Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Good Neighbor Podcast: Virginia Beach
Ep. 11 Her Path: Madison Mason's Journey in Real Estate Success and TikTok Fame
How does a surprise call from a biological grandfather change the course of a young woman's life? On this episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, I sit down with Madison Mason of Steel Forged Real Estate, whose real estate journey began with an unexpected offer in the world of personal investigation. Madison's story of adoption, self-discovery, and a leap of faith into real estate is both inspiring and resonant. From a young age, she showed the grit and determination that has since defined her career. Her move to Virginia Beach and her embrace of the real estate industry serve as a testament to her boldness and adaptability.
Join us as Madison shares her insights into the ever-evolving real estate market, particularly the challenges and opportunities that arose during the COVID-19 era. Madison also highlights her unique approach of leveraging social media to differentiate her company in a competitive landscape. As a leader of a 14-agent team, she speaks on the importance of mentorship and nurturing new talent, underscoring her commitment to community and growth. Don't miss Madison's take on becoming a TikTok sensation and how it has amplified her personal brand and business reach. This conversation is brimming with practical advice and inspiration for entrepreneurs and real estate enthusiasts alike.
Steel Forged Real Estate
Madison Mason
Virginia Beach, VA
www.madirosemason.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Denise Taylor.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Good Neighbors Podcast, virginia Beach. Today I am here with Madison Mason, with Steel Forged Real Estate here in Virginia Beach. Welcome, madison, thank you. Good to be here. I'm excited to talk to you. You are relatively a young entrepreneur and when I met with you over a year ago, you're just a force and it's so exciting to see somebody who has so much grit in our community. Tell me, you have a really great story. Tell me how you started your journey into real estate.
Speaker 3:Oh well, yeah, I mean it's a relatively long story, but I'll keep it concise. Growing up, I was adopted at birth and I grew up in California, and it was an open adoption. So I'd always known my biological parents and had a good relationship with them, but at the same time distant, you know she was usually. She was a military brat. My biological mother, my biological father, was between Arkansas and Washington, so I really didn't see them very much. But for whatever reason, when I was 19 years old, I was living on my own, I was working three jobs and going to college full time and I got a call from my biological dad's dad. So my grandfather and he offered me a business in personal investigating. He was ready to retire, he was going to sell his business, but instead of selling he decided, okay, well, maybe she wants to take it over.
Speaker 3:For whatever reason, I decided to call my biological mother and ask her her opinion, and it's one of those things where I've spoken to her once or twice a year my birthday and Christmas, you know. So it was kind of calling out of the blue and she told me if you're going to take over a business, you have to have 100% of yourself invested. So how about I fly you out here to Virginia? We talk about what you want, we go through all of your options and then you decide Cool, free vacation, let's do it. Yeah? So two weeks later, she flew me out. I fell in love with Virginia Beach. I fell in love with her company, which was real estate. She was leading a team and I just fell in love with the idea of doing what she did. So I flew back home, put in my two weeks notice and started my real estate courses right then and there. So that's how I started 10 years ago, almost to the day.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. A 19-year-old can make a decision like that and it's life changing, Very impressive. So in your current business, what do you see currently happening in the market and how you differentiate yourself from other agents and brokerages in the area?
Speaker 3:So as you know, the real estate market is nothing but changing all the time, especially since the years of COVID. You know everything changed when that happened. I remember 10 years ago where a client of mine had $500 for their name, could get a house for less what they would do with renting. We're paying deposits and everything. They could get their closing costs covered. They get inspections covered. Oh, if you need a privacy fence, I'll ask the seller to do that To needing to bid $20,000, $30,000 above list price and guaranteeing that amount. So the only thing that stays the same in real estate is change. And because me and my company are so adaptive, because of how young we are and how good we are with social media and figuring out what's next, what people need, I think that's what really sets us apart.
Speaker 2:Tell me about the agents in your office. How many agents do you have?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we currently have 14 agents. We range from being in the business 10 years to be in the business two weeks, and we what I very much strongly, you know, advocate for is mentorship. So all of these agents have found me through, whether it be doing a deal with me and wanting to learn with me, through following me on social media, and wanting to be like me or my husband or past clients of ours that want to get into the business. So these are people that we handhold through the, through the whole process of actually getting their license until their fourth or fifth deal.
Speaker 2:You are a TikTok star. Tell, tell me about how that all came about.
Speaker 3:So it's so funny. This was back during 2020 and we were all cooped up in in our homes and I was making fun of one of my stepdaughters for doing all these TikTok dances and everything. And she's like you know, you'd love it, you would love it. I don't think so. It's a, it's a kid thing. Blah, blah, blah. But she finally convinced me and so I started doing TikToks and I was more so doing it for personal, but then every once in a while, I thought, okay, well, maybe I could do some real estate content showing houses, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 3:I got in a network of other TikTok real estate agents and all of them started telling me well, no, this gives me a lot of clients. You just need to actually pay attention to real estate, not do all your personal stuff on there. Stop doing these silly things that the kids are doing and only do real estate. So I'm like, okay, well, I'll try it. I've got nothing better to do. I'm eight months pregnant, might as well. So I started doing TikTok consistently with clients or with real estate, and within two months, I started getting clients. And then it got really consistent with getting clients. And it's funny because all these people are just like, oh, you're not going to get much business from TikTok because it's just the younger generation. That wasn't true. I got so many clients who are in their 50s and 60s selling their homes that they've had for years because they use TikTok as a search engine, and that's how it worked out and I've been getting consistent clients from TikTok since.
Speaker 2:You also have had a little bit of TV stardom. Can you share a little bit about that? And it's all related to real estate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's all real estate. We did HGTV, we did House Hunters and my husband even did Beachfront Bargain Hunt. We actually were speaking to producers about getting our own show at one point, uh, but it just seemed like there was just so much going on with our family. I mean, we we have our two babies as well as my two stepdaughters, and it was just a little too much to think about adding that to our you know whole life.
Speaker 2:Plus a bit, plus a very busy brokerage. Um, what was that experience like being on HGTV?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, it was so much fun. It was exhausting. I'll admit that. We spent all day for three days filming, going through the same house five different times, for different angles, for different commentary. It was exhausting, so I oh my gosh, but it was so much fun, it was a great experience.
Speaker 2:Did you end up buying one of the homes that were that?
Speaker 3:So I'll, I'm going to admit something. It's so staged it's not even funny. They do, they don't, uh, they don't film until after you've closed. So I did buy that house house. Except it was bought before we even searched the houses oh, interesting, that's true.
Speaker 2:You've shared um quite a bit about your personal life. Can you tell me miss or misconceptions in the real estate world that you would want buyers and sellers to know?
Speaker 3:and sellers to know. Honestly, I think the biggest issue when it comes to looking into the industry from outside is that there's this big fight between both buyers and sellers, and the thing is, the goal is the same on both ends you want to reach the closing table, happy. It's so funny that I'll meet listing agents that feel the same way too, or buyers agents that kind of go in trying to fight for something. We're just like no, let's come to an agreement, let's figure this out, let's work as a team together, and I think that's the biggest thing that I would want to give other people outside and a little inside the industry. We're all working towards the same goal. There's no reason to not communicate, to leave things out, to lie about anything. We want to get to the closing table and we all want to be happy.
Speaker 2:How important Is it for an agent to have negotiating skills?
Speaker 3:Pretty important. But also you've got to think about it. Just using the point that I just made, you catch more flies with honey. You know you want to be nicer rather than trying to strong arm somebody, because people will lash out back out. Do whatever they can to not give you your way if you're aggressive. So there's a way to be assertive without being aggressive, and having that negotiation and having that knowledge of how to negotiate that way is extremely important, Can you?
Speaker 2:describe a hardship or life challenge that you would want to share with our listeners, whether it be business or family, or something specific to help a new business owner.
Speaker 3:To be honest, it's all about the balance and I mean that's a cliche in itself but it's the biggest part. I mean I struggled pretty hard to learn how to delegate. Once I had both my babies and even becoming a stepmom. I mean, when my husband and I started dating I was 23 and he had his two, who are now 10 and seven, but then were six months and three and a half. So it was really kind of an interesting transition and really difficult to be able to balance both becoming a mom, then becoming a new mom and trying to grow my business, and then my husband buys a restaurant and there's just there's so much.
Speaker 3:You need to learn where that stress level, where your baseline is, so that you can maintain that. Because I do thrive in chaos and I do love so many things happening all at once. I have ADHD. It helps me, I'm sure, but you've got to learn how to maintain that balance, otherwise you are going to crash very easily. So the biggest thing was really when I actually had my baby and going through my last pregnancy, which was very painful, learning that I really did have an amazing support team with all of my agents who are still learning from me, who are veterans, who understand the delegation and needs. So all those people really stepped up and you just got to trust that they're going to step up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. One of the things that I admired about you when we did first meet was that you had a hat. You were pregnant with your second and you had your baby on hip and your calmness about you and really confidence in such a young person was very impressive. You're very knowledgeable. You've got a great way of being with people. You've embodied the whole. You can do whatever you want and be whatever you want and have everything. What's one thing you would wish our listeners knew about your particular business wish our listeners knew about your particular business.
Speaker 3:I want everybody to understand that we've created a community within our brokerage and we've created such a community that wants to help people, no matter their situation. I mean, we have people. I have an agent that took on a renter because I don't have the time for renters right now, but several of my agents do and they were having such an awful time when it came to finding a place because they had dogs that most landlords won't agree to, and she worked so hard trying to find a home for them because she got them with a lender, she got them qualified, she helped them figure out how to jump obstacles. She did so much work that most agents would have turned away from. And that's the culture that we're creating right here in our company and that's what I love.
Speaker 3:I absolutely love that my agents will bend over backwards to make a situation work for each and every one of their clients, regardless of how much they make, where they came from, who they are, it doesn't matter. We want to help. As many people know that goals can be achieved even though there's a bunch of hurdles to take over that goals can be achieved even though there's a bunch of hurdles to take over.
Speaker 2:That is fantastic. I know under your leadership, you're going to have a great team. How can our listeners learn? Well, first of all, I want to ask one more thing what areas do you service and do you have access to?
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, pretty much all of Hampton Roads as well as Greater Hampton Road. So I'll go up to Williamsburg, jamestown also, then Gloucester and then out to Smithfield that kind of area.
Speaker 2:Okay, perfect. And then our listeners want to learn more about your business. Can you give us your website?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. We have steelforgedrealestatecom, and then my personal. My personal website is maddierosemasoncom, so MadiRoseMason.
Speaker 2:And then, what is your TikTok? Is it handle?
Speaker 3:Yeah, handle, that'd be Maddie Rose Mason I'm. I'm the same in every single social media platform. So Instagram, youtube, tiktok, it's Madi Rose Mason M-A-D-I-R-O-S-E-M-A-S-O-N.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, maddie, for being here today and supporting our community. We appreciate you being here. Thanks so much, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpvirginiabeach. com. That's gnpvirginiabeach. com, or call 757-797-8852.