In 2015, Nick Krautter released his game-changing book, The Golden Handoff, which finally gave real estate agents a simple model for selling their relationship-based business to another agent. Additionally, it gave ambitious agents a way to grow a relationship business at 10x the speed it would typically take them.
Fast-forward to today and Nick is releasing the Second Edition. With everything happening in the real estate industry, this model and concept are more red-hot and relevant than ever. Please tune in to hear the updates Nick has learned over the past nine years as he has applied the model and taught it to small and large audiences nationwide.
You can find all of the resources here: https://goldenhandoff.com
Summary:
Are you ready?
Elevating both your business AND your personal life begins with being in the right community of leaders who want to help you and have the ability to help you.
Schedule a consultation with Stephanie Peck to see if you are in alignment with the Think Bigger Real Estate Group.
**Stephanie prioritized her faith, family, fitness and finances while running a relationship-based real estate team that sold 93 homes in 2022 and 87 in 2023.
Full Transcript
Justin Stoddart 0:07
Nine years ago, Nick Krautter released the book, The Golden handoff. It changed the way real estate agents think about their business, both the departing of their business as well as the growing of their business in a very fast and organic, as well as a very referral based way. That book changed everything for so many agents. Nick’s been speaking about this all over the country. Now he’s getting ready to release his second edition. We have the good fortune today to invite him onto the show to talk about what has changed in the past nine years, what he’s learned, and what he’s going to be able to guide us to now do both as an agent who may want to retire, as well as an agent who simply wants to adopt the existing database of an agent. This episode is going to change the way you think about growing your business as well as potentially one day actually retiring. All right. Welcome back to the Think bigger real estate podcast where big thinking high achieving real estate agents come to build successful businesses and significant lives. Alright, welcome back, everybody. Excited to be here. I know Stephanie, my lovely co host this as well, Stephanie. Hello, hello,
Stephanie Peck 1:14
I’m super excited for today is something that I’ve attempted and had somewhat success in. And I’m excited to learn more about it.
Justin Stoddart 1:22
And I’m super excited to welcome Nick Crowder, very good friend of mine. For the past nine years, he and I met because he’d authored this book, I took special interest in helping them get it out to the world. And now here I am, again, I must be really passionate about this topic, Nick. So thanks for coming on the show today, we’re excited to really dig into what’s changed in the past nine years. Awesome.
Nick Krautter 1:41
Thank you guys so much for having me. I’m really excited to share this with all of these folks here. Good.
Justin Stoddart 1:45
Awesome. Well, let’s let’s get into it for maybe those will just do a brief little synopsis for those that are hearing about the golden handout for the first time. I’ll put it this way. Have you ever been to a real estate agents retirement party? crickets, crickets? Probably nobody, right? Those don’t really exist? And what what the big problem has been is and nobody’s known how to do that. Right? Nick, you identified how to do this, because you actually began adopting the databases of other professionals who are leaving the real estate industry for one reason or another, talk us through maybe just kind of the genesis of how this book came about.
Nick Krautter 2:18
Yeah, it was, it was a little bit of just showing up and getting lucky, you know, I went to work every day, in an office with, you know, some great agents. And this was in 2010. So we’re, you know, I started in Oh, six, and in 2010, you know, we’re in the teeth of a pretty bad recession. And what happened was, you know, there’s a lot of turnover and real estate. But in 2010, we started to lose a lot of very good realtors. I think, you know, similar for different reasons than what we’re seeing now. And that created this huge opportunity for me as a younger broker who wanted to grow, and wanted to put in the work, to really just slingshot ahead. And to grow my business. I think I shared it earlier, Justin, you know, I spent 14 hours a day, six days a week to get 200 clients over four years, my first four years from 2006 to 2010. And then by adopting clients from other agents who are retiring or moving or changing careers, I was able to add 2000, more. So 10x my business and these aren’t leads, I’m not buying leads, these are people that are being referred to me in mass by agents who are transitioning to a different role. And the first one I worked with was a woman named Renee, and she literally had the office next to me, she got out of real estate to get a job in nonprofit fundraising, for family reasons, she had had her second child and wanted to be home more. And so we started working together. And, you know, every month, we would close one or two deals, and she was getting referral fees. And, you know, I put some, you know, reality to this, like I found out later, much later that her husband had lost his job during the recession. And the only reason they were able to stay in their home and keep their kids in that school district they were in was because the referral fees that I was able to send her were paying the mortgage on that house that they lived in for years. And that made it so much more impactful for me to realize how, you know, meaningful that can be just, you know, one or two deals a month, could you know, those referral fees add up a lot?
Justin Stoddart 4:26
What a powerful concept, right. I hope everybody is awake now, who’s listening to this? Think about what part of the world you’re in? Is that, Nick, you’ve mentioned that you adopted 2000 clients in a fraction of the time that it took you to build, you know, to what 200 client is that you said, like, yes, drastically different experience. And I know a question that you’d asked Stephanie, which maybe you want to expound upon, which is what was the conversion rate between the 2000 versus the 200? And I thought Nick’s answer was pretty startling. You want to kind of dig into that a little bit?
Nick Krautter 4:56
Yeah. So I was lucky with Rene because she had stayed very engage with her clients, like right up until the day she changed careers. And, and so they were still they were still very warm. And so I would say my conversion rate with those clients was the same as it was with my own. And that’s really the secret, right. And this works both ways. You’re not buying leads, you are, you’re getting a referral from one agent for their whole client list. So Renee referred me 300 clients. And so then the next step is that I have to then introduce myself to all these new people as their as their new realtor. And it sounds weird in real estate. But the thing is, like, your dentist does this and has been doing it forever, your insurance agents do this. There’s so many other industries where succession planning and having a path to selling your business and your client list is is part of the industry. And for some reason, in real estate, it just hasn’t been the case. And when I started doing this, I figured I assumed there was other people doing this. And I reached out to try to learn from other people, and found out that there was no model to follow. And so we, I bought my second business. And then my third, and each one was a little different. You know, Stephanie, we were talking before the show about the Business that you’ve taken over. And you know, the the first couple that I did, we’re all very different. They weren’t just retiring, they weren’t just older, they weren’t just in the business a long time there was there’s different stories to each of those relationships. But the same, the important piece is that you can grow exponentially by referral, but you can’t do it one referral at a time for one client at a time, right. And this is a way to kind of hack that system where you can still have a referral and have that endorsement, but have it for a ton of people. And so for me, you know, I had been in the business for years, Renee had been the business, I think, eight or nine. And so the day after I bought that business from her, and we started helping those clients. It’s like I had been in business for 14 years. That’s how powerful this is. Because I knew how hard it was to get to 200 clients because I’ve just done it.
Justin Stoddart 7:09
Stephanie, you’ve you’ve successfully adopted an agent who was moving into a facet of real estate that they expect, why don’t you tell the story, and I’d love to hear your observations. And I’m sure you’ve got all kinds of questions for Nick, around this topic, so so go ahead.
Stephanie Peck 7:24
Yeah, actually, uh, I’ll go back. Because there’s, there’s two limiting beliefs that come to mind here that I think we’ve all experienced. And when I was hearing your story, Nick, about how no one had done this before, I recognized probably why I think that had been in the industry. I’ll share a story for me when I was in my first year of real estate, and I was hanging out at the office around that same time that you got into the business, Nick, there was an older couple, they had been in real estate for a long time, very well known in the area very successful. And I remember her saying, well, all of my clients are moving into nursing home. So I guess it’s time for me to hang up the hat. And at that time, you know, here I’m in my early 20s just getting started in real estate. It’s like, Wow, is that really how it works. But I think that there’s this limiting belief that a lot of people experience, especially like when we talk to people about building teams or joining teams is that they think they are the most important piece of the puzzle. Like, my clients would never want to work with someone else, because they’re here for me, and they love me. And what what you’ve done and what several have experienced now is that that that knee relationship can still maintain. And they have an added relationship. And at the end of the day, the client can transfer have that transferred trust, because, you know, I’ve worked with Stephanie and she’s been great. And if she’s partnered with Nick, then I know he’s going to be great. So you have that transfer trust and we we kind of have to remove ourselves from the equation a little bit. But But yeah, to go to go back to your question, Justin with my experience. So I have adopted a business of an agent that is very long time in the business. I mean, I took on 30 years of client relationships that he has, and because he’s moved into another space in the industry that he’s focusing on. So I mean, it’s been exactly that that transfer trust where that client is introduced to me and they say, Oh, you’re partnering with so um, so now awesome. You must be just as good as he is and his introduction to me. It’s like she she is the 20 years ago me right Right, just as good if not maybe better, because she’s a little more a little younger, a little more ambitious and Lemoore in the market. So it’s, it’s just been really, really beneficial for both of us. And I used your model Nick to frame our agreement. And
Nick Krautter 10:20
I bet Stephanie, that when you go on listing appointments or meeting with buyers, you’re very rarely competing against other agents with those adopted clients. Does that sound right? Correct. Yeah, yeah.
Justin Stoddart 10:32
Well, I think there’s no question as to why you guys know, I love this topic so much. I’m not only a big fan of Nick and Stephanie, but like, this just reeks of the upstream model, right? I mean, that’s the whole premise upon which I built my career, which is find one person who can open the door to lots of people to where that one person who’s established all this trust, that trust is definitely mentioned gets transferred all these people and I don’t know of a more powerful way that you could actually implement this than with a real estate agents business like it is the epitome that, you know, that the apex of the upstream model, I absolutely love it. And I, I think right now, there’s more opportunity than ever before, right, obviously, you know, the market has been, I would say, challenging for many agents. And many agents are at a point, if you look at the demographics of real estate, many are ready to be done, they’re ready to move on and not not go through, you know, the headwinds again. And so I do think that there are agents out there who are, by the way, not going to publicize this on Facebook that, hey, this is hard, I think I’m going to slow down. Right? So Nick, what’s the best way to find those agents? who are maybe thinking like, I just don’t want to work this hard anymore? I’m not willing to pay this price anymore. How do you find them?
Nick Krautter 11:38
So I mean, if it’s people you know, and you can see that they’re slowing down, or what I call phasing out. There’s a script I use that I think is really solid. And it’s it’s very simple. And it goes like this, you’re calling this this person who’s facing those headwinds and deciding they don’t want to fight through another recession or another slowdown. And you basically just say, you know, Hey, Justin, you know, I’ve admired you and your business for years, I was just listening to this podcast about the golden handoff. And I’m curious, what are your plans with your business when you’re done selling. And most people are gonna say, Well, I don’t have a plan, or I haven’t thought about it, or oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll just refer some stuff to other folks in the office. And that simply doesn’t work. There has to be someone putting in the work. And so Stephanie, like you said, You’re the younger, more ambitious version of the gentleman you’re helping, and that’s the secret of this is that someone has to put in the work. You know, this is not something that comes without effort, you still have to engage and build relationships and maintain relationships. And in the struggle for me in doing this, you know, it’s easy to call 200 people a year, it’s hard to call 2000 people a year and stay in touch. And so that forced me into building a team. And for anyone who’s listening, who’s built a team in any way, you’ve already retired from a bunch of jobs that a solo agent has, right. So if you have an assistant and marketing person, you’ve you’ve retired from that if you have a buyer’s agent or a showing agent, you’ve retired from that, you know, I had built a team where we had specialists in every single part of the equation and multiple admins. And so my job was staying connected with clients and and helping kind of guide the vision of the team and make sure our clients were cared for. But I wasn’t showing homes and going to listen to appointments at the end, I was, I was simply helping the agents do a good job doing that. And I was transferring my trust to my team. And so for some people, they’ll be able to build a team. But what I’m really excited about with this, this new edition, and it’s been on my mind to do this for a while, because I’ve been hearing stories from other agents all over the country, as I’ve taught this on different ways it’s been implemented. And so a partial handoff is basically where you can connect with someone who wants to phase out and slow down, and they don’t want to work as at the level they once did. Which by the way, is totally fine. It would be a little weird if you were trying to work 15 hours a day in your 80s. That would, I mean, some people are like that. But that’s incredibly rare. That’s not what I wanted to do. And so it’s a way to connect earlier and let the retirement agent and I use that loosely, but the person phasing out, let them focus on what they want to do with the business. But don’t lose all the other clients that they’re not going to market to that they’re not going to call that they’re not going to invite to a class that they’re going to stop doing the classes and the events that they used to do. Let someone like Stephanie take over and serve those people because you’re excited about that opportunity. That’s not a bad stress. It’s a good stress and and a way to make sure they have a good agent and you still get referral income. And that’s the other piece of this that makes it so easy is the whole model is based on referral fees. So you don’t have to have a big chunk of money upfront to get started. And that’s where this was huge for my business, especially in our recession. We were still growing, but we were growing slowly. And this really was what was our springboard to getting through that and coming out the other side on top.
Justin Stoddart 15:17
What does that look like, Nick, when you’re doing a partial handoff, is it just simply this part of the database, I’m going to still continue to work the rest of this, I’m going to I’m going to have you adopt Is it as simple as that. So
Nick Krautter 15:30
I’ve kind of identified three versions of how this can work. So the first one is a phase out. And that’s where the return agent keeps the part of the business they want, whether that’s a certain list of clients, whether that’s I only want to work on referrals in this neighborhood, or I only want to work on listings, in this price range. And then everything else, someone else’s handling. There’s a train out where someone like Stephanie, you would join the retirement agents team and learn from them a specialty, whether that’s condos, new construction, luxury homes, historic districts, resort property, so there’s a million versions of that too. And then, so there’s the phase out where the return agent keeps doing what they want to do. And then my favorite is what I call an honorary team member. And that’s where they keep an active license, and they still talk to people, because that’s, that’s what I love to do. I love the I love the talking to people and hearing their stories and trying to guide them and give them options of what the best paths forward might be. But then hand it off to the team, when they’re ready to look at homes or they’re ready to do a listing walkthrough and signed paperwork. And so you’re still active and engaging with people, but an honorary team member, still talks to clients still engages with people, but then once they’re ready to buy or sell, they work with someone else on the team that specializes in that.
Justin Stoddart 16:53
But I love that model, Nick, I think I’ve heard it said that right? The fastest way to be an unhappy and Ill is to completely retire. And I think there’s a lot of agents out there that have so many really good relationships and so much wisdom that it would be a shame for them just to walk away, right? In some situations, that makes sense. And they’re on to bigger and better things. So if someone is that’s your path, and that’s your path. But I do think there’s a lot who maybe are holding on like I don’t want to hand off my business because these other options hadn’t been brought forward, right, that hadn’t been necessarily uncovered. And so as a result, they’ve they’ve not done that. Whereas if they could have that kind of role, where it’s like what you’re talking about, right? Yeah, were you able to offer the relationship, as well as the wisdom and let the team step in and take care of doing more of the day to day, that sounds like a great opportunity for many agents. It’s
Nick Krautter 17:44
a huge opportunity. And the thing that’s crazy is this thing was staring me in the face for years. And I didn’t recognize it. Because guess what the biggest objection I had was in terms of approaching agents whose businesses I wanted to buy. They didn’t want to retire yet. They didn’t want to, like hang it up. And the thing is, like, for some agents, it’s a huge part of their identity of who they are. And I think you know, this is, it’s funny, you know, I’m in Scotland right now. And the culture is different here. For sure. In America, like what you do for work is a massive part of your identity. And, and so for a lot of people giving you said, you know, the quickest way to illness is to fully retire. I think that if you lose your connection to the community, or you lose your connection to staying mentally engaged and challenged, I don’t think that’s good for people, I think we’re meant to be connected and engaged. And we’re meant to be helping the rest of the tribe, right and real estate’s a really direct way to do that. I mean, it absolutely creates, you know, a role where you’re a hub of a community. And that’s one of my favorite pieces about it. But so the biggest objection I had was, you know, these really wonderful agents who had fantastic businesses that didn’t want to hang it up. And the opportunity now with a partial handoff is you don’t have to, you can keep doing it, you can keep doing it at your brokerage, you could come over to mine, you could join the team, you could stay on your own team. You know, Stephanie, you’re going to find opportunities from people with great teams where no one else on the team wants to take over leadership. And so there’s an opportunity to come in as a leader and merge your teams and to you know, take this idea and really put it on steroids. Because that’s, that’s another thing. I think, you know, he talked about, you know, myths or misunderstandings is that a lot of people think that once you’ve built a team, that there’s going to be someone that naturally wants to take over. And the truth is a lot of times that isn’t the case. That’s what happened to me. You know, I had to sell my business to an outside team. Because I tried for years to kind of groom a couple of people on my team for taking over leadership. And neither of them really wanted to do it. They really liked being brokers. They wanted to stay in that role. And again, nothing wrong with that. But it didn’t it didn’t work that I had someone that within the team that wanted to step up and take over, and so a partial handoff is a great way to kind of, you know, pick a path to work in as much as you want on the stuff that you want when you want. And and letting the rest of clients be helped by someone else.
Justin Stoddart 20:19
Sounds like Nick’s getting emotional on this topic. Well, the thing that I think is, is an interesting question I’d love to pose is something that people get really passionate about their branding on both sides. Right. Nick, is there any ideas you have? Or Stephanie? Maybe you have this? If somebody? I mean, is it always necessary to fold in into under one team name and team banner? Or can you work and preserve a brand that separate brand? Or no, I’m just thinking about the different reasons that could slow people down with this that are probably not important, right? Yeah,
Nick Krautter 20:58
I think, probably not important. And I’ve had some people where I’ve had great brands where I’ve challenged them on, can you really point to clients that came to you because of your brand that weren’t also connected to you through clients or referrals. And it’s, for most people, they’re not doing enough with branding, because you would have to spend a fortune for that to really work. And most people just don’t have the budgets to compete with Pepsi and Coke for people’s brain space. I think you know, when you’re talking about a regular handoff, or a partial handoff co branding for a while is a great way to go. And in a lot of cases, it’s going to be important to highlight both of those brands to maintain that connection. I’m in a lot of times, suggesting when I call people I say this is Nick, I promised Justin I would call you. So I always reference back to the agent that they know better because they’ve known their agent for so Stephanie, you said the guy you’re working with 30 years. So you obviously every phone call starts with Hi, this is Stephanie, I promise. I don’t know his name. But I promise Jeff that I would call you and check in. And that whether you’re connecting to the person or the you know, the team name, doesn’t really matter, but that you really want to anchor yourself back to the team or the person that you’re you’re the why you’re connected to these new clients is really the best way to stay relevant and and to get people go. Oh, great. I’m glad you called as opposed to oh, this is a sales call. Because it really isn’t. This is a client care call.
Justin Stoddart 22:30
It’s definitely you’re one of the brightest minds in real estate that I know. I know, your wheels are turning right now. What What questions do you have for Nick that might help unlock this opportunity even more for for you and your team? Yeah,
Stephanie Peck 22:43
Nick, I love love what you’re unrolling with the the partial handoff, which is what I’ve been having a lot of conversations around because of exactly what you’ve identified there. I think would actually, let’s do this. Let’s talk about what I did. Because I’d love your reference there about you. We’ve already retired out of some parts of the business if we’ve brought on help or leverage. You know, what I did when I decided to build a team is I made a list of here’s everything I love doing, here’s everything that I’d be fine if I never had to do again. So what if we’re, you know, if we’ve got someone listening that saying, this sounds like something that would be a great fit for me, that would be my recommendation to that person is to say, why don’t you make a list of, you know, in my, in my phased retirement or in my phase out plan, I would be fine doing these things for the next three years. But, you know, letting a contractor into a house at 6am. I don’t want to do that anymore. Yeah, and you know, the emergency calls or the, you know, the freakout calls or whatever, I don’t want to do those things anymore. I don’t want to be on call at dinner time to show every house anymore, whatever that is, you know, if somebody were to start with that, they would probably be able to identify who, who they should be partnering with. And I’m a big fan of roles, responsibilities and results. So when when you’ve identified that with the purchase, the person you’re partnering with, you know, then everyone has a standard to be held to. So Nick, the question I have for you is, if someone’s considering this, maybe they they know a life changes coming up. Maybe they know they’re having a baby in the next six months, and they want to take a step back from their business. Maybe they know they’re going to be relocating, and maybe they are looking for a different pace of life where they have a life change. There are lots of reasons why someone would consider this. It’s not just retirement. So if someone is identifying that in themselves, what would be their Phase output Leann, and then their phase in plan with the person that they’re partnering with, and how far out should they be projecting these things? First
Nick Krautter 25:08
of all, I love that I used to call that a not to do list. And I think is a great way to like get clarity with a, you know, a retiring agent or for you to, you know, what am I taking over? What are you doing? I think the sooner the better. And I would say the bigger the client list, how long have you been in business, the more time you have, the smoother it goes. And the sooner you can take over, before the energy level that return agents dropped and they haven’t been staying is engaged, the better the results for both people. So the more clients are going to stay with you, your conversion rate is going to be better, your client retention rate is going to be better, which means more referrals for the retirement agent. I think you know, what I’ve heard. So the book has a whole chapter of interviews that I did with people all over the country who’ve used partial handoffs. And one of the things themes that comes up over and over again, is that they would be taking time to talk to people about this. And then as soon as they started engaging, and taking over a little bit of the business and taking care of some of the clients that a lot of people decide, hey, this is going great. Why don’t you just take over everything. You know, this is this is actually I think what people want is they want to take, for better lack of a better word to Stephanie, like, if I’m an adoption agent, you’re the adoption agent, they want to take us for a test drive, and make sure that we’re gonna follow through, and that their clients like us, and that it’s going to work, because the biggest fear and where things fall apart is if you are good at selling a return agent on working with you, but then you don’t follow up with the clients and you don’t do a good job. Taking care of them, it won’t work, right. So you have to have a retirement agent who stayed engaged, and built real relationships. And you have to have an adopting agent who is engaging and doing all of the steps of a marketing plan. And I think that’s a really key piece is a you need a marketing plan that says, I’m going to call twice a year, I’m going to invite people to these events, I’m going to send my newsletter in the mail, or I’m going to send my email newsletter on this frequency so that it’s really clear what the expectations are both ways. And I would say yeah, so at least, I mean, a year out would be great. But if you’re already facing out, if you’re listening to this, and you’re God, I haven’t really called people no one’s perfect, I wasn’t perfect, you know, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and get busy and get behind on your goals. And so I would just say be honest with yourself, and the sooner you make the decision to connect with someone like you that wants to put in the work and, and take care of those clients at a high level, the better. So just the worst thing you can do is feel bad about it and wait longer and longer, and then put it off further and further. And again, what I love about the partial handoffs is I think people’s anxiety about making a decision, is they think they have to just completely step out of the way and that isn’t the case anymore. And that’s going to help so many people more than the original plan, because original plan is great when you’re ready to hand it off. But so many people want to hang on to a little bit of it, and they want to stay in the game a little bit. But that doesn’t work for like maintaining the whole client list, right, you’re gonna lose a lot of people. But if you keep the part you want and do a good job with those people or that type of business, and let someone like you, who’s excited about the opportunity of all the other people take care of that, then you don’t have to lose any of it. And that’s the thing that’s so cool about this new idea.
Stephanie Peck 28:38
And I think it what it does is it really it keeps that initiating relationship still very anchored in the new relationship. Right, it is not a handoff it you know, it’s a partnership, it truly is viewed as a partnership from the consumer, which I love. So what would be some identifying factors if someone is maybe recognizing this that, you know, and I’ll, I’ll just use an example of some competitors in my market that they’re starting to lose some business to me. And some of the feedback I’m getting, it’s like, yeah, they just don’t seem that engaged anymore, or, you know, I think we’re heading into retirement. That’s someone that I would love to initiate a conversation with. So and I see that Brad’s got a question here. So this is kind of leading into Brad’s question of how do you identify the right fit? And where do you find these agents? I mean, that’s something that I’ve identified in my markets, like someone that actually is starting to lose some opportunities to other agents that are a little more ambitious, that might be an agent that we would say, hey, let’s create a partnership here. I
Nick Krautter 29:54
think you just nailed it. I think that’s a perfect example of someone you would want to approach and all For the opportunity to work together, now you have to be careful. Or you can say like, Hey, I’m already getting your clients. So do you want to get some referrals, or I’ll just take them all, you know, you don’t want to do that. So you have to be thoughtful in your approach, and I’m sure you’ll be. But I guarantee you if that’s what’s going on, and that’s what their clients think it’s because they’re not staying engaged, and so the longer they phase out, so for example, if someone’s been doing 50 million in sales a year, and then 30, and then 20, and now they’re at 10, that 40 million in sales didn’t disappear, right. It’s just other agents are helping those clients now. And so the sooner they can connect with someone like you who’s willing to stay engaged and willing to put in the work, the more value that agents, businesses, when they sell it, the more referral fees they’ll get, and the better the engagement is going to be from those clients in that transfer of trust. And that handoff to you. And they can, you know, I think for a lot of people, they’d be relieved. So that’s an example. So someone that’s phasing out, I would say, if you’re in a brokerage, letting your broker or manager know that you are interested in taking over businesses, they know who’s moving across the country, they know who is having a second child, they know who spouse might get a job transfer, and they might have to move. And those people are looking for solutions. And a lot of times the brokerages aren’t providing them. You know, I helped a gentleman who worked on a movie project, he’s in the book, David, and David, I reached out to him, and I didn’t really know, David that well, he was the same age as me, we’re in our early 30s. And I heard that he was gonna be leaving town for a year or two. And I reached out to him and I said, I have been helping other people with managing their client list. And I heard you’re going to work on this movie project. And I’d love to talk to you about helping your clients while you’re gone. And he said, I’ve been telling my broker for a year that I need some plan. And they keep just saying, well just refer stuff, just stay in touch with people and refer I was like, I don’t have time to do this, I’m going to be working 20 hours a day on this movie, I won’t have time to do anything, I need to know that someone’s going to take, take control of this and take charge. And they were so excited that I called them and we put together a deal within a week, maybe less, I think I had a meeting with him and his wife within days. And we agreed to work together at that meeting, and took the next steps of sending out the announcement letter and going through the steps that I talked about in the golden handoff, to have a successful handoff. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can connect with people, but the people you know, are facing out, reach out to them. Let your broker or your team leader know you’re interested in doing this and ask, there’s already a lot of agents who are in referral networks and brokerages and no one is working their business. How crazy is that?
Justin Stoddart 32:46
It’s crazy to me that more people haven’t adopted this model, Nick. And if you’re a broker and you see agents who are maybe at a stage of their career, where they’re not going to be doing this for much longer, you’d be crazy to not start to take this model and utilize it to attract new agents into your brokerage because as soon as those agents go, your brokerage is going to whittle away. And I think it’s such an attractive magnet to say, Hey, I’ve got agents in my office who are gonna be doing this forever. I encourage you to come in build relationships. And I think you could adopt an entire database like it’s crazy not to think that way as a broker. Before we get too much further, I want to be sure that everybody who’s listening to this knows how to get a hold of your book. And the workbook, I believe it’s golden handoff.com Isn’t? Yep, that’s
Nick Krautter 33:33
where everything is. So as long as you just remember Golden handoff.com, you’ll be able to find everything I’ll show you this is the this is the new version of the book, I have the proof and I just got it. If anyone here is listening to this right now and wants to get the book, I will send you all the new material when the book is released. So if you want to buy the current version or the workbook, don’t wait, get it today, email me and I will send you the new material once it’s released September 3. And so I just want to make sure that people know that you know that they won’t miss out they don’t have to wait and they don’t miss out but and the new version will be out September third. And I’ll be putting updates on Golden handoff.com. There’s some other good tools that I want to mention. There’s a calculator that will show you if you know the number of repeat and referral clients and your average commission it’ll show you what the estimated value is for the adopting agent and the retirement agent which is really cool shows it on you just put the information in once and it gives you the whole printout on that which is from the model in the book. And if you sign up on the website, I’ll also send you the scripts contracts dialogues, marketing pieces, announcement letter, all the stuff that I’ve used in a way that you can edit it and take those templates and and put them to work. You know today.
Justin Stoddart 34:54
It’s so valuable you think about trying to do this on your own right or not doing it is even worse. And just the missed opportunity when you have agents like you have taught for years, agents just kind of right off slowly into the sunset, right, they don’t make a big announcement have a retirement party, they just simply quietly go away and their client clients quietly find other agents. And this is a way for you to step in and really help everybody yourself, your team, potentially, the clients of that agent, and that agent actually have a succession plan. Like you said, I love. I’ve loved this topic for years. And I love it even more now, because I think it’s even more relevant than it’s ever been. Stephanie, any final words from you, before we wrap up?
Stephanie Peck 35:35
You know, I think that this is just meant to inspire a lot of people to be looking for opportunity. Once we plant that seed in our minds, you’re either an agent that is looking for a phase out plan, and you’re thinking of opportunity now, and you might be thinking about what would this look like for me, I have gone through the golden handoff, through the book and through the process. And I would say it is a great roadmap. That will I mean, it’s not a fluff book. That’s what I love about it. It’s like, here’s the numbers, here’s what to say, here’s what to do, here’s what to put in your agreements. And I love that, that we’ve got the roadmap already at our fingertips. So just be thinking of opportunity. And if you’re an agent, that is noticing someone’s businesses phasing off, maybe because of their age, or something that you know, have in their life, Nick just gave us a great script of how to approach that person and start a conversation and build a relationship with them. So I just think that this has opened up opportunities for so many people that they haven’t even been thinking about. So thank you, Nick. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah,
Justin Stoddart 36:45
great stuff. Nick. I want to thank everybody who’s been tuning in today. If you too, will stay here for just a bit longer. We’re gonna wrap up. But I want to thank you all and encourage you that with this model, you can literally think bigger and move faster than you ever have before. So with that, I’m gonna give my final three simple words there this go think bigger, Nick, thanks for helping us do that, my friend. Awesome. Now before you go, remember big thinkers and high achievers take action. Here’s one way to do this. Find me on social media and send me in a direct message one AHA that you’re going to take action upon from today’s episode. I can’t wait to be connected