Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Ed and Ken's mini podcast.
Hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season so far. I know that in our area, Ed, we. We've gotten some snow. First big substantial snowfall of the year. Five or, or six inches. I know that that's, you know, in some places that's just a dusting. And I know in. In where you're at, that would be catastrophics.
It's all relative.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I thought it was. I thought we got snow down here, but it just happened to be some sand blue on the road. So. Yeah, yeah, my pop pop coffee cup. I've got my papa Smurf blue methylene tongue, lips and mouth. The timing was off on this podcast for me, so I apologize about the timing, but you're not hallucinating. My mouth is blue.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Yes, but listen, you got to do what you got to do, and even if that means painting your mouth blue, I didn't even know that was going to rhyme, but that really worked out well.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: I like it. You're brilliant, dude. I've been trying to tell you this for years now. Hey, a memory came up the other day of us doing our first podcast together.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Get out.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: And that Eddie, Ben's mini podcast or.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: No, the first podcast in Westchester.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's right.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: That was.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Dude that you were. Ahead of your time, Ed.
Ahead of your time.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: No doubt, man, no doubt. Climb those big stairs into that creepy, pimped out den that I had with the exposed brick walls, and you were.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Like, I operated on pure faith that I wasn't there to get murdered.
Just like this guy. He's. I think he's. All right. We'll. We'll see what happens here.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: So I want to talk today. Let's jump right into it because I've been. I've been having this conversation with a couple of folks and I think it's important, and that is that you know what, this time of year, December heading into January, not only is it, is it the time to be thinking about next year, to be thinking about your business planning to looking about, looking at your goals, your strategies, your measurables and all that stuff. And I think if you're doing that, you're, you're, you're ahead of the game.
But I think this, I think most salespeople, let's say salespeople in general, but definitely mortgage folks and, and real estate agents, they miss a huge opportunity with this time of year because prospecting is what we do. And I know you can, you can like or not like that word, you can. You know, I know it's some people. It sounds icky, you know, but prospecting is what we do. You know, intentional outreach is what separates the people that thrive in this business despite market conditions and the people that eb and flow with the tide.
And no, not enough.
Not enough people do it, man. Not enough people do it. The people that I'm talking to, they. They kind of hibernate this time of year. And it's the worst thing you can do going into 2026 is to start your hibernation, start calling people, Start calling people. It's an easy time. How was your year? Right? If you're a loan officer, you should be asking those three questions. How did you do this year? You know, what do you want to do next year? And what's your number one strategy that you're going to implement to get there? Like, there are three easy questions to ask your real estate referral partners. And how can I help you get there? That's the fourth question and the magical one.
But also, like, what do you got planned for the holidays? What are you doing this weekend? And if you're friends with them on Facebook, I saw you got the tree or I saw you, you know, you were out there with your family with a holiday party, whatever it happens to be, it's just the easiest time of year, and people don't capitalize on it.
Yeah, why? That's the question.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Why?
What I'm. What I'm learning. And before we go deep into the psychology that, of course, you and I are all always write on, I want to start giving our 7.2 billion fans who watch this the literal tool that you can do right now and implement. And it's not theory. It's not like, go here, click this, and I will send this to you.
And maybe you can put it in the show notes or post show notes, but have to give 100% credit to my friend Sky Michaels. I stole this off of one of his posts, but this is the exact text you want to send to people right now.
Hey.
Was going back through my records today and saw your name and I couldn't help but smile.
Hope all is well.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: So simple.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Hey. Hey was going through.
And now I will say, if you really want to take this further, do this in a voice text.
Hey, Ken, it's. It's Ed. Clearly was going through my records and Facebook memories and saw us doing our podcast eight years ago, and I got to tell you, man, it brought a smile onto my face, man. Hope all's well.
Why agents don't prospect mine for business. I'm like a little boy, dude. I gotta make up new words. I like to say mine for business. Like a, like a prospector, by the way. Prospector, by the way, came from, I believe, mining for gold.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: So if you don't like the word prospect, if that gives you the X, talk about connection, talk about, or call it whatever you want.
But I really believe that most agents don't know what to do and loan officers don't know what to say.
And it's just about connecting. You could literally call prospecting connecting. Just connect two people.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: And.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: The second part of that, and I've uncovered this with a few agents lately, is that they are ashamed of being a salesperson.
Deep down inside, they're ashamed of putting themselves in a category of being in sales.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: You hear one of your techniques, Ed, is the IM statements and phenomenal technique. And I feel that society as a whole, our evolution of our culture, it doesn't surprise me that people sometimes are insecure about being a salesperson. That doesn't surprise me at all.
And I'll tell you a funny story.
My own brother, when I got into the yellow page business, I was selling ads in the, in the yellow pages. This was before the Internet. Well, it was before the iPhone. It really wasn't before the Internet, but it was before the iPhone and I was doing well.
We sold a competitive product to the Verizon phone book. It was, it was more cost effective, you know, cost per views, cost per dials. However, we measured those, those metrics to, to generate business for small business owners throughout the market.
My brother Matt says to me, oh man, I just don't think I could ever be a salespeople. I'm just not good at lying.
And it was like I was, I'm like, are you serious? Like, did you just say that to me right now? But it's, it's what people think of when they think of salespeople.
And it's from a real place, a justifiable place in history where people who were good at communicating, people who are good at guiding people in a certain direction, some might call it manipulation, could be successful in sales.
But the old definition was, I'm going to use my skills of persuasion to convince you to take money out of your pocket and put it into my pocket. And for a long time that was the, that was the knock, that was the, the reputation of sales snake oil salesman right from back in the day, and it carries forward to today. The used car salesman, the, you know, the door to door salesman. Like there's just, there's just negative connotations around it. And I think that where, if you're an agent out there, be honest with yourself. Are you feeling that way? And if you are, you're not alone.
But what can you do to not like to move out of that space? And I think your IM statements is a great place to start.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. And by the way, I have a new 30 day print out that if anybody wants includes your gratitude list, your I am statements. I choose two statements with which is something I've added. I choose to.
And then you write down one main goal and did you hit your main goal today? Anybody wants that, just let me know, I'll shoot it out to you or I'll shoot it to you, Ken. And we can distribute it that way.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Should we put it in the show notes?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Let's put it in the show notes. Yeah.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: People are going to start busting our chops because if we forget to put it in the show notes.
So, so IM statements, I, you know, you have to remember that what you're doing as a salesperson is, is leading.
Right? You are helping people, us. You are using your, your powers of persuasion and it is a talent. There is some, some God given talent there that and, and, and like all things, if it's used for, for, for nefarious purposes, then yes, harm can be done. But if you're pure of heart, if you know that, that what you want, it is what's best for the person and not what's best for you, then you really have an opportunity to do good work. By helping people get out of their own way, by reminding them of what's important, by uncovering their fears and helping them overcome their fears. Like that's all, that's what we do as salespeople.
And I think that's pretty honorable.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: You know who, it just hit me. You know who a lot of times make great real estate agents?
Those of us who had a horrible experience with a real estate agent before we got our license.
And you'll hear people say, including me, like I'll never let that happen to any of my clients. Like my first real estate agent. Just literally after I signed the agreement sale. I don't think I, I did not hear from him.
I had to do everything. I had to find financing, you know, I had to find everything. He even had me wave the mortgage contingency. I didn't know what I was doing until I found out like dude, if you don't get a mortgage like you lost your down payment.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: So.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: When there's a couple things, I believe real estate agents that don't market prospect put their business out there, it's for a couple reasons. Number one, they're just not, they know deep down inside they're not qualified.
They don't know the agreement of sale, they don't know the market.
They're not confident in themselves at all.
Or it's just not a fit for them.
It's just not a fit for them and they're trying to force it.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: And you know, it's funny, the, the, the cycle, the unfortunate cycle is that if you're not doing well, you start to even question your own motives and, and you start to wonder, am I, am I operating in my integrity? If I'm forcing someone to waive something that you know they shouldn't because you're trying to get paid.
And that's where, honestly, you really have to look yourself in the mirror and be grounded, be honest with yourself in those areas and always, always, always do what's right for the customer. Do what's right for the customer. And it will always come back to you that the one time where you, where you make that selfish, you persuade from a selfish place, you should, you should feel that lack of integrity.
Right? It's, that's natural. If you don't, you're a sociopath.
Right? So, so it's good that if at times you feel it, just make sure, you know, you address it. And you always do what, what's in the best interest of the customer. And that just doesn't mean like sometimes putting together a better process, sometimes that means improving your systems because improving your systems is what's best for the customer. Improving your systems diminishes stress. You don't want your customers stressed out.
To your point, you never want this to happen to one of your ever again. Right. You had a bad experience. You know, I've, I've, I've gotten mortgages over the years and lines of credit and you know, there are times where, you know, previous companies where I would go outside my company to get a mortgage and it becomes glaringly obvious where the weaknesses are in the process. And it was great for me to recognize and to, to, to operate from there because now I know, okay, you know what? These are some blind spots even I had. Maybe we're doing it well, but I think we could do it better and it helped to improve my process.
So, yeah, bad experience is a great teacher. When they say pain is an efficient teacher.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yes. In the recovery world, it's pain is a touchstone to all spiritual progress.
Yeah, my first, my first million dollar sale was literally I was laying upside down in a dentist chair and I had referred my dentist like five patients in the last year.
And I just went, took the tools out of my mouth. I was like, hey, I referred you like five patients. When are you going to refer me some, some real estate business? Just like that.
And I knew her, so it was sort of a giggle kind of thing.
And she looked at me and said, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're saying that, Ed.
We were just thinking about listing our house and we found a house that we would want to buy and it was the farmhouse at Brick House Farms.
And that got me into Brick House Farms, which then I, at the time I had the highest sale in Brick House Farms along with the farmhouse and. But it came from just, hey, I'm giving you this business, what about me kind of thing.
And I knew them well enough.
So like start out with your pizza guy, start out with your hairdresser who does your nails. Who do you give business to?
I really believe that, you know, take a look at somebody like a Jeff Quinton. Jeff Quinton. Right now he's in Ocean City, New Jersey with a headset on, probably making 100 cold calls, man. And that's his thing.
And he is scripted and he is good.
He looks forward to getting 97 no's to set three appointments today.
And he'll do it and I'll do it almost every day.
God bless him. Some people look that go, there's no way I could do that. I get it. You don't have to do that.
But if you're going to be in the business again, going back to. There are three types of people in our business. The interested, the committed, and the obsessed.
If you're interested, you're already out of business. In fact, you, like, you shouldn't be really representing clients.
Really.
We have to fall between committed and obsessed in order to do well in this business. And keep in mind, to do well, I'm going to work with real numbers here as a real estate agent in Chester County, Penns, or the Gulf coast of Florida, wherever you're at.
You know, the average sale price is easy. 500,000.
Yes.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say probably, maybe even more than that.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: In, In.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, let's go 500,000.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yep. So let's sell a home and a half a month. So that's 18 sales times $500,000.
It's 9 million.
Let's go 2.5%.
Dude, you're, you're $225,000, 18 sales, we're not talking 80 now.
I'm going to say 95 of human beings would be really happy. And by the way, this 36 hours a week tops work, it's not a bad way if it's a.95 of people would love to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, Correct?
[00:17:48] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: And you, what's interesting is you talk about Jeff, you talk about Sky.
These are two completely different ends of the prospecting spectrum, but they have one thing in common and that's action.
Yeah. And as long as what you, you texted me. Hold on, let me pull up the text. Because we were, we were talking last week and you had texted me.
That, oh man, Facebook Live. You're like, well, that, that effed up Facebook Live that I did. Just got a seventy million dollar producer recruiting lead. Pretty cool, huh? I said imperfect action beats in action.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Imperfect action beats in action. And that is sometimes you're going to muddle through the first couple calls and that makes it uncomfortable. Sometimes you're going to stutter and that makes it uncomfortable. But the most important thing you can do is and I'm speak to directly to the loan officers right now. The most important thing you can do is start with every agent that was on either side of a transaction this year. That's the easiest place to start.
Reach out, say hi and connect.
Then from there work into the agents that you know but you're not doing business with yet.
From there, start then going to your past customer database, go into the people that have sold, have closed in the last 30 days, last 60 days, last 90 days and so on. I prefer to start with the most recent. Some people will argue you should start with the, you know, 120 or you know, 360 days away and work your way more recent.
Fine, whatever. Right. Take action.
But it, now is the time. Now is the time to connect with people, remind them that you're there, remind them that why you're there, why you do what you do and why it's important that they.
Send the people that they trust to you to get what it is you offer. And that is the highest level of integrity and leadership through a transaction. That can be very stressful.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Dude, if I'm a loan officer today, what I'm going to do is and you're a real estate agent, I'm going to call you and say leave a message. Or if you answer, I'm going to say hey, Ken, it's Ed. It's January or December 16th.
I know you're going to have the best Christmas with your family ever. And I'm going to send you a text that I learned from Sky Michaels.
And I guarantee you, if you send this to your database, you're probably going to end up with four pieces of business.
Is that cool? Can I send it to you? Something like that?
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Yep. I love that. And if I. I like the small promise, small commitment part. Hey, if I send this to you, would you use it?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: They're not going to say no because they want to see what you're going to send them, and then they committed to that. Right. So that's power of persuasion to help people use. Yes, we are psychologically talented. We understand. We have empathy. We have compassion. We have all these things, this intuition. And yes, use it for good. Use it for good. And if I can help an agent get past a block, to take a step, to make a call to a customer, to connect, to make a sale, then I'm using my talent for good.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And I will tell you, like, in my recruiting world, this will be sent to 200 agents today, maybe a thousand agents.
When we can help loan officers, recruiters, real estate agents.
Like, if I'm a real estate agent, which I am, I will be reaching out to my sphere of influence, you know? Hey, just checking in. I know you got snow. Do you have somebody that. That you can count on to shovel your driveway?
How are your gutters? Do you need a gutter guy? Did your gutters fall off? Like, did you find water in your basement after snow?
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: How to cop. That's spelled W, E. I'm sorry, W U, D, D, O, R.
It's in the dictionary on. In the Delco dictionary.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: So let's finish. We got a couple minutes.
Is Pika's number one on your Delco pizza list?
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Okay, so when I come to Philly now, guess where I go to get pizza right away?
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Pizza Westchester.
[00:22:42] Speaker B: No, it's only because I've been eating it since I was 4, 5 years old.
Drexel pizza. Small plane. Well done. And I eat it in my car as soon as I get it.
It's not the best pizza, but it is.
I'm so emotionally attached to it, so that's where I go.
The best pizza in Delco.
It's. It's not pikas. No.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: All right.
And I. I agree. It's not. It's just one of the most well known.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: I think. I think that, like you, we all have.
It's not the best pizza in Delco that matters. It's the best pizza that will deliver to you. And if it's from growing up or where you live now, because that's the one you're gonna eat the most often. And. And, yeah, you do become. And people get passionate, too, man. People. People get passionate about pizza.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: Yeah. If anybody knows about Drexel Hole pizza, there's two things that they would say right back. Hey, do you order from Drexel Pizza? They're gonna say one of two things.
10 minutes.
Or my friend, Mr. Sciudis, hey, my friend, 10 minutes. Hey, my friend, 10 minutes. You could order $7,000 worth of food, and they'll say, 10 minutes.
The best thing ever.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Drexel Hill. Next time you're up, I'll pick you up from the airport, and we'll both go to Drexel Hill. Pizza I love.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: But here's the deal. It's small playing, well done. You cannot. No toppings. You'll mess it all up.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Then we'll drive over to Leandro's, and I'll show you what real pizza tastes like.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: I gotta go to Pizza Westchester, Dude.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: I hear good things. I haven't been there.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: I'm dying.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: I hear good things. But Leandro's was my pizza growing up 69th street in Upper Darby.
It was like a $80 for a slice of Coke. And it was my childhood, dude. It was my childhood. It's.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: I'll tell you, I really feel bad for those who haven't grown up in Delco, miss these conversations.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: I'm like, my kids. Even my kids, like, I'll be. I'll send them a picture of Drexel Pizza, and they're like. They'll literally say, did you get a black cherry soda with that? Of course I did.
Haven't I trained you? That's. You cannot have a small play well done without a Franks Frank's Black Cherry. Wisnick.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: Do people in Wisconsin, like, argue over who's got the best cheddar? Like, I don't know.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Is that.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: That a thing?
[00:25:32] Speaker B: What's Wisconsin?
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Well put.
Well put. All right, folks, if you're still here a minute, 25, 40 seconds, and you hear my dog barking in the background, God bless you for sticking around.
Go prospect. Go connect. Go make the calls. Abundant action will equal abundant results.
Just go do it. Ed's talking about a thousand text messages. In fact, I want everybody to reach out to Ed and. And ask him how many texts he sent today. And let's hold ed accountable.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: By the way, real estate agents, my average referral price is $842,000. You might want to be a referral partner of mine. I don't list and sell real estate, but I refer real estate out. You might want to connect with me.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Love it, man. Love it. All right, listen, enjoy your week.
Enjoy that beautiful sunshine in that warm weather while we. While we get above freezing. Hopefully. Hopefully by Friday.
Peace edition.
