 It's the same exact thing. When you get a realtor.com lead, what do you, it's the first thing you do, Casey? What do you tell your team to do the first thing that you would do when you get a realtor.com or Zilla lead? Try and set the appointment. By doing what? What's the first movement? I'll introduce it to you yourself. How? Hey, this is Casey Stoppo with Joe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. How do you contact them? Oh, you give me a call. So all we're doing, Casey, all we're doing is we're just buying contact information of random people in our market. What's the difference in that? And just calling property owners. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Road to 10,000, 10,000 real estate agents. That's a, that's a team that's going to happen between me and my guy Juan here, Juan Carlos. Bella DiCci, right? Bella DiCci. Like, let's go with that one. You're getting closer and closer every time. But I want to know like the nationality of that, that name. Alright, so check this thing out. Baronetchi is my last name, right? I'm Colombian, both my parents are Colombian, but Baronetchi stems from the Basque region in Spain. You know where the Basque region is? No, no, I don't know Spain. It's right between Spain and France. So technically I'm French. How close is that to Italy? That's a good question. I really don't know. That's what we need to know right there. That's what we got to find out. Okay, so what's it called? It's called the Basque, B-A-S-Q-U-E. And then that's where my last name stands from. Really? Let's check this out. By the way, if you're tuning in, we have 644 agents as of March 10th. The goal is to get to 750 by what, May? And are you kidding me, bro? Is that a joke? Be conservative by May. No, no, sorry. You guys are crushing it on. Sorry. We'll see. 750, you said you're 650? 644. Okay, so 100 more agents. That's at the end of March. End of March? End of March. We'll be at 750. Oh, well, yeah, it depends. We have the aggressive numbers and we have the conservative numbers. Okay, Casey, this is a great example of the way you shouldn't be. Okay, just look at one and just see how he answers questions and thinks about stuff and realize. Do the opposite. Yeah, just do the exact opposite of everything one does. Yeah, dude, that boss country is real close to Italy, man. I knew it. You know we're opening up in Italy, right? Are we? Yeah, I think we'll be there in the next 30 days. So I've got some Italian real estate agents on the line. Schumer, give me a DM. That's the thing is, is I know you have plenty of family there. In Italy? No. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Casey, listen to me, bro. This guy, okay, has a complex, all right? He's got a Latino middle name and an Italian, okay? He says BOSC, right? It came from Italy, bro. And it was like, I'm the Latino agent, right? But I look Italian. Trust me, man, like he's got a complex and he's still trying to figure it out. We're bringing Grant Cardone on the show and like, and probably like 45 days or so. I'm gonna see if he can figure it out because I sure can't. We'll have him put it to the test. We'll see what happens. Casey, what's up, man? Welcome to the program. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. Yeah, Casey, stoppa. So tell us about yourself, man. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stoppa, you're gonna put your his last name too? Come on. What is it? Stopa. Stopa? Yeah, it's actually- I'm the king of just making up how names sound. Like, I just, I say him how I want them. I don't know. Okay, Stopa, right? Yep. Oh, okay, nice, nice. Tell everybody who you are, how long you've been selling, what market you're in, what company you're with. Give us some background here. Got it. All right, so yeah, my name's Casey Stopa. I'm a real estate agent with Yellowbrick Real Estate. Right? We're based out of Connecticut. We've got a few different locations in Connecticut. We've got Milford, Connecticut, Fairfield, Stamford and Brantford. I also have a team, Stopa Realty Group. You can look us up on Instagram, Stopa Realty Group. And I've been selling homes. I've been selling real estate full-time since 2018, since the start of 2018. So this is my fourth full-time year in the business. Gotcha. How big is your team? What's your team scenario? I've got nine people on my team right now. So you're the team leader? What was your production last year for sales within you and the whole entire team? The whole team, we did 35 million, and I did 20 of that. So we're still a little green right now, but people are starting to pick it up big time. So we're hoping to have a big year this year. Listen, man, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. You're actually three years in. This is going to be your third year. You started 2018? Yeah, I started 2018. So I'm three years in. This is my fourth year. You're crushing it, dude. The fact that you've already assembled a team, you have the foundation set. You guys knocked out 35 million last year. And the fact that you're in such a hard market over there in Connecticut, you're going to take off, man. It's just a matter of time. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, Casey, dude, let me ask you about the team thing, man. Like, so now you've started a team. You've got nine people. You're doing 35 million. How much are you enjoying this team atmosphere? I like it a lot, you know, because I think it kind of holds me accountable as a team leader to kind of work harder. You know what I mean? And it's also like my team, honestly, a lot of it is people that I know, like most of it is people that I know, like my friends who wanted to get into the business. My sister just joined the team. So the reason I started the team was because, you know, I started doing real estate. I was young and, you know, I started selling a lot of houses. My first year, I think I sold 33 homes my first year. So people kind of saw that and they wanted to be a part of it. So I was like, all right, you know what? Let me just start my own team then. And, you know, it's fun. I mean, I like having, you know, working in a team environment versus just being a single agent. So you love the team versus single agent because you feel like it holds you accountable. That's one reason, right, that I heard. And it keeps me motivated too. And it's just the whole team atmosphere, like, you know, just being able to do things with the team. We have monthly goals and monthly rewards. Like, we'll go, you know, if we hit a goal, like for instance, January, we made a goal, we hit that goal. I took everyone snowboarding in February. And then this month, we have a goal to hit. If we hit it, we're going to go paintballing next month. So stuff like that, you know, just to keep it fun. Work hard, play hard. Yeah. No, I get it, man. I get it. That's cool. I think that, like, there's so many different ways to succeed, like to skin a cat, really. I tried the team thing. It wasn't for me whatsoever. I'm still a single agent. Like Ricky, like I'm still a single agent. I still show my own properties, do my own thing and all that stuff. I love to hear people that have teams and I love to hear, like, the dynamics of it and kind of what all goes on behind the scenes and kind of go deeper with it because it's something I don't do, you know what I mean? So I'm always interested, you know, of how it all works. So that's cool, man. What do you think is the cornerstone of, like if somebody wanted to start a team, because a lot of you started a team after just a couple years in the business, now you have nine agents, you're doing 35 million a year, which is amazing, you know, to be at that place at this point in your career. What would you tell somebody who, you know, wants to start a team, like some of the mistakes you made or like a few pointers, if you will, you know, about building a team? Yeah. So if you want to build a team, you know, most people say to hire an admin first. I didn't do that. I just started taking on agents. So that's where I kind of screwed up. I think I should have hired an admin first just to, you know, help keep everything organized. I still don't really have an admin for the team. I have like a transaction coordinator that helps me with my transactions, but I would say definitely start with hiring an admin, do it the right way because, you know, I... It was a lot, you know, like the past couple of years trying to build my team and also do my own production at the same time. There were times where I had no idea what I was doing and, you know, I didn't have the best management skills, so I would say probably look into, you know, how to be a good manager. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I had a lot of stuff to work on, but I would say just if you want to do something, just go for it, you know. What ends up happening, Ricky, what ends up happening with a lot of teams, like I have a team myself and everyone's always thinking like, oh, I went out there, I got a couple of listings, I'm getting lots of buyers calling me, let me go out there and hire a buyer agent. It's what I did. And the issue with that is that when you hire a buyer agent, well, you become their administrative assistant, right? Because the second that person goes ahead and gets two deals on their contract, someone's got to do their paperwork. So a lot of agents kind of have this misconception that when you start getting a lot of listings, you have to skill in the form of a team. And there's two types of agents. There's agents that you have to. They get this misconception, like you have to go out there and hire agents to work for you. And you don't- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're saying that other people say that you have to. Exactly. And now they have this pressure to go out there and hire people. And a lot of people aren't good managers, they're not good leaders. People like Casey and myself, I have eight agents, he has nine, but we have a gratification out of helping others. It's more like a small family, we're building a culture. And even though we probably know we could go out there and make more money on our own with just three assistants behind us, it's kind of like the big picture of having like your own mini business with other people involved along for the ride. So if you're listening- So you're saying it's not about the money, it's about building relationships? I think so. Doesn't it always go back to that? I've heard that somewhere. Exactly right. Yeah, I mean, I knew that I, like I said, my friends were getting into the business and I knew I was gonna be helping them. So I was like, let me start a team. And now I'm kind of using it to start delegating smaller deals that I can focus on a higher price point, right? So now I'm starting to do that a lot more. But it's really just helping, helping agents that are on my team grow their businesses just like I did. And I know that in the future, it's all gonna help me out. Because like you said, it's all about building relationships. Right, right, right. So like I've delegated buyers that are in lower price points or that I don't wanna deal with, like there's an agent in my office that I give them to, there's my dad, he's an agent. I'll give him some buyers if I want to. I don't have to have a team, you know what I mean? To do that and really have the same benefits and not have to worry about this person's livelihood kind of deal. That's one thing I didn't like about the team is like, I felt responsible, you know? Like it was up to me. Like I feel so, I feel so less responsible on the coaching side because I'm just like, here's how you do it. And then it's up to them to go do it. But when it's like an agent on my team, like a local Lies traditional team, I just felt like it was such, and then when these agents didn't make it or succeed at the level that they wanted to, because I brought on about 12 agents over a year and a half. I went through about 12 and a half, 12 agents in a year and a half, you know? And I probably, at one point, I probably had like three or four agents at one time. And you know, like it didn't work for me because like it was taken away from my business and then managing them. And then, you know, it was like stressful, worrying about their drama and stuff. And then like trying to train them and everything else. It just, I just, I'm not built to do that kind of work. You know what I mean? I love the coaching side of it. I love the recruiting side with the EXP, like building that team. I think that's the like way of the future with it because it takes all the liability and like the broker responsibility, the expenses. That's another thing, like the team members, I was having to pay their expenses for certain things, you know? And I know a lot of team leaders, they buy leads and stuff. So that's an expense for every team member you have. And it's just like, I don't want any expenses. I would rather just sell 40 million on my own and just deal with past kinds of referrals and go build other businesses. You know what I'm saying? That's my thing. I don't want to have to deal with people, but you know what I'm saying? That's the way I'm built. Casey and Juan, like you guys have mastered building a massive team because like Juan, are you gonna hit 100 million this year? My goal is to hit 100 million. We did 8.3 last month, but the way my team is designed, I probably worked five hours last month, like the entire month. So, Juan, I mean, come on man, we're not like, you just had to throw that in there, didn't you? And it's important to know, I'll tell you why, because when people start their team, it's not like you're gonna get your leverage or your time back ASAP. The first time I started my team three years ago, I worked from 40 hours to 80 hours a week until I brought in that manager on the marketing side, on the operation side of the staff. So the team perk is that you get your time back long term, but if you're not willing to put in the two, three years to kind of get to that point, the team's gonna cost you more time and money than anything else. So I'm trying to talk people away from starting a team unless they're in it for the long term and they need that culture around them to really thrive. The thing I don't like about it is that mainstream when teams started to become the thing, like in the late 90s, I wanna say, or early 2000s, whenever team, mega teams started coming on the scene, it was like, this was for people that were getting in retirement that wanted to kind of step out of the business a little bit. And then, you know, and so then like new agents were like, oh, I'm gonna build a team to step out of the business. And it was creating a scenario where people were thinking that this was gonna be the cornerstone to making more money, doing less. And for me, that's never a good recipe for success. Like how, you know, like, oh yeah, I always wanna do more in less time. I wanna produce more with less effort, not so that I can do less, but so that I can produce more because I'm never gonna put forth less effort in terms of hours I put in per day. You know what I mean? But that's what I like about what you do because you're building other businesses, you're not just doing five hours a day, five hours a week, selling your 8 million and then going to the house. Your schedule's full all day long, building other businesses and doing other things. That's what I like about it to a certain extent. So that's what I think is interesting. And I mean, at Casey's level, I wouldn't think that you are taking any time off because of this, right? No, not at all. I mean, I put more time in, you know, I'm trying to keep growing and growing and growing. You know, I'm not one to, you know, I don't even, I don't really have any plans to retire from this business at all. I love this business. I work 24 seven. So I mean, for me, it's just, I wanna keep growing each year. So now that I can start delegating a lot of these leads to the guys on my team so I can keep doing more volume, that's mostly what it's for, you know? Like I wanna keep working. It's not for me to be able to hang out and go on vacation every week and, you know, just make money off of my teammates. It's so that I can do more and build like a legacy. And it's cool to work alongside other people to get towards the same goal. Cause I'm just that type of person where if you leave me as a single agent and I have to make these calls by myself and I have no one to speak to every single day, like, shit, I'm gonna be fricking either bored or depressed that like, I have no one to like cheer me along. So there's this whole culture where like, you build like a small- That's what a therapist is for, bro. It sounds like you need some straight therapy, bro. You know what I mean? Like they have people that, you know, you can pay for that. You don't have to, you know- I feel you. Take on an entire organization. Plus I have an assistant, right? I have an assistant and say, hey, Christy, you know, like these calls are sounding cool, huh? She's like, oh yeah, it's not like, like you guys think that us single agents are like in a dungeon with like leprechauns and stuff, like in a dark heated room, you know, like making calls like, you know, under the earth or something, man. Like we're normal people too, okay? This is a good comparison podcast. Like starting a team versus single agent. And there's so many misconceptions. Like I personally think if you wanna make more money, stay a single agent, bring on a couple of assistants and you just become the best closer there is. The second you go out there and try to start recruiting people and training them, they're never gonna be as good as you. Why? Cause you're always consistently getting better. So you have to understand that the reason that you transition to a team is to help others and that you're gonna be in a position where essentially you're a manager now. You're no longer the guy down there closing the deal for them. You're no longer on the ground if you're a true team leader. It's one of those things where you're out there supporting your troops to help them get to their next level and you have fine fulfillment in that. But if you find like you have this urge to go in there and do it yourself, well, shit, you're gonna be back to the single agent life with an army behind you saying, feed me, feed me, feed me. So I think it's a personality thing. Yeah, it's definitely a personality thing. I think you have, you know, it's right and left, man. You got people that, you know, they just decide, hey, you know, I need some emotional support, you know, I need some people around me to make me feel good, you know? And then you got the single agent guys, you know, the real, the strong characters of the world that really step up and are scared to do the work. Yeah, yeah, not scared, not scared. No, that's good stuff, man. That's funny. The team energy is super helpful, definitely. I love the team energy. I'm going skiing next week with my team. Ricky, I don't know what you're gonna do, man, but I got a nice little little group coming. You could come join if you loan, loan agent. No, bro, listen, I don't do team ski trips, okay? All right, I'll tell you what I do, man. I take my team for a skiing trip, right? I go to the top of the hill and who's it gonna be? Me, right? I go up there, I'm snowboarding down that sucker and I'm like, this is what it's all about, bro. Nobody to run into, you know? No distractions, no obstacles, you know? No, it's good stuff, man. It's good stuff. I love the comparison of it. I'm not against team building at all. I tell people, like, if I were gonna do a team right now, it would be an incredible team because I know how to build it now. I know how to set expectations. The first time I tried to do it, I didn't understand a lot about the business itself. I didn't understand how to build a team. I didn't understand setting expectations and putting systems in place. And a lot of the stuff that I've learned since then, you know, I could build a great team right now. I could have a long time ago. I just, I guess by the time I realized how to actually build the team the right way, by the time that happened, I'm doing 40 mil. I literally, you'll love this. I'm literally doing 40 mil a year working about five hours. Did you say five hours a week? Five hours a week, yeah. Yeah, I'm literally doing my 40 mil and it's about 500 or five hours a week because it's all past kinds of referrals. Like everything comes to me. I'm just processing deals. I might go show a house. I go to a listing appointment, talking the phone to a couple of people and, you know, close eight deals a month and very effortlessly. So I mean, if you're at that stage in your business, you know, it makes zero sense to start complicating everything. You know, I was like, all right, you know, I'm just going to crush this YouTube thing and this Instagram thing and, you know, become a global brand. And then Casey, how long did it take you? Like from the time you started the team till the time that you realized like, okay, like now this thing's kind of like running and I got the hang of this. Like how long did it take you to actually lay the foundation for the team itself? Probably took like a year. I started with just like two agents that, you know, were my friends and, you know, I was just helping them with some deals, helping them with whatever they needed help on. And then, you know, I got a couple more agents that next year and then I started to realize like, okay, well, you know, I probably got to step it up and put a little bit more effort into building this team, you know, and structuring it. So then we started to do like, now we do like Monday morning meetings. So every Monday at 8 a.m. we have a meeting and we go over all of our numbers and do some training. And then Thursday nights we have call nights where we all get together and just make calls, you know, whether it's past clients, you know, calling expires, fizz bows, structured differently every week. So I mean, yeah, it took about a year to really, for me to really take it seriously. And those systems hiring those people to kind of support your team, like it's expenses, it's time. I don't recommend doing it if you don't have a year to put out there. I feel like there's this idea where you hired the team and boom, you got your time back, but no, it's kind of the opposite. No, it is the opposite. And then I started, after like a year and I started really buying, like I started buying leads for my team and that's kind of like my biggest expense for the team are the leads for sure. What kind of leads are you buying and how much are they? I spend, I buy a lot of realtor.com leads. I was buying Zillow's. Well, yeah, I mean, I just cut off the Zillow's recently, but really Zillow and realtor.com. Is there like a one that's better than the other or what did you experience in your market? So Zillow's are definitely like, Zillow's are good leads. You know, I feel like people who go on Zillow are, you know, they have to fill out, I think fill out a little bit more information online. And those have seemed to be more quality leads than the realtor.coms, but you can get more realtor.coms for less. So it's just like a volume game with the realtor.com leads. So, you know, a realtor.com lead might come in and, you know, if you can't get in touch with them right away, maybe in a couple of weeks, you'll be able to get in touch with them and work that lead versus the Zillow's get like connected with right away. And then, you know, they probably, like on Zillow, sometimes they come in as like a tour request. So you can, like they're scheduling a tour right through Zillow and you can go out and meet them that way. So we do a lot of buyer, like that's kind of our whole business model. So just working with a lot of buyer leads. Why did you quit buying Zillow leads just because the price is less to get realtor.com? Yeah, it's a lot more expensive and you get a lot less leads. And, you know, I started to realize that- But they're good leads. Yeah, no, they're good leads. And, you know, there's nothing against buying them, but I just started to realize that like a lead's a lead at the end of the day. And it's just someone who's interested in buying, you know, interested in buying and, you know, whether you got them right there, you got them further down the line. At least it's someone that you can work that was interested in buying at one point. Got it, got it. Ricky, have you ever spent the dollar on online leads? Oh, you know it, bro. As soon as Zillow and Trulia came out, you know, Zillow and Trulia was a competitor with Zillow there for a minute. Zillow bought them. But yeah, yeah, I was spending, I forget how much I spent one year. Like I did it for one year, I believe. I think I spent like 20 or 30 grand in a year or something like that, just cause I was like, you know. Get a nice little budget. Yeah, and I got right up out of there, man. I got right up out of there quick. You know, I tried everything, man. I've tested everything out. I could, you know, like I say, man, I've tried the team thing. You know, it's not like I talk about this stuff and I'm like, oh, don't do this and don't do that. This is just how I do it. And it's not from me just thinking, hey, don't do this and don't do that. I've actually tried these things and I go, everything I talk about is based on experience. It's not like something I heard from somebody or watched here or it's like experience, you know, of how I built the business and what I do and all that stuff. But yeah, yeah, I bought some leads for a little bit. Very interesting, you know, very. So interesting story, probably a year ago. It was about a year, you know, a little like it was like February last year. So a little over a year ago, you know, my dad's like, hey, you know, like I have the Zillow guy call me and he said, hey, you know, we were, you know, we're nothing like we used to be. Like these leads are like more qualified. We do this, we do that. They're, you know, it's a better this and dad was like, let's give it a shot. And I'm like, let's do it. Like we'll throw 300 a month at it just for a zip code to see what happens, you know, for six months and see what you think and just give all the leads to you and see if you close anything. I'm all about it, you know, and, you know, we'll see what it do. And it was the same thing as the before, bro. Rental clients and non-answers and stuff like that. I think he, I think he got one or two good leads out of it with the six month period, but you got to spend more than 300 bucks. I get all that, but not at the same time, man. It did, dude sold us a bag of dust, man. It was, it was the same quality as before. I, I really wanted to do it just to experiment, right? Just like, I like to know stuff. I'll spend money just to figure stuff out. And, you know, I wanted to know if there really was a difference in the Zilla leads I got day one, 2013, maybe, is when I did it, something like that to 2020. So, and there wasn't a difference, I promise you, there wasn't a difference in, in the lead quality. So, yeah, man, listen, a lead is any human in your market, all right? What they're doing, Casey, is they're literally selling you random people in your markets contact information for an ungodful amount of money. That's what realtor.com is doing to you, right? That's true. Right. What you should be doing is just buy red X, geo leads, expires for sale boners, all the money you spent on realtor.com, just buy red X's, you probably have it, right? I don't have a red X, no. Dude, like scrap realtor.com. Thank you. That's hard, man. Come on. It's the same exact thing. It's the same exact thing. When you get a realtor.com lead, what do you, it's the first thing you do, Casey? What do you tell your team to do the first thing that you would do when you get a realtor.com or Zilla lead? Try and set the appointment. By doing what? What's the first movement? I'll introduce it yourself. How? Hey, this is Casey Stofo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but what? But how do you contact them? Oh, you give them a call. Okay, you call them. And how quick do you have to call them once you get the lead? That's right away as quickly as possible. Okay, immediately, right? So all we're doing, Casey, all we're doing is we're just buying contact information of random people in our market. That's all you're doing, okay? What I'm saying is, is why don't you think of your, what's the difference in that and just calling property owners? The difference is that they're putting their information in online to go see a certain property. So you know that they're looking to buy a home. Everybody's looking. Everybody, every single human in the market is thinking about doing something. I, yeah, I agree with you. Okay, so we agree there. So, Ricky, listen, I'm gonna back Casey up, but listen, I do both, right? And I look at you calling people. How do I explain it? There's always the chance that when you get the Zillow lead, they've already identified themselves. They've raised their hands, right? Like if we're selling by owner would, like, hey, I wanna buy, right? And there's always the chance when you call that Zillow lead, obviously they're not gonna be ready. And then you're right back to square one, you're better off calling the Red X leads. However, if you're a smart agent, you put that lead in your database, and now instead of Zillow selling it back to two, three months when they are ready to buy, you go ahead, you nurture it, and you follow up with them when they're ready and boom, now you got a buyer lead. So I think it works both ways, but I think where a lot of agents mess up is they get these Zillow online leads, whatever may be, and they don't convert them right out the gate, and then boom, they throw them out. And then what happens? They go back on Zillow two months later and they sell them back to you. That's an issue in my opinion. It's the same thing, bro. Like I'm calling property owners, getting their information, and putting them in my database and nurturing them till they do something. What's the difference? That one's hard, man. It's the same thing. Now I'm saying, what's the difference? The work? I'm telling you, I agree with you. I mean, I think we should do both, you know? I think that in order to be successful in real estate, you don't need to just focus on one thing. I mean, a lot of people do, of course, but you know, there's so many ways to get business. And the good thing about the leads is they're usually coming in, right? So it's like, you don't have to be prospecting all day. So you could prospect by calling for sell by owners, by calling expires, then if the lead comes in, you get it on the phone and you try and convert it. No, 100%. Listen, I'm not disagreeing with what you do at all. I'm just trying to understand. I like to understand the inside of people's psychology behind what they're doing and why they're doing it. And I like to try to understand, you know, what I do. Like, am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something? You know what I mean? Like, the way I see it, it's like, if you look at pre foreclosures, expires for sell by owners, go back two years worth of expires. And, you know, you got a folder full of them. Hey, I saw your house was on the market a year ago. Whatever happened with that? Cool. Where'd you move to? Do you like it there? What can you do? What are you gonna do next? You got an agent. Boom, boom, boom. It's all the same stuff. It's just like, when a lead comes in, we're calling them and talking to them. Yeah, if you want to add it to what you're doing, great. Like, you telling me, let's prospect and then call the lead when it comes in. That sounds amazing, right? If that's something that you want to do. But do you guys prospect? We prospect through a lot of our leads, pretty much. Okay. Through the leads. You basically call in the buyer leads back. Yeah, exactly. So we go through the buyer leads. But I mean, we have a lot coming in, you know, so. Do any of the agents focus on for sell by owner, circle prospecting, expires, anything like that? Not really, to be honest. To be honest, we're like, my team right now, you know, we need to start going after listings now because of how the market is and we're realizing that, right? So we're trying to switch it up a little bit. But, you know, honestly, the past couple of years, we've just mostly been focusing on buyers. I think it's pretty incredible that you've had as much growth as you had just with that one lead source. Because when you guys go to expand it to a second or a third lead source, like what Ricky's talking about, you guys are basically going to double up in production. So there's just so much left of meat on the bones for you guys to go after, especially if that's the only thing you guys been doing, you know? That's, I mean, yeah. So that's not the only thing we've been doing though. Another, so when I got started in real estate, like the way I got it, I got my license in Boston, right? Okay. Originally, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was like, let me go to Boston and get my real estate license, right? I got my real estate license in Boston. I stayed there for a summer and I didn't sell anything, didn't rent anything. I pretty much just partied all summer. I was 21 years old. So I racked up all this credit card debt and I had to come home. So I came home and it was pretty much, I was either gonna continue doing real estate or I was gonna start a landscaping business because my family's just like, you know, it's all, my family's all like, my dad was in the army, you know, firefighters and landscapers, right? So that's kind of what I thought I was gonna do, right? So I decided I was gonna start the landscaping business. So I got a couple of clients and it was like one morning, woke up at like 6.30, went to go put the lawnmower on the truck. It was like 30 degrees out and I was just like, screw this. Like, this is not my life. I don't wanna be doing this. Like I knew I had more potential than that and like always had a good work ethic. So I decided to do real estate, you know? And I contacted my sister's, my sister's best friend's fiance and he was working for a company called Yellowbrick and they were just starting up. So I met with the owner of Yellowbrick. His name's Thomas Pepko and like I kind of hit it off with him instantly and I hung my license in Connecticut. I had to get the reciprocity from Massachusetts but I hung my license in Connecticut with him. And I started doing real estate for a little bit and then so he owns my real estate company but he's also a mortgage guy, right? So what he did, he's the vice president of Total Mortgage and he started a real estate company. So I saw what he was doing. I saw how much money he was making, you know, drove a nice car and everything. I was like, I want that life. So I went out and I got my mortgage license. So that's what I did all 2017. I was doing mortgages in 2017. So you have the background in finance still? Yeah, exactly. So I started doing mortgages and what they did was they just threw me in a call center and I started making calls to leads like 300, 400 leads a day I was calling. That's what Ricky does in a morning, right? 300 calls a morning. Exactly, bro. This morning did 305. Jesus. Look, listen, bro, you guys can talk all this smackety-doodle all you want to, okay? Like I'm telling you, me making three, it's the same. This is, it's the equivalent as if I would have, how much is a realtor.com lead? It depends. It depends what zipline. I think it's going to be what, 20, 30 box minimum? Yeah, it's like $20 to $30. That's probably the average price, but it depends on what zip code you're buying in, you know? You could get like 50 realtor.com leads a month in like a lower zip code. Yeah. Like a few hundred bucks a month. Yeah, a few hundred bucks. Wait a minute, wait a minute, bro. You just said it was like 20, 30 bucks times 50. That's 1500 bucks. That's not a couple hundred, it's 1500. Yeah, but so it depends on what zip code you're buying in, right? You might buy some high ends. So some could be four bucks. Yeah, like that's my average. I had to pay to play, man. Yeah, you definitely got to pay. Listen, leads are expensive. You don't have to pay to play. That's what I'm getting at here. I agree, I agree. You don't have to at all. That's just the way I know how to do it. I'm all about, I'm all about. Like once I realize that like leads are just humans and I can get humans for two cents a piece, I'm like, why am I going to spend any more than two cents for a human? My advice as of lately has been, everyone's like, oh, where do I get listings and bars? I'm like, pull out your iPhone, download Kobe, extract your entire iPhone list and just call the entire list of people on your phone. Why? You already have a relationship with them. They know who you are. They just have to be aware now that you sell real estate and boom, you got your buying your listing leads right there. No, I agree, man. I mean, listen, you can walk up to anyone and that person might be looking to buy, sell it or know someone looking to buy or sell, right? I completely agree with that. Leads aren't the only thing that I do. That's just one way that I get business. I'm also big into just, I've always been posting on social media when I started, when the day I started, I was posting something on social media every day just so that people saw that I was in real estate. And then that just started to grow, you know? Okay. Tell me about it. Like what happened? So, I mean, I was just posting, I started by just posting like realtor.com articles on my Facebook page. You know what I mean? Like realtor.com loves you, bro. I know. You give them all your money and you share all their articles, man. They need to start paying you, man, or giving you a little bit of a little cut. I agree, I agree. So, you started sharing realtor.com articles about like statistics of the market and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Anything. And then I put, anytime I sold a home, I would post, you know, a sold post or a review that I got on Zillow. I would post the review and people just started to see what I was doing. And I just stayed in front of their faces as much as possible. And then they started contacting me just like my sphere of influence. Just people in my town or people that I grew up with that are looking to buy their first home, you know? Started to reach out to me. Casey, what would be some social media tips you give to people who are, like I said, just starting out, they don't really know what to get to. They have no idea in regards to whether to use Instagram or Facebook, whatever it may be. Like, what's worked for you that you could advise for new agents? Definitely create a Facebook page, you know? Like mine is just Stofa Realty Group, right? When I first started, it was just Casey Thomas Stofa, local realtor. You know, and post on that Facebook page every day. Start an Instagram page for yourself. You know, a real estate page separate from your personal page or you could do it all in one. It's completely up to you. I just like to do it separate. And just start posting content, you know? Anything really, anything about real estate just so that you can stay in front of people's faces. And when they think about you, they think about real estate so that in a year, two years, three years, they're looking to go buy or rent or sell, they'll reach out to you. I like it, Matt, I like it. It's such a simple industry. I think a lot of agents complicate it. But at the end of the day, Ricky, we meet a human. We build a relationship. We meet a human, we build a relationship. We get their contact info and we stay in touch with them. That's it. That's all it is, man. You can either pay to play or just play to stay. You feel me? It's like Atlantic City, right? No, let's do it, you know what I'm saying? Never been there. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. You've been to Vegas though, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They know me over there. I walk in, they're like, Mr. Caruth, I like, yeah. Are you going to put a thousand on black again? Oh, no. No, sir. Not this time. What's your game? Poker. Poker? Texas Hold'em? Yeah. Oh, we got to play one day. I can sit there for literally like 14 hours straight. Like, I mean, but it's like, you know, it's just, I love it, you know, but it's just like, for me, it's the biggest waste of time in the world. You know, it's just like, I really want to spend 14. I mean, I can sit there for a couple hours too, but it's not fun because like, if you're going to leave in like a couple hours or something, you feel rushed. You feel like you have to make quicker decisions. You're not really, you know, it's just not as fun. If you know, you can just sit there as long as you want to and just play it all out, you know. Listen, poker's like real estate in the sense that the guys like us three, who are in this for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years are going to have way better of an opportunity on our day to day. Why? Because we're looking at this from a 20 year plan. The agent that gets into this and says, I need to make money the next six months, all the decisions are going to be rushed. Same in poker. If you go in there and you have two hours to play, you're going to start playing bad hands just because, what, you want to get out of the game. So I love the analogy, man. That's, that's real good right there. That's, that's good. I'm glad you spotted that. Yeah, that's a way to bring it back in there. Juan, this dude is straight. I'm telling you, man, there's no way you're Latino, man. So the thing is, is that you, you like, you're absolutely right, man. A lot like it's like agents give theirself a deadline. Like if I don't do this by this time, then I failed. Or if I don't sell 20 properties in my first year, or if I don't sell something in the first six months and it's like, why are you putting these limitations on yourself? You know how much effort it's going to take to get to your first deal? You know, that's the problem. You know, people are trying to say, I'm going to put this much effort in and then this is what's going to happen. No, you're not the, the God of how much effort you have to put in to get a certain result. You have no idea. If you're not where you want to be, it's because you haven't put enough work in yet. You know, welcome to the club, man. Go do more. You know, go, you haven't even tipped the iceberg for how much work you got to put in to do that. You know what I mean? I think at the end of the day, the amount that an agent puts in is exactly what they're going to get back, not short term, but long term. All these calls that you're making right now, Casey, over the next two, three, four months, you may not even see an ROI for a year. But it's all good because you're still going to be here two years from now, you know? For the other agent, when he starts getting the calls coming in, heck, he already went out there, got a new job. So it makes a huge difference. It makes every difference in the world. Yeah. Cool, man. And this was a great conversation, man. Casey, thanks for coming on and sharing, man. It was really insightful and inspiring to hear how far you come in just a really short time. I'm looking forward to seeing kind of where you take it from here because I know you're going to do really big things, man. I could just see it, see it in you and what you've done and all that good stuff. So it's super cool, man. I'll spend some time with you today. Definitely. Thank you guys very much for having me. Appreciate it. Casey, where can everyone find you? Just reach out if you have any questions. Instagram, my personal page is Casey Stopa, C-A-S-E-Y-S-T-O-P-A and then Stopa Realty Group is my business page. Stopa Realty, OK? Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. And guys, if you're listening to this on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, one of those podcast channels, go to iTunes and give us a five star review. If you're on YouTube, go ahead and click Subscribe. Hit the like button, show Casey some love here. Comment below. Let us know what market you're in and how long you've been selling it. What's going on with you and what we can do to help you? And you can always find me on Instagram. I answer all the DMs there. I'm Ricky Karuth. I've got Juan Carlos B with me here. And we're out. We'll talk to you guys soon. We're out. Take care.