards that magic 150, number tracking is everything. And it’s everything when you’re working by referral for sales, or it’s everything when you’re working by referral for property management or for trying to build out the agent group with us. And I started preaching again, so forgive me.

Laci: Well, practically speaking, for some of the agents who are listening and again we’re trying to drive, to point home about how connections, how these touchy-feely connections, translate into bottom line revenue. You’re making people feel heard and seen and that’s all very validating for them and you’re building these relationships. But it’s a conversation about whenever they are ready, whether that’s ready to make a referral, whether that’s ready to come join Roos, whether that’s ready to sell their home with that agent or whatever the case may be. It’s been a maximum of seven days since they’ve heard from you, chris, and that’s a maximum. So they might have gotten a personal note. Also, they might have gotten a pop-by for a holiday.

They might have got a birthday card, they might have gotten a birthday card, they might have gotten a phone call from Taylor. So, with somebody’s there giving information freely, truly purely, and you’re ready to make a move, then, practically talking about the bottom line, you’re there for them and it makes a lot of sense for them to reach out to you when that time does come. So it’s when we’re talking about how well, how does this actually? You say the money will come, that part will come. How does that actually work is a question I think a lot of folks might have. And that’s how? Is? Because, by being consistent with this, by doing the connection and then the practice part, you’re there whenever they’re ready to make whatever decision. It is to work with you.

Chris: Yeah, and Taylor, you told me, but I don’t think you feel like you’re selling anything at this point, correct?

Tayler: No, I would definitely describe these initial calls as more of a discovery call, really just reaching out to check in, to chat, to figure out how long have you been in real estate, how are you liking it, how about this crazy market we’re in? Do you have a relationship with your broker? What’s that like? What do you love about your current brokerage, things like that. So, not being salesy at all, I think that’s why I’ve gotten a lot of these agents to open up a bit and have these natural types of conversations.

Chris: Yeah, I think so too, and what we’re going to be doing is we’ve got a nice little package together that, Lacey, I sent you the package. Did you see the brochures?

Laci: I did. I got back into town yesterday and I felt so loved. I’m writing with my new Roost Real Estate Code Pen as we speak. I don’t know if anybody out there has ever been courted for a partnership or a position or a role. I have had the luxury of that happening to me at least once now. But that’s truly what it feels like. It was a very personalized package. It was all focused on me and what’s in this for me and not what I can do for you.

I would venture a guest Taylor and say you probably listen on these calls more than you talk because you’re asking questions. This is a discovery call for you, right? Sometimes a discovery call can even have I know that’s used a lot in the financial industry and maybe that has a negative connotation but you’re the one doing the discovering and you’re not asking them to discover you. You’re asking them about themselves and this package is very similar in that way. It’s all about what’s in it for me, the realtor, not for Roost, the company, and I feel very it’s like a date. It’s like you’re asking me on a date with a package in the mail.

Chris: So we should make a note about remote pot buys, right. So anytime you really get somebody who is engaged in the five star prospect, then we wanna send them a piece of swag, just like we would if we were doing a local pot buy, but so anyway. So if you made 40, some calls, you had 14 people who were receptive to the call and receptive to the idea of being a realtor and so forth. So the next step is we sent them all a package and I sent samples to Lacey we’re in Columbus, lacey’s in Hickory, north Carolina, but so she doesn’t see the stuff every day but it includes a brochure about the local market, couple of the nice sock copies of the books and a piece of swag and things like that. So after Taylor does make a connection, we’re sending something nice and substantive.

And again, we’re not expecting anybody to just suddenly change their license over to Roost, but we’re hoping that, especially since we’re unknown in so many of these markets we wanna break into. That it’ll give them a feel for what we’re all about and again, whenever they’re ready, they can reach out. So there’s a whole nother set of follow up calls that Taylor will be making to the people who get the package as we narrow the funnel from everybody who’s downloaded books to picking up the phone, to getting a package, to eventually getting a one-on-one coaching session with Chris all along the way, our goal is to give and learn everything that we can about that agent and how we could ultimately help them if they chose to hire us basically as their broker. Anything else that’s stuck in your mind about that first batch of calls, taylor, that you’d like to share?

Tayler: No, so I really just think overall it was very successful. I mean the first group of agents, 51 agents I called 14 of them were smiley faces, so I mean it’s a good chunk of people. Same for the owner side, 71 owners, and then I got to chat with 15. So overall very successful.

Laci: And you don’t see those kind of results from social media. You don’t see those kind of results from direct mail. You don’t see those kind of results from other means of marketing. Not to say that those aren’t valuable tools as part of your marketing arsenal, but I think those are huge numbers 14 out of 51 is a huge percentage of, and it makes it so much more valuable, I think, especially as a first touch. So great pat on the back for both of you and I’m super excited to see more.

Chris: I’m so grateful to have Taylor on the team. I can think this stuff through. I love the marketing part, I love the planning and so forth, but and I love talking about real estate but Taylor is a far better person to pick up the phone and have a heart to heart conversation with these folks than I ever would be. So hopefully between the two of us we’ll be able to do some good in the real estate world.

Tayler: Absolutely.

Chris: All right. Well, thank you both. I appreciate it. This has been fun and we’ll do it again soon.

Laci:
Thanks, Chris, thank you.