Create a value proposition in real estate is more important than ever before. As competition from a tight market, Big Tech encroachment, and traditional agent competitors, understanding how to create a value proposition in real estate is essential to your ability to survive and thrive in the real estate industry.
Chris and I go in-depth on the six pillars of that ought to be included when evaluating value propositions for brokerages. We also discuss what agents can do to stand out in a tight market.
We discuss a myriad of topics including what we can learn from Amazon and Facebook, reducing cost and complexity in the lives of our customers and the role that opportunity cost plays in all of this.
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Justin Stoddart
Welcome back to The think Bigger Real Estate Show. I’m your host, Justin Stoddard, very excited today even honored to have a friend on the show, someone who has been a mentor of mine for some time.
Justin Stoddart
Now, he’s only known that for a shorter period of time, but someone who I deeply admire both in business and in life and today we’re gonna be talking about value propositions, how to create one from someone who’s created one, both as a residential real estate agent, all the way up to now as the co founder and co CEO of a network of sales teams, Place as well as a large network of brokerages through the Keller Williams franchise model.
Justin Stoddart
He’s somebody who many of you know and respect and this is Chris Suarez. Chris, thanks for coming on the show today.
Chris Suarez
Oh, my pleasure. I appreciate appreciate having you having me and always, always enjoy our conversations, whether it’s in a public setting, or, or the ones that we have one-on-one. So appreciate what you do for our industry, my friend.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, no, I, I appreciate that. For any of you are that are looking for deeper learning. Before we jump in here, I just want to remind you that inside the Think Bigger Real Estate Group on Facebook, we take the topics we’re going to discuss today, and then we go deeper on it, to really help you engage with it. I find that I learn best when I am actually participating in it. So please feel free to join that group, if you’re interested in going deep.
Justin Stoddart
Chris, let’s get into the topic today. I know you’re somebody as I mentioned before, who started off as a residential real estate agent. And even to this day, you continue to do that work. Talk to us a little bit about how you’ve scaled to some of the kind of the highest possibilities within the real estate world, yet you continue to do the work? Is it because you love it? Or because you find more value and relevance for those who lead talk to us about kind of that that role as still a licensed active agent?
Chris Suarez
Yeah. I think that’s a really great question. And it’s funny, because I think a lot of people just envision that well, your gosh, you’re detached from the day to day, you’re running brokerage, or you have you have teams that you’re you’re coaching, but the reality is, is before this call, I was negotiating an offer on some land. And last night, right, negotiated a property that we have listed out in Corbet for some good friends and a mentor of mine. And so I’m in it right, not as much as I used to be, but I am.
Chris Suarez
Why I don’t think it has to do with being relevant because I truly believe that you don’t have to be selling real estate to be relevant in leading an organization or even coaching, right? Like, there are many people that are out of production, and are incredibly relevant. Do I love it? Yes, to this day, I do. And I choose to do those transactions actually. Not necessarily because I love selling real estate, but I but I truly love the customer.
Chris Suarez
For the for the majority of my time, my customer is a real estate agent, but I still have true customers that I I have legacy relationships with that that real estate was their path to wealth and I’m still not still a player in that path to wealth. So for that question, it’s because you know, I i’m i’m very clear of who my customer is, in each business vertical that that I’m involved in. And, and I still have legacy customers that I truly love helping on this path to building wealth through real estate.
Justin Stoddart
That’s fun to hear that right, you can have a skill set, you can develop new skill sets. And then once you develop these other verticals, as you described, it gives you the ability, the ability to go back and stay relevant and present in these other verticals. But now be selective, right to where you’re not necessarily serving, maybe everybody that would love to work with you. But key select people get that opportunity and for you, you get the opportunity to serve them as well as serve them at a high level. Now, that’s pretty cool.
Chris Suarez
The only thing I’d add just into that is that while I am in it, I think I am always thinking about the consumer, the customer and the business. And so there is some value for me to stay engaged because I see how did that experience work for my buyer? How did that experience work for my seller, and I’ve represented a buyer and a seller in the last week. having that experience work for me as a real estate agent plugging into the platform that I am offering and the value proposition that I’ve offered to the industry as well. So right you know, I you could say, well, you read your own books or you you you eat your own food or you drive your own car. For me that is part of caring about the product, and also a way for me to constantly reinvent, re evaluate and improve the value proposition that we have.
Chris Suarez
That in any business where we’re there to, to be part of it, it’s no different than, you know, they they said that when Sam Walton would go and fly into random cities, and this is this is decades after Walmart had arrived, and literally go into the stores and measure the aisles and check product and engage as a customer like to the point where they thought he was like, Who is this guy in our store? And then they realized who he was, but he cared that much about what made one store successful, or what prevented one store from being as successful as the next? And also what would keep customers coming back. So I do think having a bit of neurosis probably probably can help business owners.
Justin Stoddart
I’m sure there’s some story where Sam Walton got escorted out of a Walmart because he was acting a little too strange.
Chris Suarez
There is there is there’s 100.
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, I’d hate to be that employee,
Chris Suarez
I love what you said there, Chris, I think it’s interesting because I have an interesting perspective on the industry, because I’m not a licensed agent, people will share things with me about experiences that they have with the real estate agents, that they probably wouldn’t tell another real estate agent. And both from everything from the listing presentation to the execution to the negotiation to all of that. And I, I get really curious about that. And it’s fun to to be kind of a fly on the wall to some degree, you know, confident for the consumer.
Justin Stoddart
And it’s probably a similar as I know, it’s similar experience, but a similar outcome in the sense we just get really curious about what are the problems that consumers are facing today, and agents are facing right? And we’re kind of both in that space as well. Like what’s keeping them from having the best experience getting to their best outcome? And how do we help bridge that? How do we help make that better?
Justin Stoddart
I’d love I think that’s probably where, you know, for the topic of our conversation today, where value proposition starts, right? Is that like, how do you really get insider information to to get to find out? What are people struggling with? what’s not working? Would you agree with that? Or like how else do you define like, where value proposition starts, like creating one that actually serves?
Chris Suarez
Yeah, I mean, I do I think that one is understanding your consumer, and then to being willing to listen to all the problems of the consumer. So for some of your audience, their consumer is and always will be like day in and day out. It’s the buyer, or the consumer is a seller, for others in your audience, truly building real estate businesses, and they have agents that they are now working with and have partnered with to deliver the customer experience, then their concern consumer has switched or flipped, and their consumers the real estate agent. And in understanding what are the problems that the real estate agent faces and providing a value proposition?
Chris Suarez
You see, if you ask me, hey, do you love buyers and sellersm or do you love real estate agents are which one do you love more or enjoy more? I mean, the fact is, is I truly love the real estate agent more than the buyer or the seller, don’t get me wrong, I love consumer, like I love the buyer and seller. But but that’s largely because of the desire to have an impact on the industry. And I know that if I can work with an agent who can work with 20, or 30, or 50, or 100, buyers or sellers, I’m actually affecting generational wealth, right and and moving that mission forward. More than I can go out and connect with 100 buyers or sellers.
Chris Suarez
Our organization, our sales organization sold 6000 homes last year, right? So that’s 6000 families, the brokerage is closed, you know, over 8000 homes, there’s no way I would be able to do that. And yet I can impact a few 100 real estate agents that are out serving a lot of consumers.
Chris Suarez
So for me, I take a step back. And honestly, what keeps me up at night, or actually I sleep real well, but what what I think about during the day during my waking hours is truly what are the problems that real estate agents face? And how do we how do we create simple solutions to those complex problems? And therein lies sort of if I’m gonna open up a notebook to like any day and start sketching out like, how do I build a value proposition that’ll that’ll, when it’s understanding the complex problem and then simplifying a solution for it.
Justin Stoddart
It’s interesting, I did not, I’ve not had a chance yet to listen to make a partner call you did just yesterday, I got an email this morning. I was like, Oh, that sounds really interesting. Kind of what we can learn from the big kind of tech giants, right, Amazon, Facebook and others. One thing that I discovered in the writing of my book, the Upstream Model is that these big companies thrive off of finding ways that they can reduce complexity and reduce price. And why are you just saying is it for all of us, even if we’re not big tech companies, we all ought to be on the similar mission, which is how do we, how do we reduce complexity for clients, right?
Justin Stoddart
And cost I think we can look at through a different lens, because so many people hear that they’re like, Oh, no, no, no, we’re not like, like, I don’t want to reduce my fees. And it could be just the opportunity costs, right?
Justin Stoddart
There’s a bunch of other costs involved, where we can affect that a client just recently chose a different real estate agent, because the last one had them so involved in the staging and prep of the home, then a well paid professional in his day job, it just got very costly. Right. So I think, again, reducing costs, reducing complexity, goes back to kind of the heart of how do you create a value proposition that that people will choose? Right over others?
Chris Suarez
Yeah, I think I think actually, we sometimes use the word cost more than we should. And we, we as an industry, even with our customers, and clients need to use the word time. And convenience, it’s interesting at the NAR report comes out every year and and when you look at what a buyer wants, and what a seller wants, there’s a few things that are consistent on both sides of our transaction are both types of customers we engage with, but the one word that’s on both sides is convenience. sellers want convenience, right? Case in point, you just shared that buyers want convenience. It’s why technology seems to disrupt an industry. It’s not that technology is better than the broker. It’s just that the technology has created a more convenient value proposition for for the customer.
Chris Suarez
The only thing I’ll go back to is because you mentioned that you know, the the top five tech companies and what lessons can we learn that we believe you can learn incredible lessons about who they hire and talent. And at the end of the day, we’re all in the talent business.
Chris Suarez
But I would say one of my biggest takeaway is as I began to research and challenge my perspective of who Jeff Bezos was as a leader, and I’ll be the first person to say I’ve never I’ve in the past, not respected, perhaps how he’s run his company or built his company. I’m kind of the the champion for the little guy. Like I love shopping local. You know, when you look at where I buy my food, and where I buy my clothes, and where I like, where I consume things, I will always go and help the local business owner like I love I love the entrepreneur. And so because of that my perspective of Amazon has always been I like I don’t want Amazon boxes showing up to my house, right? Like, it’s a battle with the family.
Chris Suarez
And yet as I as I looked at who he was and why Amazon was created, actually Jeff Bezos has done incredible good for the entrepreneur, incredible good for job creation in our country, right, the number one like it’s incredible, the millions of jobs he’s created in our country and across the world.
Chris Suarez
But this is if I can show one thing that changed my perspective. And actually, I have it on my desktop because it’s so powerful. He said this, he said, I’m customers, so whoever, whoever they are, for me, I insert real estate agents. So so bear with me, I’m going to insert real estate agents, real estate agents are always unsatisfied basis as customers are always unsatisfied. This was a letter that he wrote to his shareholders in 2000, April 2018.
Chris Suarez
And he said this, he goes, they’re always discontent, they always want more. No matter how far you get out in front of your competitors, you’re still behind your customers, they, they’re always pulling you along. See, like, sometimes we think about the competitor, especially in our industry. It’s it blows me away, like how brands and brokerages and like they just go to battle. I mean, even even potentially my own right outside of my walls, like it’s like, that’s not even who we’re fighting. Like, we have to focus on our customer. For me, it’s a real estate agent. For the real estate agent. It’s a buyer and a seller. Like that’s where we focus and the customer will pull us along. Amazon became Amazon only because customers wanted things faster. They wanted things cheaper, they wanted more choice.
Chris Suarez
And Bezos says I never imagined a world where someone will say hey, I want less choice, hey, I want to pay more. And hey, can you ship that to me just a little bit slower? Like That won’t happen. So then what are the non negotiables for your customer? And as I build on my value proposition, Justin, I say well, what are the non negotiables for real estate agents like they they don’t want to do operations or they don’t want to spend a whole lot of time in operations. They don’t want to battle with marketing, they need easy marketing. Gosh, lead generation is hard for everybody. So there has to be a simple solution for lead generation. Once a lead is there, like some of us struggle with conversion. So there has to be models for conversion. As I grow talent is a bear and a headache. So how do I attract talent? COACH talent, right keep talent and retain talent. financials don’t ask the real estate agents. So how do I have models for profitability? Right coaching is is it is a challenge because there’s so many options out there. And then the last two is opportunity and leverage, like what’s my opportunity?
Chris Suarez
As a real estate agent, and whereas leverage, almost every one of those comes back to time. So I never have a cost conversation. It’s always what solutions does the brokerage? Or does my team or does my organization provide on operations and marketing and lead generation and conversion and financials and coaching and opportunity and leverage? Like, those are my simple solutions. So I have very few things to focus on.
Chris Suarez
And as long as I have simple solutions for that, if you write those things down, it doesn’t matter if you’re so low real estate agent thinking about how do I take on these challenges, or a team or a brokerage owner, that’s, that’s the value proposition we have to create.
Justin Stoddart
That’s really, I think, a great a great way for every agent out there that’s listening to this, again, with our audience be in real estate agents, is is my current broker and solving those problems that that Chris just described, right? The things that are a sticking point, whether it be the financials, whether it be the coaching, whether it be the lead gen, like, whatever that is, look around and say, am I in the best place to get that problem solved.
Justin Stoddart
Because if you ignore it, it’s not going to be of benefit to you long term, right, you can only brushed under the rug so far. And at some point, you’re leaving a much lesser life, quality life and an offering of a lesser quality of service to your customers. And I think there’s gonna come a point, I think we’re getting there, to where you have to be actually really good, your value proposition has to be improving, if you’re going to stay solvent in this business, right? Like the competition’s getting too thick, in my opinion, both for big tech as well as, you know, marketplace factors, you just have to get better, frankly. And if you’re trying to do it all yourself, I think you’re gonna burn yourself out, you’ll be inconsistent, because humans are inconsistent, it really behooves you to be asking the question like, who do I have helping me with these, it becomes a question more of who, right not just how I think that’s a powerful concept for all of us to get our heads around, like, Who should I be in business with? That helps me solve these big problems. The best, right?
Chris Suarez
Yeah, I was reading the other day. And it was talking about when, when jobs came in, it was back in 1997, when Apple had almost become irrelevant. And, you know, some people will say, Oh, my gosh, that the iMac or the the iPhone saved apple and in jobs is isn’t is just is an interesting leader as well, because he was kind of, I mean, there’s definitely some ego there and some some personality challenges, but one of the things I, I listened to, there was a an interview clip of him and they said, Well, what product was it that saved apple?
Chris Suarez
And he said, it wasn’t a product, it was people, right as I, and we’ve watched the movie or read the book, and he threw out this product and throughout that product and got it down to a narrow field. But he said honestly, like that, that is what the outside saw. But what the inside saw was me looking at who are the most talented developers or who were the most talented minds. And he said, so it wasn’t a what it was a who.
Chris Suarez
And I think that that’s where that’s where brokerage, or even teams, or real estate agents show up? It’s, I think people don’t ask themselves, who would I like to show up and work around every day? Who is going to be thinking about me every day? are they thinking about me as a real estate agent? are they thinking about me as a p&l on a profit margin, like, like the who, not even just in the day to day work, but that leadership team around you matters.
Chris Suarez
And and in that same interview, they talked to Ed Catmull, who was the co founder of Pixar, who obviously had worked with jobs, right during his time there at Wright very closely. And he said that it was about the who, instead of the product as well.
Chris Suarez
He said, oftentimes, people showed up into the studio and said, Hey, what are the best stories we have? Like? What are the greatest stories that we can bet on? And he said, Well, gosh, that’s the wrong question. He said, Who are the greatest people to bet on because you can bring great people a terrible story, and they’ll make a great movie. But But if you have a great story and put in the hands with the wrong people, it’ll be a terrible movie. So it doesn’t matter what industry we’re in, it does come down to who and the environment that those who’s created.
Chris Suarez
And I think our industry probably doesn’t put enough value on that because we we still think transactionally instead of holistically what the industry should be providing agents, you know, as a career path or an opportunity path as well as our clients.
Justin Stoddart
I think, I mean, one takeaway for me, for everybody listening to this today, in addition to the one I shared, I just really evaluating. What does it take to be great consistently over a long period of time? Who are the like, what are the roles? I mean, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, Chris, on how you kind of walk agents through that kind of decision process of how they reinforce that brand, right?
Justin Stoddart
Obviously, you guys have some powerful networks to which people can plug into a lot of times, like it’s in a blind spot. They don’t even agents don’t even know that they don’t have something in place and it’s kind of limped along, or they’ve been so good in one other area that it’s just compensated for the fact these other areas are, are not as strong and potentially kind of a hole in the, you know, in the giant ship, what advice you have for people, again, that are trying to evaluate, like, what are my potential blind spots? And like, what are the roles I should be filling?
Chris Suarez
Yeah, I think my answer to that is we have to understand what we’re good at and what we’re not good at. And that’s a symbol for like, Okay, well, you know, recruit to your gaps or higher to your gaps, but if we only do that, then we’re we’re always going to be looking for support as a as opposed to looking for people that are better than us. Like, you know, I keep on coming back, because you you reminded me of my conversation yesterday, but when when Mark Zuckerberg hire Sheryl Sandberg, like he didn’t he hired his equal or better like, I mean, fact, like she is she is as brilliant, more brilliant than he is in running a business, she took an unprofitable business model and turned it profitable, largely based on operations, but also based on sales. Like he was a great visionary. She has a ridiculous executer and and I believe that Facebook could have been would have been, just like any other tech company or social platform, if it wasn’t for someone like Sheryl.
Chris Suarez
So when you look around, and you’re looking at your organization, honestly, if you’re the smartest person or or you’re you’re an organization built on an iconic human being, there’s a reason why they became iconic. And I would say it’s largely because, like there wasn’t anyone else for people to get challenged by or to think differently by the addition to that is oftentimes we look at a brokerage, or we look at a team and we show up because we say well, you’re you’re gonna help me make money. You’re gonna like I’m here because I want to make more money. And we actually show up like to an interview like, oh, like, well, by joining your team, I’ll make more money, great. I’m in like, and I and I say no, no, you won’t like my my job as a brokerage, or even as a team or a platform isn’t to, to make you make more money. It is to change how you think, and teach you how to think like, I change how you think and teach you how to think about your business, but also about wealth building. And by doing that, you’re your own opportunity, like you will make plenty of money, if you want to change how you think about money and wealth, and think about business.
Chris Suarez
So I think that that’s probably as much the key to attracting the right kind of people as well, because I have, I have had some brilliant, brilliant real estate agents, but they were not willing to change how they think about the business or think about people and talent and leverage, or even even their financials. And they’ll always hit ceilings, and then they’ll look for opportunity elsewhere.
Justin Stoddart
I think it’s it takes a great leader. And I would say you are one of those who’s able to look around and say, I need people, as you mentioned that are can stretch me. In fact, I think leaders become great only when they start to do that. Because if you just get people saying yes, right all the time and not saying no, I think we should look at it differently. I think you as a leader, your whole your growth is stunted.
Justin Stoddart
Part of the reason for, the the genesis of this show, is because I wanted to build an you know, a different network allowed me to be in conversations like this. And so I’m able to go out and handpick like who I want to continue to learn from and while I’m always hopeful that the audience gets a lot from this, but if nothing less, it’s it’s a powerful networking strategy for me, but more personal growth strategy for me.
Justin Stoddart
And I think all of us have to take a look at who am I spending time with? And are those people growing me, regardless of where they’re at on an organizational chart? Like is everybody who with whom I’m spending time with whether they be customers, or anything else, are they growing me? Because if they’re not, I think there’s an opportunity cost there. That’s you know, we have a cost we are incurring, whether we know it or not.
Chris Suarez
What’s interesting is this Friday, every Friday I have an organizational wide hour long coaching consulting call right it’s it’s more of a conversation. It’s it’s built on conversations that I have throughout the week and where I believe that I can help the organization and and this Friday. I’ve written my segment on growth like a growth plan. Like what is the definition of growth and what is the definition of a plan? Because oftentimes, like, Oh, yeah, I have a growth plan.
Chris Suarez
And and if we if we unpackage the definition of growth plan, we don’t like we, we we have some classes we’re going to take or, or we have something written down, because we started it in December or January, but there is zero plan around growth, because we don’t, we haven’t taken a step back and said, Hey, where in my business, or where in my life, do I need growth? Like it was the it was the formation of our podcast Xperience Growth, around like, wealth is one thing, business is one thing, but I believe that my, my obligation to our people is to, to help them grow in six key pillars.
Chris Suarez
And this is awkward, like when you think Well, what’s your value proposition? You know, I will only attract people that I believe, find value in the six pillars or want to grow in those six pillars, which then puts the responsibility of having some curriculum, or plan in place to help them grow in those six pillars. So although a podcast is very public facing, I’ll assure you, it wasn’t for the public, like, it was truly for my people. And it was a leveraged opportunity truly, for us to attract to our value proposition as well.
Chris Suarez
Those six pillars, it is career, right, because that’s a critical piece of us feeling fulfilled, and, and growing and living experientially, it’s so it’s our career, it’s our relationships, it’s health, it’s personal growth, which, which is different, because it’s personal, personal growth, spirituality and wealth, if we aren’t building those six pillars, or we don’t have a plan to know which one of these pillars needs to meet a little cement or which one of these pillars hasn’t begun to be built yet, then I believe that our our live will sort of be out of out of balance or out of kilter, if you will. So that’s what that that’s what those conversations are built around, I’ve gone out and had conversations with people that are just building a career pillar or relationship pillar, a health pillar, a personal growth pillar, spiritual pillar, or a wealth pillar. And and and that’s part of our growth plan.
Chris Suarez
And actually part of our value proposition, which doesn’t sound like operations, or lead generation or marketing or but but actually, it’s all of those things.
Justin Stoddart
I think, when people really start to take a look at what’s possible, when you start to upgrade to upgrade relationships, right? You still have those conversations that aren’t even on the radar of most real estate agents, right? It’s like, where do I go to get more leads? Right? I have these conversations of like, should I go to this brokerage, I feel like that they can have this surplus of leads. And it’s like, let’s, let’s step back and look at a more holistic view here of like, ultimately, what are you trying to accomplish? And, and are those people going to help you to grow?
Justin Stoddart
Ultimately, because leads can come and go, and sometimes they’re terrible, and sometimes they’re good, but boy, that’s, that’s a tough place. A tough reason as to why you want to hang your hat somewhere, you know, kind of very short sighted and I don’t always necessarily say that. But I do think that there’s a ton of value in in always asking the question of where can I go to grow in all areas of life, because like you said, I do think that there’s some, some sabotage that ends up happening, whether it’s self sabotage or not, when you aren’t growing, and all those areas, right, whether it be health, whether it be relationships, it always comes back to affect the business, which is ultimately kind of how we show up in people’s lives. That was those six kind of pillars, Chris, so it sounds like you’ve kind of implemented those into the value propositions of your different offerings, right?
Justin Stoddart
Whether it be Place, whether it be your franchises within Keller Williams, you bring all six of those into that conversation? Or how does that show up for you? Like, what does that look like? For people that are kind of entertaining partnering at some level?
Chris Suarez
Yeah, I think that one, yes, tactically, we have specific curriculum around every single one of those pillars and my engagement every single week on Friday allows me to focus on one or more of those pillars as well. Like, we can’t say we care about it unless we have regular conversations around it. And we can’t say we care about it unless we have a plan or or, or, or a path down to that pillar. So the reason why I think of it in terms of a path is I always say that the definition of leadership is bringing people down a path to their preferred future.
Chris Suarez
So for you, Justin, you might like we sit down, we have a conversation and you say, you know what, Chris? Like my spirituality pillars really, really strong. Like, I feel really, really healthy. My relationships are exactly where they want to be, like the one part that I really need to grow in 2020. What year are we in 2021? Let’s not go back. 2021 is is you know, my career path is fuzzy like I don’t have that three to five year plan. And I’m looking at where what I’ve done for wealth building and my family and I just don’t have a clear path to to reach retirement or we’re building passive wealth. Well, great.
Chris Suarez
So my job if I earned the right to be in business with you, then I say, Well, I think those are critical paths, Justin. So let’s take you down a path to building a career and wealth. And so we’re going to build curriculum around those two, you’re not going to nail all six at one time. So we really focus, that’s a personal relationship with each of our people. But we really focus on what their pillar that they’re working on needs to be for some this year is about health. Right? And so for them, it is their their health conversations. And that could be physical health, it could be mental health, like we we understand who our people are, and then and then say, do we have a path for them?
Chris Suarez
Because if we don’t, then I don’t, I don’t really think that I should be in business with everybody. Then it’s just a financial thing, right? Like, oh, I want to be in business with everybody. Hmm, no, you just want money from everybody. Even if your path isn’t there. I that’s why I don’t feel like I compete with other brokerages even because I believe that they they clearly offer a path to someone’s preferred future. That is that agents preferred future as long as that brokerage is executing and helping you down that path, because you’re clear about it, and they are awesome. So be it. That’s a cool relationship. And that’s why that’s why it’s good that there’s offerings in the marketplace. But the day that I don’t know what my my people’s preferred path is, then it adds a day that well you just run a business and you don’t care about experiential living, but that’s the that’s my, my deep mission for the organization is that real estate agents, business owners should live life experientially, day by day, week, by week, month by month, and not have that those someday goals and the bucket list and in retirement and, and, and when I get to like that stuff just drives me crazy, because we miss so much of real life in the process. So because of that it’s why Xperience Growth podcast was created.
Chris Suarez
And honestly, why our why our value proposition is so much based on did like if I sat down with my operations team, or you sat down with the operations team, and you said, Hey, Chris, hey, hey, Heather, or Hey, Dawn, or Hey, like, what are some of the questions that Chris like that, that Chris just asks every day? Like? What you know, what are the criticisms? Like the one of the first ones they be like, what did you do to save someone time today? What did you just save our agents time today, and that’s because I value time, so much. And time saved operationally is time that they can either go and sell real estate or make more money if they’re working on their wealth or, or career pillar, or or meditate or build spirituality, because people forget that and don’t, they don’t invest time there, or, or they get a midday run or an evening workout or like so. So time is sort of that that critical, critical piece that I can actually help people with, to make sure they’re on the path to their preferred future have one of those six pillars.
Justin Stoddart
It’s almost the the revenue, if you will, to building an experience of life is time, right? I mean, that’s kind of the key metric that that can offer that and beyond, as well as other things, the education in the insightfulness around actually being in pursuit of that one component. And I agree, I think a lot of people, especially in an industry that requires so much of people as real estate, you oftentimes people don’t, don’t create the space. Right. And I think that’s one of the key value propositions that you guys bring.
Justin Stoddart
Chris, I want to talk quickly, and we don’t have a ton of time. But I want to hear kind of your thoughts around, obviously, very tight market right now. There’s a lot of competing offers, right? When you’re on the buy side right now, you just know, you’re going up against some pretty some pretty tough competition, taking these principles and applying them to a very tactical day to day situation or a current market. How would you take this concept of creating a value proposition to stand out whether you’re now competing for a listing? Or whether you’re now competing for a house, right?
Justin Stoddart
How do those principles apply? What would you say would be some critical factors that people could could take and apply today when it comes to their day to day work?
Chris Suarez
Well, I think I think what happens oftentimes in markets that we’re in, especially in the buy side, I think it’s easy to win with the seller right now. And actually, we need to, we need to get clear about what our value is for those sellers. Because some will feel that they have all the value that they need. All they have is a house for sale, and that’s value enough.
Chris Suarez
But I think specifically where we’re industry is struggling is on the buy side right on representing buyers. And that’s because when you look at emotional and cognitive bias, what happens psychologically is pain has has more of an effect on our memory than joy does, right? That’s just clinical. It’s scientific.
Chris Suarez
The fact is, is every buyer has one moment of joy. It’s the one offer they get accepted. But what they remember more, are all the offers that get rejected. Okay? Well then think about you as a real estate agent. As a real estate agent, the reason why people are tapping out or the reason why people are struggling, or the reason why people are discouraged, and the reason why people question Can I keep doing this, or the reason why we need to have more conversations and more consultation, more coaching with our agents, if we’re in brokerage or running a team, is because emotionally we need to accept the fact that we are getting more rejection than joy in the business in the actual right, I won this offer. And honestly, we win the offer. And we forget that we won one because we have five families that are that are upset, or we have five families that lost.
Chris Suarez
That’s just that’s just understanding what emotional biases. And I actually think understanding how our brain works and how understanding our emotional countenance works is important in the process. So what that means is anything I can do as a leader to sit down and actually look at, well, how can we structure offers?
Chris Suarez
How can we set some expectations with the buyer so that they emotional highs and lows don’t happen? How can we work? The fact is, is when there’s 27 offers on the table, Justin, I’m not going to tell you that my offers get accepted every single time they don’t. Because it’s based on financing. It’s based on terms and it’s based on risk and risk aversion of the buyer like want the one tactical thing I’ll say is we sometimes get caught and how things have always been done, and are not willing to change how we think about things. I look at buying a home and winning that offer. As we we used to come to the table and try to eliminate all possible risks for our buyer, right. And so we have this preconceived notion about what earnest money is, and what happens to it. And we have this preconceived notion about what inspections are for and what happens afterwards, we have this preconceived notion about you know what an appraisal is, and and what happens.
Chris Suarez
And, and we need to sort of clear that, and we need to even the playing field and realize that if I was a buyer right now, and owning a home truly was important, and it was a big part of my financial well being or my path to wealth building, I take some risk, like I see people playing the stock market taking more risks than they are in writing offers on homes.
Chris Suarez
And I’m not, I’m not giving this advice to you for your buyers. But I think we’re so scared to see our buyer lose $5,000 or $10,000 of cash and an earnest money situation that we won’t allow it to go non refundable after right? Or we won’t, we won’t allow the deal to be subject to not you know, not not subject to an inspection. Listen, my buyer can write an offer put down 5000 or $10,000 and have an inspection all day all day long. And yes, I can write and not subject to an inspection right or not contingent on the inspection knowing that if something is horrifically wrong with this home, you have a choice to make at that moment, the house is yours if you want it or you lose $10,000 to walk away and some people like Chris, you’re crazy, lose $10,000 or continue renting. Like I think that money is made back up very, very quickly. And there are very few things that are wrong with the house that that we’re actually just playing the risk game wrong or protection game wrong. And and I think that that’s because we’re always in Oregon, see being exposed to different cities where earnest money the minute you write is all of a sudden goes hard after fully signed around acceptance or in New York where there’s always lost earnest money if you if you pull out in specs, you’re not like there’s other states that play this differently.
Chris Suarez
But because we always played it this way. We kind of we we actually advise our clients in properly instead of having this risk tolerance and how much money are we willing to lose? for the for the right to win? What is amazing tackle advice that everybody ought to be reevaluating these these industry norms that are they are they play still like they still are they still relevant?
Justin Stoddart
And I think going back? I mean, what what shows up for me, again, is this concept of opportunity cost, right? So yes, they’re risking something. But what are they risking by not doing something? And I think it was shared with me again, just recently, that whatever financial target you have, let’s say it’s $500,000 a year, right? Let’s just say that that’s a goal that an agent has. big goal, right? Great goal. Let’s say that they last year made $100,000 a year how much did it and you take a look at people are up you know always evaluating, whether it be coaching, whether it be brokerage costs, and the real question is How much did it cost me last year to not meet, to not reach to not know how to reach my goal not know how to produce it that really high level, it cost me $400,000.
Justin Stoddart
So all of a sudden when you look at it through that it’s like, Okay, if I went over here, Could these people the who’s teach me how to do that? Well, yes, they’ve got a track record of doing that. And Okay, great, then every year that I’m not with the right person that I the right group, it’s costing me $400,000 a year, all of a sudden, like, brokerage costs and fees, and everything else starts to become pretty quiet, right? Pretty irrelevant. And I think for buyers having a similar conversation of how much does it cost you every month to not have a house looking at current appreciation rates, right? rent increases, etc, etc, you really start to open people up to a new awareness of Wow, it really does make sense to maybe risk a little bit more, you know.
Chris Suarez
I think I think, Justin, if I could go there, that that goes back to the earlier conversation of in business, we should partner with people that are going to teach us or coach us on how to think. And I had a conversation with an agent that I love, actually, I’ve always respected. And in that agent came to me and said, well, gosh, you know, I think I’m going to make a decision around brokerage. Because I’ll be in the business for five more years, right? I’m really slowing down. And this brokerage is $10,000 a year cheaper. So over five years, that’s going to be $50,000. And I get to put that in a retirement account. And that $50,000 could be 70, after five years. And so it’s really a 50 or $70,000 decision.
Chris Suarez
And I looked at that, and I just said, Okay, can we have a conversation of how to think about wealth, building and money, because ultimately, you are taking money or wealth building advice from someone that that believes that you are worth a savings of $50,000 in five years, and that scares me. Because I ultimately believe that if you have five years left in this business, that truly you could be putting away hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year without working harder or spending more time. But see if my value proposition is saving money? I would I would and i’m not i’m not saying that we shouldn’t all be saving money.
Chris Suarez
But if my value proposition is saving money, I’ve just told you what my value proposition is. It’s coming from a place of scarcity of the unknown, and a lack of confidence in the fact that you are you are valuable in the industry. And and actually, we just don’t know if you’re going to be able to generate revenue, like I would I would like to look at your talent and say, how do we put away $125,000. So your $50,000 at year five? is actually the worst wealth building advice you could have ever accepted.
Chris Suarez
And then I just challenged Where did you take that advice from? And and can they show you how they’ve built out over the last five years, 10 years, 15 years, or they’re 30 years in the business? 30 years in the business doesn’t mean you know how to build wealth in this business. It just means you’ve worked hard, and you’re, you’re tenacious and you have grit because you’ve lasted 30 years, I would give anyone a war and it worked.
Chris Suarez
But it doesn’t mean we have earned the right to teach people how to build wealth in this industry. And that’s my challenge. Like we have to look at where we’re getting specific advice for I’m not Am I the best person to go to for advice on all six of those pillars? I’d be an idiot if I told you that I was. But my goal is to provide mentors for wealth building with mentors and health mentors for spirituality, mentors for personal growth mentors for fill in the blank, not not try to convince you to work with me because I’m going to save you some money, or I’m going to give you the most leads or like I have a really cool fancy CRM or all of those may be true, but that isn’t that isn’t my attraction model.
Chris Suarez
So I would say like, Hey, where are you going? What was your attraction model? Should you question that?
Justin Stoddart
Yeah, that’s powerful, really is raising people to a higher level thinking. I want to ask one more question. Chris. Are you okay? on time? We’re Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about thinking bigger, right. That’s the essence of this show. My personal mission and passion are to wake people up to help them to recognize that there’s untapped potential inside of them and then to inspire and help them to live in pursuit of that kind of a forward lean towards that potential with Can I like I could I could do and be and experience more.
Justin Stoddart
I’d love to hear from you what you do to continue to stretch your possibilities to continue to be a big thinker yourself, which is so here for the past few years. It’s been so fun to see just some some enormous steps you’ve taken. Talk to us kind of what that looks like from you your personal growth plan. You’re thinking bigger plan.
Chris Suarez
Yeah. One of the one of the things I heard recently that is really stuck with me is:
Chris Suarez
“if you’re not more interesting every day, then people will lose interest.”
Chris Suarez
And so I asked myself, am “I am I more interesting today than I was yesterday?” All that means is, am I saying the same things that I’ve always said the same way that I’ve always said that, like, am I learning or not, if I’m not learning, then then people will come to the organization, get what they need, and then they will move on. And they should, because because and that’s not a bad thing.
Chris Suarez
That means I had an impact on them for a period of time. But if I want to build a legacy company with legacy relationships, that means I need to be more interesting tomorrow than I was today. Which means I need to learn something today that I didn’t know tomorrow. And I need to be able to conceptualize that think about it and deliver that in a way that I believe will will move people down a path and in my world in one of those six pillars.
Chris Suarez
Now I think what that can be overwhelming, and that can be exhausting. And and it’s only overwhelming and exhausting. If we believe that we always need to be the hero. So when you say gosh, how do you think about that? And what does that growth pant plan look like for you? Joseph Campbell’s work.
Chris Suarez
I think, you know, one of his one of his books was the hero with 1000 faces. He talks a lot about how everybody does want to be a hero, right? Everybody wants to have impact. They want purpose they want meaning they want to feel like, you know, Brendon Burchard says, did you live to do love? Did you matter? Like we want to live experientially, we want to have great relationships and feel loved and extend and deliver love. And we want to know that at the end, we actually mattered. Joseph Campbell says, Be careful that you don’t want to be the hero in everybody else’s life as well. So his the way he described it, in a paper that he wrote was this.
Chris Suarez
Sometimes we have our world sort of mapped out, like we have our value proposition mapped out, we have our plan for everybody mapped out and we said, okay, well, I need this person in this person, this person in this person, we go in, like a director of this movie, it’s our movie. And we we cast people into these roles. I’m the hero and I need I need a Robin, I don’t actually watch movies. So I’m terrible with this. But I need all the supporting cast, like you pick your favorite movie and you you cast everybody, and you’re the hero. And he said, and that’s the wrong way to do it. Because everybody wants to be a hero in the movie playing in their mind and their world. And so ultimately, he said, You don’t want to be Luke Skywalker. Walker, you want to be Yoda.
Chris Suarez
Yoda was the guide. And Yoda was okay with everybody being heroes, the hero that they wanted to be in. And that’s how I look at myself as a leader, or wanting or intending to be a leader is understanding Hey, what makes you a hero? like Justin, if I was going to sit down? How do you become a hero in your world, can I guide you to to becoming the hero at the end of the movie, at the end of your movie, it’s not my movie, I’m just the guy.
Chris Suarez
And so I think that that one takes a lot of pressure off. But it also puts some pressure on that I need to understand where people want to go and then make sure that I’m learning or, or providing opportunity, a path to opportunity for them to go down and plug into
Justin Stoddart
I think there’s a tons of layers of that. Right. And I think, you know, you and I both being men who have kind of a strong spiritual background, I think there’s probably some, some lessons in there even about our Creator, right, that there’s much of the growth plan comes about helping us succeed at a high level. And I think that there’s for all of us that really want to live an experiential fulfilled lives, it becomes less about our own hero story and more about how we can really contribute in the lives of other people. As you mentioned, I think there’s there’s way deeper success and significance involve that, as well as just fulfillment, right? Just just feeling like your life matters.
Justin Stoddart
I love that that analogy I’ve heard kind of Donald Miller say it’s similarly right to be the Yoda and not the Skywalker. Yeah. skeptic. Yep. Thank you for refreshing that, and all of our minds and sharing with us kind of your gameplan for having, you know, for being a big thinker. So, Chris, I appreciate our friendship or the you know, appreciate your contribution today.
Justin Stoddart
To everybody listening here today. Please give us some love. Whether you’re watching this live or after the fact please let us know in the comments. This has been helpful. If you’re listening to it on the podcast, please give us a review. That will again help extend my mission of helping people to think bigger.
Justin Stoddart
And my gratitude again to you Chris, and my final charts to everybody here with these three simple words and they are Go Think Bigger.
Justin Stoddart
Thank you, Chris again for your time.
Chris Suarez
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks, buddy.