Episode Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the Off-Market Podcast. This week, we have Ryan Hvizda, a high school art teacher turned top 1 percent realtor. Ryan is the co-owner of the Hvizda Realty Group, under Keller Williams, she also has over a decade of real estate experience representing over 500 million worth of properties. Her team adheres to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit, and has been absolutely crushing it. If you are in the market for real estate in the New Hampshire area, Ryan's your gal. Ryan, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
So Ryan, tell us how you got into real estate. I know you were a high school art teacher, you became a realtor, and then you decided to go out on your own. Talk to us about that journey.
Yeah, so I actually kind of got dragged into real estate from my husband. He got in first, and now he's a real estate coach, so he's out of, he's been out of production for years.
But he got in first, and I was an art teacher, and I was, had a farm at the time, and I just thought real estate was like, I don't know. I had all these visions of real estate being like a used car salesperson, nothing against a used car salesperson. I just thought sales and I put it on a shelf and I would have none of that.
And then, um, my background in permaculture and this idea that I was always trying to like make the world a better place. And then when I learned the definition of real estate, which is land and improvements, then I, I under, started to understand that real estate was this platform to make the world a better place, my community a better place.
And I had been trying to do that in different avenues, whether it was like through art, through farming. And then I realized, Whoa, the built environment is everything. Like real estate is, touches everything. How can I take all my idealism and my vision for a better world and put it into this realm.
And so that's kind of how I got started. And in the beginning, it was very much through education around my where my passions were, which was helping people make better decisions when they were farming, like buying a property. And then we ended up in doing these things called the land access transfer sessions.
So it's basically bringing all the professionals together in New Hampshire that had anything to do with transferring farmland and doing educational events. And so then what happened was we started to get all these listings about these beautiful farm estates all over New Hampshire because people saw us as the thought leaders in that realm.
And so then I was like, okay, if this is working in the farming like I'm super passionate about making sure first-time home buyers have a really great experience. So we did like first-time home buyer classes and then I became a real estate investor. So I was like, can we do real estate investing classes, and then the other one was, oh, how to make your home more sustainable.
So like home stewardship classes. And so I built a lot of my early business off of seminars and educating around where I thought there was a need to put my vision into the world of real estate. And then as I started to grow a team, I encouraged our team members to show up in a community where they're passionate and whether to teach or volunteer and build their businesses that way as well.
I love it. It's adding value first and following your passions and then finding your cohort of people who are rallying around to support you, and then ultimately, when they're ready to transact, you're the first call they
Of course. Like, I think it's really important to show up where you feel the most joy and Empowered and then you're going to make authentic connections with people and then people work with the people they trust know and like and so If you're just going in the community and doing that then your business is going to grow Organically in an account, like in a very quick, I mean, it's not quick.
The same as like, I know I can call a hundred people, you know, and then maybe get two appointments. It's not as predictable as that, but it's a little, it's more rewarding and it becomes pretty profound over time.
So talk to us about your first deal. Take us back to who it was, what it was, what it looked like. Or maybe one of the most exciting deals you worked on.
Well, the first very, one of the very first deals was an organic Christmas tree farm, which got referred to us by somebody who worked at the co-op. And so then it was representing the only organic Christmas tree farm in New Hampshire. And actually the sellers of that became these incredible mentors to us and how we looked at real estate and how we looked at, long-term planning. They're visionaries, they, they had, um, you know, working, they, one was a firefighter, the other was a teacher, but they had started very early on investing in duplexes, fixing them up, and then making agreements with their tenants to that they'd give them just a little bit under market rate. As long as their tenants called them immediately as something was wrong.
And then that Delta in the under-market rate was helping them save money to buy a house. So as an entrepreneur and a real estate professional, I was like, okay, I love that from like the stewardship of a place and helping people get their start. But then also as a realtor, like they weren't realtors. So like now I have a client base in investing. And so they built their wealth through that. And then they ended up building. This amazing off-grid home and they bought a hundred acres and we're turning it into a legacy forest of mashed trees. Anyway, it was a pretty cool story, but our first deal started with learning, meeting them, and then being inspired about what we could do with our own real estate and how we built our own wealth plan.
I love that they started with an organic Christmas tree farm and some apartments and slowly built the snowball and kept compounding. And eventually, they built an empire. That's crazy.
So talk to us about your strategy for scaling. I know you mentioned a few of those things: energy efficient homes, net zero homes, home stewardship, permaculture, and Homesteads.
In the beginning of it, it's really just like how can we help the agents that, you know, we partner with on our team, build businesses within our business that are around the things that they're passionate about making their community better. So like every week we ask in team meetings, what, where are you showing up in the community to make your community better or around your interests or passion and then really attracting agents that want to be that value add to their community because then that helps them create a resilient business and I think that's one of our plans is just to keep attracting agents that want to build relationships with people versus just transact.
Exactly. It's creating a relationship with people outside of the transaction and making sure that you're a part of their life through the ups and the downs, and you're another ally for them just to talk or bounce ideas off of, and ultimately you become one of their friends.
Correct. Yeah. That's the best part of like dinner parties with your, your clients years later.
And then. You know, you just, you become friends and your network is just grows and grows because of it. So that's, I think the scalability part is like, how can we empower agents to do this around their interests? And that has a range of effects. Like we have one agent that loves, he's, he transplanted here from Ohio and he didn't have any friends that liked the Browns.
So he created the Browns Backers Club of Southern New Hampshire. And now he's got 40 people all transplants from Ohio. And they watch the games, they do fantasy football. And now he like built a, an authentic sphere where business is coming from around what he loves and he loves doing it. So it's like from that to the garden club to whatever it is that you love going to the gym.
Like how are you building community and building your sphere in that way and staying in touch and then all of a sudden the business is coming in
Right. it's following your passions and people will come. and it's taking that stance like, Hey, if nobody else has a club, I'll make one. And ultimately, you start to make your own sphere.
Yeah, and we are really big into our database. So, how are we helping our agents touch their database 70-plus times a year? From whether that's video newsletters, to really thoughtful mailings to client events, to whatever it is where you come in, you tell me what you want to do, and then we'll be able to systematize it and make sure that your people are hearing from you.
That makes the extra effort all worth it. Of course, of course. So talk to us about some of your interests outside of real estate. I know that you're on a few different boards, you're the president of a few different clubs or membership groups, you're on sustainability councils like you've got a whole bunch of stuff going on.
Yeah, so I mean personally I say I'm really into play right now and joy, and so like what am I doing outside of real estate? work because, for a long time, all I did was work-related. And so the biggest thing is surfing. This is outside of volunteering and being on boards, but surfing is just this thing that's completely transformed my life in the last three years.
Um, and I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time of the year down in Barbados and run my team from afar. So I've learned how to surf and I'm like, I never understood it before, but like I'm pretty much obsessed with surfing. Um, and then outside of that, like I've made a commitment. I think it was like five years ago.
I was like, I want to get to a place where I was volunteering 15 hours a week. And so I did that and I got involved. I just was like, where do I want to show up in the community around my own passions? Like, if I'm going to preach this to other people, I got to do this too. So, um, affordable housing, we're in a housing crisis in New Hampshire.
Um, so I've spent time working. in educating and on boards around that. Most recently, I just finished a two year tenure as the president of in town Concord, which is the capital city of New Hampshire, where really that is to promote and connect people to the vibrant downtown in our downtown and Concord is pretty incredible. And so I just, I'm in this phase right now where I just like finished with a bunch of boards and I'm like, okay, what's next? And I'll be candid, I might be a parent soon because we're in the adoption process. So that's going to be my next kind of big endeavor from here.
So talk to us about the process of becoming a top agent in your area. You talked a little bit about how it took a lot of hard work. But I think sometimes new agents that listen to the podcast don't quite understand the work that's required to get to where you are. And if they want to actually get to becoming one of the top agents, there's a lot of sacrifices that need to be made. So maybe talk to us about what that journey looked like and what the process to becoming one of the top agents actually took.
Um it definitely took doing the hard things I think Right now real estate has been presented as like you show a couple houses and you get sale but really it's about talking to people and connecting with a lot of people and being really consistent about that so in the beginning and I think One of the things was early on being, hiring a coach to hold you accountable, being like, I want to go here, but how do I get there?
And what do I need to take each, each week as a step to make sure I'm on track to my goal versus ending. Like, what is it? It's like a thing. Like I want to go to San Diego, but if the plane goes a little bit off kilter, all of a sudden I'm in Mexico city, you know, like, so like, how do I make sure I'm just staying on track?
So hiring coach and then just doing the hard work, which in the beginning was a lot of contacts. And the coach at the time was like 30 contacts a day. And what would That. And if you didn't make that, what would be something so painful um, for you to give up at the end of that week? And for us at the time, it was, we didn't, we were in a financial situation where we didn't have money, and so it was like burning $500.
So for months. We were like making 30 contacts a day because we didn't want to burn 500 at the end of the week. And essentially, I mean, in a weird way, like those 30 contacts a day turn into hundreds of 500. So just doing the hard work and realizing that real estate's a people business. And if you're not willing to go out and have real estate conversations every day, then you're The The rest is just not going to happen. So understanding those fundamentals and doing whatever it takes to connect with people. And that could be making calls that can go be volunteering, whatever it is, you need to be talking to people every day and ideally about real estate.
I love that. So talk to us about the importance of having a coach. You've touched on that a little bit. But because you had a coach, I'd love to hear about your experiences with a coach and why you think it's super important to have. one.
Yeah. So I've been partnered with a coach for just about 10 years and different coaches for different parts of my business. Early on, it was like hardcore production, like learning the language of real estate, how many contacts it's hits a set appointment to, um, met appointment to a signed appointment to under contract, really understanding my conversion rate.
There was one year where, um, we went on 119 listing appointments. We took 54 and only sold 22. But we wouldn't have known that if our coach wasn't holding us accountable every week to tracking that. And then after a whole year, I was like, that is hundreds of hours that were put into that. One needs to change.
So one, like we're qualifying, like we just, you have different levels of conversation. Like. What needs to change to qualify the conversation before you even go out and meet with the seller? Because Nate, you know, clearly 50 of those were not ready to sell. And then what happened when you listed and didn't sell?
Well, clearly there was a skill set missing on pricing. And then, so there was like this whole, like it just totally revolutionized how we moved forward. And then the coach has those hard conversations with you and helps you see that bigger picture. Because when you're in the weeds, all you see is the weeds, but you got to you need somebody to just be like, yo, you just spent 119 hours just enlisting appointments, not even talking about driving there, the CMAs, whatever.
Like there's just so much work that you just wasted. Um, so I think coaches help shine lights on those, those, because if we didn't have that coaching conversation, I could see that happening year over year. And then all of a sudden, like, what, What kind of business are you running?
So talk to us about some of the tips You would have for new agents who are just starting out and want to become part of the top 1%.
You need to, don't worry about learning how to do the MLS. Don't worry about the contract class. Don't worry about, you know, Dotloop Docusign get a spreadsheet and put 250 names, addresses, phone numbers. And in your first month. make it your duty to call and talk to every single one of those people and let them know you made a career change and you're here for them if they have anything they need in real estate whether it's in your local market or afar and if do that that's the number one thing you need to do and then take the next quarter call them all again and do that every quarter for the rest of your real estate career and you're going to have a huge business.
So the last question that I ask everybody is you have five minutes with your younger self, you can tell her about anything you'd like, whether it's something that you made a mistake on, or something you wish you would have done, or advice, or pretty much anything that you want. What is it that you'd tell younger Ryan when she's just getting started in real estate?
Um, A couple of things. One, give yourself grace. and it takes a while to really learn the dynamics of it all and then prioritize your self-care time. Like, figure out what it is that you as Young Ryan do to nourish yourself and make sure that's on your calendar every week. Um, And don't worry, you're going to have to grind in the beginning, but make sure you're also playing while you're grinding so that you have that balance.
I love it. so much for coming on the podcast, Ryan.
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
