In this episode of Palm Harbor Local, we have a special guest, Matt Vigh, from Brokerpreneur Coaching & Podcast. Matt shares insights into the world of real estate coaching and local community building in Palm Harbor, Florida. He discusses his journey from a real estate agent to a broker and delves into the crucial aspects of mindset, relationships, entrepreneurship, and using a CRM for success in the real estate industry.
Listen to the podcast episode here!
So Matt Vigh, Welcome to Palm Harbor Local Podcast.
Thanks, Donnie. Appreciate you having me on.
Different setup here than what we’re used to with Palm Harbor local. Home. But this is more local.
I know. That’s true. And this is kind of the vision that I had long term more relaxed, living room type setup.
So we go back, 7-8 years. You were my broker when I first got into real estate. And then the rest is kind of history of running there.
But let’s start off with you’ve stepped back from being a broker now. And now you’re coaching brokers and your businesses broker, a pretty rare podcast. You embed the host of a podcast, helping other brokers around the country. And so why don’t we talk a little bit about that, and kind of how you got into that?
Again appreciate you having me on. Thank you very much. Oh, it was great seeing you again. , I’m all over, what you’re doing on Facebook and everything with the kids and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s, of course, how we met. Right? And that’s kind of also how I met how I met Dr. Ben, the same thing through real estate.
You said, I kind of stepped back from being a broker, I didn’t step back from being a broker.
I still call you from time to time, hey, what about this?
That’s right. So, what I did was I stepped down from doing something that I did for almost 25 years. That’s really what that’s really what it was what it was about, and out. And not because I didn’t love it, not because I didn’t I didn’t love the people.
Oh, one of the things that, later, as I spent more time being in the role that I was in I love helping, I wanted the audience to be a little bit different audience of who I was helping, is what it was really about. And so, Dr. Ben Wright, the co-host of the podcast, was under a digital marketing company.
And he was putting a course together in that course was for open houses. He and his partner at that point came to me and said, Hey, do you have any information about open houses? And of course, I’ve got right, a ton of a ton of information.
So I break out this external drive and plug it in, there’s a terabyte worth of stuff for brokers, right? In doubt. And so he’s kind of looking over my shoulder as we’re going through all this. Do you need that? And what about this and that, and you could really do this with everything.
And it was, Holy crap, what is on that? What’s on that drawer? And then I just said, stuff that I’ve stuff that I’ve accumulated? And he said, Well, who do you share that with? And I said, Well, anybody that asked, and he said who was your he basically asked who is your audience for that? Right? Who is it that really helps?
And I said, Well, it really helps my agents. And we started talking about it. And he was, there’s a lot more people that this could help. There are a lot more people, there are a lot of other ways to get this exposure at that point, we already had a broker’s open podcast, which is, which is an agent-facing podcast, of course, we shared some of that information on there.
But, his big point to him was if you really helping people and you’re looking for a different audience to help, and we could get this out to some brokers and everything. Let’s let’s do a broker podcast. And if we do a broker podcast, and people ask for more information about what we’re talking about we can just want to share some of this with them that that really is how it how it all got kicked off.
So what was the the transition of, how big a different audience how did that come about?
I love real estate agents, man, I love to play and but but I was always a business person in real estate, not a real estate person in business. And, and so there was always a little bit of a, I wouldn’t call it a disconnect, but kind of a disconnect between the between the two. I always real estate people inherently are just people.
I’m very much a process. And so if you take a really close look at it, personality is of course broken down into four main categories, right, but when you chop them up two of the four main personalities are really people who enjoy the main personalities or process.
And I was very heavy on the process on the process side of that, and not that it doesn’t help real estate agents. But really a better audience for it was the brokers that are helping real estate agents. And because a lot of brokers got into the role that they got into because they were good agents. And it was just kind of that next evolution that next step, And so a lot of them were people, right, which I love that that’s what made them succeed and that that’s what makes them a great broker as far as having relationships with people.
But if they’re not processing people, they struggle on that other side of it. And that really is where that’s that was where my strongest suit was that that’s where I was just more comfortable having conversations with people was on that part of it.
So if I could reach a broader audience to it the world we live in is just awesome. Writing, for someone to start a business now in this world is completely different than just 10 years ago.
And, being able to get your word out and identify an audience how to connect with them, and how to deliver value to them. , one of the greatest tools that a real estate agent or business person can have, in my opinion, is Canva.
And the reason why is because it allows you to do things at a very quick, simplistic level, that truly allows you to display who your culture is. And there’s not a huge learning curve, right? It’s simple to use, simply use Absolutely. And we use Zoom a lot in our business, right, which is, which is great. , Zoom is constantly evolving, okay?
Sometimes the constant evolution of things causes more issues, I want to go to a program and have kind of a basic idea of how to use the program. I don’t want to wake up one morning and it be completely done.
And Canva is really good about that. Zoom, not so much, right? Microsoft Office and all that, not that it’s Facebook, I was just doing some stuff with Facebook. And it’s the same thing. It’s every time you go back in there, it’s different.
And so one of the things that we focus on with the brokers that we help is we don’t want to innovate, we want to simplify, Sometimes you simplify through innovation. Other times you simplify, by not innovating, keeping something consistent.
And being in the business, and I was in a regional manager role, for most of it, a big part of it, I was a broker for all of it, I was a broker-owner for, for a couple of years in the beginning before I got purchased.
I was always in that role of being able to put one foot on the side of the line of the agent, and the other foot on the side of the line of a broker, or business owner. And then, fortunately, I was able to in all the roles I was in also see the big picture of how companies run.
But many put me in a unique perspective it gives me especially with with what I’m how I to do business day to day, it puts me in a unique perspective of being able to have all three of those things. And they’re just people that want to hear some of that we’ve got a podcast that does really well, because, people want to hear
So I want to talk about how you start into real estate in a second. First, I want to ask you about the business entrepreneur mindset versus just being a relationship, people person is there? If you’re crafting your perfect realtor real estate agent? Is there a balance between those? Has there been a transition where it started out 20 years ago, you had to be relationship-focused? And now it’s, it’d be more business-focused. , is there any connections?
Man? Did you just unpack? That’s a lot to talk about all the way. That’s a lot to talk about all the way around, okay?
Oh, no, it’s always about the relationship. Let me just simplify it and put it to that, if you’re doing it for any other reason than the relationship. Okay? Can you succeed in that? Yes. But I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen that got into the real estate business. And we’re in, I’m just gonna crush it with this, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna shape it, and I’m gonna treat it it’s a business. And it’s not really about the relationship. It’s about the next lead and how I get that next step and all of that.
And then I go back and look at these people, three, four, or five, this plus had been in the business as long as I have, I go back and look three, four or five years later, they’re not doing that anymore. They’re not in real estate anymore. They got bored with it because they never got attached to the relationships in it. Instead, they got attached to the numbers. And so at some point, they’re just, Man, I don’t want to chase the numbers there anymore. I’ll go chase the numbers somewhere else.
So if you, you can go through going through YouTube, right? I mean, just look at the people that, look at videos that were seven years old, eight years old.
There were people who were real estate agents that were crushing it seven years ago. Now they’re not doing anything because now they run a coaching company or now they are selling some digital product or now they’re they are so and so whatever level of this there is because they just got tired of it.
They just got burned out by it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Whatever your journey is, man rocks on, his journey, right? But fundamentally, if you want to be in real estate and you want to enjoy what you’re doing, enjoy the relationships as you’re having them.
You enjoy the relationships as you’re having them, you’re gonna do more business because of it. Number one, number two, you’re going to appreciate the time that you’re spinning because that’s really what you’re doing. Right, your your hours, right? $4. Okay. And so you started the question, about entrepreneurs. I’ll be really, really careful with this. A lot of people try to get into business because they think that entrepreneurship is about freedom. It is the exact opposite of freedom. , you are, you are tied to that business. You are tethered to that business and want it to succeed, right?
24/7 24/7 doesn’t doesn’t stop.
That’s right. Even when you can’t work, it still exists in sitting over your shoulder looking at you saying, Hey, I’m here. Don’t forget about that, right? Until some point where it turns from you being entrepreneurial to you being a business owner. And then you decide at that point, hey, do I want to? Do I want to continue being this path of business owner? Or do I want to go be an entrepreneur or somewhere else? And let someone else run this business? Right. And, a lot of agents don’t necessarily, this isn’t just agents. A lot of people do not set their businesses up in a way, they can step away from it.
100%. That’s, that’s one thing I’ve learned with the podcast, and diving more into the entrepreneur business world is, that a lot of business owners, small business owners, they just have a higher paying job.
And then they can choose their own hours or whatever, they have the freedom in that respect, but it’s at the end of the day, it’s a job, and they just make maybe a little bit more money.
There’s a difference between owning a Sales Machine. . And being an entrepreneur, it’s two completely different things. An entrepreneur is somebody that, that that it’s very much an outdoor cat, not an indoor cat, right? . And, and so so there are a lot of people who get into business thinking that they want to be an entrepreneur. And what they really want is they want to create a sales machine. When they create the Sales Machine, they consider themselves an entrepreneur, but it’s not something that they had built that is has a legacy to it, that something that they can handle. And so, in real estate, that happens a lot, right? It’s about the freedom, right? , it’s about the unlimited income and everything, which it’s that all that’s there in real estate. But I would argue that there are most businesses that that’s there, you could go into any business and have that and have that same exact but.
So let’s go back to your start in real estate. Why did you want to into real estate back then? And how old were you?
So, age, I don’t know. 20-26 I’m 26-27. Somewhere in there. Oh, and so. So I wanted to get an I was real estate. Right. And there’s, there’s a statute of limitations on certain things.
So I won’t get too deep into the story, right? But,, in my senior year of high school, I actually attempted to purchase a HUD home, went down, and went through the class and all that kind of stuff to be able to purchase it to be able to purchase a HUD home.
Now, why I wanted the home is a whole different story. We won’t get into that. Okay. But but but I wanted to and I did it. I thought it was I thought it was cool. I read, I read a bunch of books about Craig Proctor and, all those guys that, have zero money down. And, that kind of stuff, read all that from very early on, never really attached it to getting into the business because I was just kind of rambling through things right at the time that I got my real estate license.
I taught school full time, and I taught karate full time, right? So from 730 in the morning ish, till 230 or three o’clock I taught school, went home, got something to eat, and then three o’clock 330 I’d go to the karate school and I’d be there till 10 or 11. , finishing up everything that I needed needed to finish up and out, and not that I’d loved all that. Right.
And, I made good money with it. I mean, I could still probably be doing all that if I wanted to be doing all that. Sure. But I knew there was just something more to my freedom and what I wanted to accomplish. All of that was really predicated on other people, and I wanted to kind of get away from I wanted to kind of get away from that. And I saw a picture in the newspaper and there are all these people in the million dollar club.
And of course, I thought that million-dollar club was people making a million bucks. Not that you sold three houses? I thought it was, I thought it was making a million bucks. And right by my house, which is an office, I ended up buying a couple years in the business there was a sign that said sponsoring real estate agents or something that.
I was, Oh, this is cool. So I’ll just go in and check this out. So I went in, and talked to the owner, right old guy had been in and been in real estate for forever, walked in and talked to him and said, Hey, I’m thinking about getting my real estate license.
And he’s, Oh, well, here you go, and tells me two or three things and kind of ushers me out the door. I’m just a young punk kid, right? , that’s just me out the door. He’s probably met 50 of those people in three weeks prior. And now. And so I go home, I buy the course. Now at this point. , there’s only the three-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk. Right? So it’s on the little Horton is, and there were 12 or 14 of them, okay?
Okay. And you plug it into your computer, and you watch it. So from 11 o’clock at night until two in the morning, I’m doing this class because I was working the rest of the time. And so, when I finished the class, gotta went to the college, which is where I bought it from to take the exam, the pass the class exam. And then I set up to take the other exam the state exam in Georgia, and Dow and good Oxbow.
And, and so so I go to take the class, and whenever I sit down, there’s all these other people that are they only allow a certain number of people, and everybody’s in there, and they all know each other they’re fast friends, because they’ve all taken the test together, and they’ve all bumped into each other, and they knew each other from class. And one person says, oh you’re here again, and, it’s my fifth time. If I don’t make it this time, I’m the other person is if I’m gonna make it this time, I’m, wait a minute, why not? At that point, I’m thinking, leave, right? prepared for this test. And, so I passed the test got through that, and get my get my real estate license. And I walked back into that office, and out, and I said.
Hey, I came in a couple of weeks ago because it took me about two weeks to do it. And I came in a couple of weeks later, and I was, hey as in a couple of weeks ago, and, I saw concern about my real estate license, and I’d love to talk about the sponsorship program.
And he was just put off by it. Right, which should have been a warning sign to me, but it wasn’t, he was just put off by it. He was, no you gotta go this and that, and this and all that kind of stuff and everything. And some, right, I let him finish. Let him keep digging a hole. And, then I pull out the manila envelope.
No, I’ve got my real estate license. . And at that point, he was kinda he was kind of taken aback. Right. schandau. And so we talk a little bit more about it and everything, and I get up and running. And within a couple of years, I bought I bought him out. And then a couple of years and a half after that, a large company bought mine out. And I went to work for them for about 10 years.
Crazy. So that’s, I mean, to fast track to start start your license or get your license. And then a few years later, you’re, you’re buying your own brokerage and stuff. What was that? I’m sure you learned a lot in those first few years. Right? Managerial brokers, how big was a brokerage back then?
So that was 13 People. Okay, when I sold it, there’s about 27. Okay. We went from $106,000 in commission income, or $116,000, or something like that. We were at $300,000- $340,000 or something in a couple of years.
And none of the production was mine. I knew immediately that this was just for me. Okay, so this isn’t for everybody. But just for me, to get everybody where I wanted them to, from a productivity standpoint. I couldn’t sell. But I was Rookie of the Year, in my first year, my second year there.
Even though my first year, I was I had I still had two full-time jobs and down. And so I’m in between things, I’m answering my pager, right, that goes to tell you, I’m getting my pagers going off so that people are going, oh, where’s my home inspection? I’ll talk to you when I get them. Get your number off my pager.
And, and so so I was able to kind of carve it out the first couple of years. And so I learned real estate really quickly.
Oh, the business part of it, because of what I had done before both of those other companies that I worked for I knew a lot about business because, right then I ran a karate school, I worked for somebody else, but the karate school was independent.
So I mean, there was, you had to learn some business, you had to learn some lead acquisition, stuff that, and out and you, you learn accounting, all that type of stuff, you just got to get you got to get all that. And then the other thing that I did was with the human resource company and the same thing with them. I helped a lot on as much as they needed on the back end of that business.
So at the same time, I was learning all that with them. I was learning real estate. And I started going to classes about, running a real estate company and being a broker and All that kind of stuff. And so all of that just kind of culminated into the opportunities I kind of saw them and just kind of started putting the dots together and, things kind of things kind of fell into place.
And so and then the rest of your career, you’re just not just a broker, but a broker, right?
Yes. And I loved it. And what you’re saying just a broker? I mean I was telling you.
Which, which I loved and fit really well, for me. Oh, now, there was a part of that when you’re selling and you’re in the trenches, the way that you learn and understand things differently than I learned and understood him.
But I had to I had the ability to be able to see what a lot of people were doing. And I’m really good at aggregating data. And so that was me being able to share that was beneficial to other people.
So broker life and what you guys are doing with broker pretty rare podcast and that, what do you want to accomplish with that with that business?
So we’re doing it. We’re living the dream. We just got off a mastermind a couple of hours ago, whatever it was, and there were brokers that were from across the country, right? We have people from Alabama, and Florida, Wisconsin, Wisconsin.
Wisconsin just got its first freeze warning for the northern Ohio State. Frost on the ground, we haven’t even broken our summer temps yet.
And, and so we’re talking to them, and then somebody from Washington State and somebody from New Mexico and everything. So it was really cool to be able to hear and every time we get on with the brokers, because of course, we have stuff for brokers, we have stuff for real estate agents.
Every time we get on with the every time we get on them at the broker, specifically, we say How’s the market? Tell us what you’re seeing in the market. And so it’s always really good to hear from brokers, what they’re seeing in the market. So it’s not the media, right?
That’s what they’re saying. Media is different than journalism, two completely different things, we won’t get into that. So there is a lot of that story that’s happening there. But I heard the story. I hear that because it’s good data.
But I also heard I download the NAR information, check it out, right, I download the state stuff from Florida, and I keep up with that. But man, I hear it from the people that are signing contracts. Right?
And, and so they’re all kind of saying similar stuff. And so I love being in the middle of that. So what is it that we want to accomplish? How do we try to help manage that? It’s them being on that call together and being able to talk and share and collaborate? , we talked about today how to help their agents grow their business going into a changing market at the end of the year we spent an hour just digging into that.
And, they were sharing ideas about what they were doing. And, hey, I’ll share this with you. If you’ve got that send that over, and Oh, my God, I don’t know where to get started on all of that. , it’s all the same. It’s all in the same mastermind.
That’s pretty cool. I think that’s something that I think agents have adapted, maybe more so recently, but is that collaboration aspect, right, collaborating with other agents across the country and that sort of stuff? Because there’s so much value in those conversations?
100%. And with brokers, especially if it’s kind of taboo, right? And it shouldn’t be they’ll, they’ll talk within their network. But, and sometimes now, some of them will get out of that. But a lot of the ones that get out of that are the independent ones.
The ones that are in some type of network will talk within their network, but they won’t just, our mastermind, man, you just go click the link on our podcast, and you’re in there at 12 o’clock on Friday and, and so, you can jump in there, and listen and talk. And there are no presuppositions about anything that comes in there.
And let’s talk about what you want to talk about. Now. We’ve got some rules so that we abide by a code of ethics and all that kind of stuff. Sure. But, come in there and whatever you want to talk about, man, we want to talk about.
That’s pretty cool. So starting this business, what are what’s one big challenge, that maybe you didn’t see coming? And then, a tip, or something that you’ve been successful at, in starting this business that you think could help somebody else who’s looking to start their own business?
I’ll say this from my personal experience standpoint, and people have probably heard it before, but I’ll tell, I’ll tell a little bit of a story with it so that if you heard it, but didn’t listen to it, this will help you listen to it. Okay.
So we knew who our audience was our audience was real estate brokers, real estate brokers from a certain size brokerage that wanted to focus on recruiting retention per agent productivity. We established that in the beginning, right, we knew that but we were not good at getting our message and our value directly to them. It took us a long time to isolate that audience.
And, Everybody has heard before know who your audience is, and be able to speak value to that to that audience, right? And so, and we know that, and we knew that, but we just weren’t doing it effectively. And if you’re not doing it effectively, the business world will let you keep doing it not in the business world doesn’t care.
Now, you can keep jotting down that road in the business world, and that consumers don’t care. And so and so that was part of what we had to do is we had to figure out how to hone in on that piece of that.
And a lot of that is probably just trial and error. I imagined too, right? It’s not there’s a secret sauce or a secret formula, it might work for this business, but it’s not gonna work for years.
Absolutely. . . 100%.
What about the success that you’ve had? Or maybe a tip or something for someone who’s starting out?
So understand the tools that are available to you. So, you’ve heard me talk about this, right? And I talked about it a lot with brokers and a lot with real estate agents. Oh, if you don’t have a CRM, let me let me put it this way.
So let’s say this water bottle, right, let’s say you create the best water bottle, it’ll keep water at 36 degrees for 58 years. If you put water in it, okay, it’ll even cool it down. And you can sell it for 19 bucks. That’s, that’s an advantage. Okay. You take that, and you put it on Amazon. It’s an incredible product, and it’s being sold to how many people everybody’s just buying it.
Here’s the mistake that people make. They think that the people buying that is their customer. They’re not they’re Amazon’s customers. You had to go to their customer base to connect with them. In order to get that product to them. You are just a business delivering a product to someone else as the customer is interesting and huge. , I cannot tell you I cannot stress how important that is. And you’ve, you’ve heard it before. Right?
You listen to Tim Ferriss, or listen to whoever it is all these people say the same thing. Oh, get your audience and get you a mailing list and all that kind of stuff. I completely, wholeheartedly agree. You have to have a CRM. And you have to be feeding that CRM constantly with people in cultivating them as customers.
If they buy something from you, it doesn’t mean they’re a customer. It means they consume something from you. Whose customer are they? You need to adopt them to be your customer. Adoption is key and using your CRM, and adoption is key. And the people that consume your product, how many of how many contacts you have with them, to turn them into someone that is a lifelong fan of yours. And that is it.
And so that goes back to what we’re talking about with real estate being relationship-focused, right? that’s, that’s any business? It’s just how are you building that relationship that changes.
So if you’re in business, focus on the relationships, and lenders, that’s it and use your CRM to do it. Use the tools.
And so we have people that we have people that listen to our podcast, and people that comment on it, and people that come into different different masterminds that we have, that are not in real estate. Please understand that this isn’t just about being a real estate broker at us. We talk about stuff constantly that will help people in business in general. But I do it from a framework of real estate because I love real estate. You got to do so, anybody can come in and, join in and be part of the conversation and collaborate. We love it.
CONNECT WITH MATT:
- Website: www.brokerpreneurpodcast.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/matt-vigh
CONNECT WITH DONNIE:
- Follow Donnie: @donnie.hathaway
- Follow Palm Harbor Local: @PalmHarborLocal
- For more real estate information – www.thehathaway.group
JOIN THE LOCALS for exclusive discounts and specials from our local business owners and stay up to date on what’s happening in Palm Harbor.
Together, we keep Palm Harbor local.
Stroll through the laid-back streets of the Palm Harbor community with this informative podcast, proudly brought to you by Donnie Hathaway with The Hathaway Group, your trusted guide and local expert in navigating the diverse and ever-changing property landscape of Palm Harbor.
Work with me + FREE Resources
Would you like help buying a home in Palm Harbor? – Buyer Consultation
Would you like help selling your house in Palm Harbor? – Seller Marketing Consultation
Download our free buyer’s guide today – Buyer’s Guide
You can hyper link the new paragraph back to https://palmharborlocal.com for now. The plan is to have a landing page for them to sign up in the next few weeks.
