Tech, Team, and Tenacity: How Dallaire Realty Thrives in Real Estate

Join us in this engaging podcast episode with Greg Dallaire, the visionary owner of Dallaire Realty. Discover the captivating journey from Greg's humble beginnings in real estate to the thriving brokerage he leads today. 

Learn how Dallaire Realty leverages cutting-edge technology, nurtures a supportive team culture, and embraces unwavering tenacity to stand out in the real estate industry. Gain insights into the challenges Greg faced, the lessons learned, and his vision for the future. 

Whether you're a real estate enthusiast, aspiring entrepreneur, or just love success stories, this episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration. Tune in and explore the Tech, Team, and Tenacity that powers Dallaire Realty's success!

#entrepreneurship #businessowner #realtor #dallairerealty #smallbusiness #greenbayrealtor #realestate #actionfinancialstrategies
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Introduction (0:00 - 1:00)

Greg Dallaire's Real Estate Journey (1:01 - 9:00)

• Greg shares his early inspiration and mentors.
• The story of Greg's first investment property and obtaining his real estate license.
• The transition from working at Coldwell Banker to launching Dallaire Realty.
• The decision to start independently and the focus on technology and marketing.

 Challenges and Lessons in Entrepreneurship (9:01 - 12:59)

• Greg discusses the early challenges of running Dallaire Realty and the importance of learning from mistakes.
• The significance of work ethic, hustle, and adaptability in the real estate industry.
• Observations on the changing landscape of the real estate and mortgage industry, with a significant reduction in professionals.

Success Factors in Real Estate (13:00 - 18:59)

• The secret sauce of Dallaire Realty: consistent use of technology, a supportive team, and leveraging social media for marketing.
• Greg elaborates on the importance of being consistent, supporting the team, and providing quality employment with benefits.
• The power of collaboration and adapting to changes in the market.

 Future Plans for Dallaire Realty (19:00 - 22:59)

• Dallaire Realty's forward-looking plans.
• Greg emphasizes the focus on technology, support staff, and leveraging the database for continued success.
• Providing flexibility and benefits to the team, maintaining a positive and collaborative culture.

 Conclusion (23:00 - End)

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Learn more about Dallaire Realty
Website: https://www.dallairerealty.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenbayhomes
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/greenbayrealestate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dallairerealtywi/

Need a little guidance in your own business? We're here for you!
https://www.actionfinancials.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ActionFinancialS/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuE31mXf6_Nf4yhpuZRHI6Q

Transcript

Brad Ruh: [00:00:00] We have with us today Green Bay Greg, the man himself, Greg Dallaire, owner of Dallaire Realty. He is a local real estate agent owner, fantastic human being, and he's gracing us with his presence today. And he's gonna tell us his humble beginnings of being in the real estate world, 

Greg Dallaire: Super excited to be here. Super excited to share this story. Hopefully, we can, give some value to the audience members. I know there's definitely people that have thought about getting into this business and, I'm an open book, and I a lot of people I feel like when they talk about real estate as far as a career and getting into the business, they Only show the pros.

And I'm the polar opposite of that. I want everyone to know that the true how difficult this business can be And, setting those ex expectations, but happy to talk about my story 

Brad Ruh: as well. Yeah. So take us back. How did you even get into real estate?

You obviously didn't just, jump out of [00:01:00] grade school right into selling properties. So tell us how it all started. 

Greg Dallaire: I was, like, fourteen, fifteen, and there's this book that came out called Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki who had written these books basically to teach you about the importance of, becoming either into these different quadrants, like self employment Or self employed business owner or investor. . That kind of opened my eyes.

And then I had a gentleman by the name of Royal Shackelford over at Coldwell Banker. When I worked for the newspaper, I worked in classified advertising when I was, like, sixteen because I could type ninety five words a minute. But I met this real estate investor who also is a real estate agent. His name is Royal Shackelford. He was working at Coldwell Banker, and I just started asking him some questions about these ads I was running for him. About duplexes and things, and " you really should come down to my office and, we'll have coffee and talk."

And I was, I think, sixteen, seventeen at the time, and I'm going to his office, and he's hey, you need to read these books, and then if you read these books, come back and see me. Don't tell me to read something. [00:02:00] I typically read it, so I did end up coming back to him.

I ended up getting my real estate license in 2006. 

Brad Ruh: Was that under Coldwell then? 

Greg Dallaire: Yeah. I started at Coldwell Banker back in 2006, and, Royal Shackelford had kind of guided me. And then when I was nineteen, I bought my first investment property.

I bought a duplex, and then I owner occupied my side, and then I had a roommate, and I also had a renter on the other side. I was really grateful. I had a really great job at a super young age. I worked for the Gannett Newspapers, which is like the Green Bay Press Gazette, but they actually had eleven newspapers. And I kind of just worked my way up there. And when I graduated high school, they just kept promoting me into these different positions. 

Brad Ruh: Were you selling properties at the time too then? 

Greg Dallaire: No. I was just working for the newspaper, but I basically got to the point where I had enough money saved up from that.

Plus, to be fully transparent, I was really good at playing online poker. 

I was really good at computers and technology.

Online poker, plus having a great job. I had [00:03:00] enough money saved up At a point where I could, take the leap of faith of saying, hey, you know what? I don't have to depend on a paycheck every single day. Plus, I had lowered my living expenses by having a roommate and a renter, and I decided to take a leap of faith and get my real estate license.

I think it was, like, twenty one and a half at the time. So I started extremely young. Thankfully, I could grow some facial hair, so I actually looked like I wasn't twenty one years old because you're dealing with people's biggest asset a lot of times, in real estate. 

Brad Ruh: So then you were working basically full time for Coldwell, just selling properties. 

Greg Dallaire: Yeah. To be brutally honest the first couple years, I was honestly playing a lot of golf. I was, playing a lot of online poker, and then I met my beautiful bride. We had a daughter, and I realized, hey, I need to take this serious. I do not want to be -- they call him Rounder -- I don't want to be an online poker player for the rest of my life and raise a family.

So I decided to really kick things into gear, and that's really when the consistent take off occurred with our business. And[00:04:00] in 2011, we launched Dallaire Realty. It started with me, and then we slowly kind of grew and added people over time.

Brad Ruh: So why not stay under the Coldwell arm? 

Greg Dallaire: That's a great question. Michael Sewell, Royal Shackleford, and all the great people there really were awesome to deal with. But at that time, the technology world was rapidly changing, and I was on the forefront and cutting edge of that.

It's always been my specialty. There was a lot of things that I knew that I was doing on my own from a technology perspective for my clients that Coldwell wasn't really doing. So I was like, I'd rather build the things we want to build it and have a better process for our clients, from marketing. Back in 2007, really no one was taking professional pictures. We always take professional pictures. Of properties. We were doing videos back in 2008, 2009, 2010 on YouTube, and really trying to do a lot of marketing things that a lot of people weren't. So I just I wanted to be in control.

I had our website [00:05:00] to the first page of Google in 2011, and I really knew where things were going and that people were going to be using Search and other things to find resources. 

Brad Ruh: And you just didn't feel with Coldwell and their structure that you were able to really employ a lot of that on your own without going through the bureaucracy of approvals or the brand? 

Greg Dallaire: Combination of all of it. I wanted to be able to build it ourselves . And build a brand. I had some moments in 2010 before I went on our own completely.

I was like, hey, does the brand help me, how much does it really impact? And I kind of did a test run for a period of a year where I worked at a different company. They had great marketing and stuff, but I purposely did not use any of it.

This is like a pretest before I go fully out on my own. And then I took the jump of faith because I knew that at that point, it was what I brought to the table from a communication standpoint, professionalism, follow-up, gritty sales, things that a lot of people talk about game, but I was always pretty consistent. [00:06:00] And over time, I just started getting more and more referrals because people trusted -- if I said I was going to do something, I actually did it. 

Brad Ruh: So you started Dallaire Realty. How does a real estate agent just start a real estate company? 

Greg Dallaire: You obviously have to get years under your belt, you have to get a certain amount of sales to become a broker. You have what's called a real estate salesperson, then you have a real estate broker.

So a real estate salesperson can't become a broker until they have at least -- it was two years of experience, but I think they've increased that. And they have, obviously, licensing requirements. You have a lot more responsibilities where you have people underneath you that you're making sure they're doing things the correct 

advisory. Yes. 

Brad Ruh: Gotcha. So you've slowly gathered agents under you and some have come and gone. Where are you sitting at now with your brokerage?

So we have twelve agents. We cover Green Bay, Appleton, and Oshkosh. We're not about having the most agents. We're about building the most productive agents because we actually have three full time support [00:07:00] staff, that is basically having three executive assistants for each individual person on our team. Very specialized, and they're extremely detail oriented people.

Because I think most people that are probably listening they probably know some good salespeople. And great salespeople are usually good at talking and presenting, but they typically suck at the details. So I wanted to find three specific people that were so detail orientated. I don't even let our agents write the descriptions on the property, to give you an example.

I want somebody who is methodical and thinks about things differently. We're not about having the most agents, but we've averaged it was crazy. I just recently for another talk, We've averaged thirty eight sales to fifty one for the last eight years. And if you Google what is the average yeah. Per a sale per agent.

Wow. And if you Google, like, what does the average realtor sell? It's seven homes a year. I'm not looking to have the most agents, but we wanna make the most productive agents. But if anyone's watching and wants to get into real estate, we're actually at a point right now where we could [00:08:00] definitely acquire some massive talent in Green Bay, in Appleton, and in Oshkosh.

So if anyone's thinking about getting into the real estate industry, we'd love to have a conversation. 

What was it like, running Dallaire in the early days, now that you're also a true business owner? For a young entrepreneur starting a business, what are some things that you started learning right off the bat that you had to go, okay, I gotta figure this out. 

Greg Dallaire: I always tell people the minute I think I have this figured out is the minute I get my butt kicked, and I'm telling you what, anyone that knows me, I don't want to get my butt kicked.

So I'm always trying to improve and get better. We learned so much, so many hiring mistakes that we made along the journey. And it was just from inexperience, lack of knowledge. But the great thing about our team and the people that have been with us for a long time, we don't let ourselves make those same mistakes. We weren't willing to gamble on somebody, if we feel like they have potential it factor, but there's so many fail safes in place now that there weren't Initially.

And sometimes you have to make some mistakes to learn and get better at things, [00:09:00] and I was scared about that for a little while. But I realized You can't grow unless you learn it. Sometimes you have to fail to learn. And the more rapid we can learn and grow, The quicker we can get everyone to the, a much further thing down the road. 

Brad Ruh: You've obviously learned a few things about running a business, have there been any big, Holy crap, what just happened? Any big stumbling blocks in your path as a real estate agent so far? Whether it's, the market or, business mistakes? 

Greg Dallaire: I think we've been consistent for a long period of time when we built up this business. There's times when things change in the market where, for example, sixty percent of the homes are Locked up.

When I mean locked up is they have a mortgage under four percent, and we're in an environment where the rates are much higher. And one of the things we struggle with now is we are so big on past client and referral business because we've been doing this for a long time, and we have a great process, and people trust [00:10:00] us. And we've been telling our team for a while initially, what helped us build our client base was a lot of outside, sources. And knowing proactively that hey, we need to engage some of these other sources, but Those other sources are a little bit harder to work.

They take a little more effort. But as a leader, I need to make sure that our team is looking at this from Hey. Hey. You know what? You're reliant too much on these two sources, and that's great. I understand that's what you wanna do. But if you truly wanna hit your goals, we need to open up the playbook and go back to the place that built your database to begin with. But it's a journey in things are always changing and evolving, but your mindset and kind of the effort that our team puts in is what's going to get us through all these different phases. And, If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. And I'll tell you what, there's a mass exodus of people in the mortgage and real estate industry. 

Brad Ruh: I was gonna say, have you seen that with just in the communities that you're kind of still touching, 

Greg Dallaire: [00:11:00] In 2022, there was 1.6 million realtors. In 2023. I think the last time I checked, and this was months ago, but it was, like, 1.2 million. Wow. But 1.6 was, like, uncharted territory. 

The barrier of entry to get into our industry, unfortunately, is a little too easy, I feel. In the bare minimums. But the problem is it's still one of those attrition businesses where you bring ten people in -- similar to finance. Mhmm. Like financial advising you bring in ten people. After five years, one has left if you're lucky.

Sure. It's a very tough business

Brad Ruh: What do you see as the biggest hang up for young or not even young, some people starting mid career back into, into a real estate role, what do you see as the main things that do not allow them to be successful? 

Greg Dallaire: I would say for our industry we've actually had more success with people that are outside of the industry getting in because they don't come preprogrammed with these bad habits.

I think a lot of people that have been a real estate agent for, a year to five years, they think they have it figured out. And maybe they think they can [00:12:00] reprogram themselves. But the reality is usually you can't.

Yeah. For people that have experience, I feel like They're having a hard time really adapting and changing.

They have to truly want it. You and I both know how change how hard change is, but you have to want it. But as far as somebody that's not in it, you have to have the ability to communicate with people. You need to be able to consultatively have conversations and ask great questions and shut up.

 Every once in a while, I get excited and I just start talking and I can't stop. But a great salesperson, needs to be listening eighty percent of the time and talking twenty percent of the time. Somebody that's great at communication, somebody that actually says they're going to do what they're going to do.

If I commit to being here at two o'clock, I'm here. Mhmm. It's sad that in 2023 that is something that we're even talking about. 

Brad Ruh: The professionalism, integrity to your word. 

Greg Dallaire: I set traps all the time. Hey, you need to, like I need you to do this. Even before an interview just to see if they're willing to do things. Tell my kids all the time.

I'm like, if you can hustle and [00:13:00] have work ethic, you can do anything in this world. 

Brad Ruh: Great advice for any young entrepreneur, too. 

Greg Dallaire: As long as you're willing to fail and learn and then try not to make that same mistake over and over again, I think there's massive opportunity. 

Brad Ruh: So what do you see on the horizon for, the leverage factor going forward for real estate company to real estate company?

What do you think is gonna set the stage to be the ones that pull ahead from the pack kinda going forward in this space? 

Greg Dallaire: I think the inventory is going to stay low. I think the buyer pool will potentially shrink a little bit. And I do think that the people that are actually, pulling out the sword and going into the consistent of prospecting. And by prospecting, reaching out to people that have intent to want to purchase real estate.

I think there's a massive opportunity for the teams that kind of align with truly identifying the People that are looking to purchase and truly finding out their motivation, in the next few years. There's going to be less sales. There's 35% reduction in sales across the country [00:14:00] just in 2023 alone. So everyone's fighting over less sales. It's not fun to go through, but it's actually probably a healthy thing for our industry. And the people that kinda got in, thought it was going to be easy money, I can tell you it is not.

It is a lot of work. You sell your soul a lot of times. I have clients calling me, texting me sometimes nine, ten, eleven o'clock at night. Love them to death, but, sometimes that wears on you. You need to be quick responsive because -- think about the "now" economy. It's a good thing and a bad thing, but super annoying.

If I don't respond to somebody pretty quickly and I may have A ten year relationship. If they don't get the answer they want within seconds, they're off to somebody else. 

Brad Ruh: Looking forward, what do you say would be the difference that Dallaire Realty has -- the secret sauce. If you want to divulge the secret sauce for us, you don't have to give us how it's made, but what is your Big Mac sauce that makes Dallaire Realty special? I know you said some things about, you have a higher[00:15:00] close per agent. You may be using some technology, I understand, a little differently.

What would you say is the competitive advantage that you guys have whether it's a it's an actual thing or just some of the professionalism culture that you're teaching? What do you think that is? 

Greg Dallaire: It's a great question. So I would tell you that the technology that we have in place and that we've had in place for a long period of time is we've poured serious money into our websites. And recently, we just added a full blown app to our repertoire.

We have our own branded app in the App Store, which has push notifications Cool. Which allows you to actually communicate with your agent. Which actually has accurate information. You go on those national websites, and they're basic kinda like a trick to make you inquire on a property that's already gone. 

Our app is really designed to only show you properties that are truly available, not under a contract. I think it's a collaboration of the team, the leverage of the support team to do more.

If you hire one agent who They work for this big brand name, but the [00:16:00] reality is they don't really have an assistant. They don't have a closing coordinator. They don't have an inside sales agent. They don't have a group of people around them that truly want them to be successful. The culture at Dallaire Realty is we help each other. If Sarah on our team has a soccer Tournament for her girls, Chris on our team can cover that or I can cover that too. One of our agents is in Boston right now, and he's had a client that wanted to see a property tonight. I said, hey. No problem.

I was just in Aruba. He helped me. That's the thing with this "now" economy. We have to work together as a team, and we have the technology in place. We know that if somebody's in an appointment and they get a text message, we could help them respond to that text message. We have Staff. And it's a team. But we also have this database of buyers who've been in our system since 2014 this massive database. 

We have over seventy thousand people in our actual database Wow. Where we have correct phone numbers, emails. We've probably been talking to a lot of these people for 5-7 years. Provide value to them [00:17:00] knowing that they're not ready.

 To get back to your question aren't the things that people know us for is social media. A lot of people will put a property on social media. They're not actually spending money advertising it. Mhmm.

They don't actually realize that they can actually retarget the people that are potentially a really good Fit for that property. We've got Instagram. We've got TikTok. We've got Facebook. But we actually spend money.

The majority of the posts that we do is our client's properties. And we've always said we spend our money marketing our clients' properties. Yeah. I see you post properties all the time.

Yeah. And we are spending money consistently with those platforms not to get outside of the circle of hey. You put a sign in the yard and you put it on a website. Okay. That's all fine and dandy.

But I want to catch the people that are not necessarily looking, but they are the right fit for these properties. And that's been our voice.

But, we keep adding more and more to our repertoire. If you list a property with us, we've got professional pictures. We've got a floor plan, a 3D walk [00:18:00] through, but now we actually have a floor plan that is connected to the 3D tour where you can actually click and walk through. It's 4K, but then we have video of the property.

We have the video on YouTube, and we're actually spending money to market that property. And this is crazy. I couldn't do all this stuff without staff. I understand how to do it. But there's no way possible I could do it without staff.

The secret sauce is not sexy. It's consistently doing something for, for us, thirteen, fourteen years. And thankfully, Mike Wasilkoff, who's been with me forever, has poured into me every mistake that he ever made in his previous ventures. He's just pounded into me you don't do this. We don't do this.

 If we can't be consistent at, we're not gonna do it. 

Brad Ruh: That's good advice for any entrepreneur, any business owner. 

If you're gonna do something that you know you can't follow through and be consistent on, is it really worth doing?

Greg Dallaire: It was painful. We launched TikTok. We launched Instagram. And I'm the social media guy.

I get it, but I did not want to have to manage all these other platforms, but we finally did it. And we've been consistent in that. And it was [00:19:00] amazing. In the last six months, I've had more people tell me oh my gosh, I see you on Instagram. I see you on TikTok. I see you on Facebook. I hear it all the time. Obviously, it's working and it's expounding, but it's not just working for us, it's working for our clients' properties. And I wouldn't be able to do that without the support team and the leverage. So I think that's our secret sauce. 

Brad Ruh: That's awesome. So where do you see Dallaire Realty going forward?

What's the ten year plan? 

Greg Dallaire: That's a good question. Mike challenged me to write like, a ten year letter to myself. Really powerful tool, and it'll bust you up.

I remember in 2012 writing down this number that I thought was big and aligning these actions that would take to get this. This wasn't like a formula. This was like we wrote it on a piece of paper. This was not like a here's your structured business plan.

Yeah. But I remember, that you're actually hitting that number, and then the very next year, doubling that number. As far as where we go with [00:20:00] Dallaire Realty in the future, we are in Green Bay. We need to continue to build our team in Appleton, kind of these SEAL teams. I wanna have a SEAL team in Green Bay, have a SEAL team in Appleton, SEAL team in Oshkosh.

And from there, our computer system that we use to be able to publish all of our listings and stuff, They cover some bigger area, but I think Green Bay, Appleton, and Oshkosh, there's a massive opportunity to not only to give me different opportunities. But I can give other people on our staff additional responsibilities, or we may be able to actually increase and hire some more people and provide quality employment. Because I'm proud we have we paid half their health insurance. We have a 401(K) where we match four percent. And I'm an independent brokerage. And there was a person who was with us, unfortunately, and was no longer with us. And they went to a national name, like a big name, and couldn't unfortunately they were not offering insurance. Oh. It's devastating to me. 

It's really cool that not only are you [00:21:00] providing your employees with a great system, but you're also providing them with great benefits and taking care of your own. And that's funny that you say that because in prior podcasts, that was like, when I asked, what would you give as advice to, you know, business owners, and it was take care of your employees. They are your resource. Number one resource. So it's great that you made that comment about insurance. 

I used to think that my job is to be there for the employees, in changing your mindset about that. You're right. And I actually want our staff to have some freedom and flexibility. Because they see us as real estate agents. To be honest, if you're not your own devil's advocate -- just like financial advising, you could, talk about doing all this work, but are you really doing work? But I want our staff to, have some flexibility. So I'm, like, always cognizant of that. I don't want them to feel like they're locked into an eight to five, and I've got so many great people, like our support staff, a lot of them have been with me for seven, eight, nine years.

Brad Ruh: What would you say in closing, Greg, for [00:22:00] all of our listeners that stuck through to the end for the entrepreneurial wisdom of the day. What advice would you give to a young Greg starting out at Coldwell. What advice would you give to a young real estate guy that just started out?

Greg Dallaire: Even then there's people that told me you're not gonna be able to do this. You're not gonna be able to do this. And I would tell anyone that's considering doing anything that's outside of the normal box. Even when I bought a duplex, I was, like, ridiculed Even personally, like, why would you do that? All of the decisions that'll get you out of the normal rat race that everyone is in.

Society wants you to think one way. Mhmm. And when you're into these fields where you can step outside of that a little bit, you're gonna get people I call it like the crab in the bucket. As soon as you try to get out of that bucket, they're trying to pull you back in.

I would tell the young Greg go get it. If somebody tells you not to do something or you can't do something. I had this insatiable chip on my shoulder like that. No one's gonna tell me what I can and can't do. I just lean into it [00:23:00] in massive action. Here's what I'll tell you the most successful people I know, they will open up the playbook and they will tell you anything you want to know. People are just scared to ask the question. My success is not like I'm not something like super power. I'm a collective of all these beautiful brains from all across the nation.

I just saw I had a missed call from, Um, a guy in Atlanta, Georgia. The guy is brilliant. And if I didn't have the wherewithal to actually build a relationship ship or genuinely be interested in him, I would have never cracked open a n opportunity to learn everything about where he's been successful. He was asking me hey, what are you doing with this? 

So lean into people that are successful, and the ones you don't think would help you are the ones that'll help you the most. There's just something weird about like, entrepreneurism and successful people, and people are, like, scared of them. They don't have to be. I'm telling you, I'm very generous with my time. I always tell people if I'm going to pour into somebody, I don't want your money. I just want you to carry that forward at some point in your life -- to [00:24:00] help somebody or help them improve their life. Whatever you think you're doing, you can do more. 

Brad Ruh: Love it. Thank you, Greg, for coming in today.

This is fabulous. It's awesome to hear your origin story and where Dallaire Realty is going. Can't wait to get you on here again in ten years when you're selling your business and sailing off into the sunset and snowmobiling up north all winter long. 

Greg Dallaire: I sure will be. Thanks for having me.

Brad Ruh: Again, thanks for coming along, and thanks for tuning in to from Garage of Growth. We'll see you all next time.

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This material is for general informational purposes only and was produced by Action Financial Strategies, LLC.  Life insurance is subject to underwriting. No coverage exists unless a policy is issued and the required premium is paid. Neither Action Financial Strategies nor NYLIFE Securities LLC or its affiliates provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. For advice on such matters, consult your own professional counsel.

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