 So it's kind of a combination of having something that's unique to yourself, engaging with people, being consistent, using those hashtags. And the other thing that I found is that it's really important to be authentic and make sure it's not all about real estate. What's up, everybody? Ricky Caruthier, welcome back to another episode of Road to 10,000. I've got my guy Juan Carlos Bedadichi. What up, dude? Come on, you've got to get it right. It's Baranichi. Come on. I thought the double Rs sounded like a D. Well, actually, you're supposed to roll the Rs. OK, which sounds like a D. Like a D? Yeah, about that. Yeah, right? Close enough. Let's get to it. How are you, Tim, bro? Good, man. There's a lot of exciting stuff happening. You heard about Elon Musk accepting Bitcoin. That's pretty cool stuff, right? Oh, yeah, dude. Yeah, they bought 1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and jumped up 12%. I sold all my dodge coin two days ago. I'm pissed. It went up? It went up to 8 cents. I bought it at 6. I couldn't deal with the volatility. The thing would drop 20% go up 50% the next day. I kept looking at it every 10 seconds. I had to get out. That's almost like a game stop. Yeah, it's crazy what's happening. I feel like there's this whole get rich, quick energy going out into the air, you know? Yeah, yeah, which means what goes up must come down kind of thing. I'm not getting involved. I've got Bitcoin. I have a lot of Bitcoin, but I'm in it long term. You know what I mean? You got to hold that thing five, 10 years, see where it goes. Yeah. So first off, congrats to Tampa Bay, huh? Absolutely. Tom Brady does it again. Dude, can you believe it? Dude, it comes from the Patriots to basically a no-namer. It's like that was a Super Bowl first year. First year. I was rooting for him the whole time, but you know what's crazy? In the actual game, you see how laser focused the guy is when he's up 21 points. It's like he was losing the whole time. Yeah, I was just amazed that he leaves the Patriots. The Patriots don't even make the playoffs. And he goes and wins the Super Bowl. It's wild. Nice. Next level. That was one of the biggest beatdowns in Super Bowl history I've ever seen. Yup. Not even close. I thought that Kansas City was going to win. You know, like from the beginning, before the game started, I was like, I want Tampa Bay to win, but, you know, but Kansas City, you know, I don't know. I don't know how they have their number. Listen, when he gets into the zone, and I'm speaking about Tom Brady, you can't stop him. So there's a lot of stuff that we see. It's very similar to the Michael Jordan's of the world and stuff like that. When someone gets dialed in and they just know that they're going after it, there's no stopping them, man. It's crazy. He's the go, bro. He's the go. Seven Super Bowl reams. Congrats to the guy, man. That's it, man. And listen, let's talk some real estate. The guy just snatched up a nice piece of land in Miami. I heard he has a really nice real estate portfolio. So he's doing. Ready? He's winning on both sides. Yeah, he's doing really good. I'm sure he can buy whatever he wants. Absolutely. So is it true? Like I want to know, like I've looked around and tried to figure it out. I've tried to like look for stuff. What is the deal with Grant Cardone? So I'll put it this way. I heard about this last night. I looked at one of his stories and he's advertising that his wife, Elena, is getting her real estate license. Coincidentally, 24 or 48 hours before that, he's speaking with Glen Samford, the founder of EXP. And they're talking about how they're gonna 10x EXP and they're gonna collaborate in some sort of joint venture. So the way I see it is, heck, if Grant and Elena come on board with their following and what they've built and now they start pushing EXP, who knows how big this thing is gonna get? Because now it's almost like EXP is going mainstream. Everyone's hearing about it. It's no longer the new kid on the block. And there's a lot of hype around it. So I think. You think Grant will get his real estate license? I know Elena's getting it. So who knows if they build everything under her or? There's definitely real estate license. I have no idea. That's a good question. Yeah, see, that's what I can't figure out. Like, what is the real story behind it? Like all these rumors and stuff. Who knows if he's just getting in for the hype? Maybe he just wants to take advantage of the network that Glen's built. But I don't know. I think when I watched the interview for a second, it seemed like he, I don't know. There was like a sparkle in his eye towards Glen, you know? Like he was like, you know, it seemed like he was kind of nervous to talk to him, you know what I'm saying? Let's say what Glen's built is pretty cool. And he has a vision. And when you come across someone like that, who has a worldwide vision to disrupt the entire industry, who knows? He's trying to get close. He's like, I want to buy these cocktails. Yeah, so we'll see where that takes. But that being said, why don't we get into the session, man? I think we have a really special guest and we have a lot we can learn from her. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. We do have a very special guest, Rebecca. Rebecca, come on out. Hey, how are you guys? We're good. We're good. How about you? I am good. Trying to stay warm up here at Cleveland and do as it's been brutal the past week or so. It's gotten pretty cold. What's brutal to you? Because brutal to someone in Florida is 40 degrees. Over here in New York to May, like 40 degrees, I'm having fun. I'm going out to the beach. What's your definition of brutal? 40, I'm good with 40. I mean, it's supposed to get to like single digits here. I mean, it is bitter cold. But that's Cleveland for you. Our weather, one day, could be 80 and sunny. And the next day, it could be like 20 degrees. You just kind of have, you can never put a certain closet away. You've got to have all four closets where the season's out. So you've got to be ready to go. So. Yeah, yeah. I'm in Alabama and they say, if you don't like the weather, just wait till tomorrow. Because it literally changes. Like you said, it'll be so cold, so hot the next day. It's like 60 right now. And you know, it's cold for you guys. Is that like a little breezy? A little breezy, yeah. Low 50. I'd be in a tank top outside tanning. That's what I'm going to do. I would be in short sleeves hanging out. Anything in the 60s is fine. I'll go jogging and stuff. If this low 50s, I'm done, you know. I'm huddling up by the fire, cold up under my blanket and stuff. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's so cold there. So Rebecca, give us the rundown. Tell the audience who you are, what you do, and why you're experiencing so much success so fast. Yeah. So I am in the Cleveland, Ohio, Northeast Ohio market. I've been in real estate just over five and a half years, which it doesn't seem like five and a half years. It feels like the time has just flown by. Got my license in summer of 2015. I run a top producing team here in Cleveland, the Rebecca Donnelly team with an independent brokerage, McDowell Homes Real Estate Services. We're in the top 5% of realtors here in Northeast Ohio. I was honored in Realtor Magazine, 30 under 30 class of 2019. Currently serving as president-elect of the Lake and Jogger Area Association of Realtors. I serve in leadership on the local, state, and national level to have for the past couple of years. And as I shared with you guys, I recently published my first book, which I'm really excited about. It's called Think Bigger. It's your time step into leadership. It's on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. Really, really excited about that one. So a little bit of... Yeah, a hundred percent. Let's see that cover again. Here it is. Here's the cover. Bigger, right? What's the little subtitle at the top? It's your time step into leadership. Nice, nice. Awesome stuff. So what inspired you to write the book? What's the deal? Yeah, so I never saw any of this path in my future at all. I went to college to be a high school math teacher. I'm a total math nerd. I love calculus. That was my thing. My senior year of college, I had basically a breakdown, and I realized that was just not meant for me. So after college, I worked a couple of jobs, and my mom actually suggested I get into real estate when I was going through a funk of not working at all. I took a couple months off to just figure out what the hell I was supposed to do, and my mom was like, why don't you think about real estate? And here's me who'd watched maybe a couple of episodes of House Hunters, and I'm like, oh yeah, okay, sure. I couldn't even tell you the difference between a colonial and a ranch at the time. I was 24, and I was never the type of person to go the extra mile for anything. I was kind of always a follower. In fact, my story opens, my book opens with a story about me getting suspended in the seventh grade. My principal referred to me as a follower, and so it kind of leads into this story of how unexpected this journey and the leadership is slash was for me. So I stepped up in a leadership. I was honored on the board of directors for my local board. I was doing all these different things. And then when I got selected for Realtor Magazine 30 under 30, I was like, damn, this was a huge goal of mine that was so far out of reach that I was like, if I can do this, anybody can do anything that they possibly want, and you have to leave all the doors open. I own a speaking consulting company now, and when I was in college, I don't even know how I passed public speaking course because I was so terrified of being in front of 20 people in my class. So it's kind of this big unexpected, but incredible journey into leadership and just stepping up and owning your goals and doing whatever the hell you want and not being stopped by anyone, whether it's the haters or your own mind. So that really inspired me to just share that story with the world. Nice, nice. So just more of a wanna give back kind of thing and share your experience and inspire others to, you know, chase their dreams kind of deal and think bigger. Yeah, yeah, that's the goal, you know, I had one goal when I sat down to write this book, it took me almost two years to write it, which was certainly not the plan. In the middle of writing it, my life took a different turn than I had thought. I got divorced, I moved, and so that, you know, obviously put the book kind of on the back burner for a while. So it took me a while to pick it back up and revisit. And when I revisited the book at that time, I had a different mindset than when I had picked up the book to write first, you know, and I had gone through this really crazy life alteration and experience. There's a story in my book, I'm not gonna share too many details cause I want people to read it, but there's a story about my team basically, two thirds of my team up and leaving at one time. And it was about a month before I decided to leave my marriage. So I was in a very, very low point. And I wrote the book with one goal and that was to inspire at least one person. If I could inspire at least one person with my story and stepping up to do things that they never thought they were able or capable of doing, then I'll have hit the goal that I spent all this time and energy and sleepless nights writing the book. So being able to have done that over and over is pretty cool. Yeah, so how long was it between the time that you started writing it and then stopped and then how long, how much time went by before you picked it back up? Yeah, so I started writing it in early spring of 2019. Okay. And I wrote a little bit of it. I already had the title picked out from day one, which is rare for authors. They're usually write the whole book and then come up with the title. I already had the title from day one and I never changed it, which is pretty cool looking back. But I wrote a little bit of it and then after maybe like two months of writing a little bit, it was kind of like an outline slash thoughts slash, paragraphs, just a jumbo of different things. I took a break probably between May to December. It was a long break and I didn't pick the book back up until December of 2019 when I had already left the marriage. I had moved into my new place. I revisited the book for a little bit and then COVID happens. And I'm like, okay, this is the perfect time for me to finish my book because we're in a global pandemic, so nobody's gonna be buying real estate. Little did I know that it was the busiest time ever. I was busy out of my mind. So I had no time to write the book. And then summer of last year came and I was like, all right, girlfriend, it's time for you to finish this book, get it done. So every single day I put time aside to just write. I had a couple of nights that I hold all nighters, which I do not recommend after you graduate college because you will pay for it hard. And then I published the book in the beginning of October last year. Nice, nice. So yeah, I had the same experience with mine, but I started in 2012, right? Published it in 2017, right? I stopped it, threw it away, started over probably 13 times, you know, completely forgot about it for a year or two here and there, and came back to it. And every single time, like you said, every time I came back, it was like a whole completely different book, was completely different. Every time I started over, so the last time I did it, I was like, okay, I'm just gonna finish it this time, whatever it is it is. Even though I know that if I would have stopped and started over, it would have been better, better, better, better. Did you self-publish it? I love that. Yeah, so I did hire someone a good friend of mine, Wayne Salmons, who also published a book, put me in touch with his publisher. And so she, I sent her my final manuscript and she did all the editing and kind of helped me out. It was technically self-published through Amazon. I don't know anything about that and I frankly don't have the time for it. So it was really nice sending it to her and she designed the cover. I had a cover in mind, but she kind of put the whole vision together, which was really, really nice. And the publishing aspect, it's crazy because it was really fast, like really fast between the time I got her my final copy and the time that I was actually able to hold the book in my hand. And I got weirdly emotional during the publishing experience. Like there was one day that I emailed her just having like a breakdown, like, oh my gosh, where is, where are the edits that you, you know, I'm freaking out. And I felt bad, you know, cause I was not expecting to get that emotional, but you know, looking back, it's, I poured every part of my being into this book. I tell some very intimate stories. I cry during a lot of the writing process. So it, you know, it was worth the tears, I guess, but. Wow. Yeah, it was quite the experience, so. Right. Yeah. Well, listen, you accomplished something that for a lot of people, it's something that they put off for five, 10 or 15 years. So I think that's really inspiring. If you could do it all over again, is there anything you do different? Yeah, so I am in the middle of book two now actually, that one will be coming out later this year. You know, honestly, it's, it's interesting looking back at the writing process cause I never, when I sat down to write, I never Googled like, how do you write a book? Cause let me, let me see how other people did it so I can kind of mimic. I just started writing, I wrote down my thoughts, I wrote down words that came to mind, people's names that were important to me, like chapter names, different things like that. I didn't write any of the book in the order that you read it today. I would say with this time around that I'm writing now, honestly, haven't really changed a lot of the writing process. The only major difference that I'm doing this time around versus the last time is shortening the period of time that it takes me to complete the book. I definitely don't want it to take me two years. I don't even want to take me a year. But for me, that worked really well for me just writing things as they come to mind and I have to be in a certain mood to write. So I can't just write all day every day. I have to be in a certain mood where I, it's really hard to explain. And Ricky, I'd be curious if you went through this when you wrote, but I have to be in a certain mindset where the writing is not the same quality. So that would be the only thing. Yeah, 100%, that's a lot of work. Like that's some of the hardest work. I looked back on it and I was like, looking back on it right now, I'm like, I have a lot of great book ideas, tons of great book ideas. And I know exactly how I would lay it out and they would do really well. But man, the work involved for writing a book is ridiculous. So I'm just not interested right this. I've wanted to write a third one and the first two was like so much, I had to let so much out. It was almost like it was therapy. I was like letting all these emotions and thoughts, I had to just get it all out on paper and get it out there. But now it's like, I look at it like, like when you get to the point where there's no more emotions to pour into the paper and it gets to the point where you're just trying to write a book just for the sake of writing another book. You know what I mean? And you're trying to come up with what would be a good marketing title and a good, something that would sell. That's when it's just not fun anymore. And I feel like that's where I would be if I wrote a third book, I'm at a place where it would be more of just doing it just to write a book. And when I wrote the first two books, I wrote them because I wanted to. And it was something that I enjoyed doing. But now it's like, if I do it, it's more like a job, and that takes all the fun out of it. So yeah, you gotta be in a certain mindset. Another thing, I got a 15 month old here at the house now. And I got two dogs and stuff. There's no way. As soon as I got into a good groove, here she comes wanting to get her in my lap or the dogs are barking or somebody's here or so it'd be hard to concentrate. Because ever since the pandemic, I never loved working at home until the pandemic. And then the pandemic made me work at home and now I won't go back to the office. I bought an office building and I will not go there. Like I have employees that work there and stuff, but I just will not go there. I'll drive through and hate to even walk in the door. I've gone through the same thing. I signed a 12 month lease last January and I think I've been in the office a total, probably of 10, 15 times in all of 2020. So it's one of those things where like, I literally don't take advantage of like this week, I was there once, last week, once, week before I didn't even go. And it's five minutes away. But when you're working from the- Do you have employees and stuff that work there? Yeah, one or two employees that work there. But for me, it's just so much more efficient, you know? Dude, I wake up, I have my little space, you know, I get to work, you know what I mean? I don't know, it's just, I feel like I'm almost like living the dream kind of thing, you know, just doing all this for my house. I'm like kind of opposite where I now like crave being back in my office and some of my best writing days, closer, this only happened like right when I was getting ready to actually publish the book and I was finalizing a lot of stuff. I would spend nights until like 2, 3 a.m. at my office, just counting out the writing alone, it was great. And there's just something for me about being there, but there is something to be said about being at home. It depends on the mood honestly, it depends on the day. Like I said, I hated working from the house, hated it. Like I had to be in the office every single day. But the pandemic forced us to enter this weird place and I just kind of got to where I was really comfortable and now I'm like, I'm not going anywhere else. But okay, switching gears a little bit, you know, with you doing the writing and the consulting you said and you're running a team and all this, like how do you do all those things? Like how do you balance everything, still run a real estate business? You know, like how does all that work? How do you like mentally handle, you know, okay, I'm gonna write, you know, a book, I'm gonna, you know, run this team, sell real estate, consult, do speaking gigs and all the stuff that you do. Yeah, so this is one thing I wrote about in my book. It's towards the end about taking personal time because I definitely will be the first to admit that I love to work and I have a hard time putting it down. I enjoy having a very full plate. So for me, there are times where it's hard to put down, but I've realized, I feel like I have a really good work-life balance. I do work a lot, I'll be honest. You know, I definitely am working a lot, but I'm really good about putting it down when I need to and taking that time for myself. But as far as, you know, balancing everything, I'm super goal oriented. So I love writing down my goals monthly, weekly, and then I write like a big list of yearly super goals I call them. And I track them every single day. I'm doing different activities throughout my schedule to make sure that I'm on track for those goals. So it's definitely the key to handling all of it aside from massive amounts of coffee, which if you know me or follow me on Instagram, you know that I am a major coffee junkie. In fact, I've got one right here. I drink about four to five a day. Four to five a day? Yes. What happens if you go one day without it? I actually get headaches. Oh my goodness. I stopped drinking coffee because I was on four to five a day during my college years, and I realized that I couldn't function without it. So I cut it out cold turkey. I haven't had coffee in like three years. Really? Wow, yeah. I don't even touch it. Right. Wow. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's the way to go. One day I'm probably going to get there. I'm not there. Don't talk to the near future. Right now your girl is not ready to give it up. But no, I stay very organized and I think that's one thing that really helps me. So every day I'm doing different things in each kind of bucket, if you will, my team and my personal sales, my speaking business, writing, leadership fills a lot of my plate up. So I make sure to stay organized and I also create could, should, and must lists, which really helped me prioritize what I should be doing, what I could be doing, what I must be doing. So I'm staying on track with my goals. I have an organized schedule and I'm able to kind of balance everything. And it works for me. I mean, everyone's completely different. Like I said, I just like having a very full plate. So do you have a notebook? Like what do you, when you say you say organize, what do you, how do you keep your buckets? Like what do you imagine this? And like you just keep it all in your head. You write it down. Is there a special magical app? What's going on? Yeah, so I have a written planner. I don't keep any of my calendar in my phone. I write everything down every single day. It's in my bag. I don't go anywhere without my planner. And then every week, my goal sheet, I have a small goal sheet in my planner that follows me. So I can constantly see the goals that I'm working towards. They're always looking at me every single day. I also keep a big like whiteboard type of calendar on my wall so that I can see every day what I have going on that day, schedule-wise. And then in my computer, I do keep this electronically. My could, should, and must list. I do keep those very organized. So, and it's interesting because I'll be the first to admit, I'm not, overall, if I didn't have these systems in place, I'm not a very organized person. I'll be the first to admit that. I don't know if it's the Virgo in me or if it's just who I am, but I'm just not that organized. So if I don't have these systems in place and I'm not actively using them, it's gonna be a shit show. Like, it's just gonna be a nightmare. So I have to keep things very organized and they really do help me, but I'm that person that's gotta write things down. I've got a lot of books and all that. Yeah, me too, me too. I mean, like, here's my to-do list for today. You know what I mean? Like, this is what I'm doing all day. So, okay, tell me about your real estate business. You know, like, how is that structured? You know, how do you get leads? What do you do for your clients? How do you build your brand? You know, how have you built such a successful real estate business? Yeah, so when I got started in the business, I was 24. I had no connections in Cleveland. I had no family in real estate. I'm like, one of the only people you'll ever meet that didn't know three realtors already getting into the business. So I was going to these appointments up against realtors that were, you know, 10, 20 plus years older than I. They had a huge book of business behind them. They had connections. I had to just sell myself. And so my first year was a pretty successful year. I was working the year at my company. And, but I was still, you know, trying to figure out how to get business. I had door knocked, I had cold called. I did all the things that, you know, a new realtor should be doing. All realtors should be doing. And then I started seeing realtors on Instagram marketing their businesses. And I was like, Oh, this looks cool. And I really didn't think of it as a potential source of business or way to build my brand. I kind of looked at it as a hobby. I love real estate, I love photography. So it was kind of the, you know, win-win. I know technology, no social media. So I hopped on, I created a real estate account. And I started posting regularly, started sharing my life and all my coffees and all the different things I was up to. And people started following me really quickly, started messaging me, making connections with realtors all over the country. And that was kind of it. Instagram, I owe all of my brand to Instagram to be honest with you. That's where I've made all my connections. A majority of my business comes from Instagram. And now I'm fortunate enough that another majority is between referrals and Instagram. So I get a ton of referral business, which I'm so grateful for and social media. That's the name of the game for me, so. Okay, so walk me through this. So you, with Instagram, you just started posting stuff. People just magically started reaching out to you about real estate. So I started doing a mix of different things. The first thing I did was what you tell every brand new realtor to do when they get in the business, write out your sphere and contact all of them, right? It's like the golden rule that you give every new realtor. So I kind of did that, but on Instagram, I connected with all of my friends, everybody that I knew, I followed all of them. I followed all the local businesses around here, all the Cleveland sports athletes and everybody, bloggers, influencers, developers, anybody in Cleveland that I knew or that I knew that I wanted to know, I followed. I posted consistently. I engaged with people constantly. I would comment on their posts. I would like their posts. I would direct message them and introduce myself. It was kind of like a mix of different things that I was doing every single day. And at the time I was really busy, but I was just selling some houses. I didn't have nearly anything that I'm doing today. So I had more time to really spend a lot of it on Instagram and build those connections. And people started messaging me, started connecting with me. And it was that consistency every single day of making sure that my face was in front of them. And over time I was able to build a brand uniquely from that. So it's really about that consistency, but also staying in touch with people regularly, sharing what you're up to, the whole nine. So Instagram consistent posting and then people message you. Is that what happened? People start following you. How do they find you? I mean, because that may, this is like, Instagram there's not a lot of organic reach and there's not a lot of, nobody really like goes viral on Instagram, like you can some of these other platforms. Like, did you were using certain hashtags or how did, I'm just trying to really bring some value to the listeners today on what exactly is like a secret there to actually building a business on Instagram. You know, I actually will kind of disagree with you a little bit on that, that there is a way to, if you start really connecting with people, the great thing with Instagram and hashtags is definitely one of those things that I would put real estate or real tour, Cleveland real tour on all my posts still do. That is one of the top ways that I was able to connect with so many people. But with Instagram, the great thing is when you start following a lot of people, you then have those suggested followers and your name is gonna consistently come up. I started following realtors in all cities around the country so that I could connect with them. I would connect with their followers. So it was kind of like this domino effect of just connecting with a lot of people and always commenting. So if my name was always on their posts, like great listing or happy birthday or whatever I'm saying, other people are seeing it. So it can't, there is a way for it to go, I guess viral, if you will. And that's kind of what happened. And you have to give it time. None of it happens overnight. I've had this account since summer of 2016. So it's one of those things that you have to give it time. You have to build with it. You have to be consistent and patient. And I really didn't start getting business from the account until about a year after I started it. So it did take me some time. But I do think if you're constantly connecting with people following them, you're gonna show up as a suggested follower. You put the hashtags on there. People are gonna search by your name. And I had also started sharing my love for coffee. This is a funny story because it was total accidental, but I love coffee so much that a lot of my posts just happen to have coffee in it. And so people started noticing that I was this Cleveland realtor who loves her coffee and these realtors in other cities that I had never spoken with one day in my life tagged me in their posts with coffee and say, I'm thinking about you as I'm here working with my coffee. And so it's a great way to get your name out there and build that brand to where now all those people are gonna think of me if they ever have a referral in Cleveland. So it's kind of a combination of having something that's unique to yourself, engaging with people, being consistent, using those hashtags. And the other thing that I found is that it's really important to be authentic and make sure it's not all about real estate. People get so bored with houses and houses and kitchens and bathrooms. And they wanna see what you're up to not just what they expect you to be doing. So I get more engagement on my posts that aren't just house real estate related than I do on the ones. And that's why if you go to my account now, you'll notice I don't really post a lot of houses. You don't really see a lot of my sales because that's not what people are gonna connect with. They know I'm a realtor, they expect me to be selling houses. The key is for them to trust me behind the screen so that they feel comfortable enough reaching out to me for whatever they need, whether it's a real estate related thing or they just wanna have a conversation with me. That's the key is really being authentic too. Something I notice is I see a lot of new agents get their license or even experienced agents come on Instagram for the first time. And the first thing they do is their first 25 posts are just sold. Or it's just something where it's they're advertising open houses, they're new listing and they have those generic cookie cutter templates that say happy holidays and things like that. And I have to literally pull them aside and be like, listen, people wanna see you. They don't wanna see a robotic page that looks like it's been set up on Hootsuite and you're just automatically posting it every day. There has to be some personality to it. So I actually have your Instagram right here. You mind if I share my screen and that way everyone can take a look at how your thing is set up. Yeah, absolutely, go for it. So right here, the first thing that I noticed and I always tell this to realtors is your bio, your head shot and your name is the first thing that's gonna pop out. Prior to people even looking at your content, they're going straight to your name to find out who you are. I see people with like real estate agents, their names are like CH2465. And I'm like, how do you expect anyone to find you with that sense? The second thing, their head shot isn't even that. It could be their company logo or it could be a house. And once again, it just goes back to making things personal. So I see exactly where you're referring in terms of keeping it personal. It's a lot of lifestyle, a lot of coffee. I told you, I was lying. Yeah, and you kind of start building your own brand and that's how people remember you. It's by what you post and what you're always talking about. Absolutely, and I was one of those agents that it was starting out just straight up houses. Like that was me when I first started. And I realized that, you know, people, okay, they wanna see that you're selling houses. That's definitely important. But it doesn't make me unique to the 8,000 other realtors that are in my market. And it was interesting because an agent, she's about an hour away from me. She called me up to hire me to help her build her real estate business on Instagram. And she's like a $50 million producer. So she's certainly, if anything, I'm gonna call her for some help, right? She's killing it. But none of her business comes from social media. So she wanted to expand and kind of do that. So she hired me to help her on social. And I said, okay, send me your Instagram. Let me check it out. I'm gonna, well, then need, and I'll give you some feedback and go from there. So she sends me and I looked at him like, I don't even know what you look like based on this profile. I can't even put a face to your name. Why should I call you? All I see are our houses. And I get it, you're killing it and you're sharing that. But if I can't even put a face to your name, how am I supposed to connect with you? Why should I reach out to you when I can see somebody else that I have a connection with? And so that's why that lifestyle and sharing more personal things about yourself is really, really important with kind of sprinkling in a little bit of the houses, the listings, things like that. So yeah, couldn't agree with you more. So why don't we talk about what do you think the best route for a new agent to take would be if they were to get started in real estate yesterday? Would it be to start building out their social media to start doing a lot of engagement and posts and things like that? Would it be to get more involved on what Ricky preaches, which is building relationships through the phone and circle prospecting? Or would you just take a completely different route in general? What would you do if you had to just start your business from day one and you wanted to scale it from A to B as fast as possible? Yeah, so the first thing I think about if I could go back to my day one where I was just absolutely clueless, I mean, literally had not a clue what I was doing, I would have started on social on day one. That's the one thing that I will say. And from there, there's so many things I would change if I went back and building relationships is by far the second one next to social for me because I was that agent that was literally waiting for my phone to ring as soon as I posted, hey guys, I got my real estate license and here I am literally waiting for my phone to ring. And it was pretty silent, nobody was calling me. And so I had to go out there and if I could go back and build those relationships with people 100%, I would do that. And really being active on social, the beautiful thing with social media is that it is totally free. I mean, your return on investment is ridiculous if you use it right the right way because you don't pay for anything. I mean, some people do Facebook ads which I would love to learn more about because I have only done a couple and I know some realtors that do really, really well on there. But if you get on Instagram or just on Facebook in general, you don't pay for it, being active on there, making connections with people, reaching out to realtors all over the country, seeing what they're doing, taking a little bit of what everyone's doing and kind of doing your own thing but seeing what works for other people too is really important. I think it's the combination of both of them. I mean, if I could go back, I had a really good first year but I would have had a kick ass first year if I had implemented those two things. So. Yeah, very nice, very nice. Yeah, I mean, I'm totally in agreement. I mean, I've got a real estate business and then I've got a coaching business and it's kind of weird because the coaching business is basically all social media and the real estate businesses is all voice to voice, word of mouth, email marketing. So it's like I handle each business as a different like marketing arm, you know? Yeah. But yeah, everything that I learned in the coaching business with social media, I mean, it's my social media, my influencer business is a multi seven figure business and the power of it, like you say, is so amazing and it's so cool that you could, it doesn't take, it's free. You don't, it takes very little effort to connect with so many people. You know, like this wasn't around when I started, right? I started selling real estate in 2002, okay? I don't know what you guys were doing in 2002, but I was- I wasn't diapers, Ricky, I don't even know what I was doing. I was getting my license and jumping off a roof and hopping into an office and there wasn't a social media or anything, you know what I mean? So I've come from like an old school, I guess. At this point, it's kind of weird. Like when I started, there was like no Zillow, no Facebook, no like nothing, none of this stuff existed at all. An app didn't even exist. Like there was not even an app out there. Like Zoom wasn't here. We couldn't do a call like this, like none of this stuff existed. So it's really strange for me to be honest with you. So watch how the industry and the world has evolved since then so quickly and all of these tools that are available to people. And you know, most new agents, they don't even realize how good they have it or take advantage of what's right in front of them. You know, they're looking for something else. You know, they're like constantly looking for something else that's better or something. It's like, man, this is the best. So, you know, I totally agree. I was gonna bring it up, Ricky. You had it so hard compared to how we have it now. Ridiculous. Like if you're looking to build a real estate business and you always wanna build relations with other realtors, it's as easy as, I'll just share my screen again. You log on to Instagram and you just type in hashtag real estate agent. There are 10 million posts. Good God. 10 million. All you have to do is click any one of those posts and it's guaranteed whoever's hashtagging that is probably a realtor. What do you do? You reach out to them, you DM them, you build a relationship with them and long-term, if you stay in touch with them, they will eventually send you a referral. It's that easy. I don't know why people overcomplicate it. I guess it's trying to find an easier solution or maybe it's too easy that it seems even, like it won't work, but it's right in front of you. There it is. There's the word they're worrying about, work. Well, you know what? I think it is. This is the conversation I've had with a lot of realtors where they try it on Instagram. They give it a couple of days, maybe a week and they don't have a lead yet. So they're like, okay, well it didn't work and I'm done with it. And I'm like, you have to give it time. You have to be consistent with it. You're not just gonna start getting leads overnight just because you created an account and like a couple of photos. Like you have to give it some time and the proof is in the pudding. I mean, I have had this account for, you know, almost five years, which is crazy and the amount of business that I've gotten from it. Like I almost feel guilt that I haven't paid for it because if you really put in that time and you reach out to all those people, that's the great thing about using hashtags. You can be seen anywhere in the world from eyes that don't even know you exist and build those connections. And you never know when there are people, you'd be surprised how many people are moving to Cleveland. Let me tell you, I've had like in December, I had like three from New York, like Chicago. I mean, realtors that need a referral. And so you have to give it time and that's where I've seen a lot of realtors fail is that they expect that overnight success. If you will, they don't give it enough time. They're not consistent with it and they're not patient with it. I like to say it's like losing weight. It's like weight loss. You have to diet, you have to exercise, you have to give it time. If you go to the gym for 20 minutes one day, you're not gonna drop 20 pounds by the next day. It just doesn't work like that. And it's the same thing with this, but I agree with you that it's a tool that is right in front of you that is so hands on and easy to use and millions and millions and millions of people are on there. And so it's up to you to make the most of that because it's right at your fingertips. And there's a lot that people don't understand that with that consistency, it's working in terms of your getting progress. And you may be seeing 1% of progress every single month, but there's a book that talks about that. I think it's called The Slight Edge where the author goes over how if you compound a little tiny bit of progress and you take it over five, 10 or 15 years, the results are huge. The Instagram me and my partner built took us four years. We posted one to two times a day, every single day for four years. We use specific hashtags. We had a network with the top pages on Instagram. The people don't see that there are hours and hours and hours of time and work put into this. And if we stopped after six months, we'd probably be at like 800 followers. And we stopped after two years, we'd probably just have gotten over like 10K, but that's the crazy part. Once you hit the tipping point and once you break past 10K or 20K or 50K, everything's exponential as far as the growth goes. Totally. Love that. 100%, 100%. Well, thanks for coming on today. Tell everybody where they can find your book, where he showed your Instagram page there, but you can shout that out or anywhere else and more people to follow you and reach out and ask questions and send you referrals and all that good stuff. Yeah, so anyone can reach out anytime. I live on Instagram. So if you want to follow me on there, DM me on there, it's RebeccaDonatelli.realTour. If you want to pick up the book, it's on Amazon, it's an e-book and a paperback version. It's called Think Figure. Or you can shoot me an email, RebeccaDonatelli at MCDHome.com. Sweet, sweet, sweet. Well, again, we appreciate you coming on and sharing everything with us. And we hope, we hope you nothing but future success and to continue crushing it and all that good stuff. And any last words, Juan or Rebecca? Rebecca, let's just find out what is your 10-year goal? I'm just curious to find out with all the success you're having, what's the one thing you're looking to accomplish long term? Wow, that's a loaded question. 10-year goal. Right now, I'm focused on building a monster team to be honest with you. That is top priority for me. I love being in leadership because I love helping other agents, building them, growing them. I love seeing their success. That brings me a lot of gratitude and joy. So for me, I would probably have to say, building a monster team, I have some other really big goals that I'm not quite ready to share publicly yet. So you guys just have to stay tuned and wait for those. Love it, awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun. I really appreciate you guys bringing me on. Yeah, enjoy it, enjoy it. You have a good day. All right, you guys too. Thanks.