Today I'm with Zhorka from Era a very good friend of mine that I mentioned to you last week and we're going to talk about what it's like to be a real estate agent. He mentioned that a lot of people contact him and ask him - what is it like to be a realtor, what does it look like to be a realtor, a lot of people have no idea what it's like to be a realtor so I'm like, a little bit of variety.
Miro: Good morning George
Joro: Good morning, Georgi my name is me, I work at ERA real estate agency and today I am very pleasantly surprised that Miro invited me to participate in this episode.
Miro: Okay Zhorka tell me now how you decided to become a real estate broker, why a real estate broker.
Joro: This is a story that I tell every time to absolutely everyone because it's very exciting. What happened to me, I always say it's luck that should befall you. I came to Plovdiv a year and a half ago and I was looking for a job, and I started looking at different websites, I was posting CVs left, right and at one point I didn't have a job for 2 months. But then I was looking for a place to live and everybody was saying to me - become a broker, and I - no, not a broker, go around, whether it will happen or not, there's no point in wasting my time. However, at a certain point 2 months I don't have a job and I'm thinking if I become a broker, invest 2 months in my studies to become a broker and then see if I get a result, anyway I've lost 2 months it won't go bad if I lose another 2 if it doesn't work out. So I started looking at agencies again on the websites, put my CV in 4-5 places for a broker, and that's how my adventure in the field started.
Miro: Why in the EPA?
Joro: Ope shot - one kill, the first place I came across the first people I met in the industry were here at ERA, they introduced me to the way of working, they showed me that there is a way to learn, because I have no experience whatsoever, I can't tell the difference between a panel and a brick. I was intending to work rentals, I walk into the ERA and they say to me - we don't work rentals, we only work sales, and I grab my head and shout I'm 19 years old, I don't know the difference between construction, who's going to buy from me. And they said to me - relax, we have our training, we will prepare you. In which I felt a certainty that I was going to go out into the market prepared. I've always had the motivation, I've always had the temperament, I just needed a preparation to enter the market.
Miro: Tell me about your first deal.
Joro: The first deal - the first month. I went through the training very quickly, they got me in quickly, thanks to the EPA we have this system of allocating clients and luckily I'm on the right shoulder, and the phone rings with a client who sounded pretty motivated. We went in to see a quote, which he rang about. I gave him a presentation to our standards and he rang the next day to say he had made a decision and my heart broke. It was a very easy deal with no kinks, an investor deal with a client with a nice little credit profile, so everything went according to plan which I am very thankful that everything went as it should and completed successfully and in a short time.
Miro: It's actually a big part of a broker's motivation to develop in this job is to make that first deal happen quickly because it's a commission-oriented business, there's no fixed salary and if you don't make some quick hit or some nice hit you lose motivation very quickly, kind of see that there's a kick out of the whole thing. Tell me what you do all day, tell me how a broker's day goes.
Joro: Well, from the side looking at it, I'm probably drinking coffees and just cool chicks all day. So, my day starts off very light and picks up later. I find it a bit harder to get into gear in the morning, so I sit down and organise my work from lunch onwards. First phone calls with people I need to hear from second, people I need to meet, present my services to them, buyer clients I need to discuss their demand with, people I have already discussed with, because I don't catch many buyers and sellers, I have a certain number I can catch in the month and give them dedicated time. And I talk to them first thing in the morning, until lunch, then after lunch I start going out on meetings, where with buyers, where with sellers, with investors to pick up new buildings, because we do a lot of new construction, and finally I also make time for farming, because that's a very important thing to gather offers. I go around a certain area, I advertise myself in the area, I look for new offers for sale because I have a lot of buyers on hold just waiting for something to come out and buy it, and upstairs by 8 - 8 and 30 I'm done with the work day.
Miro: So, for everyone who thinks it's easy to be a broker, it's easy to be a saleswoman in the store, except no one tells you that you're in the office at 9 and if you're lucky you're home at 8 at night. Our day is 10, 11, 12 o'clock, because as I said, we earn our money, nobody gives Joro - here you are 1000 leva, go snap your fingers, whatever you earned is for him for this month. Now tell me what you think you should do, and then I'll tell you what you think you should do and what a successful broker looks like, which broker is successful, how brokers become successful.
Joro: I, before you came I was thinking about this and I'm very insistent, because you've been in the industry a lot longer I wanted to hear you first.
Miro: Bre, I hadn't thought about that, you surprise me. I said a little while ago it's easy to get in, to get started, to be a broker, it's very hard to stay being a broker. And the most important quality of a successful broker is persistence. And when I say tenacity, keep in mind that that's the most important quality in anything to succeed. It doesn't matter if you're selling real estate cucumbers, tables, shooting YouTube vlogs, it doesn't matter, you have to be persistent, you have to be consistent, you have to be consistent. The dumb thing about us is that everybody is savvy and everybody is looking to jump you, so the challenges are a little bit more. You go, you sell this table, somebody comes, looks at the table and you tell him - it costs 470 leva. And with us - hey now, what 50 thousand leva for this property, can't it be 45, and now I have a loan, do you know how much the neighbour is selling for. And then your everyday life passes in such conversations with all kinds of people, each trying to screw the other. If you manage to keep up with all the wildness, not to mention that there are months when you have no income, whatever we're talking about there are empty months, nobody is very happy. So to be a successful broker the most important thing is that you have to have that as a goal - I want to be a successful broker and the EPA and the other big companies offer training. All the people who think they can become a broker without training because they just decided - it's not going to happen. It's easy to become a broker, very hard to stay a broker, as it is with everything else.
Joro: Mine is the same opinion, because for the year and a half that I've been working, my success has always been in persistence, pushing in one place and being persistent to see with every meeting one step up, one step up and all the clients that I work with, because I'm not from Plovdiv, when I came I didn't have the sphere of influence, I don't have anyone to call to say - let's sell, let's buy, I started in the most ordinary way to contact sellers who have listed their properties, and there are so many brokers, I have to convince them to work only with me and give them that dose of confidence that a guy in his 20s will sell a property for a lot of money, which is even harder, and that's someone who doesn't know the city. And I started little by little first meeting - presentation, ok good service, but I don't see hope in you. I wait 2 months the property is not sold, high price, I know it, I wait for people to mature because at some point everyone matures and again after 2 months, hello let's do one meeting again I have this and this new, already one step up and at best the third time already say - ok, we are working
together, go ahead, you're in and then I can show what I'm capable of. That's how I've built my name so far, it's not through personal contacts, it's not through acquaintances or connections, it's just with that.
Miro: Something very important to say. We, the so-called real estate agents, are maniacs on the topic of hearing "NO" and refusals. So if somebody comes to you and says, I'll take it, we're all - no, not normal. The first YES for a broker is up there on the 5th or 6th NO. So imagine what it means for you to go in and be told - no, I don't want it, dump it, you're a scammer, don't bother me, I'll sort it out myself, and that's your daily routine. And then you're like Jorkata smiling, upbeat, motivated, no worries that something bad is going to happen. My point is, if we're going to worry that something bad is going to happen, better - at home, at the desk and something on the computer at mom's, and that's it. You have to take risks in this life, otherwise it doesn't work. George is the simplest example of a prima vista, coming to a town where he knows no one - I'll tell you how I met George. He calls me on an offer I made and I don't know him, I've heard him, I'm looking at some chats, he calls me on an offer and asks me in a building that we're building and I explain to him and he shouts - where is it. And I hung up, how do you not know where that is, to me it's a matter of honor. However, he's new and he meets a moron like me who starts pouring on him, scolding him, getting mad at him, I slam the phone down on him. And Zhorkata rings after a while - such, a view we will want, and I a little already softened - 12 and a half of his view with me. Zhorkata rings his buyer - ah, no, no, no, no, I don't want to see this property. And now Georgie's taken the axe to me once, the second time the buyer's told him he doesn't want to look at it and now the third time he has to call me to tell me we're not going to have a viewing. And he's like, oh, he's going to do me now and I don't know what, but he's not going to - he has to call me. And he's been facing this all day, and then you explain to me how anybody can become a broker - it's not true, anybody can try to be a broker, not anybody can become a broker and that's with everything. Everybody has to find their own recognition. Jorkata's recognition is selling something, being a broker, talking to people, morons like me, refusing him, hammering him, shouting you're not getting up and him saying - NO, I'll show you I'm getting up. And most people like us find the first NO very motivating, the second NO even more motivating, and so on. Otherwise it's not happening. What do you think about this.
Joro: what I've noticed is that a lot of people leave very motivated, at one point second, third NO and they're like, nah, it's not going to happen here, I'm going to a new place, the new place, the same way - first, second, third NO, there's not that persistence, and I even watched a video of some colleagues who also do vlogging and that's what they emphasized - regular communication. Rather constantly listening to your clients. And they had even pulled out a statistic of theirs if a broker, because he's hearing from, say, 100 people a month, if those 100 people every 2 months he's ringing them up, his clients are going to pick up a lot more percentage wise, and he's going to close a lot more deals. Because out of 100 people, not all 100 will buy this month, some will buy in 5 months, some in 1 year, however you ring them every 2 months and new ones come in and you generate a huge amount of leads. And if you are more consistently in communication with these people you are likely to be much more successful, so I keep at it and I don't give up after the third NO because I notice it in a lot of my colleagues the third NO is the end. And at some point I can't do that, I don't want to do that, it's the most disgusting profession. And I've been more like that since I was a kid and it doesn't confuse me much, and I go all the time I meet new people, I make new contacts, I've helped a lot of friends, who needs a job, who needs a favor. And I because I rotate contacts and I remember them, I remember a lot of contacts that I meet, and I refer them, and then at one point I said to myself - I help people a lot for thank you, I should get a job where I'm going to help, because I'm keen to give help to a person who needs it, who I can see that they can't do it on their own, and therefore it's already paid. And that's why I chose this profession and started to like it.
