Using the Simple to Solve the Complex w/ Maria Quattrone

Welcome back, real estate business builders. This is going to be an awesome episode. I love when I get the chance to talk to someone that has not only been through man the trenches of real estate, but they went through the Great Recession. So Maria Quattrone out of Philly is here to share a little bit of, I would just call it the good, bad and ugly of your journey. So we were chatting before I hit record and we really, how we're going to set up this conversation is that, you know, Maria's built a business through leverage. Other people are succeeding. So she's gotten out of the working like 10 women and now she's teaching 20 men and women how to work. But before I get into like your, your learnings and what you could give us going into this shift, tell us a little bit about, you know, getting into the business, getting that first hire, kind of introduce us to your story and then I'll take it from there.

Thanks for having me, Lars. I'm excited to talk with you today. Yeah, I got into the business in 2004. Friends said you would be great in this industry and I was like, I don't know. So I did my research for like a month and then I decided I was going to go for it. I was, I left after 11 years of selling radio advertising. I exited that. But before I could exit, I stayed with both of them for an 11 month period. So I started in March of 2004, had my first sale within literally 30 days of that. My second sale in May for a million 50 for a four unit building. So I pretty much hit the ground running. And in February 05 I resigned from my full time career in advertising sales. And you got it kept running faster and then within, by May I had my first assistant.

Yeah, so talk about, talk about that one decision. So I've heard It said that 85% of real estate agents don't have administrative support. But here you are getting full time into the industry in February 2005 and like a few months later you had a full time or a part time assistant.

I had a full time assistant. I would have had the person quicker if I could have found somebody quicker. I was in a full time for about 30 days and I literally could not handle the paperwork because it was triplicate. So I had to rip off these papers and then organize it and then file it. And I am not set up for that. So I had, it was like the.

Stone ages where you had to carve.

Your offers and yes, sign, sign here, press art. Okay. So I decided Immediately that either I was going to have an assistant or quitting because I cannot do all these jobs in the real estate transaction. In fact, from day one, I thought it was the stupidest industry I've ever seen. The way that it's set up, not for success, for one person to do seven jobs, and I'm only good at one, maybe two.

Yeah. And was it your background in corporate sales where you had some leverage or you saw leverage in action or you were just like. It was just an obvious. It was just an awareness. Like, I will. I'm doing all the $20 an hour tasks.

I think it was an awareness of it. And also when I was in the advertising sales, I wasn't the person recording the radio spot. I wasn't the person scheduling when the. When the spots would air. My job was to go out, sell, bring the business back and hand it over, pass the baton to the next person. So when I entered, I immediately decided that that's what I was going to do. I pretty much ready after the assistant. Within a few more months, I convinced my sister to come into the business and I started a team. And then I had this another person. And then a guy that was in the radio industry, he came over and he joined me. So before the end of 05, I had two assistants and three agents.

And what was your. Do you remember what your production was in. In that year?

I don't remember what everybody was, but I know that I closed like 38 units, which in 05, you know, this is when we had to drive the offer to the listing agent's office with the check, which requires a lot of time. I was. It was a pretty good amount. It was just under 10 million. It was like 9 something in sales. And so I was busy. Awesome.

So. So let's. Because, I mean, it's. It's pretty obvious, at least to me, that we're getting even though real. Well, now real estate could be a thing that complicates the shift that we're in or are going into. But as you navigated the, you know, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, which was pretty crappy. I know in the northeast, it was pretty squirrely.

Oh, it was really, really hard. I mean, I saw it coming in. Oh, six. Inventory started to accumulate and my broker was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh, my God. Because I figured out how to do market absorption rates back then. I got the numbers person. So I was really freaking out. I'm like, it's 10 months, it's 12 months. Then over the weekend it became 16, it was like crazy. And so I did my best to educate sellers about this, to educate the agent population, but nobody really wanted to listen to me. And anyway, I kept saying, listen, we got to adjust the price, we have to adjust the price. Now you're going to, it's going to lose more money later. It's kind of like what's happening today. If buyers can't afford to buy the house, then the only way for them to afford it is for the pricing to come down to be at a level where it makes sense, but it doesn't make sense with the rates and where prices currently are. So you're seeing that inventory accumulate. Even though we have less inventory than we did a year ago, we have 30% less sales year to date. That's, that's not just Philadelphia metro market, that is the whole brain MLS. Yeah, it's down 30%.

So because you've been through a shift before, what, what advice would you give for, you know, give to a growth minded, you know, so either a top agent that knows they're going to add leverage and they understand it, or a team leader that maybe isn't aware of what's going on. What advice would you give folks going into this next two to three year period where it could get pretty squirrely?

So number one thing is take care of yourself, take care of your health, get to the gym in the morning. I do walk, spike and weights, so if I'm at the gym I'm doing weights. And today I had to do a lot more than I usually do because I needed to put myself in the right frame of mind. I think taking care of ourselves first, you know, you're on the plane, the oxygen mask comes down, you got to put it on. And a lot of times we neglect ourselves. And I did over the years and I've been on a health journey over the last seven months and I was able to get my mindset right, lose some weight, feel good, have more energy. So I would say the number one thing is to take care of you. Number two thing after that is to really, really go back to the basics and focus on the daily activities. The daily activities of your calls, scheduling, you know, your time locking. If people aren't running off of this right now, I mean it's critical to choice management. So I don't think it's time management is choice management. What are you going to say yes to and what are you going to say no to? And not only what do you need to start doing, what do you need to stop doing. Because there's things in your life that you're doing right now that are causing you not to be where you want to be. I know that, you know there is going to be quite a few bumps in, in the road. But being in an action oriented economy versus whatever other economy there is, we know for a fact that buyers will buy and sellers will sell real estate regardless of market conditions. Okay. This year in Philadelphia county we've had 20,000 property sell just on residential. Which means What? We have 40,000 sides, 40,000 opportunities. Doesn't matter where rates go because if you're half, you need to buy a bigger house because you're having babies, getting divorced, somebody died, you're going bankrupt, you're moving to la. Always like that one. You're going like it doesn't matter. And I think that's what agents need to get their head around. It doesn't matter. The business is there and at the end of the day work works. So if you do the work, by the way, the work is boring as f because it's the same thing over and over and over and over and over again to become a master at it. But look at all the great athletes in the world. They throw that football. Eagles are 5 and 0 right now. Very happy about that in Philadelphia, those crazy fans. But it's practicing over and over again. And I say to my, my, the agents and our agent partners in our community, you're either practicing on the client or you practice with a colleague. You choose because you're practicing either way. And it's better to do it with a client than practice on, I mean to practice with a colleague and practice with a client.

So yeah, and so I love that. And I gave you the third one. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about it. So first one was take care of yourself, which I agree 100%. Second one is focus on daily activities and choice management, which I think is awesome. I may have heard that said before, but not often are people calling it choice management. So that's really amazing. And then the third one I'm going to give to you and have you talk a little bit more about it. But it's the mindset that the business is there versus the headlines that are bleeding and the fear, uncertainty and doubt. So talk more about, you know, how do you. Because this year you'll do a 250 sides and you're mostly out of production. How did you grow through those crappy great recession years or make it through when I know our roster went from 15,000 to 5,000. So just being in business in 2011 was like a major feat. Like you were one of only one out of three agents that even made it through the crap we went through. So talk about mindset that that's needed to not only just like live through this shift, but to actually dominate during the shift.

So I think, you know, if, I think back then we were, we did really well. We did a lot of business. I mean not as much as we're doing today, but the business is different today. Right. And this is 10, 12 years ago. But from where we were to where we went to and we were doing, you know, pretty good at that time. What happened was so many people left the industry and most people weren't willing to do what it, what it took on a daily basis. Yes, first sin, first, first in, last sale, you know, calling the expired because that business is there again. So constant follow up. The mindset of like what happened for us was people called us because they knew even back then that I was a market expert because I had already done so many transactions. So what happens during this time is people want to use the best people and they're going to call the people who they know can get the job done. And I think during, you know, this pandemic when everything was flying off the shelves, people would just work with anybody that took actually market share away from us. We could have done way better than we did had all these other people who didn't, you know, oh, I sell five homes here were entered into the business. So that goes away, right? We, we, you can't out, you can't outspend a market like this. So I focus on talking to our database, sending out a weekly video and they're all different ones. So what I've done this year is a few months ago I started to do these Facebook lives and so on Tuesdays I do one about investing and I'll talk about different investment deals that we have, whether it's land or multifamily or whatever. Wednesday, I do rise in real estate for real estate agents. Tips of how they can talk to their sellers about price reduction. What does that look like? When do you start that conversation? You start that conversation at the listing. Meaning it started then, it's not started after the fact. Future pace them for what's going to happen, how to give great customer service. So I do all these tips on Wednesday and then Thursday. I do now weekly market update because the market is. So whatever's going on, it's changing. I'm giving updates Every week what's happening instead of like a monthly market update. So these different segments are getting these, the videos and so when we are making the calls into the database, I've already made deposits to them on educational thing, not asking them for anything. So and then when we call we're just following up. How are you doing? And so really focusing on and these activities. There wasn't as much video back then when I did that, but it was the constant follow up. The mindset of we're going to win regardless of what and we're going to do whatever it takes. And I remember Lars, the deals were so hard because of the tightening of the mortgage industry and what happened. They wanted your firstborn child to close their loan and it was, it would take us four times the amount of time to do a deal because of all the regulations and everything that came down. So this time won't be like that. This time will be different. I think you putting in the work and knowing what it's going to take is going to require skills and making sure you know exactly what to say. And those are some of the things that we practice. We practice on what, how we our future pace our buyers or our sellers and what we're going to, what we are going to say being 100% transparent and truthful as possible so that we don't cause anybody to lose any more money.

Yeah, that's awesome. One thing tactically, so when you're doing. Because I, I thought when I was in my real estate team I was doing the monthly market updates. But to your point, like the market it's, it's literally changing weekly. So when you're doing are you doing a Facebook Live and then you're dry. Like you have a custom Facebook audience.

So I do, I do Facebook, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and then I have the Facebook remix page. My and my page. So it's like it goes to five or six places but afterwards I pull it off as a mini jpeg and I send it out through mailchimp to the database and it's segmented. Sometimes it may be for everybody. Like one just went out of court to everybody. Like 20,000 people. And then I only have one set for the real estate agent. So instead of me doing all these separate videos that I was doing in Big View, I don't care if anybody's watching me live or not. Like if they are great, if they're not great, it doesn't matter to me. I'm putting it out there. They watch it later so they could see it on social. And then if they're in my. In my arena, then they're going to get it via email. So then we can see who opened it and who has, you know, interest in raising their hand. What other. Buy, sell or real estate agent.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, really awesome. If there's one thing you can do is just keep everyone in your database and on every platform aware of the market. There's nobody that's not interested in what's like a market update if they own an asset, you know, a house, 100%.

And, you know, some people, a lot of people aren't ready to do anything in real estate. But I see people out and about and they're like, I love your marketing. You market so well. And people will come into our office and they don't. They work with our agents. They're not working with me, but they'll say they know me. They're like, I watch all your videos.

Yeah, tell me. So, like, knowing what, you know, with your sort of history in real estate, going into what we kind of agree we're going into, and we're already seeing what's like one or two resources that you might recommend a book or like a daily or weekly practice that you haven't mentioned. What's like a couple things that you could, like, this book saved me, you know, or what can you think of?

So as a. As an organization, when somebody joins our company, we. They read the Compound Effect and we do a daily chapter for over the course of two weeks. There's seven chapters in it. So it goes through Wednesday, that Wednesday. And we review it every single day about what they learn. Because I want the agents to understand a lot of people are brand new. Building your skills and building your pipeline is a continuous thing that you need to do every single day. And I don't think that book, I think a book is for everybody. I think you can apply it to anything. You can apply it to losing weight, you can apply it to, you know, wanting to learn how to speak a language. Whatever it is, it is the value of a compound effect. In fact, on my podcast, Be the Solution, I opened, I opened the segment with talking about the compound effect, then over a course time. So you started here with one little line and a year, you're all the way here. And I say, look how far you've come. Because we have to look at what we have done and not what we haven't done. And so looking at what we have done and keeps us moving forward instead of worrying about we're not there yet. You know what, we're never going to talk about this. We're never going to be there because the steps, they keep going and going and going and it's impossible to get to the top of them.

Yeah, I remember it makes me think of when I was really sort of like out of all of the day to day of my real estate team, but I would go in on Tuesdays and a new, a newer agent, he's like 22 years old. He comes in, he's like, Lars, you know, it's really, it's great to meet you. And he's like, what advice would you give a 22 year old getting into real estate? I don't, I've never given this advice before, but instantly I was like, give it seven years. And he didn't make it like seven. I know he didn't make it seven months, but I said, give it seven years, you'll be out earning your peers by a factor of probably five to one before you're 30. And I said, and I remember his name. I won't say it, but I said, you probably won't. I don't know why. If I was just having a weird day or what it was, but to the compound effect like that was probably the book I would have picked up all the books that I read. It's like the simple, like just if you do one thing long enough, like, you know, if you just do as many push ups as you can every day, at the end of two years, you'll be doing a gazillion push ups every day, you know, but nobody does it. It's like it's so. What's the expression? Like it's really, it's simple but it's not easy.

So yeah, the simple solves the complex. Yeah, if we just focus on the daily activities, that's it. We only can focus on what we have to do today. And what if I have to do 20 conversations a day? 30 conversations, whatever the numbers are, then that's all I need to focus on. And it has to happen come hell or high water, period. And if that's what you do and you do it five days a week, every week, I tell them all. I promise you, if you do exactly what I tell you to do, you will be a high income earner in real estate. And that's, you know, a minimum of 100,000, which I would say you could do a lot more than that. But my goal is because we have a scholarship program, my goal is to help 100 women come into our program and within 24 months be earning 100,000 plus a year. Consistently help them be a homeowner and then teach them how to invest in real estate. So that's a legacy that I want to leave and helping change people's lives through getting them out of some cases, generational poverty and building generational wealth.

That's amazing. What's the best way where people can get. Can get in touch with you?

Absolutely. They can find me on the website mqrealestate.com or I'm on Instagram. Instagram sold by MQ. I'm on Facebook. It's my name, Maria Quattrone. I'm always answer the emails or messages.

So awesome. This has been really good. I love this because I mean you started even before we hit record. You were just. What did you say around simplify, multiply. What was your. The simple. I think, yeah, it's just not complicated. People want to like over engineer success and it's like, it's not like if you want to be good at a thing, just do the thing and practice it and you know.

Yeah. If you're a real estate agent, it's doing the same thing over and over again. Making the contacts, showing homes, going on listing appointments. If you can become a great listing agent, listings are leveraged. If you're a team leader, it's about replacing yourself every day.

Awesome.

So for us, it's about, you know, continuing to bring contributors into our company and we have some goals set ahead of us that are pretty big. But, you know, when you decide, you have to decide, you have to make draw a line in the sand, make a decision, and then do whatever it takes to make sure that happens.

Awesome. Thanks for your time, Maria. I appreciate this. This will bless many, many agents. We'll talk to you soon.