In just two years, Trish has sold over $10,000,000 in real estate volume. Her biggest source of referrals is Facebook. She posts at least every other day, and never in a “infomercial” type of way. Rather she posts normal things like what she is doing everyday, and just shares with her friends. She is able to stay in people’s minds when they need a realtor with this strategy. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!
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Trish Williams Real Estate Background:
– Real estate agent and broker with Keller Williams – Las Vegas
– 2014 she started her career in Real Estate and was named Rookie Of The Year
– Biggest testament to her level of success is in that 90% of her business is referral based
– 2016 served as Technology Chair-member Of the Associate Leadership Council, and ranked number 5 in overall production in her brokerage
– In two short years she had already sold over 10 million dollars in real estate volume
– Based in Las Vegas, Nevada
– Say hi to her at: www.trishsellslv.com
– Best Ever Book: 6 Steps to 7 Seven Figures
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TRANSCRIPTION
Joe Fairless: Best Ever listeners, how are you doing? Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m Joe Fairless, and this is the world’s longest-running daily real estate investing podcast. We only talk about the best advice ever, we don’t get into any of that fluff. We’ve spoken to Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank, Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and a whole bunch of others. With us today, Trish Williams. How are you doing, Trish?
Trish Williams: Hi, good morning. How are you?
Joe Fairless: Good morning. I’m doing well, and thanks for being on the show. A little bit about Trish – well, in two short years as a real estate agent, she has sold over ten million dollars of property, and she’s in Las Vegas… In 2014 she started her career in real estate and was named Rookie of the Year. Her biggest testament to her level of success is that 90% of her business is referral-based. She also works with some investors, and in 2016 served as a technology chair member of The Associate Leadership Counsel, and ranked number five in overall production in her brokerage, which is Keller Williams Las Vegas.
With that being said, Trish, do you wanna give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and your current focus?
Trish Williams: Sure. Good morning, and thank you again for having me on the show. Basically, I got into real estate in 2014 towards the end of the year. Believe it or not, I was a union painter before I got into real estate…
Joe Fairless: I don’t believe that. No, that’s surprising.
Trish Williams: A lot of people don’t believe that. Most people, I tell them and they’re like, “What? How did that happen?” Well, I did more [unintelligible [00:03:39].27] a lot of custom homes… It just kind of got me a fascination with real estate, even though it wasn’t the same type of business that kind of got me fascinated in the build.
I decided to do it, just try it out and see what happens, and it’s been excellent ever since. This year one of my major focuses is I’m building a team now. In the beginning of the year I hired on a full-time admin, and I just took on my first buyer’s agent to join the team, and by the end of the year I hope I’m growing it by at least one more agent as well.
Joe Fairless: 90% of your business is referral-based… How do you get to that level? Other than performance, are there any tactical things that you do to get the 90%?
Trish Williams: You know, one of the major things that I use to gain business — for one, I was born and raised in Vegas, but it’s not just because I know so many people here… I use Facebook as a form of gaining referrals. Every time when I meet somebody – if I meet you at the grocery store and we have a conversation, I ask you your name and I’m gonna add you as a friend to my Facebook. And on Facebook I’m not marketing, I don’t ever wanna sound like a commercial… I’m just talking about what I do.
If I have an experience, if I’m out at a house and it has an amazing kitchen, I’m gonna post it. If I see something that has great investment potential, I’m gonna post it. But I’m not posting it like a commercial, I’m posting is as me, Trish, just letting people know what’s going on out here. That has brought me so many direct referrals….
Sometimes I don’t even really speak with or haven’t talked to in years, or don’t even know personally, will be “Hey, I need a house, I need to do this, I have a friend selling their house… You’re the one I choose.” So I build enough credibility on Facebook to get direct referrals off them.
Joe Fairless: That’s an interesting concept, and it’s something that it sounds like you’re taking the approach that perhaps some don’t initially take, and that is it’s not a commercial, but it’s more casually talking about, in a conversational sense, what you’re up to and some interesting things, versus “I have this listing, here’s a link to the MLS.”
Trish Williams: Yes, and I noticed that people have zero response to that. I mean, there is every now and then, if it’s exactly what they’re looking for, but people don’t wanna be advertised to. It’s just plain and simple, that’s not it.
If I get an award, I’m posting a picture of me with the award, or something happens – every success, I’m posting it, but there’s never an advertisement involved in it. I post videos all the time; video has such great response. People get used to seeing me, and even though they might not see me in everyday life, they know me, because I’m always posting these videos, and they’re not professional videos; sometimes my hair is crazy, or whatever, but I’m still a person, and people really like that.
Joe Fairless: What are the videos of?
Trish Williams: If I’ve been out door-knocking, I posted a video. You know, just “Hey, I’m out door-knocking this neighborhood. It’s a great day out, [unintelligible [00:06:41].10] people” and I show the yards of the neighborhood, or the view of the street, or something like that. If I’m at a new construction home, grand opening for a model home, I post a video of it… Just different things, whenever I’m out, that I think people might wanna see.
Joe Fairless: And before you became a real estate agent and broker, while you were a union painter and maybe even before that, were you really active on Facebook?
Trish Williams: No. I posted, yeah, but I was nowhere near as active as I am right now. I actually have a friend, she owns a restaurant, and she was voted Best of Las Vegas for years and years in a row, and I watch that and I’m seeing she does everything on Facebook; she’s always posting pictures of food, pictures of everything. She just drives people into there by posting, and when I got into real estate, I was looking at “How am I gonna get people to know who I am?” I don’t ever want to meet someone and get them on the big long laundry list with everything I’ve done. To me it’s annoying, and I never wanna do that, so I wanna build that credibility with people first, and that’s basically what she did. She had so much success from it, I just started doing it. I make it a habit, I post all the time. I’m not selfishly posting, I take time out of every day to scroll down, see what other people are doing, find out who’s birthday it is… I’m interacting with people, so I use Facebook as a big part of my life now.
Joe Fairless: If you meet someone at the grocery store and you have a good conversation with him or her, and you say “Hey, what’s your name? I’ll add you on Facebook” and they say “I’m not Facebook”, do you then have a different approach you take?
Trish Williams: Oh yeah, I always have information for market updates, for different things that are going on in the community… I can talk to you about giving you an estimate of what your home is worth if you’re a homeowner; if you’re looking to buy, I can tell you about all the different programs, “What’s a good way I can contact you?” There are people that aren’t on Facebook; not everybody is gonna be leeched on there.
Joe Fairless: How frequently do you post on Facebook?
Trish Williams: At least every other day. Every day I’m commenting on something for somebody; I’m checking it often and I’m doing some kind of post. But my own personal post that I post on there – probably at least every other day. And it’s not all business, I post personal things, too. I stay out of politics, I stay out of any kind of things that are controversial. I never ever post anything that has to do with those. I don’t wanna alienate people whatsoever, so I always keep kind of a neutral stance, and stay positive, and just try to be the person that people really wanna work with.
Joe Fairless: Do you have any other approaches to social media or Facebook specifically, whether it’s commenting on other people’s posts or replying to comments, or always liking every single thing…? Is there anything else other than what you’ve mentioned?
Trish Williams: No, I try to stay genuine when I scroll through Facebook. I’m not gonna like everybody’s post just to be there, because eventually people are gonna know it’s not real. But I’ll scroll through and I’ll comment; I take interest in what other people are doing. I see what’s going on in their life, and that helps me too to know who may need my assistance. I do just make it a habit every day to scroll through, take a few minutes, see what people are doing… Whatever is at the top of my newsfeed. And birthdays, of course. I always reach out on birthdays.
Aside from that personal page, I do have the business page that we’re supposed to have, and I do do advertisements and target marketing through that page. One of the things that I haven’t really quite figured out yet — I get the engagements, I get the likes, I get all that stuff off the target marketing; every now and then I’ll get a direct message that is responding to it, but on that target marketing I haven’t really figured out how to convert those people or grab them… So I add them as friends. [laughs] I just add them to my personal page, because I have such a better conversion rate of converting people through that.
Joe Fairless: When you reach out to people on their birthdays, what do you say?
Trish Williams: Oh, just “Happy birthday!” If there’s something I know special about them, or what’s going on in their world, I mention it. It’s just whatever…
Joe Fairless: Alright, so you don’t have a certain approach you take, other than just say “Happy birthday!” and perhaps maybe something else… Okay, cool.
Trish Williams: Just the regular, yeah.
Joe Fairless: Switching gears, you’re working with investors… The majority of your business is people who are buying a house to live in, so not investors, but you do work with some investors, and with those experiences with those investors, what are you working on acquiring for them that meets their goals?
Trish Williams: Well, right now the way that our market has been – I don’t know if you’re familiar with what’s going on in Vegas, but we’ve had a lot of big announcements over this year, so our market’s been doing very good and prices have been on the rise. They announced professional teams coming, we’ve got the Raiders coming, and professional hockey teams… A lot of great things happening in Vegas right now that’s boosting our economy and boosting our housing market.
Right now prices are a little bit higher than they have been over the past couple of years, so the investors that I’ve worked with that are looking to purchase homes right now, the days of buying homes super low and flipping them – there’s still a few of those out there, but they’re by far not as many. The shortsales are starting to go away, even the foreclosures are getting less and less… So there’s not a whole lot of opportunity there for that anymore, so I’ve been working with a couple people that are buying rentals; they’re buying homes to basically have as a rental property or whatever for just the next couple years, because the Raiders Stadium is supposed to be coming in three years, and of course none of us have a crystal ball, we don’t know for sure what’s gonna happen, but we do believe that there’s going to be quite a bit more increase between now and the next three years.
So they’re buying these properties as rental properties where they’re not getting a huge return on investment right now… They’re just kind of breaking even, coming out a little bit on top, but in the future, the point is to sell them in the next couple years for a lot higher than they purchased them for.
Joe Fairless: Okay. Do you know if they’re making any money in that holding period?
Trish Williams: Yes, they are. On average they’re making about — probably just coming on top of that $150 or $200 a month. Not a lot, but it’s enough.
Joe Fairless: Okay, and what’s the price point?
Trish Williams: The most recent ones I did, both of them are around $200,000, and they’re both in areas where there should be increase as the market starts to inflate. They’re good property altogether.
Joe Fairless: What leads you to believe that the areas that these homes are in should increase?
Trish Williams: They’re close by where the stadium is going to be built, so that should naturally just bring people around the area. The community is decent, it’s not ran down, or an older community… It’s still a place where somebody would wanna live – close by schools, close by shopping; all the great location things that everybody talks about.
One of them is a three-bedroom, one of them is a four-bedroom. It’s homes that can hold a family.
Joe Fairless: Now, one question I always ask, and this is based on your experience working with these investors, and then also coming out of the gate incredibly fast with the ten million dollars in two short years, for the Best Ever listeners who either want to create a referral-based business where they’re getting organic leads, or are looking to invest in a market somewhere in Las Vegas, what is your best advice ever for them?
Trish Williams: Well, creating a referral-based business, basically use – and it doesn’t have to be Facebook – any type of social media where people… Especially people this day and age – they’re always on it; all ages, too. What you’re trying to get across to people, instead of telling them, instead of marketing to them with fliers, with all this different stuff that’s marketing, you can create that whole persona through social media, and it’s very easy to do. That’s one of the hardest things for people that are starting out in real estate – it’s “How do people know that I’m good and I’m gonna take care of them? How do I let anybody know that?”, well that’s a great way to let people know. To me it’s simple; it’s the simplest way that you can get in. The best type of leads is direct referrals.
As far as investing in Vegas, we’re definitely doing pretty well in our market right now… I don’t know what to say. You’re looking to actually invest in something that you wanna resell… To purchase, rehab and resell; you’re going to have to look for shortsales, highly distressed properties… Very often it’s going to be cash-only purchase where there’s going to be some things wrong with the home, and that’s the way that you’re going to get a good return on it; you’re not going to get something that’s even partially move-in ready, because buyers are buying those even. They’re buying homes that are cosmetically destroyed, as long as they can get financing on them. Those homes are still selling right now like hot cakes. So if you really wanna get some return on your investment, you’ll probably have to go with something that’s not able to be financed at this point.
Joe Fairless: Going back to the referral-based business and your focus on Facebook – do you put your attention towards other social media platforms, or you’re pretty much exclusively focused on one?
Trish Williams: I’m exclusively focused on Facebook, and it’s probably because I don’t know any other ones that well… Facebook’s very easy for me and that’s why I do it. I have plans on talking with people to walk me through the other platforms. I have an associate that I’ve spoken with recently – he does a lot of business through Snapchat, and I can’t even imagine how that would work, but I’m willing to give it a shot.
Joe Fairless: Neither one of us can imagine how they get business through Snapchat…
Trish Williams: I know…! Like, there’s a way…?
Joe Fairless: I’m not even sure I wanna know, quite frankly… [laughter] Alright, are you ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round?
Trish Williams: Alright, let’s do it. First, a quick word from our Best Ever partners.
Break: [00:16:35].04] to [00:17:26].18]
Joe Fairless: Trish, what’s the best ever book you’ve read?
Trish Williams: Okay, so best ever book – are you talking real estate or non-real estate?
Joe Fairless: Real estate.
Trish Williams: Okay. Real estate – Pat Hiban’s “6 Steps to 7 Figures.”
Joe Fairless: Okay. Best Ever listeners, you can google “Pat Hiban Joe Fairless”, I interviewed Pat on the show and you can hear his interview. What is the best ever transaction you’ve done?
Trish Williams: Best ever transaction I would say was a new construction home… It was when I first started out, I really didn’t know much about the business whatsoever, but I heard that you can go in with new builders and negotiate, so… I actually hit them really hard on a bunch of things, and now down the line I’m amazed how much I was able to get from them… I didn’t know any better, I just tried to get everything I can. [unintelligible [00:18:34].06] added on for the fire, but I also got like a third-car car garage added, the extra bedroom downstairs… It was like over $30,000 of upgrades that were added on for nothing. So I don’t know if it was the time of the year or whatever, but they left the office a few times; I wouldn’t budge. I was just really proud of that; just starting out, coming out the door, I thought I did a great job on that one.
Joe Fairless: No kidding. Do they still talk to you today?
Trish Williams: Yes, actually, believe me, they do. Every single time they have a new community, he always calls me and invites me out. In the end they really liked me.
Joe Fairless: What’s a mistake you’ve made on a transaction?
Trish Williams: Overpricing listings. Just kind of going with the sellers when the sellers don’t really wanna budge on price and kind of giving in on that – I’ve noticed that I really have to stand firm on the prices, because an overpriced listing doesn’t do anybody any good. It doesn’t do me any good when the home’s not moving, and I’m trying to explain to the seller that the home is not selling because of this; pricing it right will get you more money. I didn’t really protect myself on that in the beginning, and it hurt me. I mean, of course, I spend a lot of money on marketing upfront, so it was a loss for me in the end… But that’s something that I’ve learned the hard way; it doesn’t benefit anybody.
Joe Fairless: What’s the Best Ever way you like to give back?
Trish Williams: I’m a Christian, I go to church. I [unintelligible [00:19:57].13] 10% to the church. Every summer the church has summer camps where they send the youth to camp for a week and they do all kinds of zip-lining and all kinds of fun stuff. It’s a great week that they spend away in Prescott, and that actually is what brought me into church. I hadn’t gone and wasn’t really a believer or a follower or anything, and when my daughter was little, she really wanted to go to this camp, and I was really against it, and then they offered to sponsor her, and I didn’t understand why they were doing this… Overall, it made me start going because I wanted to know why they wanted her to go to camp so bad, so I had to go anyways. Anyways, that brought me into church and it means so much to me, so every summer when it’s time for church camp, it’s a big deal to me to sponsor as many kids as I can. So I take 10% of everything I earn during that time of season when it’s camp season, and it goes all towards sponsorship. Last year I sponsored about 30 kids to go to summer camp.
Joe Fairless: How can the Best Ever listeners get in touch with you?
Trish Williams: My website is www.trishsellslv.com. My phone number – 702-308-2878, and I have an e-mail address, trishwilliams@kw.com.
Joe Fairless: You didn’t even mention Facebook.
Trish Williams: [laughs] Yes, I’m on Facebook! My Facebook page is called Your Realtor Trish Williams, Keller Williams, the marketplace one.
Joe Fairless: Okay, great… Yeah, I was waiting for the Facebook mention, and I was like “Wait a second, where is it?” Well, Trish, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for talking about how you get 90% of your business from referrals and your approach for doing so, which is using Facebook as a form of gaining referrals, and it’s not a commercial, if we were to become friends with you, it’s simply what you’ve got going on… And your exclusive focus on Facebook as a platform, versus fragmenting it out across many platforms, not being good at any of them, or being average at all of them… But instead, you’re really good and doing really well within one platform; I think there are a couple lessons there.
Then just your overall approach – you meet someone, “Hey, what’s your name? I’ll add you on Facebook and we’ll stay in touch. Great.” It’s just the platform that you’ve used to, as you said, build credibility with people first before you sit down with them… Because I’ve seen that in my business, and I’m sure every Best Ever listener has seen that as well – it’s a completely different conversation when someone knows you prior to sitting down or jumping on a call with them, compared to you two being relatively strangers to each other, and then having to build up from nothing. It’s just a completely different conversation, and it’s so much smoother when you two know a little bit more about each other… So thanks for being on the show, Trish, thanks for sharing that insight. I hope you have a best ever day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Trish Williams: Thank you for having me, Joe. It was great talking to you, and have a great week!
