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16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors.
16W Media Group Presents The Branding Highway Podcast
Don Hill: Elevating Tampa Bay Real Estate - Showcasing the Top 500 Agents, Family Dynamics, and the Journey from Cutco to Industry Leadership
What does it take to rise to the top in Tampa Bay's competitive real estate market? Join us as we sit down with Don Hill, the dynamic founder of Tampa Bay Real Producers, who reveals the mission behind showcasing the top 500 real estate agents in the area. We'll unpack the stringent criteria for making it to the top, based on MLS sales volume, and discuss the staggering difference in activity between these elite agents and the rest of the 17,000 licensed professionals. Don sheds light on the high turnover in the industry, especially among those who start during market booms without understanding the sustained effort required.
We also spotlight the achievements of top producers like Andrew Duncan, Tony Barone, Martha Thorne, and Jennifer Zales. Don shares the backstory of the Top 500 list and its evolution, emphasizing the importance of systems and teamwork. Discover how essential vendors and referral networks, like BNI groups, play a vital role. Plus, I share my personal journey from selling Cutco Cutlery to investing in real estate, an unexpected connection that has enriched my career in meaningful ways.
Balancing a thriving career with a bustling family life is another theme we explore. Don opens up about raising five children under ten, the joys and challenges of sports and church activities, and our shared passion for New York sports teams. We reminisce about growing up near iconic sports venues and drawing inspiration from those experiences. Don's stories from his formative years at Cutco, where he faced significant obstacles, offer invaluable lessons in leadership and mindset. Tune in for insights into Tampa Bay Real Producers, growth opportunities for aspiring agents, and the significance of community and perseverance.
Tampa Bay Real Producers is a platform designed to inspire, connect, and elevate the "Real Producers" in the Tampa Bay Real Estate Community. We do this through our social magazine, social events, social media and our podcast.
(203)240-0011
www.tampabayrealproducers.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mike Sedita.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast presented by 16W Media Group. I'm your host, Mike Sedita, and today we have the pleasure of being joined by Don Hill. He is the founder of Tampa Bay Real Producers. Don, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:Life is good, mike, thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you coming on One podcast host to another podcast host. Hopefully we don't screw it up too bad and bring shame to our name, but just so you know, I did a little research on your podcast, so you know a little bit about our group here, what we do. The Good Neighbor podcast was really started during COVID as a way for brands to get their story out to the community. Over the last four years there's now Good Neighbor podcasts in Denver, Atlanta, Virginia, all over the United States. I'm the guy here in Tampa that gets to talk to entrepreneurs and founders like you. So, with that said, just start us off with what is Tampa Bay? Real Producers.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Tampa Bay Real Producers is actually part of a bigger national franchise model called Real Producers, which represents about 125 different markets across the country. So I own the Tampa Bay franchise and founded it back in 2018. And so we specifically highlight we say inspire, elevate and highlight the top producing real estate agents in the Tampa Bay community, which is specifically Hillsborough, pinellas and Pasco counties. Those are the three counties that we kind of serve and there's about 17,000 licensed agents in those three counties that we kind of serve and there's about 17,000, you know, licensed agents in those three counties. But to constitute what we call a real producer, we our audience is really the top 500 agents in the market. That that's the audience that are in our magazine, on our podcast. We do a ton of events for them and with them and with other local partners in the area, so that's really our main audience.
Speaker 2:And the podcast, the magazine. That's all designed for the end user, is your realtors, to give them like what's going on in the market, like what's going on, for example, like in the condo market, like all the different rule changes and stuff. It's designed to educate them and keep them at the top of the game. How do you, how do you like? Is there a threshold? I need to be. Do I need to sell $7 million worth of homes to be ranked in that top 500? Or are you just kind of eyeballing it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. So we do base it off of MLS sales volume and we look at the top 500 producers, which of course, is going to change every year. Last year, as an example, to be in the top 500, an agent would have had to do at least $13 million in volume to be in the top 500. And we found from our data they average 55 transactions per agent in that particular audience and when you compare that to number 501 through the rest of the list, like 17,000, they average about five transactions per agent. So to be featured in that top 500 is generally something that they're pretty proud of. It just shows that oh, absolutely is generally something that they're pretty proud of.
Speaker 3:It just shows that you know outside party that's coming along saying that these are the best of the best. And one thing you mentioned about like the purpose of our podcast yes, there is, you know, real estate specific information that gets elaborated on the podcast and in the magazine. But really the premise behind what we do is really just to get their stories out there Right More about what made them top producers, what are the habits, the goals, the actual systems that help them build their businesses and what are their thought patterns, what's the mentality look like, and really trying to overall help more agents reach those top levels, instead of having an industry where there's just so much turnover and people kind of come and go pretty quickly. So it's really designed to kind of elevate the overall real estate community.
Speaker 2:Well, you know it's funny. You said that was one of the things I was going to touch on. You talked about 501 to 17,000. The reality is probably 13,000 to 17,000 don't ever do a transaction. I mean there's got to be some statistic right, or is it? 17,000 have done at least one transaction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and again, that changes every year as well, but according to last year's data there were about 17,000 just under that that did at least one deal last year. But the majority of those like say from 12,000 to 17,000, most of them did one to three in that range. Most of them are not doing most of that. 17,000 are doing five or less. I'll put it that way it's really when you start getting up over like that top thousand that you start to see people that are really treating it like a full time career and they're doing 20 plus deals a year.
Speaker 2:You know. But then the other part of it too is OK. So that's 17 with a single trend, 17k with a single transaction. How many other people? I mean there's got to be statistics. I mean you're deeper in it than I am, yeah, how many people come in Like, for example, we come out of COVID in 2020. And then somewhere around the middle to late 2021, the interest rate was still like nothing?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there was no inventory and the market was so crazy People were spending so much money on real estate. How many people go to real estate school, get their license, get out and then realize, oh wow, this is actually a real job. People think they're going to become a realtor Right, I know, I know so-and-so is going to sell their house. They don't realize they know probably 50 of the 17,000 that are actually doing transactions, how many of them don't ever even make a transaction?
Speaker 2:I mean is there a number for the total population of licensed realtors?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there is, and again, it ebbs and flows and changes regularly, but based on, again, the numbers that we had access to from last year, we were seeing between 23,000 to 24,000 licensed agents, right okay, so about 7,000, 8,000 of them are not doing anything it might have been licensed at any point, you know, during that time, and, as you said, some of them get a license just because they want to have one for the sake of it, thinking their own house, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean like some people do that to save a little bit of money to sell their own house. I get a $700,000 real estate course to save 12,000. I mean, it's not a dumb thing to do, so let's bury the lead. Who's the number one real producer right now in Tampa?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a dangerous question because there's going to be people that tell us I'm bringing you on the spot I can shine a light on you, but let's do this, let's not put them in order. Who are two or three of the top 10 that you know off the top of your head and you say these are really good at their craft?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there are some great people out there, and one of the things I and I will give you some names, but one of the things that I want to say is, like I've learned over the years, when we especially interviewing them on the podcast and even for the magazine articles that we do, that there are certain like characteristics and trends that these top producers have and someone from the outside looking in tends to just view like very, very successful agents, as they must be cutthroat, you know, they must have a mentality where they they just want to beat everybody else. And don't get me wrong, there's a of those.
Speaker 3:There's competition, for sure, but I've actually been surprised by the amount of especially top producers that really have like a collaborative type attitude, yeah, where they really do care about the market as a whole, they care about helping people in the community, and so that's been a positive thing to come across. But you know names, like you know. Andrew Duncan with the Duncan duo are very well known and he's always been a top five producer and built a great team. Tony Barone out of Keller Williams, which is another name that a lot of people know. He's built a top 10 team for many years. Martha Thorne out of Clearwater has built a great luxury brand as a top 10 producer. Jennifer Zales is very well known as a top luxury agent, has always been a top producer, and I know I'm leaving some names out that I'm sure people will be mad about.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want you to have to take any heat from the other 497. So so here's my question too is like if you ever watched Saturday Night Live, when you host it five times, you get like a five timers jacket.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:How many people like when this started in 2018,? Is this when you started compiling the top 500?
Speaker 3:Yeah, our first issue as far as the magazine was January of 2019. So that was the first issue we put out. We've put out one every month since. So we just passed our five-year anniversary and every year we look at a new top 500 list. So there have definitely been agents that have been on that list every year since we started, and then there's always new agents that are on it for the first time. I've seen, I would say, on average, like Out of the top 500 every year, there's usually anywhere between 100 to 200 that are actually new on an annual basis.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, yeah, that's great. I mean that is cool. I mean numbers and stuff like that always fascinate me because it's almost like its own ecosystem of people coming in, people going, things happen in their life. Some people may apply themselves a little bit more, but one of the things you touched on, because I talk to a lot of real estate agents too with what I do with my marketing, so I find that they all have systems in place. Whether it is how they do their marketing, they effectively do the right amount of direct mail with the right amount of branding, with the right amount of whatever else they put in there.
Speaker 2:Email blasts and other different things they do.
Speaker 2:They have the right team in place that knows how to make sure all the forms and things are filled out properly, and someone who's always making sure, because listen, real estate transactions, there's always that monkey wrench that gets thrown into the middle of it. The ones that I think are the best have systems in place, actually play well with others, because it makes the transaction so much more cohesive when it's not that domineering agent, bullying the other agent and some of that goes on. I mean, it definitely happens, but when you play well with others, you have systems in place but, most importantly, you can pivot rapidly when it hits the fan that they're able to kind of hey look, the title didn't come back the way.
Speaker 2:We thought we need to do this, this and this or the. The husband just bought a big screen TV with his credit card a week before for three grand and we need to figure out. And they have a network. I mean pivoting and having that network of title. People mortgage people. That it's a team, it's a collaborative team effort.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right on the money. In fact, that's actually part of our platform with Tampa Bay Real Producers is we have vendors who actually support our platform and those vendors are vetted through referral processes working with the agents. So the way that we operate is we don't ever partner with a lender or a title company.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they don't they don't ever come to us unless they've come to us as a referral from one of the agents that we've interviewed for the magazine. So that way we can kind of vet that list and we have about 60 something partners right now on our website at Tampa Bay Road Producers, and that's the industries you just mentioned. You know, roofers, stagers and home inspectors, all those different industries, and so, yeah, having a great vendor list is a key to, I think, being able to scale their organization and have people they can trust.
Speaker 2:I mean that's why you know, in networking groups like B&I, that's always the power team in every B&I. I mean I think in my opinion that I mean I could be wrong, it's just my opinion, but that's what keeps every B&I group afloat with their thank you for closed businesses. The realtor calls the pressure wash guy to clean the house, calls the home staging person, gets the title person involved, has the mortgage guy already set up and they're doing, you know, out of those $13 million worth of transactions to get in the top 500, they're doing all that in a BNI group, in a smaller ecosystem, to keep that afloat as well, which is incredible.
Speaker 3:So tell me a little bit about your background, Are you?
Speaker 2:are you an agent? Do you? You just like talking to realtors all day? Tell me, how do you get into this where you're doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm actually not a licensed agent. Tell me, how do you get into this where you're doing it? Yeah, I'm actually not a licensed agent. Everybody always asks me that I've never. Now that I'm in this industry, I actually like my positioning of not being affiliated with any specific brokerage. I think that way I don't have any sort of like biases that some people think I might have getting into the industry. So I've always loved real estate, though from an investment standpoint. I read Rich Dad, poor Dad when I was like what's up, buddy? I read Rich Dad, poor Dad when I was like 19 years old and that kind of got me first interested in real estate as investment opportunities, right, and so from there I used to sell Cutco Cutlery, if you know anything about the night.
Speaker 2:I do actually. My company is born out of a Cutco executive started the company that I do business with Is that right?
Speaker 3:Very cool. Who is that? A guy by the name of Dave Durant. I know, dave. Well, actually that's funny Small world so yeah, Dave was a region manager in the central region when I was running my division in Connecticut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so small world.
Speaker 3:So I grew up up there in the Northeast and I was with Cutco for 12 years and I'm in the Cutco Hall of Fame and only in New York, as Dave is as well and so that was my background. I moved to Florida because I went to college down here at University of Tampa and fell in love with the Tampa Bay area.
Speaker 3:But you know, yeah, went back up north to do Cutco. Eventually thought it was time to leave. So in 2012 is when I moved back to Tampa, did a couple things. Started an energy company for a little while with a buddy of mine, but quickly got involved with a company called N2, which is the parent company that now has real producers as one of its product lines. And the guys who started N2 were actually old cuckoo guys as well.
Speaker 2:And Dave who started Best Version Media.
Speaker 3:Exactly right. So how Dave started Best Version. You might know of Earl Seals and Dwayne Hickson, who started N2 before Dave started Best Version. Right, yeah, man, so that was the story. So N2, then, as you know, creates a lot of neighborhood magazines. That's actually how I started back in 2012. I launched two franchises for them over in the St Pete area one for a neighborhood called Snell Isle in St Petersburg and then one for Tierra Verde. Okay, they have one in Bel Air, I know they One for a neighborhood called Snell Isle in St Petersburg and then one for Tierra Verde.
Speaker 2:Ok, they have one in Bel Air. I know they have another one in Bel Air.
Speaker 3:They do. Yeah, they have one in Bel Air run by Clint Jones. He's another friend of mine and so I had that and had both franchises. But Real Producers became another product spinoff within the model, so I ended up selling off both of those franchises. They're still involved today and the AD who's running them is doing very well, and I just was more interested in building out the real producer model. I like that network. My best partners were always the real estate agents. I seem to always get along well with them and I can relate with them, and so I had a good network of agents that were clients of mine anyway network of agents that were clients of mine anyway.
Speaker 2:So it's real producers, the franchise is N2, the parent of real producers as well.
Speaker 3:It is. It's still the parent company and they have four different product lines now under that parent company. One of them is called Stroll, which is their neighborhood magazine. Real producers is the real estate product. Then they have one called medical professionals, which is for the medical doctor's field, and then there's a fourth one called Be Local, which is for new movers moving into a community. So they have four different divisions now, and RealProducers started back in 2014 with a test market in Indianapolis and it's now grown to about 125 markets across the country.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great. Yeah, it's funny how the technology changes and people the medium kind of shifts as the time changes, which is interesting to see that happen. So for you, I mean, one of the questions I always ask is what is a myth or misconception? I mean it's kind of hard. I mean you do the same thing I do. I mean, the of the questions I always ask is what is a myth or misconception? I mean it's kind of hard. I mean you do the same thing I do. I mean the thing I run into. The biggest myth that I run into is people can't figure out how to navigate StreamYard. What do you? I mean you do everything live in person and you're scheduling it. People are coming into the studio. What do you run into? Stuff where you're trying to educate folks that they just don't quite understand what you do and how you do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I would say I guess I would reference more of my client-based side. So when I first onboard a client who wants to connect with agents, let's say right, and I would say more around the misconception that they think, hey, I'm just going to pay for this ad, I'm going to throw it in a magazine and because of that ad I should be getting people to call me and create results through that right.
Speaker 3:And in this world. It just really doesn't work that way, right? Of course, there's value in any ad campaign and at least being seen and having branding or else the advertising wouldn't exist but the real value in what we do is all about the engagement of the client in terms of intentionally wanting to connect with real estate agents and learning how to build relationships with them, right. So it's that I think we do a pretty good job of creating the right expectations with them upfront so that they know what things they should do to actually get results from our platform. But if there is a misconception that they're just going to throw an ad in and be passive and that's what they're going to pay for, they're probably going to be mistaken when they realize that that's not how it's going to work.
Speaker 2:You know, what's funny is the conversation I have with people every single day is understanding what type of marketer you are.
Speaker 2:You know, a lot of people think they're direct response advertisers. I'm going to run an ad and the phone is going to ring, but lawyers, doctors, realtors, you know, plumbers no one is just actually going to pick up the phone and go hey, let me call a lawyer today, for you need something to happen. And if you don't have the branding as a base underneath what you're trying to do, yeah, it's the difference between people knowing your name and people having to google to find your name. It's just, it's one of those things and I have that same conversation all day with people understanding look, this is one layer to what you do. If you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you're gonna eventually be disappointed. It's getting getting that full spear full of. You know a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and that's what I was saying about the realtors who are successful.
Speaker 2:They understand I need to be everywhere, if I had a pot of gold, I would be everywhere, but I need to strategically be as many places as I can and maximize out my budget. I mean, this is there's a lot. There's always some sort of regulation and things changing.
Speaker 2:I know right now in the real estate market here in Florida with condominiums. There's a whole big ruling coming down with people needing to kind of redo and upgrade their entire condo complex and people are starting to sweat that a little bit. But that's kind of heady real life heavy stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What do you do when you're not recording and talking to real estate? Do you do for fun?
Speaker 3:uh well, I'm married with five kids, so no fun, no right there that's where the fun lies, there, mike, so you know how that works.
Speaker 3:One of them just walked in a minute ago. You never know what's gonna happen at your home office, right? But you know we, yeah, we have five little ones. My oldest is 10 years old and, uh, we have five kids that are 10 and younger. Our house is a zoo. We're big sports fans. My two boys love baseball, so I'm coaching Little League here in Land O'Lakes. I live in Land O'Lakes, over off of 54. We're pretty involved with that. We're very active in our church. We go to Hillsdale down off of Ehrlich Road and my wife teaches there Wednesday night. I teach Sunday school every Sunday morning, and so that's been a big part of our lives for the last few years. And traveling man, we love to take trips when we can with the family and just get away and build that quality time.
Speaker 2:So important question. You're from Connecticut, are you a Patriots or a Giants fan?
Speaker 3:No, I grew up right on the border of New York and Connecticut. Dude, I'm New York, everything. I'm Giants fan, yankees fan. I'm all about the New York teams.
Speaker 2:All right, we got that covered. We can continue now and have the remainder of this conversation. So yeah, I was saying a minute ago about going up north. I literally go maybe once a year and I go just to gain five pounds of eating all the good food that I missed, but that's literally the only reason for me to go there. I mean, I have to go for my 35 year high school reunion in a few months, right, which will be interesting, but I don't get up there as much. Once you get that, you know, once the cold gets out of my body.
Speaker 1:I don't want to, I can't, I and I never go like.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna go the middle October this is like winter for me. To go to New Jersey in October it's bad, is that where you grew up Jersey. I grew up walking distance to Giant Stadium. When we were kids we'd get dropped off to tailgate at the stadium and then we could walk up the hill. That's how close we were to Giant Stadium.
Speaker 3:That's cool.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean I'm New York, everything except for the Atlanta Braves. I had TBS as a kid and I liked Dale Murphy in the powder blue uniform, so I kind of got hooked on that. But yeah, giants, knicks, you know Devils because they were right there where I grew up. But here it's cool. I mean I have tickets to. I go to the Lightning probably 10 times a year. My, I go to the Lightning probably 10 times a year.
Speaker 2:My girlfriend has tickets to the Bucs but it's not 300 degrees sitting in the sun. I'll try to go out to a couple of those games.
Speaker 3:I was here in 2002 when the Bucs won their first Super Bowl. I was in college then and so that was a cool experience and I became a secondary Bucs fan. I'm still always going to be a Giants fan at heart. When they play and the Giants are in town, I'm always rooting for the Giants when we get to go to the games. But I got to go to the Super Bowl when they did beat the Patriots out in Arizona the first time the undefeated season I was at that game it was. It was an awesome experience. But yeah, I grew up a Giants fan, go to a lot of the games. I lived in Connecticut so I wouldn't be able to walk there like you, I'd have to drive. It's close.
Speaker 2:I mean people don't realize. I'm trying to explain to my girlfriend. We live in tampa palms and she used to live up in weston chapel in epperson and where I grew up in new jersey to time square was closer in miles than here. To epperson like this is 16 miles. I grew up 12 miles to time square. Everything is so condensed. When you're in that tri-state area it seems like it's a million miles away because it's crowded, but from a geography standpoint it's relatively. You know it's pretty close For you though. So you were talking about being here for the Bucs championship, like when they were in 2002.
Speaker 2:I lived in Atlanta in 1994, 1995, when they won the World Series in 95. In 1994, 1995, when they won the World Series in 95. And, ironically, like 10, 12 years later well, 95, probably about 20 years later, 2015, I ended up playing league softball with. Mark Wohlers was the closer on the mound to win a World Series. Like cool, like really, really cool guy I mean he broke my toe on accident. I mean we had some good times hanging out with him. But like being in that city, like that's their first championship, winning it, like I'm sure how it was here in Tampa in that time frame, it's like a different vibe, but I was at the parade after the 18-1 Giants back victory. I was at the parade in the city. It was crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went to the parade in the city when the Yankees beat the Braves in 96, too. That first year I was there as a 16-year-old kid, just loving the start of a dynasty.
Speaker 2:So it was cool. So now you've got five kids, 10 and under, boys, girls.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we have three girls and two boys.
Speaker 2:And they're all softball baseball.
Speaker 3:Love. My girls are really into dance, so my wife has always been a dance teacher and she actually used to dance for the New York Jets for a few years. She was on that flight crew cheerleading team that they had for a couple of years. They've kind of followed her footsteps a little bit and they're all involved in the All-American Dance Academy here and off of Dale Mabry. But yeah baseball and football seem to be the two sports my boys are really into.
Speaker 2:So what's in your life? I mean, you talked to your story a little bit, but has there ever been like a challenge where you're like you?
Speaker 1:know what. I don't know if I'm going to get through this. I don't know if I'm going to you know whether it was transitioning from Cutco, moving across the country.
Speaker 2:where was that challenge in your career where you're like I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it, but you got through it? How did you get through it to get?
Speaker 3:to the other side. Yeah, I mean there's a lot. One that specifically I would say comes to mind is during my years at Cutco, actually when I was a college student. Still, there was a program that would allow us to open up an office for a summertime and recruit our own teams. So I ended up opening up an office in Martha's Vineyard, massachusetts, which was a pretty cool experience for a college kid.
Speaker 2:Now it might not have been the best idea from a business perspective because there wasn't a lot of recruiting and there wasn't really like the same type of opportunity from a. They're eating lobster and have white gloves on. They're not coming out to do work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very different from that standpoint than where I could have recruited from other areas. But I recruited 41 college kids that summer and they sold over $180,000 worth of knives and we were one of the more productive teams actually in the country. But I remember when I first got there I was supposed to be running a training seminar and supposed to start this thing going and the person that I was renting the room from basically bailed on me and sold it to someone else. So for the first two and a half weeks of being there I was basically living out of a homeless shelter in Martha's Vineyard, where it was kind of funny looking back on it now because I'm the only guy putting a suit and tie on every day at the homeless shelter and then running off to work. But I had no place to live. I was literally sleeping in my office for the first two nights and it was a challenge just trying to balance, trying to grow a business.
Speaker 3:I had invested a good amount of my money really all of my money at the time into trying to get this thing going, to try to figure out how to do that, while finding a place to live on Martha's Vineyard which rents for $10,000 a week was a challenging situation.
Speaker 3:Week was a challenging situation. So there was a lot of other things that happened that summer that I would be able to elaborate on regarding, just like challenges, of helping people overcome obstacles, but it really helped me grow a lot as a leader, since I was a college kid myself, but I had all these other college kids who were looking at me as their boss and their leader and when they'd have problems they'd come to me with it, you know, and it really helped me grow a lot, become a better listener and just realizing that, at the end of the day, our mentality is what shapes everything, you know. So, however we choose to view our challenges, we can view it as an opportunity or we can view it as an insurmountable challenge and I really learned to view all obstacles through the lens of opportunity and I think that has helped me in my business career ever since.
Speaker 2:You know that is a great skill set, because it's like I worked with this company in my past career, you know, and the company was just, it was right in the middle of the real estate crisis.
Speaker 2:And you know I'm talking to this guy who's running the company and like, listen, anybody can sail the boat in calm waters. It's when you can sail the boat and navigate through the waves and get to the other side. That's what creates leadership. That's what creates, you know, people that you know that are going to look to you for future stuff. And the thing is it sucks when you're going through it. When you're in the middle of it, you're like, you know, when you're getting your tie on in a homeless shelter, you're like, man, this is miserable, like how did I end up in this? But when you come out, the other side, that's now a story that is like a, you know, a feather in your cap that you carry, because next time somebody comes to you now as a leader, and they say oh, you know my car broke down on the way to work.
Speaker 2:It's like, hey, listen, it's a challenge, you know you got here, you still do the way. It gives you that like that street cred. You know what I mean. Like it's like I've been through it, I've been through the grind with the same as you, I've done it, I've been there, I've done it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean that's amazing, like I can't even imagine sleeping in the office and trying to keep your head straight to work during the day, to motivate people and all that stuff. That's pretty challenging. So let me ask you this If there's real estate agents listening to this, or other vendors that are in that real estate circle that are interested in Tampa Bay Real Producers, what's one thing they need to know about working with you and your team and what you guys do and accomplish?
Speaker 3:Well, if they're an agent and they would like to be featured by us and they know that they're a top producer, we generally reach out through our list and through our nomination process. But all they need to do is go to tampabayworldproducerscom and they can literally click on a contact button there and we can just verify their volume and we can get them featured, you know, and get them into our system, have them on the podcast and get them into the magazine. If you're an agent who's not yet a top producer but you want to be and you're committed to that growth and that process, we also have a consulting program now called Top Producers Nation and you can also apply for that right through our website which includes a course and weekly group coaching. There's also one on one coaching and it's really cool because we bring in top producers from all these different brokerages and they all are there to teach and train and share value, and so that's a program that we've just recently launched called Top Producers Nation, and you can learn more about that that, too, up on our website.
Speaker 3:And then, lastly, if they're a partner or vendor who would like to work with top producers but they feel like they need help in connecting with them or figuring out how to get in front of them and, more importantly, build relationships with them. They can go to our website and apply to become an official partner with us. We would then follow up with them, have a Zoom call like this to just learn more about your business, exactly how you work with agents, what you're looking to accomplish, and then we can figure out whether or not you'd be a really good fit to become an official partner of Tampa Bay Real Producers or not.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So and you said it a few times I mean to get ahold of you the best way is tampabayrealproducerscom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say so. I mean, we're on all the socials. You can send us messages on Facebook and on Instagram, and our YouTube channel has been built out with a ton of video content. So there's stuff all over there, but our website is the most direct way to just fill out a form and it'll come right to us and we can connect with you from there.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So, folks, if you're listening to this, you're a real estate agent. You're listening to this, you're a real estate agent, you're a top producer or you want to get there. They have a way for you to get involved in their program, in their platform Tampa Bay Real Producers Don Hill he's a Giants fan. That, amongst anything else, right out of the gate, I'm already in, I'm bored. Contact him today, tampa Bay Real Producers Don, thank you for being a good neighbor. Thank you for being on the Good.
Speaker 3:Neighbor Podcast. No doubt, Mike. I appreciate the invitation.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast PASCO. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnppascocom. That's gnppascocom, or call 813-922-3610. 3 9, 2, 2. 3, 6, 1, 0.