Manish Patel's Blueprint for Success Beyond Engineering

Ever wondered how an engineer might conquer the real estate world? Sit back as we engage with Manish Patel from TFN Realty, who'll unravel the tale of his extraordinary pivot from the precision of engineering to the thrills of property investment. Manish's journey is one of accidental discovery, where a single venture in Phoenix lit a fire that couldn't be quelled, leading him to leap into the Canadian real estate market and redefine his career. He brings to the fore the critical importance of human connection and the art of service—a mantra for enduring success in what's often perceived as a transactional business. In a world rapidly digitizing, Manish shares the hurdles new agents face in an industry where the warmth of personal relationships still reigns supreme.

As we peel back the layers of the real estate business, it becomes clear that the future is a dance between innovative technology and the undying essence of human touch. I share anecdotes that draw parallels between AI, like ChatGPT, and the unmatched customer service found in a boutique setting, reinforcing the notion that some aspects of our industry remain steadfastly immune to automation. We then pivot to the broader strokes of carving a meaningful career path, where success is not just measured in revenue but in societal contributions. To those eager to plant their flags in the real estate territory, we offer sage advice, and also give a glimpse into the nurturing environment at TFN Realty, where family values and robust support systems set the stage for a real estate odyssey like no other.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey everybody, this is Diana Victoria Quinn from TFN Realty and you're listening to the Real Talk Real Estate Podcast, the uncensored show that keeps it real for people who love real estate. We'll have some of the best interviews with some of our industry's most exciting people right now on a variety of different topics. We promise not to bore you. We have Manish Patel, broker with TFN Realtor, here. We wanted to bring you on because we see you as a game changer. Obviously, you're one of our top producers, award winner for multiple years in a row now, so we're very grateful that you're here and we get to get to know you a little bit more how you started your career, a little bit about before your real estate career and sort of what brought you to TFN. So maybe we can start with that your beginning.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Yeah, absolutely. So before joining Real Estate, I was actually working in a multinational firm, in an engineering firm, in a marketing department, so I used to had a team of people, you know, and it was an engineering company. So my, my background is from engineering as well as from management. Yeah, um, so, yeah, I mean it was. It was a cool shift. I that is actually a funny story uh, that, uh that I, I had to be in Arizona for some official work and I extended my stay after I was done and then I ended up buying a property just by extending a couple of more days, and I worked with the local real estate agent and at that time the Arizona it was actually in Phoenix, the Arizona it was actually in Phoenix and the market was such on a low point and I ended up buying a small property over there.

Speaker 1: 1:52

That was an expensive trip.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Absolutely. It was an expensive trip, but it also gave me a huge return. I ended up selling it after maybe three, four years and, yeah, and that was my first exposure in real estate as far as investing goes right, and that went really well. Although, before going to Arizona, I did a lot of market research and then I found out about the state of the real estate market and I also understood very quickly that it is actually at the lowest point in the history. And then the rest is the story. The real estate market actually boomed up a lot after I bought, and then it actually particularly got my interest into investing real estate. Obviously, I invested in more properties in Canada, locally Exactly and then I thought, you know, this is the right time to switch my carriers into real estate Very cool.

Speaker 1: 3:00

Did you live in that property at all or was it completely investment? Investment the one in Arizona.

Speaker 2: 3:05

Yeah, okay, it was bad it's beautiful weather there absolutely, it is yeah and I'm curious.

Speaker 1: 3:10

So you have an engineering background but you were focused in on marketing for the engineer how did that happen? Yeah, so so absolutely usually engineering and marketing are like complete opposites.

Speaker 2: 3:23

Yeah, that's true. Well, actually every engineering firm, they also have a marketing department as well as the sales department. So I was actually heading the sales department, sales and marketing department for a number of years. So, yeah, I do have the background from engineering. I'm a PEng, a professional engineer, by certificate, and I also worked in their sales department for a number of years.

Speaker 1: 3:53

That's a great background. You have the engineering, the analytical side of things, the marketing and sales. That's such a great package to bring you into resale. So you came back to Toronto. You started investing again locally. How did you make your way into TFN?

Speaker 2: 4:12

So before coming to TFN I used to work with a different real estate brokerage, but as soon as I met a couple of people in TFN I immediately knew that TFN is a different company than some other companies. And then I was interviewed by TFN and then I immediately got the sense that it's like a family culture. Obviously we do have a lot of pre-construction access but at the same time a lot of family culture here. People care about, about their agents so so, yeah, that definitely got me hooked to tfn yeah, amazing um and manish.

Speaker 3: 4:54

With all these years of experience and in real estate, what would you say that it's the most important strategies for you in order to have, in order to succeed in real estate?

Speaker 2: 5:08

Right In order to succeed in real estate. I mean, obviously people talk about real estate as, like, you can make a lot of business and stuff like that, but what I always say to uh, to new agents is is, you know, go back to your basics. You know, go back to basics, build relationship. You know, serve your clients, and then that is that is the, that is the basic, that is the main strategy of the real estate business. If you are not building relationship, if you are not serving your clients, well then they are not going to come back. Yeah, you can do a lot of marketing, a lot of social media marketing and whatnot, but again, if you are not back to basics, you will not survive in this competitive environment for very long.

Speaker 1: 5:59

I completely agree, and I think, though, for a lot of the younger agents, when you say go back to basics, I understand what that means. I'm a little older now but I think, for the younger agents, because of technology and the way that we've communicated, we've communicated behind a screen. We're text messaging, we're sending emails, and it's almost like picking up a phone to call our clients is taboo. It's something we don't know how to do. We were actually falling behind on how to build a platform, human to human connections. Covid didn't help, obviously, but I totally agree. I think that is the key to success in all businesses is building a human to human connection, and, yeah, I think we need to remember that and use that in our day to day.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Yeah absolutely Challenges. So success comes from challenges. Hopefully, hopefully, we've learned from them and made some improvements. Can you give us some challenges that you faced along the way in your career?

Speaker 2: 7:04

Yeah, absolutely so. Again, when we especially talk about real estate. You know real estate is a very, very dynamic market. You know, for some reason, what you are doing today that may not work after a week, you know. So you have to on top of your game. You always have to evolve, you always have to change yourself. So that is the biggest challenge, I would say.

Speaker 2: 7:32

So, for example, if I take my example, you know, like when I started in real estate, I mean social media was almost non-existent. It was there, but it wasn't used in the way that it is used nowadays. So obviously I mean I had to learn a lot of social media. I had to learn how to make videos, you know, had to learn a lot of social media, I had to learn how to make videos, you know. So obviously you have to be on top of your game, on top of the technology. So this is just one example. Second example I would, I would say, is that even the real estate market itself has evolved. So, for example, pre-construction resale, you know, investing going outside of the provinces. You know investing outside of the countries.

Speaker 3: 8:21

So there are so many different changing avenues and I think every real estate agent needs to change themselves in order to survive in this dynamic real estate market and how do you keep track of all this evolution, how do you manage to understand and to be aware of the whole change that is happening around every single thing? Because it's not just technology, as you said. It's around, everything, right. How do you keep track of this change and how do you manage to stay up to date with everything around you?

Speaker 2: 8:57

see when, when you are in real estate and then you are talking to your clients, you are talking to your peers, you are talking to other people in your own brokerage. You know, those are the, those are the biggest indications, those, those will give you actually a lot of guidance and a lot of showing of directions where actually the market is going. And I would say the first thing is that talk to your clients. If you talk to a lot of your clients, you will understand whether their thinking is changing. Maybe their perceptions are changing about real estate market, maybe they are ready to move into a different areas of real estate market. So I would say, always talk to them, always be in communication with your, with your clients as well as your peers so, so you already said it's really and it's really important.

Speaker 3: 9:53

The relationship with your clients um and more in in real estate. That's really important. How do you what? What are those strategies that you use to stay in contact with them or to make them like more close to you all the time?

Speaker 2: 10:09

right, because it's really yeah absolutely yeah, and and it is definitely challenging, especially when you have you have a lot of clients, and and also another thing talking about is the competition there is. There's a lot of competition in real estate market nowadays, so so yeah, I would. I would say phone calls, emails, text messages, those are, those are the main, main kind of communication means I always keep with them and keep myself updated about them.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Yeah, I have a question about your business. So your team name is Menish Helps. So first question how did that come to be? And part two of that question is each year do you put some time aside to assess, you know, all of your accomplishments, maybe areas where you could have improved, and create business plans for the following year? Do you do that exercise in some way, shape or form?

Speaker 2: 11:11

Yeah, absolutely. So, team Manish helps. That's a very interesting question. So, yeah, I mean, I mean again, I always believe that in any business doesn't matter whether it's a real estate business or any other business you know, helping, helping the clients is your, is your number one, it should be your number one priority. And and by by by putting a team name as Team Manish Helps, I always wanted to say to the larger audience that hey guys, doesn't matter, I'm here, here I am, I'm open for your questions, I'm open to helping you out. Even I'll tell you a couple of incidences. Like there are some other people who actually called me for the jobs you know, for example, the students graduated from university and they actually called me. They said because your business name is Manish Helps, I hope that you will help me out and guide me where I can find jobs. So yeah, so definitely, it actually resonates with lots of people and I always believe in helping clients and holding their hands.

Speaker 2: 12:27

And I think the second question was your business planning, about the business planning. So, business planning, absolutely, I do keep actually about the last couple of weeks in December to do my business planning for the next year as well, as business planning is also very dynamic nowadays. So you can't just do business planning once in a year and just follow that guideline. You have to keep yourself evolved and what I do is that I do business planning, I would say, like at least once in a month. You know, I see where I'm going, which direction the market is going, whether I am following the market or not.

Speaker 3: 13:13

Mm-hmm following the market or not. So, speaking about technology, that's a concept that recently has improved and makes everything easier, faster, optimized. Everything is changing so fast and is improving so fast. What do you think is this tool that is going to help you the most? Or what do you think is that technology that is changing the real estate world?

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, and that's a Besides ChatGPT.

Speaker 3: 13:51

That's a really big one.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Yeah, absolutely no. I mean, that's a very good question. I'm not like. My background is not from IT or from those technologies, but I have been hearing about AI and I have experienced myself AI a lot, for example, in virtual staging. You know making videos, you know you name any of the components of real estate, and AI is there actually. So definitely AI will be a great game changer. But again, I would still like to mention that, yes, the technology is always evolving, technology is always changing and technology will always help you more, but it can only help you, help you more, but it can only help you. What the most important thing is that you have to stick with the basics. You know relationship building, you know helping the clients, you know. So, as long as you are stuck to the basics and taking the help of the technology to grow your business, nothing wrong with it. But if you are just dependent on the technology for growing your business without doing the basics very well, then I think that will be a challenging time period.

Speaker 1: 15:10

I completely agree with you on that. I'm a huge fan of AI.

Speaker 1: 15:14

I love ChatGPT, I have great conversations with it and actually I agree that I think it's a great tool to help in many different aspects of our business, but one area that is lacking and I'm sure at some point it will get there is the emotional intelligence, and I've tried to connect with it on an emotional level and have philosophical conversations and have questions, and it's not quite there yet. I don't, like I said, I don't know if it'll ever get there, but there's something to an emotional connection that is a huge part of our role and our job. We shared this on a recent podcast, but I want to share it with you is I shop at a woman's boutique and they call me every time they have a sale. There's the lead salesperson there and she'll say you know, diana, our fall winter collection now is 70% off. There's a couple pieces that I think would look amazing on you. Our spring stuff is in. Because you're a great client, we'll give you an additional 20%.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Why don't you come on in Every time I walk in? Hi, diana, I don't remember any of their names, but they all know my name and I feel like at home they care about me. Now, of course, they're on commission this is part of their job but they've made this connection Now. I get their e-blasts, I'm on their database, I get their emails but I delete them, I don't pay attention. But when you call me or send me a text or call me by my name, you make me feel important, that I'm not just another number to you, I'm not just another client. I'm an extension of your family, your friends, you care, and I think that part can never be replaced by AI. It may at some point I'm sure it will 50, 100 years from now, but in our lifetime we're still responsible for that caring component, for that human connection.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1: 17:11

I agree completely with you Five, 10 years, the future. Speaking of the future, where do you see yourself, your career in five, ten years?

Speaker 2: 17:23

Well, as I said, you know, market is very dynamic. Real estate market itself is very dynamic, so sometimes it is a little bit hard to see where exactly the evolution will be. But obviously I want to be on top of my real estate game. At the same time I also want to kind of diversify a little bit more into managing the team, more managing the other real estate agents and also, most importantly, helping them and imparting the knowledge that I have and how to positively contribute to the society. And it is very important part of any real estate agent too, that how they can contribute to the society. Obviously, making money is everybody's goal, but contribute to the society. Obviously making money is everybody's goal, but contribute to the society is also very, very important.

Speaker 1: 18:24

So is Team Manish Helps hiring.

Speaker 2: 18:28

It will be hiring soon, so yeah, keep updated for the news.

Speaker 1: 18:35

And what advice would you give to a new agent who just got their license? How do they start?

Speaker 2: 18:40

Yeah, so, interestingly enough, yesterday I had two calls from the new agents and they were asking about my advice. Actually, one agent he wasn't the agent, he's still preparing for the exams and stuff like that and there was another agent. But anyways, I always tell to them you know, don't, don't, don't think automatically that that there is so much fame and there is so much money you know there is. There is also a lot of going behind the scenes, right, it's, it's like an iceberg, you know you can only see the tip of the iceberg, but bottom of the iceberg is even bigger than that, right? So always think from that perspective, you know, always see what you are getting into.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Obviously, I would encourage the appropriate personalities to get into real estate, but at the same time, you know there's a lot of things going in the background. You know you are also devoting a lot of time. It's like you're more than a full-time job, obviously. So very important to understand those things in the background. And then, secondly, it is as I said, you know it is very important to go to the basics. You know there are some people who call me. It is as I said. You know, it is very important to go to the basics. You know, there are some people who call me, you know that, okay, I'll do the Facebook marketing and I'll do this, and I'll do that through your knowledge and then through your, maybe your friends and relatives, right? So it is very important to kind of understand the basics of real estate, which is sales actually initially, and then you can do relationship building and maintain your clients. So that is a very important part of the job.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Yeah, that's great advice.

Speaker 3: 20:47

Thank you, Manish. Our last question is related specifically with TFN. And that's what? Do you think it's the key factor, the key element that makes different TFN from other brokerage?

Speaker 2: 21:08

So, first of all, TFN is very different than the other brokerages, Absolutely so. A couple of things I would like to mention. One is TFN is like a family environment. So if you come to TFN office, if you talk to somebody broker of record or marketing people over here or accounting people they will not just treat you like as a number.

Speaker 2: 21:40

They will treat you like as a person. So that's the biggest thing that I found. And secondly, tfn is not only in the resale market or it's not only in the pre-construction market. Tfn is actually everywhere. Tfn is a leader in pre-construction. Tfn is leader when it comes to the resell dealings. So you will have a lot and a lot of support available from TFN whether you are focusing on resell, whether you are focusing on pre-construction, whether you're focusing on outside of the province's cells. So TFN is the way to go.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Thank you. Thank you for saying that and seeing that in us as well.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:29

And congratulations again on being an award winner at TFN and we look forward to future success, all of us together.

Speaker 2: 22:40

So thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to our guests and our editor. We hope that you enjoyed this new episode and, if you did, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review. Our goal is to continue to provide you with interesting content and exciting topics, to stay up to date with TFN's Real Estate Real Talk and to get all the behind the scenes content. You can follow us on Instagram at TFN Realty Inc, and on YouTube.