Episode Transcript
Austin Beveridge: Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market Podcast. This week we have Breann Green, a third-generation realtor who's sold over 2,500 homes worth well over a hundred million dollars. Breann is a certified divorced real estate expert and is in the top 1 percent of the 1 percent of brokers nationwide. If you're in the market for real estate in the Oklahoma City metro area, Breann is your gal. Breann, welcome to the podcast.
Breann: Thank you so much for having me Austin.
Austin: So Breann, tell us about how you got into real estate. I know you graduated from high school, and on your 18th birthday, you passed the real estate licensing exam. So I’d love to dive into that.
Breann: Well, I am, like you mentioned, I'm a third generation real estate agent. And I actually started, I got licensed my 18th birthday while it was while I was a senior in high school. Um, so I actually spent the first nine months of my real estate career selling after I got out of school in the afternoons. And, but it was my grandfather that really saw it. My dad always wanted me to do it. My grandfather kind of saw that potential in me and was just like, why don't you get your license? Sell while you're in high school, you know, have some extra income while you go to college. You know, he was spending it that way. Secretly knowing if I ever started, I wouldn't stop. So here I am almost 19 years later.
Austin: I love it. And especially being brought up in a real estate family, I'm sure you saw the ins and outs of real estate, which gave you a little edge.
Breann: Yes, I would say it did give me a real edge of watching, especially my dad. He sold real estate in very high volume, and you know, was selling 150, 200 homes a year through most of my life. And then he also was a coach for the Mike Ferry organization. He started coaching when I was eight or nine. So I'd also hear him constantly coaching top agents throughout the country. And I would work at the office in the summers and my grandpa would have me teaching scripts and skills to our agents in the company. So I was very indoctrinated and a lot of that before I ever got a real estate license.
Austin: Yeah, you had the behind the scenes tour of what it took to become a top agent, and then you became a top agent yourself.
Breann: Yes, very much so.
Austin: So talk to me about your first deal. I assume it was when you were still in high school. What that deal looked like, and how did it unfold?
Breann: So my first deal I did, I got licensed in the end of September, but I actually didn't get my license number to like the end of October. So I really started the end of October and my first deal was the end of November, first week of December. And I still to this day, it's actually an investor I still work with. Investor called on a property and did the walkthrough, wrote the contract sitting in the front seat of his, like, Ford Explorer. And I want to say this investor bought the house for like a grand total of like 15,000 or 18,000. So, I mean, it was, it was a real money maker.
Austin: But you got the done, that's what matters.
Breann: Got the deal done, and I've worked with him on multiple deals since that have paid much better than that. But that was how I got my foot wet.
Austin: Yeah, right. And then from there, you started to unfold and you built an entire empire and now you sell a hundred plus homes a year. I think it was 175 last year?
Breann:No, we closed and pended about 300 last year.
Austin: 300! Double what I had seen.
Breann:Yeah. We were just, we'ld do one every other day. We're on track right now for 500 this year.
Austin: Well, congratulations. You guys are crushing it.
Breann: Thank you.
Austin: So talk to us about your strategy. I know that you would specialize down into divorces and relocations. Did you try to focus on a niche up front, or like, what was your strategy for scaling?
Breann:No, I mean, really focusing on niches like that are something that have come much later in my career. I got certified as a divorce real estate expert in 2020 and relocation and started taking on some of those more niche, in real estate with COVID and the changes of COVID. Prior to that, I really had built my business on expireds and for sale by owners. A lot of just listed and just sold calls, building a database, networking. I really, like I saw my dad grow up on the Mike Ferry system. So I grew very much up on that and just had blinders on not knowing really any other way to do it.
So I just spent four hours a day prospecting and, you know, trying to set three listing appointments every day and building a big listing business and started to scale through, you know, and first I was more buyer heavy and just slowly started to transition to more listing heavy. You know, not as buyer heavy and just slowly transitioned through that.
Austin: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. One of the podcast guests we had early on was Steve Koleno, who's done over 5,000 listings in the past, like, eight years, and he had done the same process of going from a buyer's agent to now exclusively doing listings.
Breann:I never got to exclusively listings when I was full time selling. But I would say I was 80 or 85 listings and then would just be very selective on the buyers I did work with. Because it was really the only way. I think I listed 250 homes in 2020 when it was my last year in full production. And when you're doing that, you can only work with so many buyers. You don't have so much time. So I was very selective on the people that I did. I never would say I got a hundred percent exclusive, but I was really close.
Austin: So talk to us about the importance of coaching. I know you mentioned Mike Berry a few times, and I actually know that you're one of the coaches in that organization. So talk to us about the importance of coaching in real estate teams or relatively early on in their career.
Breann: Yeah. So I'm not a coach for them anymore. I only did that for a couple of years. I stopped that and probably 2014 did that for a few years. It was a great experience. You know, something I learned really early on was if you look at any of the top professionals in any industry, they talk about their coaches, their mentors and who has gotten them there. And so it was something very early. I was going, okay, if Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan, you know, you go down this list of people, they have a coach working with them day in and day out outside of, you know, even just the coach of their teams. Then why would I not have a coach? Why would I not have somebody pushing me and, you know, to ask questions and guide? So to me being a top performing agent and being able to do what I've done has only come from having coaches and strong accountability. And I don't just have one coach. I have multiple coaches for multiple different areas of my business and my life. So it's just, I have put that discipline and accountability and guidelines in there to allow me to hit the goals that I've set to hit and to become the best version of myself that I can possibly become.
Austin: I assume now you're kind of transitioning down those learnings that you've had to your team. What are some of those things that you've tried to instill in your team members, whether they're green or whether they're now becoming one of the top agents in their own niche?
Breann:Oh, there's so much, you know, when you take a lifetime of real estate, it's there's so many things you want to get through to them. I think if you really break it down to be really simple, Austin, you know, you've really got to get through to new agents, people who are green. You've got to treat real estate like a business. People get into this thinking I can do this part time here and there, this side gig. This is so much harder than anyone realizes that it actually is. And that is why we have such a high fail rate in our industry as a whole. I think that's why we've seen some of these NAR things that have happened is our industry has never taken this super serious to treat it like a career and to really force who is in our industry to be the best of the best. So we are really big on you've got to treat it like a business. This is going to take 40 to 60 hours a week. If you really want to be successful, we really get into them of what it takes skill building wise and how intentional you have to be every single day and building your skills and following a schedule and just really having goals that you're committed to hit no matter what. And so it's just everything we're doing is How do we help them become business people, treat this like a business, understand the numbers, build the skills to ultimately help them get the results that they really want to get.
Austin: I agree. It's the systems and processes that enable you to do and be your best self. So talk to us about what the process looked like for you to becoming one of the top agents nationwide. I've heard of things that people will hire their first transaction coordinator at their like second deal. I've heard about people that brought on a team of agents to help them scale. I've heard about people that started to buy billboards and bus stops and banners and doing mail flyers and door knocking and so many different ways to grow their business. But I would love to hear what you did and what your process was become one of the top agents.
Breann: Absolutely and you're right. There are so many different ways to build a successful real estate business out there. I think there's a lot of things out there that are misguiding to agents. And so whether you want to look at this as a positive or a negative, I look at it as a positive in Oklahoma city. We have a much lower average sales price than for instance, like you would in San Francisco. So I had to be very protective of my expenses and had to put everything through a real, like, what are my returns going to be on this? You know, so for me, I didn't have a website and marketing and any of that stuff. I didn't have a website till 2021. I mean, that was how long I was in the industry before I had any of that. Um mine was very much built off of, you know, making contacts and networking and just having conversations and building it very authentically and just having this very much mentality of I'm going to create a client for life. If I'm going to work this hard to find them. They're coming to me for everything in the future. And now I have, you know, three and four generations of families that I've sold homes for. I just built it up through the daily contacts. You know, I prospected four hours every day, which was being on the phones and calling. I made 50 contacts a day.
You know, at first it was one listing appointment a day and then, you know, went to two and then it went to three. And so I really just built my business through that every single day commitment of, I was starting my day over at zero. I knew exactly what I needed to accomplish every day, how many people I needed to talk to get to an appointment, exactly what my ratios were. And I just broke it down very methodically of every day I'm going to get up and give this a hundred percent and do exactly what it takes each day and just start over at zero every day. And over time it built, I think I did 67 transactions my first year. I went up to I think just under 90 my second by my third I was at a hundred and it was just every year I've pretty much seen 20 percent growth. There was I felt when I got about the 150 point in my business kind of stagnated there a little bit but what I was doing when I was kind of stagnant there if you will with the transactions as I was focusing on bringing at my price point. So I was starting to earn a lot more money during that time. It wasn't necessarily doing a ton more deals, but I was trying to get my price point up to where, you know, I was being a little bit more profitable during that time. I did bring on a transaction coordinator towards the end of my first year. I had a part time and then my second year I had a full time and I'd have to go back and look a couple of years and I've been went to two assistants, but when I closed 210 deals, In 2020, I just had two full time staff and a part time runner. I didn't have any buyer's or anything, so that didn't start for me until 2021.
Austin: That's pretty incredible that you were able to do that yourself.
Breann: Lots of time, lots of dedication, lots of efficiency.
Austin: You're a force of nature. We interviewed a guy earlier this week who has 156 agents on his team. And he's got like 8 or 10 back office staff. He's got all these different things, and then he still sells himself. And so it's incredible to see how some people have structured their business in different ways. And you've been able to sell 2,500 homes on a team of 2,3,4,5.
So thinking back on your journey, what are some of the tips that you would give to people who want to become, or hit the same place that you're at and become a top agent in their area?
Breann: You've got to be 100% committed. Life happens no matter what. This business is hard. I mean, you're dealing with people, you're dealing with transactions that can go crazy. It's immense amount of skills. There's a lot in this business that can be very difficult. And it can wear your mindset down. And so whenever I talk to people who are really striving to hit higher levels, you know, I tell them all the time, I'm like, one, you have to dream bigger. Your cup's gotta be bigger. Most people are doing this to pay their bills and survive. You can create so much bigger life in real estate than that, but your cup's got to be big enough to handle it. You've got to be working on your mindset every single day. You've got to be fanatical about just building that muscle and being able to have the resilience to get knocked down and get back up again, get knocked down and get back up again, you know, and to push through life. And I tell people, I'm like, when your goals are Stronger like the pain of not hitting that goal is stronger than the pain of what it takes to do it you're gonna do it.
Now I've been saying I say with my agents all the time of don't tell me that it can't be done But you're actually telling me you're not committed to doing it when you're a hundred percent committed to doing it. It's gonna happen. You're gonna make it happen. You'll find a way, you know Life may throw something at you and you're gonna sit down and be like, okay Let me sit down and rework this. Like, how do I still make this happen? How do I adjust this? You're not giving up on it. And I think too many people get into this. Maybe their first sale is easy. Then a couple of sales in, it's beaten the heck out of them. They've got clients upset, deals busting right and left. You know, it's, it can be hard. And if you don't have that commitment, it's gonna be a real challenge to really ever see this success in this industry. And I think that's where you see the top of the top is just, That mental resilience and commitment is unwavering. Like I don't have a college degree. I'm an, I was an 18 year old high school student. People didn't even know I was in high school. So it's like I put in the skills, the work I was going to outwork the competition. People never questioned me. Like now people will ask me though, like you've been in this for 19 years. How old are you? And I get it now more than I ever did then, you know? So it's kind of fun now to be like, actually, yes, I have been. But you've just got to have that longterm commitment and resiliency. And I think you can really be successful in this industry.
Austin: That's 100% true. It's that commitment. The other thing I've heard is to focus a hundred percent on your customers and make sure they have a delightful experience at every step of that journey. And even if things don't go well. You just, provide that guiding light to help them through whatever they're facing.
Breann: That's building the customer for life. And we don't control a lot that goes on in a transaction, but we do control the communication and we do control how they receive the information. And so whenever you've got that great communication and you're sending expectations all along the way, even if things don't go right, they can still look back at you and be like, Hey, we loved working with you. We trust you. But a lot of agents want to take personally, you know when the appraisal goes bad or the lender doesn't know what they're supposed to, or titles about whatever it is. And I'm like, That you don't control that, but you just control your communication and guiding the client. That's all you gotta do.
Austin: My last question that I always like to end with is let's say you have five minutes with your 18 year old self, green, just about to graduate from high school. You get your brokerage license or your real estate license, and you have five minutes to tell yourself about anything or anything that you've learned or any lessons you've, you've shared. What is the story that you tell yourself?
Breann: When you asked me that, or I saw that question that you're going to ask me, I really spent some time thinking about that. I think there's three real things that come to my mind. In that one is just helping myself so much earlier, realize, what I'm really capable of, what I'm really worthy of. And I think we all fight that self confidence, that self limiting belief, that imposter syndrome as we reach different levels. And when you're especially young, you just don't know how big your cup is, how big life can be, how much is out there, how the world is your oyster.
And so I wish I would have really been able to go back to myself and be like, be so much more confident in who you are, like, be willing to step into you fully who God made you to be. Don't hold back. And that's taken me a long time to really step into who I fully am and not like try to damper that for other people. Also it took me time to really go, okay, why can't I earn half a million dollars or a million dollars or why can't I have this great life? Why can't I have these things? And really realizing how big the cup can be and how much more you can give to others when you are making a great living, and it doesn't have to just be selfish, it can be for other people.
And then the last thing I would have said is, I wish I would have started working a database a lot sooner. Of the people I know, and building my past clients and actually working them my first several years, I didn't really do that. And I do feel like I missed a lot of lifelong relationships that could have been there if I would have been more focused on, not that I wasn't taught to do that, I just didn't take what my coach was telling me to do and doing it. So I wish I would have taken that a lot quicker and really put that into play, because I think it could have really changed my business.
Austin: I think that's exactly right. It's building the database of the people that helped you get there and continuing to nurture them along in that journey.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Breann.
Breann: Thank you so much for having me. It was great to be here.
