EPISODE 2 - NO TWO ROADS PODCAST - HOW WE GOT HERE

In this episode Brent and Darren take you through the history of their real estate marketing company - Leffers and Rook - from how it began all the way up to who their current team is today and how it's shaped them along the way. 

Have you ever wondered how they got to where they are? Now's your chance to find out! 

Stay tuned for our next episode where we interview our first guest on the show - Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My truck broke down and it's now in the shop, and now I'm driving a little SUV, which I'm not too happy about. I told you to stick with four.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to the No Two Roads Podcast with Darren Leffers and Brent Road.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome back to the No Two Roads Podcast, episode number two. Still liking the name, by the way. Okay, good. It is Brent and Darren, your hosts. We also are owners of the Leffers and Rook Real Estate Group. And the point of this podcast is to talk about business, entrepreneurs from the beginning of their business all the way to the end or whatever growth they had. Please like, subscribe, follow along. We'd love your support. Darren, what are you talking about today?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Well, we're looking forward to getting some guests on here. I'm really excited about that. But today, like last time we talked about each and us, each of us kind of how we grew up and the different jobs we had, how we got to Leffers and Rook. So today we're going to start about how that all started, how it's taken shape, and kind of where we're going to take it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

So the beginning of a real estate business, how we started, and where we are now, almost 10 years as partners, which is kind of crazy that I've put up with you for that long. That is true. Vice versa. Yes, exactly. And current events as of today, my truck broke down and it's now in the shop, and now I'm driving a little SUV, which I'm not too happy about. I told you to stick with Ford. Was stuck on the side of the highway yesterday. Flat tire, engine overheating, pretty new GMC truck. That's too bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So somehow Brent still, even though Brent ran over something to put a puncture in his tire, he still convinced GM that they should pay for half of it. So negotiation.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

What are you talking about? They chose to run over it, or you did? Listen, when I went on the highway, okay, the overheat thing went on. It told me to idle. This is right after I picked up my truck from GMC, and they're like, you can now drive it. It's safe to drive. Don't worry about it. Come back Thursday and pick up your part. So I said, okay, fine. So then I go on the highway and it goes overheating with the fan on. It tells me to pull over. So I pull over and hit a spike. And that's my problem. Well, if there's a cute little deer there, would you have run over the deer? You would have gone past it and then around. Doesn't matter. I don't like your argument. You know what? Okay, let's go. Let's get back to Leffers and Ruck. Okay. No, I actually wanted to talk about your beard too. It's gone now. Oh, yeah, it is gone. Yeah. It was, it wasn't real. It was fake from last episode.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

No, I went from uh three and a half months growth to like 10-day growth. So, you know, I guess you'll be able to see how far apart are podcasts or film. I don't think you look as good. I'll grow it back. I thought it was pretty good. You know what? I can uh I can make anything look good. We'll just go with that. Alright. Okay, so Brent, I'm gonna start this.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

What was the first thing we did when we partnered? So we left last episode, we talked a bit about Dale. Um, because it was three of us to start, and then Dale stepped away. Uh we love you, Dale. If you ever listen to this. Great mentor. Yeah. And uh and then we became 50-50 partners. And I had transitioned out of a career, you'd already been a realtor for five or six years. Yep. Right? So then I became a realtor, and here we are. And it was scary leaving an $80,000 a year salary, um jumping into something that has no base salary. It is a performance-based business. You sell, you eat, if you want to put it short in the short way. Uh, and if you don't, well, you're not really making any money. So it was a really scary time, but uh an exciting time. It was so exciting for me to be all of a sudden from employee to business owner. I think anyone who's gone from that transition knows the excitement and uncertainty and scariness of it. And that was it was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

So yeah, and I would say, like, so I was a realtor for five, six years. Um, we're both still learning today, but I was learning then, but it was also fun to be like, Brent, this is what I already know. Like, don't make this mistake. Uh, you're doing great here. Oh, you're dealing with this situation. Here's my thoughts. That was fun to kind of grow together in that. So um, I think when we started, it was like in August or September. And for the first five, six months, we are just our office was my home office. I had an outside door, that's where we would meet to plan because there actually was a lot of planning that went to like, okay, let's get a let's get a new logo, let's create some buyer's guides, a seller's guide. Um, how are we gonna prospect where are we going after it?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Right. So yeah, 99 designs for the logo the website where you can you basically submit for cheap uh the name that you want, which we had decided we we talked about different names. We talked about like there's there's real estate teams that have just the name of something. So we had talked about maybe be called Mint, or I don't know if you had any other we were ahead of Mint Mobile's time because that would have been before. That would have been right. So we we talked about that, and they were like, no, what do we and we came down to let's go with our last names. It's it's recognizable. There's other brands that we know that have their last names. Um, and so we came up left for the rook. So you basically punch that in. Here's what we want our name to be. Here's what we want our um, here's here's our industry, make us a design, and then you just submit it on this website, and then all these designers try to and we wanted an arrow in there because it's we wanted L and R Leffers Rook.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

We wanted an arrow in there because our our goal was like, hey, we want people to make a move in the right direction. We don't just want to be transactional, like we actually want people to move forward in their real estate journey. And I would say that's like we don't use that terminology, but it still is very true in what we do today.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Um, yeah, and and that branding work. We still use the brand, we got a ton of swag. I still like it, it's good right right there. Rep rose they got the arrow there, yeah. Yeah, so the leather patch, yeah. We like that. So that was kind of the start, and we were meeting in your 10 by 10 office at your house. I lived in Abbotsford, and then we just drive to Langley and we kind of worked out of there.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Yeah, and uh within six months, an opportunity came up. My father-in-law has an office in Langley right by Canadian Tire, and that was 700 square feet, and it was an option, he wasn't using it all, so it was an option for us to take that over. Great location, um, which ended up being close to our future brokerage. Um, so yeah, it's nice to have something small as about 700 square feet, and it was just me and Brenton there, and we were kind of getting lonely.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah, it was scary because we had overhead that we didn't have. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Well, it was $30,000 rental.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Yeah, but so that that's because we business was going well. Oh, did we do that later? Right? Well, no, I I don't know if it was in the first six months, it was pretty fast, but like to start, I had without any idea of how it was gonna go. For me personally, we had in our first year, we both did over 30 deals a year, and for year one for me, not knowing how it's gonna go, to do 31 deals and make way more money than I'd ever made in my life that way. You needed some write-offs. Yeah. Well, first of all, I was super thankful, like, praise God for that. And it was it was a crazy time to just go through it emotionally. Um, like just from the uncertainty, like, wow, to what is this? To oh man, this might actually work. This business is growing, and then you and me talking about man, we need an office space. So uh the overhead wasn't, I remember it wasn't that what was it a month that we paid for rent there?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

1800 bucks?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I want to say even less. Yeah, like 12 to 1500.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

And it was just enough space for the two of us. And then when we both did um 30 transactions, so as realtors, you know, people sometimes just see the highlights. But basically, when you're doing that many transactions a year, you're in front of people, and then you need to stop at like the office or a coffee shop and try to do as much paperwork as you can, and then go on the road again in front of somebody else, and then stop and do as much paperwork as you can, and then at night getting caught up on paperwork and all the little details that you miss because you're meeting with people all day. Because to do that many deals, you need to be in front of a lot more people than that because you're not gonna get them all, or you're gonna consult buyers that aren't gonna buy it. Like your funnel has to be quite a bit bigger in order for that to happen. Yeah, so I just remember running around like crazy, and you know, my wife was really gracious about it. She she knew, and I learned this from uh from my dad. He's like, when you start a business, if you're not willing to sacrifice for the first five years and like hustle, and your wife's not on board because you're gonna be gone a lot of nights, there's no point in even starting. You have to be ready to sacrifice, and that was kind of my mindset.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

So we we just started all day a lot of nights, and then the new office space, and then you and I realizing like, hey, we need someone to help pick up all the little details in our business, and so I would say it was totally doable without an assistant, but you're right, it's the okay, it's 10 to 11:30 at night. I'm going to prep my listing for tomorrow. Um, I'll be home, but I'm home for an hour for dinner. Sorry, I'm not home for dinner tonight. Uh more Saturday stuff. So so you're filling in all, like you said, that paperwork stuff to um when you have time early morning, late at night. So we're like, if this can free up that time by getting an assistant, and hopefully the assistant does a better job, more more efficient than us, even on that paperwork side, it's gonna allow us to build and grow. So I I would actually say to realtors, I I want to say if you're hitting 20 deals, you could almost use an assistant. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I would put the line at about 30. 30.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it's right in the middle, it's 25.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

But yeah, yeah, for sure. Right? Or you can have four deal overhead and actually if you want to save yourself time. If there's one thing I've learned from any really successful realtor, and we've been to a bunch of these conferences now, mastermind events with some of the best realtors in the country, it's that they all almost push themselves to burnout before they were like, I need to scale this thing. Yes, I'm I made good money, but I'm like, I'm killing myself as far as time, hours. There's so many, there's so many sad stories of like divorce in real estate and strained marriages and not enough time with the kids. And it doesn't have to be like that. And I'm so thankful that we recognized that pretty much after year one, and it was like, okay, we had an opportunity because Lindsay, who shout out to Lindsay, um, fantastic human being and assistant for so many years till she decided to get married, start a family, and you know she's still a fantastic human being. Yeah, we she yeah, she's still a fantastic human being, but she left us, okay. Um, but no, so we had an opportunity with her coming down from uh Houston, not Smithers. I've learned that you can't combine the two. So from Houston, uh to for part-time work. And so we're like, hey, what if we take on this assistant part-time, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

And then which is also a little scary because we're like, that's moral red.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Um, but if I can I let me jump into what you were saying about how people that have done well in real estate and then push themselves. I one thing you hear so often is people saying, um trying to find balance, right? It's it's work, it's family, it's health, it's faith or hobby, whatever it is, trying to find that balance. And I kind of I heard uh a coach, Keith, a coach we've had before say, no, the word you need to look for is harmony. Like that's where our values really align in our team is is we want to find harmony in all those things, and not not just us, but also like wanting to see it in our clients. But we weren't willing to sacrifice, like we knew we were pushing too hard that we didn't want to sacrifice that. So whether that's you know, Brent's going on holidays, I'm covering for him, or he, or you know, vice versa. And now then getting to this assistant, being like, okay, we need to if we want to grow and if we want to still strive for that harmony, it is hard. Uh, we need an assistant. So then it was started as part-time. I think was she half-time, I think, at that point.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

Yeah, she started off just part-time, and we quickly realized that oh no, no, this could be a full-time position. We love this. And so, for those who don't know, like um, just real quick in real estate, what it what that looks like is you know, you the important part of any person in sales is to be belly to belly. You want to be in front of people, you want to be advising them, you want to be coaching them through the big decisions. The what's still important to do a good job is all the paperwork that then follows that. So, like it's like, hey, we got a listing, great. What needs to happen? It's like we got to pull title, we gotta do research on the property, we gotta figure out what it's worth, and then you gotta send there's a whole bunch of documents that you gotta prep to bring to the client, and then you gotta take those documents, they gotta get to the brokerage, and then there's some back and forth with the brokerage, it's gotta get to the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board, and there's little tasks like making sure your sign gets up and where are the lockboxes, you gotta make sure that gets on the listing, and there's all these little things that happen, you're just touching on probably a tenth of what goes into a listing, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Like, there is a lot. So when people say, like, what do you do in a day? It's like I I can't just tell you, like, because from one day to the next, it has actually a lot of different things, but there is just way more real estate than people think. Yeah, I think if you're selling on the sell side, on the buy side, and prospecting and business building, there's a lot to it.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Yeah, and it and it I think a good way to almost summarize the the career is like can you do a whole lot of little things with a whole lot of different people at once, at once, and stay organized doing it. That's a good way to put it, right? Like that is ultimately it, and there's people that can do that, and there's people that can't do that. Yeah, and that's something that I think when we built out our system and our process now, so if we get a listing, there's just a hundred plus checklist now that our assistant, like she goes through and just runs through it, and that way nothing's missed and it's actually processed, you can actually, you know, have a life and do real estate.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Well, I to throw a little bit more context to that, I correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say, like, I think the most listings we've ever had with held at one time was about 35. But I would say we're is that right? Uh sounds like we should have been selling. Yeah, probably over. But that was that was for a while when things there it was churned. No, it was it was high because people were still selling and things, sorry, still listing and things were starting to slow down a little bit. Um, but I would say on average that number is probably 15, 12, let's say it's 12 to 20. So between our team, yeah, right? Between our team, there's 12 to 20 listings, yeah. And you're churning those or selling them, then new ones come on, but that's your average. So you're dealing with that many, and then on the buy side, um, you know, we might each have a list of buyers of let's say it's 15 that are categorized differently. Some people are here ready to go now because I've already sold. Some people are, I don't need to sell, but I'm waiting for the right property. So we don't ever categorize them as A, B, C, and D, like we won't do that, but they're at different stages of their purchasing or buying cycle. So if I got 15, Brent's got 15, you know, that that is a lot, that's where you go to. It's a lot of different people with a lot of different things. Um, and it's always on your mind, right? So you got to compartmentalize all these different things, and having an assistant to take a lot of the clerical work or the administration work takes a big load off.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah. And you need uh, so we we got the office space, we got the assistant, and we ended up loving both, yeah, which is awesome because the office ended up allowing us to have a central hub that we could grow out of for good value. Yeah, I didn't love driving a Langley every day from Abstrad, but there's a lot of ways. I don't know how you won that. Um, we're in Abstorford now, I guess, right? But uh it's a good opportunity, yeah. It was, and and and I did love it as well, and then full-time assistant, so that helped us to scale, and that was super important. Um, and then from there we grew again, which was with your brother. Yeah, so then it was like Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, so we're like, hey, I don't even actually don't remember to have to ask Ryan how that conversation started, if I came to him or he came to me. I I don't remember, but I I do just remember thinking like he's got a good personality on the I would say on like the servant side, like he Ryan likes to serve. We know he's got a similar um side to us as far as the values go. Um, so we thought it would be a good fit. Something with lefters and ruck, I think that we can say and will always say is that we want everybody that works here or with us to have a similar value set because then you just you will get along better. And whether Ryan's looking after one of our clients or we're looking at like it, it just through the whole thing we know that people are just gonna get you know the leffers and ruck way of doing things experience.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

That's the word that's the word you want. Yeah, so Ryan, but when Ryan came on, he was like again, brand new to the industry, and it was tough. Like he was he also didn't grow up here, he didn't have a ton of connections. So, pretty quickly we switched him actually to another more administrative role, not really administrative, but so we had Lindsay that was doing all kind of the paperwork and small details, and then Ryan kind of became like uh a fill-in and a like research guru, and that's what buyer's agent buyer's agent a little bit, yeah. So he would cover showings for us, he would so we we we had him more on a um like pay per deal rate um for helping us out on each deal, so that would be his incentive, and then we were able in turn to be in front of more people doing more deals because we had that as well. I actually really enjoyed that position, and there's like now we have Ruth and Chiera, and they both, and we'll get to what they what their rules are, but I do miss certain things that Ryan did for us, and now he's been a real successful realtor himself with our team. Um, so yeah, shout out to you, Ryan. You're killing it.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

I think it benefited him getting to see a lot of deals from us, right? And and then bouncing things off, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

So all of a sudden he's got experience in like 80 deals instead of you know, maybe a new realtor doing like five. He's touching 80 and being in front of different people and doing research on different properties and be exposed to commercial residential. I think it was an amazing way uh for him to start. It's sir, I think it served him a good purpose. It also served us a really good purpose because even for us, it's like we talked about harmony. Well, that allowed us to you know churn 40 to 50 deals each in a year and still have like your Saturday to spend some time with your family and still have some weeknights because Ryan could run around with buyers on weeknights if you were double booked with something. Um, a lot of people work during the day and want to see real estate at night, so he was able to help us that. So it was kind of just an organic, natural way for us to grow the team, I think. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

I think it benefited us, it benefited Ryan. Yeah, it was great. And then so Ryan, so if you if we're going on 10 years now, Ryan would be eight to nine, like he came pretty quick, I think, right? Within a year or two, yeah. And then the next one would have been Michelle. Yeah, Michelle joined us. I want to say it's been six years for her, five, six years for her. We're still at the last office. Um, we Brent and I talked about growing because we had our processes down, we had an assistant.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

So this time we built a CRM. So before we get into the brokerage, a few things in real estate, and I know we're not we're not necessarily talking to realtors here, but if you are a realtor listening, like you don't have a CRM, get one. If you don't have your processes written down, write them down for your buyers, for your sellers. Build it in your CRM, put every person you meet that's a client in your CRM. That way you have ways to track them, right? And for example, for us, there's touch points for everyone, there's birthdays, everyone gets a gift card on their birthday. It's just a great way to actually keep track of all the people you get to you get to work with. Invites to our two parties every day. Yeah, a couple client parties that you can blast out invites. So it's key. And so we had found success in the first few years of building this stuff out, building a CRM, and then we wanted to share it uh at the brokerage. So we were we were asked to kind of share about scaling and building teams for those who are learning. And that's when we kind of threw it out there. Like, hey, we actually are growing. And if there's anyone that's interested in joining a team, like please reach out to us.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Well, I I want to say at that point, we actually started to feel like we had something to offer of value to other agents, right? We wouldn't have done that in the years prior. Like we had we offered value to our clients, but now having a team, having processes, having a CRM, having an assistant, us both having experience, we're like there, there's I think an opportunity for agents to start joining our team because we can show value. We're gonna provide all the systems, um, you know, provide photo video with white cloud. Shout out to Jeremy and Adrian. Um, get everything set up. You come here, you we're gonna give you some leads as well, but you can go pound the payment, and when you get a lead, you get a buyer or a seller. We have all the systems and processes in place. So we had just kind of put it out there like, hey, we're looking to grow our team. And then I was kind of tasked, I think, a little bit to go find that agent. It we I remember looking at Indeed, um, you know, ideally. Asked around a little bit, but then Michelle phoned us and like, hey, I heard your chat. I didn't know who you guys were. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

I'd like to chat.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah. Okay. I I don't know how long she was a realtor for. I wanna I want to say six to twelve months. Um, but we had we sat down with her, asked her a bunch of questions. She asked us questions. I don't remember what the whole conversation is, but I remember meeting it.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

We kind of looked at each other and we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's we both remember that. Like when she left, we're like, she's a fit. She's a go-getter, hustler. Somehow, this woman crushes it in real estate, runs her family like well. Like she yeah, she is dialed.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

It's it's not it's not easy being a realtor with a family, and I know it's way harder to be a mom realtor with young kids. Yeah. There was definitely some bring kids to work days, often, but at work.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Yeah, yeah, she had a baby while she was working, right? Yeah. I think so. Yeah. She's only a two. Okay. So shout out to Michelle. Yeah, babies in the office for the meetings, and but she was working on her career and being a mom and doing it all. And so I got a ton of respect uh for that. And she's still hustling uh to this day. Um it's been a long time now, but she's been a great, another great asset to the team, and she brings a lot of fun to the office. I think the different personalities, like she brings a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Actually, we we actually wanted to have a female join our team too, because we had Lindsay, but we're like, hey, like let's like realtors get more well-rounded with just three three guys, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah, and there's stuff that guys just miss, just she's not as good, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

You need the you need the woman's touch, so and so what I will say, like it's been awesome, and I really think she has again the same um characteristics, values that we do, um, and we mutually benefit from that. So yeah, I I love that our team is very little drama in a real estate world where there is lots of drama. We've got each other's backs. We know that if we're working with one of Michelle's clients or vice versa, um we're all gonna do a good job for each other's clients, and people can we can trust that of each other.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

So we've been very thankful to have her join our team. Well, and people out there might wonder too, you know, why why would realtors join a team as opposed to just being on their own? Maybe that you know, I think the general public would wonder that. And we've talked about a lot, and Darren touched on it, but yeah, when you get in into real estate as a realtor, you're kind of just like, okay, I got my license, like, what do I do? Like, I gotta go, I gotta go help people buy and sell. But then the real problem is they actually don't have a community or connection or not near enough of who is gonna buy and sell with them. How do you, especially if you're young, how do you walk into you know a listing and get the appointment? How do you get the phone call to get in that door? You're not you're actually just not going to, right? They become a realtor and they just type on Facebook, like, hey, I became a realtor, give me a call for all your buying selling needs, enter, and then like sit back, hold your hands, and wait for the phone to ring. And then people don't think enough about how hard prospecting is. And I'd say that business, if you do it well, especially listings, lead to more listings, leads to more business. Yeah, one way that we've always operated on a few things is like you know, if you do a good job for someone, I think they'll tell about 10 people. If you do a bad job for someone, I always tell myself in my head that they might tell 50 people, and that's a terrifying thought. And that's also motivating to like make sure you do a really good job from start to finish. So to circle back, that led to our business kind of exploding. I think we are organized and we do a good job for people. Whereas we got to train outside our office here, guys, and paper thin windows, which is what all that hawking is. We get we love our windows, but they're they're paper thin. Um but yeah, so that led to our business exploding, a referral base. And these new realtors, they don't they don't know exactly how to make that happen. So they come under a team and it's like, okay, we're gonna provide you with some leads, we're gonna provide you with a brand that's known and trusted, and we're gonna provide you with like all your expenses covered. So all you need to do now is go out and sell. You only have to worry about one thing, so and that is, and there's still like it still takes skill. There's a lot of realtors that still won't find success. So I don't want to downplay what their role is, but that is why a realtor would join a team.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Yeah. If you become a realtor, no matter what, before you even if you have no listings and you're just working with buyers, in a year, what would you say your minimum expenses are?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

If you wanted to be a realtor first between the real estate, let's say you list like between 15 and 20 grand if you just get sold nothing.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

I would say no matter what, it's gonna cost you 40 grand between your being at a brokerage, gas, computer, uh, any subscriptions that you need to have, a little bit of marketing if you get some listings. So no matter what, you're 40 grand. That's before you even make any money, right? So so you have to make 120 grand to actually take home 80 grand. And that's at a minimum. You can pay tax rent. Yeah. So yeah. So by joining a team, you can take away a lot of those expenses because there's economies that scale through the team. So I do think it's very attractive. I mean, there's people that join a team, it's not what they expect. They go back on their own, it's not for everybody, but there definitely is value in joining a team if a team's run right and it can give you guidance, can give you experience.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Um well, there's also a difference between a salesperson and a business owner, right? And I think we approach it as business owners. How can we grow? How can we scale? How can we teach? How can we lead? Yeah, how can we serve? And there's people that are just they are more just like sales, and they're actually gonna be totally unorganized in the business as well. And so it has to come like you need someone that can do both, yeah, and then you create a good platform for people. And there's a bunch of teams that are doing it really, really well, and um, it's it's I think it's a main reason why our team was able to grow.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Yeah, and we've had like we did have a couple other people that joined your team, and it didn't work out for different reasons, and we were okay with that, right? Um and and you know, they they saw a better fit elsewhere or to be on their own. That's fine. You you do definitely learn from things that you right, like there's growth. Um, so having Ryan for all these years, having Michelle for all these years, that does show something. I think it shows that we appreciate them and that they appreciate what we offer. Um, and we had Lizzie until she she moved on, and now Ruth for a few years and Kara for a few years, like I really like where we're at, and and it's kind of gone. Now we're like, what's next? Right? Where do we grow from here? So well back so back it was uh Ruth, like we me and Brent wanted to be like, okay, we want to market our properties better than anybody. So it is a given that it goes on MLS, and some realtors that's all they do. Pull out their iPhone, and it got better, but they're still not good. Snap a bunch of pictures, maybe take a video on their own, post it on MLS, and wait. We did not want to do that. We hired photographers, we hired videographers, we do drone. So um started, I think before Jeremy even started, Coala, who also do a great job. We transitioned to White Cloud with Jeremy, but we wanted to make sure that we were doing the best where we could. So you have to be the best every part of the way. It starts with marketing, so then it goes through your processes. Adding to marketing, we're like, What how can we do this better? Staging. Yeah. So for for years, we're like, how do we do this? Because we don't want to, like, we're not gonna move in couches.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Okay, so side note about this. Side note. My wife used to thought it was hilarious that me would walk through people's houses and advise them on how to prep their house for listing. Because she's like, I would not let you give me advice in my house. I wouldn't let you touch up with a 10-foot pole. She, like, because she did it all, but like, I don't know. I could give the high-level advice on what look good.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

I think my sales like, or if I'm trying to sell us, I'm like, and we have Ruth. And Ruth is a stager, and she's gonna come through your home, she's gonna make it look awesome. She's gonna tell you to put this there, tell you to put that there, because I am not very good at that. Part of the reason I'm not good at that is I don't want to tell people it looks like you're a little cluttered here. Ruth does a way better job, and I tell them, you're gonna like Ruth way better than you like me or Brent.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah, she brings a practical, she brings a unique mix of like, I think when people meet Ruth, they look at her and they'll be like, Man, like she looks fancy. Ruth's always well dressed, she's always well put together, and she's a kind of a designer slash, you know, stager. So you kind of you can kind of picture a human being being like, you know, they they don't want to get their hands dirty, they want to tell you what to do. Whereas Ruth shows up, she kind of looks like that, but then she rolls up her sleeves and outworks you, which is the crazy part, which is really cool about Ruth.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

She will wipe dried, nasty cat pee off someone's floor. She's not gonna be like, I'm not touching that. She's like, I'm gonna, I didn't, I wasn't there. Also definitely would help me. I was like that's bad from that one. Not what I thought your job was, but I'm like, I'm not gonna tell you not to, but appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

So she's been a huge asset to our team. And again, another reason why growing a team, and then when the general public asks, like, well, why would I use like an individual agent versus like lefters and rook? It's like now there's all these different layers that you're getting, right? Yeah, so yeah, shout out to Ruth there. We should we should bring this back a bit to we had we had Ryan, we grew with Michelle, we were at the office, and then we eventually left Langley and went to Abbasford.

unknown 32:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

This so that would have been what are we going on three, four years now?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

2021.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

So our office is currently in the old postal office in Abbamsford. A lot of people know what that is. The older generation will know that the younger generation will know escape room. Actually, maybe not the younger, maybe our generation. I never went. Yeah, I did once. I think I escaped. Here? Yeah. When I was walking through, I'm like, I think I remember this room. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

So yeah, corner office, third floor.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Yeah, we first were thinking about buying one, and we wrote an offer on one.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

We did across the road. Yep. Listed for 650,000.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Would have still been probably a good 600.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

It was it was a lot of money for a thousand square feet of office. $650,000 for a thousand square feet of office. But it was nicely, it was nicely updated. It was really nice. There wasn't a lot that we had to do in there.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

It was good. That would have been really, really cool. But we ended up finding this. It's a good lease and good landlord. And we just did another TI in here, and we were very happy with how it turned out. And we had to do it because we needed a more central location as well. Because I had I had always lived in Abbotsford since I bought an acre in Yarrow and built a house kind of around that time. So I was going a little bit further east. That's my wife's fault. She dragged me to Yarrow, which now I'm appreciated a little bit. But at the time, it was supposed to be an investment property. It's actually a really cool story. I'll I'll tell it another time. But my wife uh fell in love with this property that was supposed to be an investment property with a client, and then she's like, No, we're actually gonna live there. I was like, oh, really? And we argued about that for a few weeks. Anyway, so we didn't know. So I was in Yarrow, Chiera um on a team who we haven't even got to yet, but we will. She's in Chilliwack. John, who we haven't really talked about yet. East Chilliwack. He's in East Chilliac. Ryan gets married and moves to Daroche. Where's that? Exactly. It's like it's like another Houston. He probably feels right at home there. And then Darren's still in Langley, just like you've always been out in Langley, which is great. You still complain about the drive to Abbasford now. I'm close to the first time. I'm gonna be further away in six months, but I don't even feel bad for you. Oh I don't want you to. Okay, good. And then Roosevelt, Ruth's the smart one. Ruth's an absolute. She's like right in the middle of it all. And then uh you got a five-minute commute. And Michelle's Maple Ridge, probably the most unique real estate team. Actually, if you think about it, we come, so we come from everywhere and we show right to Absford.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Brent was Brent and I were saying, like, what are some things that you would change? I said, this isn't really something I would change, but I can appreciate realtors that have farm areas that are close and they they are not driving every all the time because one day I can be in North Delta, the next day I can be in Chilliwack. Hope. Yeah, I don't venture out to Hope much. Brent has. So hope. Chilliwack is kind of like my boundary. Langley's kind of Brent's boundary.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Surrey sucks. He'll he'll go to Surrey. But I will. Yeah. I will. Surrey, Surrey doesn't suck. The traffic in Surrey sucks. So I basically in my head I'm always like anything past 196 is dead to me. Unless it's like north of the highway in Port Kelly. So there's you know, Darren's area. I we do have a lot of clients in Surrey. We still take your listing. We'll still help you. We'll still do it. My one of my first condos was uh in Vancouver. I remember I drove over the bridge like 20 times. I remember that. You just take what you can get. Is that just south of False Creek? Always. That was right by Granville Island. Yeah. Right by Granville Island. So and I it's just take what you can get mentality wherever it is. And we kind of still operate under that way because the team is so broad, right? Like we'll take what we did we do deals in Kelowna.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

You know what we gotta do? I think we've kind of done this. Banger Island. We have to take like a map of the lower mainland and put pins wherever we've done deals, and guaranteed we will have like a way wider um graph than anything on the wall, that'd be really cool.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, every deal you've ever done. Let's do it. That's the wall right there.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Yeah, I think it'll look good. But so so I would say that that's been something that has been a bit of a struggle because we drive, we put a lot of miles on, but it also expands where we do business and expands opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Well, and a lot of people were moving from west to east throughout our careers.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

And young people moving from west to east, and now their parents are moving from west to east.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

That's what we're noticing, following them. And we have a very good grasp on the market west and east. So it's like perfect one-stop shop for everyone, right? I even just I just had it again. We still get asked the question. Like, I drove out to Murrayville. I just got a listing that I was competing on against a couple other agents, and um, one of the questions they asked me was like, Well, how well do you know Langley? Like, we know you drove out from Yero. I'm like, Yeah, it's I mean, it's a great question. But I was like, actually, my business partner, Darren, still lives in Murrayville. Well, you don't live in Murray, but you're about to live in Murrayville again. And I said, I grew up, I spent years in Murrayville, and then I moved to Abbotsford, bought a house, and then I moved to Yero and bought a house, and now our office is in Abbotsford. We sell everywhere. Like, we definitely know our area, there's no doubt about it. So I think I completely they they were obviously rest assured, I got the listing, but it's a good question because it's not every agent that's yeah, driving from Europe.

SPEAKER_01 37:07

There's people in Langley that refer out to Chilli.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Yeah, we wouldn't dream of that. Like, not a chance.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

That's where I'm there, I'm gonna be there twice this week.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

Yeah, if you don't feel like driving it, then I'll do it. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

That is one way that we could probably be better if we're like, hey, you just stay here.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah, but it's nice to it's nice to go everywhere too. Like it's you we've learned at this point, we're 10 years in, we've learned the markets. There's not a lot of there's not a lot of types of real estate in those areas that'll surprise us, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Which has been the odd time we will get someone say, Oh, you're a Langley agent, or oh, you live in Chilliwack. It's like okay, hold on. I I I can tell you right now I do more business than the person you're thinking about in here, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Like, yeah, so it's like that's not the area specialist that you need, actually. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

I would say that is definitely a uh false thought, the area expert. Um it is good branding, but like how many deals are they doing actually in that neighborhood, right? There there are some, but a lot of people I would say use that.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah, so but yeah, Absurd was nice to have the central hub, and it was nice to grow, and then from here well, a lot of teams don't have their own office, they're still going to the brokerage, go to the brokerage.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

So to have our own thing here, we've hosted some first-time home buyer events.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Um we have a huge storage room where we keep can keep all our signs, keep all our swags, they're not in our garage for us or in our trunk for the car. Desks for yeah, desks for everybody, boardroom table we meet at every single Monday. Um, all things I think that keep us consistent um with the ability to grow. Yeah. All things that are important.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

So now that we're at Ruth and we we're talking about Lindsay Levin, who was next on list.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Okay, first of all, before we get off Lindsay, I do want to shout her out. Like, she was fantastic, um, really good at what she did, and it was a tough blow. She was grow almost from the start, and be better. Yeah, and she like lived and breathed for left as a road. You don't meet employees very often that do that, right? They she wore it like it was hers. And that is yeah, that's something we'll always we'll always have, right? And that's and now so to replace her was really hard. And what we knew, and everything in our business has been was hiring for character and word of mouth. And that's what happened with Kiera. Um she actually had a referral from Ruth. Yes, partly, yeah. And she was doing nothing like the administrative type role she is. I think she was in a clothing store, pretty young. She still tells us when we're wearing something we shouldn't be wearing. Yeah, she yeah, and she's like a few years younger again, so now all of a sudden we're dealing with like this different generation. And I remember sitting down with her for the interview, and she basically interviewed me. Like, I'm like, what is happening here? She's like, Well, like, what kind of benefits will I get? And what are my hours gonna look like? And what is to ask me all these questions? I'm like, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

That's that's the best way to interview, is to ask questions of your interviewer.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

No, I well, you know, to put you on the spot. She she actually did, she did a good job. And I don't know. I after the meeting, I was like, hey, she's sharp, she's eager, she wants to learn. It sounded like she really wanted the job. And also, we do we we checked on like personalities is important for an administrative role. And over the years, Darren and I have taken a few of them. So one of them's called Widget, um, which basically takes a task from start to finish. It's like all it's all the letters of it, so W-I-D-G-E-T. And an administrative nation should be kind of E T, crossing T's, doting the I's. And and she was, so she fit that perfectly as well. And she was she was eager. So we hired on character, and uh, hey, here we are. That was in 2024 or 2026, a couple years in, and hiring on a character is a hundred percent the way to go. If you're looking to hire, I think, I think you teach the role and hire on the person because Ciara has been fantastic, she had huge shoes to fill. Yeah, um, she's learned a ton. It was uh one of the scarier times in her business, like having little girl and having a lot of people. The market was insane. Yeah, like everything was anyway. So it was it was a tough transition, but Kiera's done extremely well. She also wears the brand, proud. Like one of her goals this year, too, is to like be the reason we make a few sales by you know getting the word out there to people she knows in her sphere. Um, she is heavily invested, even in like, you know, we're doing a podcast, she wants to know all about it. Um we got in trouble for sending not sending the first episode, right? Yeah, which we get in trouble. We get in trouble all the time. She harasses you for paperwork, which is what we need, right? Yeah, never harasses me for paperwork.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

I'm just kidding. I I'm just shrugging this off because we know that we know it's true.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

So yeah, we uh I'll admit that position just won't admit to it. Definitely keeps us organized, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:53

But I remember when she she'll tell us now that I think both of us, she was she was actually not not threatened. What's the word I'm going for? Like, she she didn't know how to take us to start, and we just kept telling her, like, don't take us too serious. Like, if we're gonna make a joke about something, like we are completely not serious. Like we're I actually think we're quite easy going. We'll we'll tell you know her if something needs improvement, but like we're pretty easy going, and as long as the job gets done, like we want everyone at Leftford's and Rook to enjoy working.

SPEAKER_00 42:24

So we're we're working hard. Like, my attitude is always like, I'm gonna go out and work really hard. I expect you to work really hard and do your job well, but I also want to give you complete freedom. Like, if you can do that really efficiently, and then you need to like leave early or take a weekend off or whatever it looks like. Like, there's a lot of freedom in in that, and I think people love freedom and they love being part of a team. Yeah, she was surprised that she could just like so easily take a day off here, take your day off there, and like if you're getting the work done, that's all we care about. Yeah, that's a good culture. It's part, I think it's part of the culture that is we built, which is important in the team as well. Yeah. So where are we at? Well, we're we're missing John. John, another another organic growth. Yeah, I remember so. I think I I chat with John a lot more to start, right? Yeah, but well, we no, we so we both had deals, right? Deals. Okay, tell yours and then I'll tell mine and then how it came together. So John builds houses in Chilac, and he's very good at that. 30 years for a long time. And then John decided that realtors make too much money, so he was like, I'm gonna become a realtor.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

I don't even know if his realtors make too much money, because realtors make too much money off of me.

SPEAKER_00 43:33

Yeah, that was yeah, that was definitely his attitude. He built too many houses and worked with people, and and then yeah, so he is like, I'm gonna become a realtor. But hey, so I had buyers that bought one of John's houses, and we mostly dealt with him direct during this process. And then Darren had a set of clients that bought another one of John's houses. This is like six months later, and both transactions went really, really well with my communication with John, with Darren's communication with John. We both appreciated how well he built homes. And what was important to him. And he was chill. He was just good all-around dude. Again, we like character. But then I remember a few months goes by, and then my phone rings, and it's John. And he's like, hey, Brent, like, yeah, I'm a realtor and I'm trying to figure out, like, you know, I like he likes real estate and that, but he was kind of like, he's like, I was thinking maybe I should join a team. And I remember being like, like, what? I'm like, John, like, what do you mean you want to join a team? A, you've used like, I don't know how many other realtors all in Chilliwac, and your buddies with different realtors in Chilliwac. Like, we've done one deal together. We're from like a Langley brokerage. I didn't actually take the phone call that seriously. And he was just kind of like, you know, chatting for fun. And it was like, oh, we had a good chat, we liked each other, and then we kind of left it. And then he called back again, like another couple months, and it was actually a little bit more serious. He's like, hey, I actually think that we should talk. And I was like, okay. So I remember we had a meeting and he's just like, hey, I think I could use some help on the hill that we're selling in in Shannon Heights. And I think that I would like some support with all my paperwork and all my processes and that kind of stuff. Because he doesn't want to be bogged down, especially this guy that's like a super successful developer, now being bogged down with like your basic, you know, real estate paperwork. It's just not uh not something. So it was kind of like one of those fits where it was we like you, you like us, you don't really need us. We don't really need you, but this might actually work perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Yeah, and we definitely had value to help him out with. And in the end, now we're partnering really on the marketing of Shannon Heights, which is a 51 lot subdivision that he's building out. Um, we just started phase two, uh, almost sold out of phase one. So we I want to say we've learned from him a lot. He's learned from us. That's that's kind of been our story, I guess. Is like us learning from each other, benefiting from each other. Ryan, Michelle, same thing. Lindsay, like we benefit from Lindsay and and Kira and Ruth. Our clients all benefit from like it's it's a lot of just mutual, like, yeah. Uh our growth, we never would have been like, here's what we're doing going forward. But looking back, it was like it all made sense.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

It all made sense at the time, and that's where we we were asking ourselves before this podcast, like, what are what are some things you can leave with people or like your biggest regrets trying to grow the business? And I think I think it was just a lot of like almost perfect timing. Like, we we there was somehow regrets. No, because we we somehow got ahead of it was like, hey, we're selling a lot of real estate, and our life sucks right now because we have no time with our family to time with the kids, we should maybe get assistance. And then, yeah, and then that went really, really well. So we're like, okay, now we've built this platform with assistant, maybe it'd be make a lot of sense for like your brother. And it was like, oh, he's there, and then we decided we'll take on another agent because this is working. And then Michelle came and it was fantastic. And then it's you know, the way Ruth and Kier work, I kind of separate those roles in, you know, to dumb it down would be like people and paper. Yep. So Ruth is client care coordinator, she deals with all the people, all the little things in front of people with like staging and listing prep and all that and showing requests and again freeing up more of our time on all these little tasks that need to happen. It sounds dumb when you say, like, you know, setting up lock boxes and signs and buying gifts, but if you do 100 transactions a year, that's a hundred gifts. And if you actually want to have a normal gift, that means basically every three days of the year, you're thinking about okay, what gift card am I getting? Oh no, I don't want to get a gift card, I want to get a gift back. Oh, where am I gonna get this? Now I gotta get this. It's economy's just running around and do it. It is so now it's like all of a sudden Ruth is like super thoughtful and she gets way better gifts than we ever did, and she helps us come up with them and she runs around and and grabs them. So that's actually or it looks pretty not all of them, but the like it'll that was like in a pile in the back of my truck and just like throwing on the kitchen island and say, here you go, look what I got you. Now it's like this beautiful basket. Yeah, people never believe me that I wrapped it. But I give Ruth credit right away. Yeah, so so she's but she's the face with the people.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

You say people and paper, and then it's like it's client care and like clerical stuff, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:02

Yeah, and Ciara would be all paper, so she's prepping all the listings, but they they connect a lot too, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:07

And they get a lot of forth.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

So yeah, going back and forth brokerage, keeping us organized with paperwork, like so key. She's and she's more in the office like every single day. Um, whereas Ruth is, I don't even know where she is everywhere, she's just everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

We actually do get a lot of questions from other realtors, like, how do you guys do it? Right. And and we've also had a conversation with a lot of other teams, like, and what we found is each team runs very differently. Yeah, it's very people dependent, and um yeah, everybody's in a different situation in their life. You know, if if it's if it's a a male or a female realtor, uh, you know, uh a mom or a dad at home, how many kids like everybody's situation is different. So every team is run differently. We've talked to people, we've used some things in our business. There's some things where like that would never fly. We're not going that way. So going forward, there is gonna be times where it's like, hey, let's make this a little tweak. We might run into a realtor tomorrow that's wants to join our team, and we might be like, that's a perfect fit. We're not out there to be like, hey, let's let's grow. We need to add more agents because it it is more management time for you and I, which we really enjoy with Ryan and Michelle, right? Helping them out, helping them grow. But it that's time as well. So we're we're in a really good, you know, small still, I don't know, we are we a small team. Like, I think we we do well with what we have in front of us. Um, yeah. I'm not gonna say, are we a small giant?

SPEAKER_00 49:33

Can I say that? Uh yeah, I think in some ways, like it's it's always been about if we were to like summarize the business, it's been a natural organic growth, but we were business-minded. So it's a small business that has had some natural growth, but we never want it to be the agent that's like I think the general MO for agents is like, I gotta sell, sell, sell, I gotta work 24-7, I gotta answer my text and my calls whenever I can. I gotta work all the time and I gotta grind, grind, grind, hustle, grind, hustle, grind. And it's like, okay, can we not build this like someone else would build their business, right? Like be good at what you do, but during normal hours, scale up what you can scale so that you can do the important things in your business and like see where that takes you. And that's been almost the reason of every decision we make. Even now, I go, like, when we're doing a lot, it's like, okay, what we we always talk about this, what holes are in our business now? And right now we feel that there's still, even though we have Ruth and Kiera, there's some sometimes there's some overlap that we need to tweak, or there's still a couple holes in there. Like, for instance, we never require Kier to work after 4 p.m. So she's like she's off. And she will fill in the all-time if it's an emergency. And Lindsay always did that too for us, which is amazing. But we love writing contracts, me or you, at seven o'clock at night. At night, it just comes out. So then you're still writing contracts and doing stuff at night when it can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

So we can still get better. We we definitely know that there's ways to have, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

I think some people have a little bit more 24-7 coverage, or now there's like AI. How do you integrate that in your business, in your CRM, and still have a you know, a personal business? Like real estate's so personal, but how do you now implement AI? It's like you're gonna email me, and then my AI robots just gonna respond or call you back, and somehow that's gonna be like, oh, Brent touched base with me today. It's like, no, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

I just actually had a client complain about that, not from us, but he was dealing with another profession and he was getting AI in return. And he's like, no, like that's not cool.

SPEAKER_00 51:27

So yeah, it's it's a fine line. I think AI can AI can be in your system and save you a ton of time, but it it can't it can't ever become at least a face for way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

It should be helping every all behind get to you to make things easier, and then you still convey it, right? Yeah, so you were talking about 24-7. When we tell realtors we're 24-6, we do our absolute best not to touch Sundays, Sundays you know, go to church, it's deal with our family, um, rest. They're like, How do you do it? And I'm like, just do it. I think I've lost two deals because I don't work Sundays. I don't think I've ever lost a deal. Yeah. Um, and and I'm I'm totally at peace with it, right? Um and yeah, and we need that day. So when people say, How do you do it? I'm like, how do you work seven days a week? Like you need some time off. So setting that boundary for us, anybody can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Um you should have a day of rest, like religious or not, a day, mental day to reset, like go for a hike, go for a walk to family, whatever it is. I don't care if it's you know, Sunday, a Monday, a Tuesday, like take your day because you actually will feel rejuvenated. And for us, it's it's Sundays, and it's going to church and it's spending that time with family, and and that's something that like I don't some people say to me, you can't work Sundays.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

I'm like, no, it's not that. It's like I don't have to, and it's a blessing. That's right. Like, I want you to be able to like say that.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

Dude, take a day, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

So now the another challenge we do have is the you know, nighttime and stuff like that. So we're still we are still kind of trying to work that out, and but it's it's a it's a balancing game, it's an ever-growing thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:05

Like, there's so what would be what would be our goal like tied to that for like the next year.

SPEAKER_01 53:10

Can I add one more thing? How I think we're different. If if we had 200 grand to spend on our business right now, I think I can say like we're not gonna go put um our logo and our faces on a bus bench or on buses or just blast everything out there. We we tend to spend it on our community and on our clients to grow and then still grow organically. Um, I would think say that's one thing that sets us apart.

SPEAKER_00 53:39

Yeah, almost all the money is invested on the current people. So that's like people walking around with swag, people going to client events, people getting canoe tickets, different things they sponsor being supported by us, and then they sponsor the call, like we get hit up by a lot of these different organizations to help out, and we love doing that, which is and it's way more fun than just putting our name on a bus venture bus any better.

SPEAKER_01 54:02

So that tied to that, it's like where do we go from here, right? People deal with realtors that they know, like, and trust. We got a lot of people that know us, they like our us and our team, they do trust us, but the knowing is the hardest part, right? So it's so going forward, it's how can we, without just you know, spending a bunch of money on advertising, because we don't want to do that, we'd rather spend it in our community, grow. And and we always kind of have conversations to to try to put ourselves out there, right? But that would be the how do we and the way I I look at it is if we believe that we do good work and we're benefiting those that use us, why would we want to stop at just the numbers we currently have? Like, let's grow that, let's double it, let's triple it, let's grow our team, right? But we are limited by how many people know us.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

So yeah, and and our amazing clients are still referring to us all the time, every time, even in this a tough market right now, and sometimes it's like ah, this is a grind, and then all of a sudden there's three, four leads. This happened to me last Monday, where it's like yeah, two listing appointments and two new buyers in a day. And I'm like, wow, and this is all word of mouth. So not average. Shout out to our clients. Please keep doing that. We love it when you do.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

So, so where do we go from here? I think we didn't talk about it. Brent and I together actually bought a uh a place in Mission that used to be a vitamin store with three residential units above. Dump. We we did eventually sell it.

SPEAKER_00 55:22

Absolutely, it turned out well, but I think we should expand a little bit more. Let's give the people the good stuff. How far do we go into it? Oh, right into it. Okay, so the upstairs was three living quarters. The front one was like heavily, heavily smoked.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

We're we're we're sprinkling our real estate into this now, right? Like the this, we we want people to know, you know, what what we've learned on the way. So here's what we've learned on the way of what to invest in, what not to.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

Yeah, so heavily, heavily smoked in. Like we went in and there was there was like burn marks in the mattress and on the floor beside the bed from like where people would fall asleep while having a cigarette and it would just like fall out of their mouth on the street, or like didn't quite put it through whatever. It was all that was gross. So that one, that front unit is disgusting. The middle unit, he was actually a nice guy, but he he was dirty. It was dirty, and then the that was like kind of the least of our problems, and then the back one, we walk in this place, and from floor to ceiling on the walls are eight by eleven photos of inappropriate content of younger girls, like they weren't naked, but they were like it was like You're like this this shouldn't be like this a wall of descendants, a wall of female wrestlers, uh just like a a wall of Selena Gomez. Uh it's just these are three different renters, yeah. Right, and it was oh man.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

So our goal there was to purchase it, to rent o it, raise the rent, and and maybe even actually put uh off the roof and and move us there. But then we ran into challenges. The none of the tenants wanted to leave because they had such low rent for spinning. But vitamins stored out. Um and in the end, the market kind of tipped up a little bit, and we had a willing buyer, and we're like, hey, let's let's sell it.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

So but but we actually tried to buy it and get vacant possession. It's true. Because we we were gonna move Lefers and Rook there, and but then the tenants didn't leave. And then we went to the we went to the hearing at the tenancy board and we lost it. That's true, which was so that that sucks. Our story was like, oh no, we're gonna move in one, and then like when Darren's parents come and visit our town, there's a place for them to stay, and my parents are gonna build a house, there's a place for them to stay. And it was just uh, anyways, we lost, and our story was like it's kind of true, but it was just it was a big challenge.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

So knowing that in real estate, any investing is gonna be a challenge, but going forward, like we love our office here. I I don't think we have any plans to move, but it would be like, does it make sense to purchase an office sometime?

SPEAKER_00 57:51

Yeah, and we did make money on that investment, like we bought for one one, just over one, and we sold for over one four. Yeah, and we bought in a dip, and it so it was it was still good overall, and we were so happy to get out of it. And we learned from it, and we learned from it, learned a lot of things from it, um, which was good. We actually haven't made another investment together yet, so maybe it's almost time. Like, I've I've actually took that some of that profit and invested in a condo in big white, kind of focusing on family, and then another fixer upper. I'm still currently working on with another friend. So I've kept the money in the market, um, but still working like the big white is you don't buy in big white for super long term for profit, I guess. You buy it for experience and time with the family. Like, even the person I bought off, I think they made 300 grand in like 20 years, but that money invested elsewhere would have done a lot better. So that was more of a personal decision, but it is cool that we can go skiing. It's a lifestyle. I think we made a good purchase. I don't think it's gonna go down. I think it was bought at the right time and we get to enjoy it. So that's kind of neat. And then the other one is a reno that, yeah, I mean, jury's still out. We got a lot of way to go on it. Um, but yeah, maybe it'll be an office space. Yeah, maybe we can buy one one of these.

SPEAKER_01 59:02

Office space, or it's or or it'll be you know a warehouse investment. I I think that's kind of or that's our personal things going forward. Um, and then as far as lefters and routes.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

We talked with John. John is like super intelligent in Chilak investing and land and happily partner with him. But yeah, yeah, I think I think if you leave the doors open and um you know pray about stuff and and see where you're led, like I that's something that I strongly believe in. Like, not all these decisions in my life, they were like open doors that they were just open for me. Like they're even the people we've hired, everything it's like it's it's kind of in front of you, and you you embrace it, just keep your mind open, and that's yeah, and I would say there's a lot of opportunities that I've had that I saw the risk in, not the reward, and I should have saw the reward, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Like you say no because of the risk, but the ones that we have decided to go forward on have worked out, right? You could say that mission didn't work out because we don't no longer have it, but we learned from it and we still made money on it. You know what a place, man. And that's not even talking about the hall that I bought with another client of ours. Well, yeah, there's another one I don't have anymore, but it's you didn't work meet a little bit on that, right? Yeah, but again, kind of a tough one. But we are always looking for opportunities, and the thing is, you running a business takes time. So if you're investing here and there, that's just more time, right? So it's it's trying to balance all those things. Harmony, yeah, harmony. That's the word harmonizing.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

But for lefters and rook, I try harmonizing. My daughter just she's like, Dad, pain. Are you tone deaf? What did you sing in one day on here? Painful. That's why I play drums.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:33

I don't know what to sing. Yeah, as far as lefters and rook goes, I think I think we're slow growth from the personnel side, and it's really just trying to really build our community bigger and bigger. So I guess we'll see where it goes from here.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

I feel like that's probably a good place to wrap it up a bit here. I I don't know if we really went through like everything in the business or what, and hopefully there's some things people can learn. Let's give them one thing that is like one of the most important things toward that we learn through growing a business together, and one of the things that you think like this is something to avoid. Let's leave, let's leave the people with that. Put me on the spot.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

Okay, so I would say I would say constantly um, like not challenging what you're doing, but reflecting. Like in the past, we we went to the island one time and and spent two days there being like, let's go through our business.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

We would have yearly partner meetings.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

So we're due for a 10-year anniversary slash review, slash find a golf course somewhere around the golden. Sounds amazing. Yeah. Um, so it's reflecting on your business.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Like we had hard conversations during those times too, as partners, because it hasn't been all roses and butterflies, like mostly, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

But we've definitely had to have our hard conversations and and we see things differently too, right? So, you know, if if if I say, Hey Brent, we should hire another assistant, and he might well, like, I don't need that, right? Or the or the other way around, right? Um, so I would say constantly reflecting on that is a good thing. What has been our biggest I we haven't had a real challenge or a real hiccup, I don't think.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

Um, yeah, I don't know if you have something to so my my thoughts would be like you have to be if you're starting a business, be passionate about it, be 100% in. Like if you have to have a talk with your spouse about what the sacrifice is, because it is a sacrifice for both of you, especially the first couple of years. So if you're starting and you haven't had that chat with your husband or your wife, um, and just like just you need to have it. You need to have it because yeah, they're they have to come along for the ride. And my wife had to be super understanding about that, especially with two young kids. Be all in and and go. It takes it takes every part of you to get it going. And then once once you get it going, and I think once the ball was rolling and left was a rook and more of the referrals and leads come in, that's when it's like, okay, now let's build the systems and the processes to now harness that, right? Yeah, so be all in, like take take the risks, but like be all in. I think that's the simple thing I want to leave people from the from the beginning, and then think about it, especially in real estate, guys. If you're a real children, think about it like a business. You don't just be a smith salesman running around unorganized. Like, you can be a professional, give long-term advice, and and build your business so that it works for your life. I got a couple things now that I have time to think about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:16

There you go. So I would say serve. Like serve people. Don't you're you're not a realtor just to do a deal, move on to the next deal. The way I look at it is like we do it, we try to do a good job for people and we will make a living, right? So you're serving them, you're helping them get from one place to the next. I I think that's huge, and trying to do it you know, out of humility, but it's it's definitely serve and then and find ways to learn. Like how much have we learned and we're still learning, right? And that's gonna get you better. So whether what no matter what business you're in, if you can fulfill people's needs and show value and learn while you're at it, like that that to me is a win right there. And hopefully you're making a good living at the same time, right? But but start with that, like how can I serve people? I think is a huge first question to ask, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

And then well, I'll just spitball on here, and understanding your team's personality is another huge thing. Like we we've diven't, we've dove in, we dived, we dove, dove, we dove deep. Oh, I'm such a blonde way. It's a good way to add it. We dove deep on personalities and on each other and on our teams to understand how people work. And I think that's important for like team cohesiveness and understanding who you are. Um, so I highly recommend that. Like just understand that about each other. And then one thing I want to say about regrets, I'd say for us, we have definitely spun our tires wasting some money on unnecessary marketing over the years. I think a lot of people have in our industry, but you know, I think it's important to identify what you're good at in your business and then focusing your time, effort, and energy on that, especially for lead generation. We're good at like warm doors, referrals, spending money on our people, and that's been super successful from us. And every time we stray away from that by like buying a few signs or like, hey, YouTube ads this, or you know, Facebook ads that those leads have been people that we just don't jive with, and just it hasn't worked, it's ended up being a waste of money, like tens of thousands of dollars over the years. I don't think we've hit 100 grand on that, but we've definitely I would say we spent like 40 to 60,000 for sure in like trying this stuff out.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

It's something that you can't see. And it has an ROI from, right? Like if you're farming a specific area, you can get ROI from that and see it. But if it's uh uh YouTube ad here, YouTube ad there, you know, yeah, you're spreading out you over your bus bench here, it's hard to see ROI from it. So I would agree with that, even though you feel like that's what you need to do to grow, just get in front of more people. So maybe that is door knocking. Like Ryan does a lot of door knocking, and props to him, it's not an easy job, but he has definitely grown his community from that, and now he's following up, right? Like that's definitely one way he's getting in front of people, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

So okay, guys, thanks for listening again. Um Like, subscribe. If you have any questions for us, like reach out to Darren at any time, whatever, however, you're listening to this. Like, you can shoot us a text. You can find us on Instagram, whatever it is. Um, so left at leffers and rook to find us on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:12

Um, and we got a great guest coming up for our next episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

Yeah, stay tuned for episode number three, our first guest ever. Hopefully, we don't botch it for him. We're excited for him.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:20

In a way, he made Leffers and Rook possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Uh, more to come on that. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Thanks for watching and listening. We'll see you guys next time.