Why Dylan Provencher Returned to RE/MAX Hallmark

The Toronto real estate market rewards agents who lead with trust…but how do you build it fast enough to survive? 

Eric Skogland into conversation with Dylan Provencher: team leader, 18-year real estate veteran, and former child actor who bought his first investment property at 17. 

Dylan shares the unexpected path that brought him from television sets to real estate transactions, and why the referral business he built over nearly two decades traces back to one non-negotiable principle: telling people the truth even when they don't want to hear it. 

From psychotic cold-calling routines to hard lessons about overspending, team-building mistakes, and why the most successful agents in any market are paying to avoid the prospecting they're not doing. 

This episode is a candid, high-trust conversation built for agents who want the real picture.

Listen For:

:59 How did buying his first home at 17 shape Dylan Provencher's entire real estate philosophy?

6:41 How do top Toronto realtors build a business around family without sacrificing income?

21:44 What do 20 client calls — including angry ones — reveal about a realtor's true value proposition?

31:52 If you had to start your real estate career from scratch, what would you do differently?

42:17 What should struggling agents stop believing about the Toronto market right now?

Connect with Dylan Provencher, Owner | Path Real Estate Team | RE/MAX Hallmark®

Website | Email | LinkedIn | Instagram

Connect with Eric Skogland, Sales Representative at Skogland Homes | RE/MAX Hallmark®

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Email 

Transcript

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Dylan Provoncher (00:00):

And I always ask people, what is the money all for? What's the money for? If you're not loving your family and loving your friends and having an incredible life, what's more of it going to do?

Eric Skogland (00:18):

Welcome to Real Estate Strategies with RE/MAX Hallmark. I'm Eric Skogland, your host, and I'm really excited to be here with Mr. Dylan Procochner.

Dylan Provoncher (00:28):

Thanks for having me.

Eric Skogland (00:29):

Yeah, we've got father, husband, team leader, realtor, former actor, and proud to say my friend. So I'm really looking forward to getting to chat with you and everybody learning about you a little bit more.

Dylan Provoncher (00:45):

I'm super psyched. Let's get going.

Eric Skogland (00:46):

Awesome. Okay, great. So first question, how long have you been in real estate?

Dylan Provoncher (00:51):

Coming on 18 years.

Eric Skogland (00:52):

18 years now.

Dylan Provoncher (00:53):

Yeah, I was 25. I'm 43.

Eric Skogland (00:55):

Wow. Tell me a little bit about your start into real estate.

Dylan Provoncher (00:59):

My start in real estate actually started when I was around 14 because I worked as a child actor. I had a feeling I was going to have quite a bit of money come to me once I got to the age of majority. And because of that, I read a lot of books surrounding investing in general and some more based in reality than others. But the one that really caught my eye was a book called The Wealthy Barber, the original edition. And they had a whole chapter on real estate and just what it was like to own and the leverage side of things. And because of that, when my parents ended up getting divorced and I just finished a movie and I just told my dad, I'm like, "You got to co-sign. I'm blowing through all this cash. You got to co-sign for a house." And Tina Smith, a Hallmark agent at the time, we started working with her and I was 17 and three quarters when I wrote the deal to buy the house that my wife and I still live in to this day.

Eric Skogland (01:47):

That's

Dylan Provoncher (01:47):

Amazing. And we had to wait for me to turn 18 so that I could actually close on the place because I wasn't able to legally sign. Oh my God. The APS I signed I think was completely defunct because -

Eric Skogland (01:58):

Really?

Dylan Provoncher (01:58):

I was a child. Yeah, I was 17. But the thing with acting was that I had been negotiating 100 plus thousand dollar contracts since I was 12. So yeah, I always knew that I really loved real estate.

Eric Skogland (02:10):

Well, in my head, my plans for today, I mean, I think we're going to have a candid conversation. I've got some questions I'd love to ask you, but we're just going to chat. But we kind of got right into the child acting side of things, so I'd love to explore that with you.

Dylan Provoncher (02:26):

Sure.

Eric Skogland (02:27):

Tell me a little bit about that. I mean, you were on some shows that I definitely watched a lot as a kid.

Dylan Provoncher (02:33):

I'm sure. We shared the same time slot as The Simpsons, so I find that hard to believe.

Eric Skogland (02:39):

I mean, goosebumps, you kids.

Dylan Provoncher (02:40):

I was on goosebumps.

Eric Skogland (02:41):

Yeah, I mean, come on. But no, tell me a little bit about that and how you got your start in child acting.

Dylan Provoncher (02:47):

Actually an incredibly sad story. Basically what happened was my good looks peaked right at 14 and it's just been a hard road downhill ever since. So yeah, I've got a face for radio now, but I was a pretty cute kid.

Eric Skogland (03:01):

You got a face for podcasting.

Dylan Provoncher (03:02):

Right. Yeah. This is my first one ever, by the way, guys. I'm quite nervous. I love

Eric Skogland (03:04):

It.

Dylan Provoncher (03:06):

Yeah, no, acting was great. I mean, I was born in Montreal. I was in theater classes. My mother in particular had an incredible knack for figuring out what children's great skills were. And my brother Sean, who was my business partner for 13 years, is a much better violinist than I ever was an actor. Wow. And yeah, no, he's spectacular. And she just noticed that I was really, really into copying movies and then some theater classes.

Eric Skogland (03:31):

Was it YPT?

Dylan Provoncher (03:32):

No, no, no. This in Montreal.

Eric Skogland (03:34):

Oh, right.

Dylan Provoncher (03:34):

Yeah. By the time I was here, it was all paid work for the most part. Fair

Eric Skogland (03:37):

Enough.

Dylan Provoncher (03:38):

Yeah. And then an agent approached us. It didn't work out with her, but then another one really committed. And I'd only done one Are You Afraid of the Dark episode? And it's kind of crazy how I came to Toronto. I'd never been on a plane before. I was 11 and a half, and one of the larger bits of work I did was a show called Window My Back. And they flew me and this kid in, and we were in Yorkville. And we went to read in the producer's office. And it was right in his office, no cameras, which is a bit weird back then. It was always camera and it was a real audition space. And they sent us down, you know that big rock that they blew apart and built into that boulder in Yorkville? Yeah,

Eric Skogland (04:16):

Sure.

Dylan Provoncher (04:16):

They said, "Okay, you guys both go to lunch. Kevin's going to decide which one of you is staying. You guys are going to get lunch. And then one of you is going to the plane and one of you is going to hair and makeup." And we sat on that rock, and this kid had beat me out of two or three roles before. So I was pretty sure I was going home. And then we got the call, he went to Pearson. I went to hair and makeup in Scarborough, and my entire family moved here.

Eric Skogland (04:37):

That's incredible. It was

Dylan Provoncher (04:39):

Wild.

Eric Skogland (04:39):

Kind of a cutthroat business, right?

Dylan Provoncher (04:42):

I mean, the funny thing is I was really lucky. It's a business fraught with abuse and dangerous stuff for kids. And I was basically unscathed. But yeah, it was great. I mean, I think in my acting years, if you were to watch everything I ever did, it was like three and a half, four days with no sleep. It's a massive, massive body of work for any amount of time. And yeah, I made quite a bit of money back when money meant something.

Eric Skogland (05:09):

And there was a point in time where you decided that you weren't going to go the acting route anymore?

Dylan Provoncher (05:17):

The thing about peaking at 14 was a bit of a joke, but it also had a bit of basis in reality as well. The problem with being, not the problem, but the great thing about being a child actor is you can get away with being just cute. And as much as I'm joking with the 14 thing, I never made the jump. I could tell that I wasn't Chris Hemsworth and I was never going to be that level of leading man. It just wasn't going to work. And I sort of took stock of myself at 18 and I was like, well, my parents had just gotten divorced. I bought the house. I was a new landlord. I was living in my garage. I sort of thought I can keep chasing this same thing over and over and over again for the next 50 years. And I might eventually go back to it because it's very pleasurable to do it.

(05:54):

I'm quite good at it. But I just figured I needed to do something else. Plus I've always known I wanted to be a father. And I mean, when I was 12 years old, I think I made $110,000, which back then was substantial. And then when I was 13, I made 12,000. And I just knew that this wasn't going to be a way of earning a living that was pleasant to have children with.

Eric Skogland (06:14):

14,

Dylan Provoncher (06:14):

I made a hundred grand again, but the ups and downs are just -

Eric Skogland (06:17):

Sure. That's interesting. And one thing you mentioned, you always knew you wanted to be a father.

Dylan Provoncher (06:23):

Yeah.

Eric Skogland (06:23):

And knowing you like I do, I know that your family is the most important thing to you in your life, your kids and your wife. How do you find balancing your real estate career with being the father that I know you take pride in?

Dylan Provoncher (06:41):

Yeah. So I mean, one thing that I'll say that's difficult early on in your real estate career is that you really have to produce in order to keep food on the table. You have to just figure out a way to earn a living. And it sucks because you got to do a lot of stuff that makes you uncomfortable. I'm still doing stuff that makes me uncomfortable. You have to go really just out of your comfort zone is the main thing. Whereas now, I mean, I'm a decade and a half plus in, and I find that my greatest strength now as far as balance goes is actually leaning into the stuff that you love. I love wine and food. I have an entire group of friends that are all circling wine. I've got a ton of parent friends, so spending time in the schoolyard and being a good parent, present parent is a lucrative thing for me to do.

(07:29):

There's tons and tons of things that you can lean into through your life golf as well.

Eric Skogland (07:33):

I was waiting for that.

Dylan Provoncher (07:34):

Yeah. I know it sounds stupid, but anything at this stage, once the referral train starts running, if you can just really lean into who you are and bear with people and really expose who you are and get to a high level of trust quickly, I really do find that it yields incredible results.

Eric Skogland (07:52):

Do you think trust is the most important thing in your business?

Dylan Provoncher (07:55):

Depending on the type of business you want to run, for me it is. Yeah. Because the fact is I always tell people, especially when they're interviewing five, 10 agents, I say, "This is great and you're doing an intelligent thing. A piece of business this big should be put to tender in theory. But the fact is there's going to be a moment that whichever agent you hire has to trust you. Or sorry, you need to trust them and they're going to advise you on something that's going to be several tens of thousands of dollars, potentially hundreds, and you need to know what is coming out of their mouth is the correct thing and you need to be ready to follow them. So if it's not me, make sure whoever you hire, you have that feeling with. And I think that through referral and a high trust level is critical.

(08:32):

The nice thing about being a present dad and just sort of present in all your social circles and running to unpleasantness. In real estate, death, divorce, you're around a lot of stuff that's very, very, very challenging. And I think that not being afraid to show up in those moments and be more present almost than. You kind of want to shine in those moments, I think.

Eric Skogland (08:53):

Yeah, I think that's fair.

Dylan Provoncher (08:54):

I drifted a bit there, but I think you -

Eric Skogland (08:55):

No, no, I think that's great. I think in going to that conversation around being uncomfortable, I think a big part of this industry is also rejection, which is something that you have to become relatively comfortable with.

Dylan Provoncher (09:07):

So I mean in acting, you get rejected way more than real estate. I mean the rejection odds are incredibly high. And I think that at this stage in my career, I don't know, I feel like I get rejected a lot less now. And I think that it's actually maybe a hole in my industry because I should be at more non-guaranteed at bats. And it's somewhere that I'm probably leaving money on the table because I'm not usually one of four or five agents. It's usually pretty. So you have

Eric Skogland (09:39):

A strong referral business.

Dylan Provoncher (09:41):

Strong referral business, strong past client business. Again, the nice thing about children and death and divorce and things that if you're in those scenarios with them in those moments and you're honest with them about what's going on in your life within reason, the trust is so heavy that even if they think that there's someone who might be able to do a lightly better technical job than you, it doesn't really matter. They want the trust,

Eric Skogland (10:02):

I think. Well, I mean, I would say also yourself as a team leader, it's almost like I want to challenge you in that thought process as well in the sense that you have, especially in the past and still to this day, you have team members that are doing things like cold calling. And these are things that they learned from your experience.

Dylan Provoncher (10:29):

There's not many people, maybe Steve Tabrizi has done more cold calls or door knocks than I have, but I don't know a hundred people who have. My brother and I did an unbelievable amount of cold prospecting, like psychotic amounts.

Eric Skogland (10:42):

We

Dylan Provoncher (10:42):

Used to have a rule that if by Friday, so Monday to Friday, you hadn't done 10 hours of, was it 10 or 12? 10 hours of straight door knocking or cold calling. You then had to go out on the weekend for another four hours. We never went out on the weekend. We were religious. We stopped door knocking eventually because we both had bad falls. That's how much we were out there.

Eric Skogland (11:04):

Really?

Dylan Provoncher (11:04):

Yeah, because if it's snowy and icy and you're going up into hills, you're going down eventually. I remember one time I was at a door in somewhere near Broadview and Neil or something, and I sweat in this funny pattern that's like a heart. So I end up looking like a psychotic care bear. And people literally would be like, "Are you all right? Can I get you a bottle of water?" Yeah, we were crazy. It's a

Eric Skogland (11:23):

Great way to get in the door.

Dylan Provoncher (11:25):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everything works. The weird thing about real estate is the more of any activity you do, for example, now it's all very passive and social, but back then I didn't have the network I have now. So it had to be more hard-edged and competitive.

Eric Skogland (11:39):

Well, and going back to being a new agent, I think there's a lot of people that don't want to put in the work and do this stuff like that. And I think you also instill that in your team. You have some more experienced team members than others.

Dylan Provoncher (11:54):

Yeah. The guys on the team, the main thing I say is, look, if you're a newer agent, I'd rather you do practice kissing on a stranger than your dear network that's going to talk about you. Go out and sound stupid a few times in the general public so you can get those behind you. You want to be incredible by the time. And the nice thing too is that I think with any team, I think you get to borrow from the legitimacy of whoever's running the show. So you can be two years in, but you're dealing with, on my team, I think it's like 35 or 40 years of experience. So it adds up. And I think that's the wonderful thing about you get to look good early by joining the right team.

Eric Skogland (12:33):

Yeah. I mean, speaking of the right team, I mean, I was a 22-year-old snot nosed kid swimming in a suit that didn't fit me, that got into real estate. I was the first male on an all female real estate team, the right sisters, and the instant credibility of Melanie and Lindsay was very helpful.

Dylan Provoncher (12:51):

And then Mark afterwards, so I didn't know the game.

Eric Skogland (12:54):

Yeah, no, for sure. All right, so teams, let's bring it back.

Dylan Provoncher (12:59):

Sure.

Eric Skogland (13:00):

You got into this business, you were 25 years old. You started with a team, so to speak.

Dylan Provoncher (13:08):

Yeah, let me go back on that a little bit further than that. Sure. Because from 18, so my parents get divorced, I move out at 18, the money arrives, I buy my house, and I buy my parents' house at the same time. I then go for about a seven-year run where I'm just working in rock and roll in a local stagehand making next to nothing. And I watch my real estate portfolio outperform me individually, each house, every single year for my entire career. And then finally I throw this party. Tons of Hallmarkers were there, by the way, on my 25th. And Lisa Andrews was there with. Oh, Chris, what's his name? Anyway, the guy she was dating at the time. And they look around and there's like 250 people at this party and they're like, "You're an idiot. You have this big network of penniless children," for the record at the time, but a lot of people.

(13:54):

And they're like, "You got to get into the industry." And I though about it and I was like, "This makes the most sense. I've always believed in real estate a ton. It's outperformed me every year. I could be doing better doing this." And that's when we got our license. Wow. And yeah, to your point earlier, and then I joined the wonderful Matt and Ben team who were incredible and still formative to this day. I tell Matt all the time. I see Ben less often, but I would tell him too. Yeah,

Eric Skogland (14:18):

Sure, sure.

Dylan Provoncher (14:19):

Yeah, they're incredible guys.

Eric Skogland (14:20):

Yeah, so you started with Matt and Ben with RE/MAX Hallmark.

Dylan Provoncher (14:25):

That's right.

Eric Skogland (14:25):

And how long were you working with Matt and Ben?

Dylan Provoncher (14:30):

I can't remember, and I really wish I did, but I want to say it was 18 months or two years, somewhere in that zone. Basically -

Eric Skogland (14:37):

Cut your teeth.

Dylan Provoncher (14:38):

I think to this day, I would still be working for Matt and Ben if they had been in a different stage of their careers. I think that I arrived too early. They weren't set up for us yet. They really built a lot of this stuff at the time because of us, and they've obviously done 15 more years of it now. So I can't even imagine where they're at now. But had they been at a stage where I would've been. Yeah, had they been a little further along, I think I'd still have their flag on my card. Incredible guys.

Eric Skogland (15:06):

And so 18 months, two years, let's say. And then you went to a brokerage with a different model. Was that right then?

Dylan Provoncher (15:15):

Was that exactly how it happened? Yeah,

Eric Skogland (15:17):

Then that's actually fair to say.

Dylan Provoncher (15:19):

Yeah. No, I don't think it was just two years. We went and flew a different flag for a while at the time. They had some training that Hallmark hadn't quite developed yet, which they have developed now, by the way, so heavily. And yeah, that's really where we cut our teeth, got into coaching, did a lot of the prospecting that I'm talking about.

Eric Skogland (15:38):

Right. Yeah. And I got to tell you, it took a lot of work, a lot of conversations to get you back over to Hallmark.

Dylan Provoncher (15:45):

Yeah. To be honest with you, how can I say this? We had been wanting to come back for a while. Ashley and I, my brother, Sean and I, he moved to the West Coast, as you know, about five years ago. And that was a huge fork in the road for us. And quite scary, frankly. Sean had really carried a large portion of the production for a long time. And we've had some great years since he left, but it was a tumultuous time. And yeah, I think, how long did we talk? Two years?

Eric Skogland (16:14):

Yeah, I would say that's pretty fair.

Dylan Provoncher (16:16):

Three

Eric Skogland (16:17):

Rounds of golf.

Dylan Provoncher (16:17):

I feel like one of my opening lines to, I think it was Matt, was like, "Tell these guys to call me." And then I think at our first meeting I said, "It's not if, it's when. I'm not interviewing. I'm coming home." And that's exactly how I felt. Yeah. And we got lucky too, because if it hadn't happened when it happened, I mean, it could have been January, February. Anyway, it doesn't matter now.

Eric Skogland (16:37):

The timing worked and -

Dylan Provoncher (16:38):

It worked great in the end. Yeah. It was incredible too, because one of my main reasons about being nervous to come back was the transition with Ashley and everything else. Right. And we don't know, we didn't know. And even you should interview Ashley about it at some point. She was floored at How Smith. Ashley Lockyer, she's my everything for my team. Yeah. Ashley runs a day-to-day, handles all the money, does basically. If it's not making calls, negotiating contracts, or visiting people in person, it's pretty much Ashley doing it.

Eric Skogland (17:08):

Right.

Dylan Provoncher (17:08):

Yeah.

Eric Skogland (17:08):

Yeah. No, that's awesome. How has your experience been since you've been back? It's

Dylan Provoncher (17:14):

Been incredible. Yeah, it's been really, really good. Yeah, it's been phenomenal. The thing about what you guys have done that's so incredible is that there's just economies of scale in every business, and you guys have really taken it. I know, or I think most of the brokerages are actually into this different ownership structures, but it doesn't matter because it's all handled by the mothership at the top. And you really feel it. It just feels like you're part of this huge, massive machine that spans two countries in most of this province. And there's a lot going on there. And the other thing too is that one thing at my old flag that I was having trouble with at the time was that I really wanted people to look up to in a big way. And there were larger agents than me at my old place. It was just that there wasn't that many of them and the way they ran their business wasn't something that I was aspiring to.

(18:08):

And Michael's dad, Ken McLaughlin was great. He has a huge Rolodex of people that I got to chat with in the transition period. And I'm still thinking about a lot of those conversations. And to go back to what I was saying too about not enough casual at bats with people that I'm not dear friends with, it's the next thing I got to work on with my business. And you guys have been incredible about it and I'm sure you'll continue to be.

Eric Skogland (18:31):

What is it that you'd say are your biggest strengths in this business? And then maybe you were talking about some of the things that you could work on or some of the things that you -

Dylan Provoncher (18:42):

Yeah, so I think one of the things I've always had, money has always been drawn towards me. I'm not phenomenal at being the custodian of it. And I think that we were raised a little bit poor, and I think that some of that's still in me. I think I'm still a little bit screwed up about money. And I've had tough financial times in this business, incredibly difficult. But I think that the next step for me is I need to get to a place where I'm confident to earmark a large sum of cash and do something with it to produce passive business opportunities. I think that's kind of the next thing I got to do is what I think. And I think that my limiting belief on it is that I should just hoard the cash and not spend it and that somehow will be better.

(19:28):

And I think it is a limiting belief. It's like I just need to cross that threshold. And again, to go back to RE/MAX, it's been incredible here because we've met with tons of people and I have more people that I want to talk to. The problem I have now is that until I am ready to do it, I feel like I'm being a bit of an asshole with people because it's like a masturbatory exercise, me asking questions and then not executing on the advice that's being given to me.

Eric Skogland (19:51):

Interesting.

Dylan Provoncher (19:51):

So I'm not going to take anyone's time to learn.

Eric Skogland (19:53):

But it's there. The advice is there, which is -

Dylan Provoncher (19:55):

Oh, it's there in droves. I mean, God, I could drive to Ottawa and get it. Even some of the time that you guys have been generous enough to spend with me, there's mountains and mountains of opportunity here for. Yeah. I was forced to go on a couple interviews other than you guys. Your offering is so phenomenal that I would say people, yeah, they should meet with Eric.

Eric Skogland (20:18):

There you go. I love it. Love that. You're talking about some of the things that you can improve or the next level of your business, but I mean, there's a lot of things that you are really good at. And one thing that really stuck with me was a conversation that we were having. And you had mentioned in your conversations with Kenny, you've done some coaching with Kenny, and he asked you to write out what your. I think you know where I'm going with that. Why don't you tell us - Yeah, but I'm

Dylan Provoncher (20:55):

Going to forget the word too. You know what he wanted? He wanted me to write down what my unique value proposition, like elevator pitch, what's my thing? And I wrote this garbage, this word salad horseshit that just wasn't like no basis in reality and I'm cross-synergistic. Not that bad, but that sort of thing. And then he was like, "Great, good job. I love this. Now what I want you to do is I want you to call 20 of your old clients, including ones that are mad at you, and then ask them what it was." And it was brutal. It was just a devastating thing to go through because what I had written I thought was so nice and tidy and clean. And it was so overwhelming, the response of why they actually worked with me. And yeah, it was great. It was a really good.

(21:42):

I'd recommend it to anyone. Everyone can do it.

Eric Skogland (21:44):

And what was it that people continuously kept saying about

Dylan Provoncher (21:48):

It? It basically was the same thing over and over. It was some variety of, "I might not like what you're saying to me, but I know you're telling me the truth." But that was just it over and over and over again. I believe what you're saying.

Eric Skogland (21:58):

Goes back to trust, really. Yeah.

Dylan Provoncher (21:59):

Yeah.

(22:01):

And again, this is one of my limiting beliefs surrounding farming or whatever version of getting passive leads goes that I convince myself otherwise. I'm like, "Oh, I won't be able to provide the best service because I'm going to be fighting for trust all the time." And the truth is what I need to do is I need to just figure out a more all-encompassing presentation of some sort. I know the people in the brokerage I'm going to go to talk about it because I know some of them have unbelievable presentations. Because right now there is no presentation. It's like a conversation. There's no paperwork, there's nothing. Everything gets signed on DocuSign after the fact, and it's a conversation. But I don't think that's going to be enough for Randos.

Eric Skogland (22:37):

It's interesting because there's certain people that would hear that and go, "What, you don't have a presentation?"

Dylan Provoncher (22:42):

No, we don't even look at comps at all.

Eric Skogland (22:45):

It'd be wild.

Dylan Provoncher (22:47):

Ever. Never, ever, ever. Like ever. Yeah.

Eric Skogland (22:51):

I mean, yeah, I don't think I could possibly feel comfortable just myself walking into a house and not having that stuff. But I mean, that does show a level of -

Dylan Provoncher (23:02):

What I usually say is that if you hear me talk about real estate, I would assume you know that I know what I'm talking about. I don't know. It's

Eric Skogland (23:11):

Pretty damn.

Dylan Provoncher (23:12):

I don't hate that. But you know what the trouble is? Is that if I go, and then Mark's a great example, if he goes in after me, I'm probably cooked. If I don't have that incredible level of trust, which I can develop quickly with some people and I've won against everyone once in a while. But yeah, it's a tricky thing. So it's going to be neat. The other thing too is that the thing that is really my favorite part about my life is also my greatest downfall right now because I do not, for the most part, I might work one evening every three weeks at the most, and I almost never go out on weekends ever. So the easiest way for me to get a ton more business, full stop is if I started to do open houses again and the tiniest shred of door knocking.

(23:56):

Now I do think I'll add back in a bit of door knocking because my kids are in school and they need me less. But my wife's got a big important job and I am primary. And it's good for me, like I said, to be in the schoolyard, to be present.

(24:08):

You get work where you hang out.

Eric Skogland (24:09):

I'll tell you, watching Deborah Bain cook in the schoolyard while she was dropping me off with the little blue blackberry she would have out there. She sold every one of my parents or every one of my teachers a house. And I bet you -

Dylan Provoncher (24:25):

Now, did she bring presentation materials? I feel like everyone would just be so frightened they'd sign immediately.

Eric Skogland (24:32):

I mean, I would very strongly believe that she came in with a pretty strong presentation. That would be my assumption.

Dylan Provoncher (24:40):

We'd have to ask her.

Eric Skogland (24:41):

Yeah, for sure. You

Dylan Provoncher (24:42):

Should get her in here. Has she done one?

Eric Skogland (24:45):

Kenny and her did one.

Dylan Provoncher (24:46):

Together.

Eric Skogland (24:47):

Yeah, Kenny interviewed her. It was pretty good.

Dylan Provoncher (24:49):

That sounds good. I got to watch

Eric Skogland (24:50):

It. Yeah. So you mentioned some of these prospecting tools that you have, I mean, gotten away from over the years. I mean, part of that is your team is -

Dylan Provoncher (25:01):

Well, no. So first off, my son required private schooling at first, and it really became a time suck, and it just caused me to not do the prospecting activities we were doing. And this frankly, probably was the beginning of the end of my brother and I too, because at the end of the year, I'd noticed that my referral business had yielded almost as much as his full go prospecting business. And it just felt like we started to be on a different trajectory. We also had different requirements in life. So I noticed that I could invest more time in calling fewer people and yield similar results. And I decided that's where I wanted to focus. But the thing is, I know that if I hung around. As my kids get older and the time becomes less valuable, because my wife is only available on weekends, so I'm not chopping it up.

(25:46):

I want to be with my family. It's incredibly important to me. It's the whole point of everything. Chelsea tells this story. She was in one of the seven sisters law firms earlier in our relationship. She since has gone in-house, but she talked about this guy, and I don't know which firm it was, so it doesn't matter, but he was 80 years old. The guy had been making three million bucks for as long as anyone could remember, massive corner office. And they said to him, they were like, "Look, your Rolodex is dead. Everyone's died. You don't have a Rolodex anymore. You're not brainmaking like you used to. We can't keep paying you the three million bucks. You're just not producing." And I said, "That's fine. Just leave my corner office." And from 7:00 AM to 8:00 every day, 13 hours, he would come to the office and read the paper because he just didn't know his family.

(26:30):

And I always ask people, what is the money all for? What's the money for? If you're not loving your family and loving your friends and having an incredible life, what's more of it going to do?

Eric Skogland (26:45):

Interesting. Yeah. And I mean, this business does give you that opportunity.

Dylan Provoncher (26:49):

You make whatever you want, and you don't even have to sacrifice. I would say that my average week is unbelievably pleasant. In fact, Ken gave me some pretty rough stuff about this. He's like, "What do you do all day, Dylan? Yeah, good point. And I do want to do more, but yeah, if you're efficient, you can make a wonderful living with a very efficient amount of time.

Eric Skogland (27:12):

Yeah. I mean, you've built to a point where you can be a little bit more, I guess, frugal with your time in a way. Your referral business is strong. I bet you ran a pretty damn good open house. Yeah,

Dylan Provoncher (27:25):

I'm great at open houses for

Eric Skogland (27:26):

Sure.

Dylan Provoncher (27:28):

I was much cuter back then too. With

Eric Skogland (27:31):

The fresh

Dylan Provoncher (27:32):

Haircut,

Eric Skogland (27:32):

Man. I mean, you look pretty good.

Dylan Provoncher (27:34):

Yeah. So yeah, no, an open house would be great. That is something I look forward to getting back to. I think that that would be. Because you know what's nice about open houses is Brent Crawford is a man I adore. And his wonderful wife, Audrey, obviously. And they've been incredible to us over the years. Tons of open houses as well. Yeah. Just phenomenal, phenomenal leaders, great people. Just incredible, incredible people. And I listened when I was coming over, you guys were kind enough to send over, I don't know what it was, an audio recording, maybe video that I listened to.

Eric Skogland (28:07):

His open house

Dylan Provoncher (28:07):

Session. Oh my God. And my favorite thing he said about that whole thing was all I want is one good bit of contact with one good family per weekend. And you're not going to get every weekend. Sometimes you're going to get two in a weekend and then nothing the next weekend. My brother and I, when we started, we did open houses probably 45 weekends of the year. And we found that every year, one of us would sell the open house we were in. So if you do two years worth of open houses, you'll probably just sell one on the day.You'll sell it Sunday night.

Eric Skogland (28:37):

That

Dylan Provoncher (28:37):

Was kind of the average.

Eric Skogland (28:39):

Yeah. I mean, you're not doing the open house to sell the house.

Dylan Provoncher (28:41):

But the crazy thing about it is that I find the numbers are scary similar with cold calling too. If you do a hundred cold calls, you're probably going to meet about four people worth talking to again and half an appointment. The numbers are staggeringly consistent forever. I've always been that way. That's interesting. Door knocking similar. The problem is you're going to have deeper connections, but it's going to take way longer, but your connections will be deeper. You just got to be a lot more guarded with your time because you don't want to spend 45 minutes chatting up someone and you're not getting a phone number.

Eric Skogland (29:10):

Right. And I think the difference between talking about these three versions of prospecting is with an open house, I mean it's almost like it's an appointment booked where they're coming to you. You're not trying to book the appointment, they're actually coming to you. And then you, of course, want to book an actual appointment with them. But it's people walking into your, call it office, your home that you're -

Dylan Provoncher (29:29):

Well, the thing is too is if you take a heavily networked group of people, they're going to know 10 agents. They just will. And four of them are probably going to be quite good because if you know them, they're working. So if you're going door to door, you're going to meet a lot of people who are reclusive or don't have a massive network or just haven't talked to a real estate agent in 30 years. The amount of incredible contacts I've made at the door have been phenomenal. And I got to say too, if you do have this poverty mindset that I'm trying to break out of, this is all free. These are free things to do. Cold calling, if you want to be efficient with today's technology, there's a bit We have a cost there, but it'll be overrun by the efficiency. But I mean, man, if you're a new agent.

(30:06):

I always say that I don't think I know. Who's an incredible agent that's single in this company? Jamie Dempster. This guy is making a fortune and a bunch of them are, and they're incredible agents. And the thing that I find astonishing is I bet they're running nowhere close to capacity. I bet they're busy, but I bet they could do more. So if you think of a new agent, you got nothing going on. I remember I met this guy from Century 21 out in Durham. This guy, I can't remember his name right now, but we did a course together and he was like, "Oh yeah, I remember my first few years." I'm like, "Oh, tell me about it. What'd you do? You're so successful." He's like, "Oh yeah." Basically I woke up, okay, put my kids in school, and then I just go door knock for four hours.

(30:45):

I'm like, "Four hours?" He's like, "Yeah." And then I go home, my wife would have lunch ready for me, and I go back out for another four hours. I was like, "Eight hours in a day." He's like, "Then I'd have dinner. You know what I do after that?" Door knock. Oh my God. 10 hours a day. And then I'm like, "Holy God, that must have been insane. You must make a fortune." And he's like, "Yeah, I did." I'm like, "What's your listing presentation like?" He's like, "Oh, it's awesome. I got this four-inch D-ring binder, and it's all the houses I've sold just in this tiny little community in Durham." So I rock in and I make a real show of lifting the binder, and I make sure it lands really hard on the table. I'm just like, "Here's everything I've sold in this community." It's like, "Where?"

Eric Skogland (31:26):

That's wild.

Dylan Provoncher (31:26):

Yeah, that was incredible.

Eric Skogland (31:27):

Yeah. I mean, you kind of touched on it, but I mean, one of my questions for you is, there's two ways of asking this. I'm going to ask it in this way. If you had to start your business completely fresh from square one with the knowledge you have now, but zero database, what is it you would do? That's my other way of asking, what would be some advice to a new agent that you'd be giving right now?

Dylan Provoncher (31:52):

Yeah, I think I'd get some therapy surrounding my relationship with money. And I think I would, because I've got this problem that I can earn money, but if I have to look at it, I find it incredibly stressful. I just want to put it on the mountain. I don't want to play with it at all. I can't pay a bill. I don't want to do any of that stuff. My wife does it at home. Ashley does it at work. I have an incredible credit rating. I ask her sometimes how it's going and that's it. That's how I can do it because that's a coping mechanism for a wonky financial childhood. So I wish if I had, and I still should figure this out. I'm telling them about myself here. But if I had done that, I think I would've been able to keep an eye on money because I've put myself through some real hard times in this industry overspending, and you can't outearn bad spending habits.

(32:39):

That's a law that every real estate agency has to do. You cannot outearn bad spending. And yeah, I think that would've helped me avoid some real hardship. And I think as well, I got lost in around 2017. I believed that I should hire 15 or 20 agents, and I did hire them. And we had a huge year. I think we made 1.4 that year, and I ended up with a quarter million dollar tax bill just because we overspent. And it was so foolish for me to think that me, some washed up child actor who's uneducated should be too good to sell real estate is the definition of psychosis. It's crazy pants. And from the outside, that was probably our most impressive looking year. We looked - On the surface. Oh my God. Yeah. But there's a million stories about agents like that that look so cool and are acting so right, and it's just a bloodbath underneath.

(33:31):

And listen, we came back really quick and everything was fine, but I think if I hadn't fixed my relationship with money, I think maybe I could have avoided some of that by being more attentive.

Eric Skogland (33:40):

It's pretty evident that. I've seen it a lot where agents want to start a team without really being busy enough to actually start a team. They just want to say that they're the, whatever, the John Smith team because they like how that sounds. From my understanding of your business is you've had that large team.

Dylan Provoncher (34:02):

Yeah.

Eric Skogland (34:02):

And right now you have four members of your team, not including yourself.

Dylan Provoncher (34:08):

I have four agents. Yeah. Yeah.

Eric Skogland (34:09):

And then of course the wonderful Ashley. And you seem to have a good thing going right now, right?

Dylan Provoncher (34:18):

Yeah, I do. Yeah, I am super proud of what we got going. I would always want the guys to be busier, obviously. It's really a focus. We talked about this the other day on the golf course. I want to see them be more successful and we do work at it. One thing that was good is that in 2017, we really ran a high pressure sales environment where it was top-down pressure about production. And now I've sort of taken a different approach to it because everyone has different financial requirements. And some people are going to be okay writing four deals a year, and some people aren't going to be okay writing four deals a month. So you really got to figure out what your guys require, what they want, and provide that. And I also think that finding the right fit for guys and ladies obviously is critical too.

(35:03):

I was joking with Michael McLaughlin the other day that I've built up all these things in my team that make it more pleasant for me to work there. And I think that there's a certain type of person that really benefits from that. For example, I really don't want the guys doing much else than being on the phone, showing people attending meetings and negotiating with other agents. Those are the three core activities I want them doing. All the other stuff Ashley or the VA could handle because I don't want. It's hard enough to develop the sales skills to really make it in this, especially the local market. Southern Ontario's psychotically competitive. You hear the way some of my colleagues in middle America do it, it's completely bananas. Yeah. So it's really competitive here. You got to really cut your teeth and be good at your job because there's 15 agents right behind you who are going to do it as well.

Eric Skogland (35:56):

And when it comes to a team, I mean you give them the tools and you give them your knowledge and experience, but you have to be careful not to be too much of just spending all your time managing a team because that's also, I find, a kiss of death for somebody that is successful in this business. They start accumulating all these people within their team and they don't really give themselves enough time to just get out there and sell.

Dylan Provoncher (36:19):

Yes. I don't feel, I think maybe because of what I was complaining about earlier with my. I need to produce a certain amount period anyway.That has to happen. And to be honest, the guys I hire and ladies, they really do. They're pretty good. They pull me in mostly. One thing that I've noticed is that I always describe the sales cycle as one side is the general public and then the other side is money. And the thing that I have in my life is that I've got two young kids and a beautiful wife that I want to spend time with. And the guy who's actually probably the best at the first part prospecting is probably me. So I don't have enough time to produce this to get our team anywhere close to the capacity it can be on this end. So what I need from teammates, frankly, is them to take it to kind of here.

(37:11):

And then if there's some sort of weird follow-up we need to do to convert to an appointment, then I'm happy to jump in. And then from there, Ashley and I are pretty much going to carry them, especially on the listing side, to the finish line for the most part. And then obviously if it's a buyer, they'll handle showings, but I'm happy to jump in at any moment. The reason that I think it's good is because I'm not the most experienced, but coming on 20 years pretty soon, and just because I've done so much prospecting, I do have a pretty high level of closing ability. Yeah, sure. And it allows the guys to focus on sharpening their teeth where it's required for all of us so that they don't have to stress as much. They're going to learn this, but they're going to learn this as fast as they get good at this.

Eric Skogland (37:49):

And being able to just witness it, I think - Helps a

Dylan Provoncher (37:53):

Lot.

Eric Skogland (37:53):

Yeah. I mean, me sitting in listing presentations with Melanie Wright, I mean, there's no better -

Dylan Provoncher (37:59):

Y said our buyer appointments were nuts too.points

Eric Skogland (38:01):

Were amazing. Yeah, exactly. And listen, there's someone on your team that I asked you about the other day because when he first got into this business, I was working with him a little bit and got you two connected.

Dylan Provoncher (38:16):

And he's doing great. Yeah. Sold first listing. He's got a bunch of offers on the go. He's

Eric Skogland (38:20):

Amazing.

Dylan Provoncher (38:20):

Yeah, he's doing great. And to be honest, it's Mark we're talking about. And Mark's a perfect example of a guy that the team fits because the same guys who identify sales as a high profit opportunity usually have a couple things in common. And I won't talk about Mark, but I'll talk about me. Tiny bit lazy. I like the easy ways to the finish line, and I want to earn a lot of money for the hours I'm working. So sales is a natural choice. Now the problem is those same qualities that may be good at sales make me absolutely rubbish at a lot of other stuff. And that's where Ashley and our support comes in because we just can't be good at it all. And frankly, I don't want you to be. I want you to figure out how to function within the system and produce income in a very pleasant way so you can spend more time with your

Eric Skogland (39:00):

Family. Focus on what your superpower is or focus on what you are good at.

Dylan Provoncher (39:04):

Yeah. I mean, the core needs that. And the thing is too, is I used to just teach my guys cold calling. I was like, "Just hammer this, hammer this, hammer this." But the truth is, because of that lent legitimacy that we talked about, I also am telling them talk about us proudly at Christmas parties. Talk about us proudly at dinner. Talk about how we were talking about them and then say that we were talking about how we want to get together with them to talk about their plans. These are really easy ways that you can reinforce. All of these guys on my team, I know they're friends, I know their families. They're people that are familiar on calls because we're kind of the guys built in. So I do think it's important that they cut their teeth with it. But to go back to your question about regrets, I think one of my biggest regrets is not.

(39:49):

I mean, first off, I was 25 and I was like, "You swimming in a suit looked like an idiot." I remember the first time I took out this client, he brought this girlfriend of his with him and she looked at him and she was like, "Oh my God, he looks 15." I had already toured the units. There was condos, so I was so nice about finding the lockboxes. That was a low for me. But I wish, again, that I had been able to buy into myself earlier because I think that networking could have.

(40:20):

It was fake until you make it for too long. I should have recognized you made good money this year. You are doing this. Yeah.

Eric Skogland (40:27):

Well, I mean, you talked about this a little bit too, but when you're 25, when you're 22 years old getting into this business, your sphere isn't buying any houses. You were trying to connect with people mid - 30s to mid - 40s, whether it was open housing, cold

Dylan Provoncher (40:44):

Calling,

Eric Skogland (40:44):

Door knocking, and having these people trust you. Yeah.

Dylan Provoncher (40:48):

Thank God I owned a couple houses. That was helpful. Barely.

Eric Skogland (40:50):

Right. I was like, "I'm pretty sure I could talk to you about this stuff for hours. I love it." So there's been a lot of conversation around. I speak to a lot of real estate agents. Veterans in the game, people just getting into the business and everything in the middle. And what I hear less from the agents that are successful pretty consistently, I hear them complain about the market less. And I hear people. There's no doubt we are in a different market than we were for probably, I'd say, 10 straight years with a little bit of craziness in that. But for 10 straight years, we were looking at just an upwards trend. You buy a house that's worth more next year. And the past two, three years, we've seen some different stuff. My question for you is, what would you say to somebody, an agent that may be struggling, whether they're brand new or whether they've been in the business for a couple years, maybe they got into the business in 2020 or 2021 when things were just cooking.

(42:01):

You threw a sign on the lawn, it was gone. Or you do an open house, there'd be 80 people through and you'd meet five people. What would you say to those people that aren't seeing the results that they've been seeing in the past and they've been struggling for a couple years? And you hear them talk a lot about the market.

Dylan Provoncher (42:17):

Yeah. I'm aware that there are tons of agents, or not tons, but many agents who are thriving in this market. But I also think that if you're newer, I think that survival is key. If you can fight to fight another day, I think, are you going to have a banner year every year during this period? Perhaps not, or perhaps you will. And if you do, you're taking territory. One of the biggest mistakes I made in the last few years was future casting. I thought the recovery was going to be a lot more attached to interest rates, and it turns out that it's more geopolitical, in my opinion. So the fact is now is one mistake I'll never make again. I think that the advice that I'd give to newer agents in this moment is you don't have a crystal ball. You have no clue. Nothing has been more upside down than today, in my opinion, in my lifetime.

(43:03):

It's wild what's going on out there. It is. No one can anticipate anyone's next move. Half of it looks fake and is real. It's just bizarre what's going on. So the concept that you believe that you'd be able to tell your clients to wait six months and it'll be better is gone. So whatever is happening now. And the other thing too is mine's greater than ours are saying that the recovery, especially in the condo space, is going to be long, quite long.

Eric Skogland (43:25):

Year and a half, two years.

Dylan Provoncher (43:27):

I mean, that would be an aggressive plan. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because we don't know. But the fact is that if someone has motivation, the timeline is extensive for any guarantee that we're going to get back. So I think you can't future cast. We're not smart enough. No one knows. Tell them what the deal is now. You can talk about what other people are saying as far as expected timeline goes. I would be more exaggerated than what you just said, and then just say, "We can rent it out, but do you want to be a landlord for the next five years? Because realistically, that's what we're talking about." Yeah.

Eric Skogland (44:01):

Yeah. I mean, I would agree with you that it's not a business. You get into it. And I think there were a lot of people that got into this business during COVID.

Dylan Provoncher (44:13):

For sure.

Eric Skogland (44:14):

Saw their friend showing homes on Instagram and TikTok and though, "This looks easy," or, "I can do this." And didn't really understand the grunt work that goes into building a business like this. I mean, I hear you talk about, there's the Century 21 guy you talked about, but I mean, you guys door knocked a lot. You guys called a lot. Tons. Like you, I open housed a ton my first few years.

Dylan Provoncher (44:43):

For sure.

Eric Skogland (44:45):

You really have to put. This business is not rocket science, but it requires a lot of hard work. And for you to be in a position now where you've admitted that there are elements of your business that you want to improve on, which is great, but you have built over the past 15, 17 years, you've built a referral business of trust where people will be calling you.

Dylan Provoncher (45:16):

I'll flip it on you though. So Daryl King said something interesting to me at the RE/MAX golf tournament, which was great, by the way. Good job, Eric.

Eric Skogland (45:24):

Me, I didn't delegate at all.

Dylan Provoncher (45:25):

He said to me, he was like, because I was complaining, as I always do, because I'm going to ask Cole about how I should be doing this next in my business. We were on the range together and he goes, "How don't you just door knock around? You just sold 50 doors." I'm like, "Daryl King, this guy has 60 people just on the sales side working for him, and he's still out here going out, knocking on a few doors." And the thing is too, David Bittori, he's still doing open houses most weekends. So the thing that Daryl said that I thought was really brilliant was he's like, "Yeah, no one wants to do it, but you're paying not to do it." And I thought it was so brilliant because I'm like, "Oh, I'm just not generating any new business because I want to be with my kids." No, I'm paying in the money I'm not earning to be with my kids.

(46:08):

And that's fine. But you can't look at it both ways. You can't be like, "Oh, it's no big deal. I'm just not earning that money." No, you're not. You could be earning that money. You're choosing not to earn it by not doing those activities. And it's the same with door knocking and everything else. If you want the money, it's all right there. It's not rocket science. We're not telling you to go replace some algorithm on the dark web. You are capable of doing the things I'm describing, and so am I. I'm choosing not to get that money. And I think that that perspective's actually better because you're like, "Oh, well, I tried door knocking. It didn't work." No, you didn't. Door knocking takes years. You got to be grinding it out and following up consistently, doing everything else. And yeah, if you're not doing the open houses, you're not getting paid.

(46:47):

You're paying to not do those.

Eric Skogland (46:48):

Right. And what are you really doing on that weekend when you're not open houses?

Dylan Provoncher (46:51):

I'm hugging my kids.

Eric Skogland (46:52):

Okay, fine. Yeah.

Dylan Provoncher (46:54):

It's well worth it. It's a decision I' super comfortable with. I'm saying you got to flip it that you're paying for it. And the thing is too about teams is you got to figure out what you want to do too. Some of the guys on my team, they're still doing tons of open houses because they're at that stage of their career, and it makes a lot more sense for them to do it. They don't have kids, whatever the case may be. So it's a symbiotic. I always say that a good partnership with a team is I need to make more money because I know you and you need to make more money because you know me. Otherwise, the relationship's broken. We can do it for a while, but it's not going to work long-term at all. Great.

Eric Skogland (47:28):

I think a common theme that we've been in this discussion, we've referenced a lot of great agents. Most of them hallmarkers. We've mentioned some non-hallmarkers too, like this mysterious Century 21 guy.

Dylan Provoncher (47:40):

You got to hire those guys.

Eric Skogland (47:42):

But realistically, I think the collaboration and the opportunity, I'm always so like, yes, am I in a biased position? Sure. But I think just the generosity of people within this company with their time, their knowledge, and their experience, I think is so cool. And just hearing you getting so much advice that you almost don't want any anymore until you can actually implement some of this stuff. And I'm kind of paraphrasing. No,

Dylan Provoncher (48:12):

I just think it's abusive. These people are busy. You don't want to take. I know the direction I need to go. When I'm ready, I will seek out a little bit more guidance, but I need to be able to tell them in 30 and 60 days what I did. Yeah.

Eric Skogland (48:24):

Well, and I mean, even someone like yourself, we've had this discussion. Whenever I have somebody that I'm speaking with maybe from another brokerage, you're like, "Get them to call me. I want to tell them what I'm experiencing." And I just think it's just a testament to what the leadership team has built. I'm really proud to be a small part of it.

Dylan Provoncher (48:43):

I'll tell you another thing too. The last brokerage I was at was on a profit share model, and they used to call it the Golden Thread. And it's funny because I loved contributing at my old brokerage and it was great. But I almost find that at RE/MAX, one thing that I like about it is that it goes back to what I said about you need to make more money because you know me and I need to make more money because I know you. And I think that that sort of relationship, we're not doing kumbaya over here. This is business and we all want bigger lives for our families. And we do that through partnerships that are mutually beneficial. And I like the fact that RE/MAX, one of the things that I adore is, like I said earlier, the mothership supporting all of the brokerages is so powerful and so well laid out that the value proposition is so staggering.

(49:39):

Yeah, it's been incredible. And then the other thing that I've always said is you just can't make new old friends. And that was a big reason that I wanted to come back to.

Eric Skogland (49:46):

I love that. Well, like I said, I could keep going. We could do this for hours, I feel like. I mean, I feel like we do do this when we're on the golf course and it's great, but I really appreciate you coming in and chatting with me. We might have to do a round two one of these days, but I think it was great. And I really appreciate you coming in. Awesome.

Dylan Provoncher (50:06):

Thanks

Eric Skogland (50:06):

Guys. Okay. See you guys.