984: From $1.7 Million in Annual Sales to $100 Million+ with Luke Newcomer

Aaron Amuchastegui  00:32

Real Estate Rockstars This is Aaron Amuchastegui. Hey, welcome back Today you guys get to be a part of, I’d say a fireside chat, but there’s no fireside nearby. So Luke newcomer, he’s an agent out in St. Augustine, Florida, he reached out to me on instagram really just a few weeks ago, to let me know that he was a fan of the podcast and listen for a year, you know, some of his favorite episodes. And I thought, you know, let’s just he said, Is there a time we can get to know each other better. I said, let’s do a zoom. Let’s get to know each other better. But let’s record it. Let’s put it out on the podcast cuz I’m sure whatever we talk about will help some people out there as well. So Luke, thanks for coming on, man.

Luke Newcomer  01:06

Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, it’s really cool that we’re, we’re speaking I had zero expectations, except for the fact that I just wanted to send a message of gratitude. And the fact that we’re chatting right now is, is pretty incredible. So I’m looking forward to kind of dive in into this and seeing where the conversation goes.

Aaron Amuchastegui  01:24

That’s probably the first life lesson life hack out there for people is like leading with gratitude with zero expectations. So the sending a message zero expectations, hey, this was great. And then me replying back saying, hey, let’s get you on the podcast was not that part was not expected. But so much of life for me is it’s just that lead with gratitude with zero expectations. tell people what you appreciate, offer to add value somehow, and you’d be amazed at how much people want to give back regardless of who’s out there. Right.

Luke Newcomer  01:55

So I’m gonna add to that 1,000%. But I just started reading the four hour workweek. Yeah, that book. Yep, absolutely. takeaways was He’s like, try to reach out to like, high profile people, right, or someone that you’d never think you’d have the chance to talk to. And he says he sends letters to like, the president Jennifer Lopez, whoever, right? So for me, you know, you know, pat yourself on the back, I guess. But you know, you’re like saying, like, man, I would probably never talk to this guy if it wasn’t for social media. So once a week, I will shoot a DM out to somebody that I think I’d never had the chance to talk to. And sometimes I get no response. Sometimes I get a response. But it’s never to like, gain anything other than to be like, man, keep it up. It’s really cool. So what you guys put out for new and seasoned experienced agents is totally awesome.

Aaron Amuchastegui  02:41

Yeah, I remember that part. In the book, that book was life changing for me. And he talked about there was like a contest in a class or something. And it was like, they told that all the students, whoever can reach out and meet the most famous person, like get a phone call, or have a conversation with them is gonna win. It’s like all expenses paid trip to somewhere, it was some sort of big prize. And the first year, nobody actually got the prize, because they all thought, I’ll never be able to find the person. So nobody tried. And then no one got it. So the next year, a bunch of people tried. And they and I forget the names of the people that they had conversations, but it was like presidents and like really famous people. And they realized just by reaching out, they were able to do that

Luke Newcomer  03:24

you got to shoot your shot. It’s super relative to real estate in general. So anyway, not to get a lot

Aaron Amuchastegui  03:30

of a lot of my closest friends or people whose books I had read who I saw speaking somewhere and was like, man, and I lead with gratitude, a lot like what you’re talking about now. And now. They’re the people that that I share holidays with and things like that out in Austin. And so it is, it’s really funny part of my vision board is people out there going I want to be friends with that person. And the end, it materializes and it manifests out there. So the hacker hacker the way to make things happen. Totally we haven’t talked about this. This topic hasn’t come up on our podcast before but it is such a good one. out there’s a hopefully people out there that are listening, like pick somebody out there or do once a week like Luke’s doing, you know, find somebody send a message lead with gratitude, you’d be shocked at these people that are super high level are also just humans. They also like talking to people and you’ll be amazed at that who rushes back. So when did you get into real estate?

Luke Newcomer  04:22

Sure. So so 30 years old turn 30 in January, and this is our fifth year, my wife, Sandy her and I own and run the team on the brokerage run the team. This is our fifth full year in business. But I grew up you know, my dad had rental properties. I helped him flip some properties. And you know, before getting into real estate, we actually were going to open a restaurant my wife and I and we got you know, we had the place that we were about to lease we had the business, the menu, all that fun stuff when we got a life changing car accident that had put my wife out of business or out of work and laid up for about a year. It gives me goosebumps on story. And I, you know, I was working part time and we kind of burned through our savings. And we really had to reevaluate what we wanted to do. And as you know, HGTV HGTV is not real estate real life at all. But we’re watching a lot of the projects and we’re kind of like, let’s, let’s kind of dive into this and start selling real estate. And one thing led to another, we got connected with the right people that were very coachable. And we took our business from her and I selling 1.7 million our first year, to going to now we’re going to sell over $100 million in real estate this year, in our fifth full year. Wow, she just had a life changing car accident. We’re like, what, how can we get ourselves out of this, and then you were watching, you kind of came across real estate.

Aaron Amuchastegui  05:46

So when you came across real estate was that on the investment side, like the like the flip this house type?

Luke Newcomer  05:51

Flip the chip and Joanna Gaines stuff. This is the stuff that’s easy to watch, and you know, see it go, you know, take a house and grow it in 30 minutes, but it takes much longer. But, you know, we were always interested in flipping and we have flipped a property before. We’ve been interested in investing. We’ve got quite a few doors. In fact, we’re closing on a quad Plex at the end of this week. And you know, but we are fully heavily sales and I’m very much in production with my team.

Aaron Amuchastegui  06:16

Yeah. What’s your family like? You don’t have any kids?

Luke Newcomer  06:19

No kids, we’ve got a dog. She was actually pacing around Lily. She’s a golden retriever. And then we’ve got a cat that’s just old and grumpy. But um, no kids on the horizon. My brother in law and sister live up the street. So they’ve got three little ones between three and a newborn in July. So we keep busy with them.

Aaron Amuchastegui  06:35

I mean, you’ll have plenty of time to borrow kids and then I’m sure your dog will try to to jump into the view here. Where were you born?

Luke Newcomer  06:41

So I was born and raised in Lancaster County, like County, Pennsylvania, ended up going to Flagler College down here in St. Augustine, my wife Sadie, she’s born and raised in Manhattan, which is crazy. Like one of the few people I know that was born and raised in the city. Her mom still lives there. And we both met Flagler College, which is in St. Augustine and the oldest city in America, beautiful place. And we just never left kind of built our roots here, build our business, have an awesome community, great friends great business. So

Aaron Amuchastegui  07:10

is it a college town? I mean, I’ve heard a lot about St. Augustine. Yes, you should google it. In fact, I’ll

Luke Newcomer  07:15

send you like our YouTube links. We’ve got all these like different neighborhood features, which we can dive into which is awesome for lead generating, but um, it is a college town. They’ve got it. They’ve got a physical therapy University, which is St. Augustine University. They’ve got a community college, St. Johns County Community College and they Flagler College. So the historic district is very much built around Flagler College, which was owned by Henry Flagler was a hotel back in the day. I mean, it had electricity before the White House. I mean, it was some Fuji living way back in the day when they were developing Florida. And since then, they turned it into a college I think in 1967. So the the historic district though, I mean, people come for the architecture, because it’s very Spanish, European, amazing dining and culinary, phenomenal beaches. So there’s, there’s a good mix of college, but also tourism here as well. Your own sense of community built behind it all.

Aaron Amuchastegui  08:08

So when in your process, did you so when you first looked at it as like HGTV you’re going to fix flip this house? When did that transition to becoming agents and really building your real estate team?

Luke Newcomer  08:19

I think we were like, Well, honestly, it’s kind of like everyone that gets into it. I think we were just looking for something new, we had to start figuring out from the ground up, and we’re like, let’s get into real estate. And we didn’t really have any expectation as far as where it was going to take us. And we got linked up at the time ancient city real estate. And I don’t know if you know the name, DJ and Lindsay really big real estate team, well known throughout the country. He’s actually my broker of the newcomer group. But um, you know, they were doing they were building a team, and I just kind of sat there and we had lost so much time after the accident that I just wanted to get ahead, I felt so far behind and I really sat with him. I was like, Look, you know, you’re 10 years in the business, however long it was like, What do I need to do to expedite this process? And, you know, he’s like, you really got to treat it like a business, which was kind of foreign to me, I’m like, well, we’re just gonna sell some houses this and that. So he, you know, helped me get set up. We built our whole business off of online leads, Zillow, Google, Facebook, whatever it was, that’s how I built my business, because I’m not from here. I got in the business when I was 25. So I didn’t have any friends that were looking to buy. I didn’t really have any deep connections. So I built my entire business off of online leads. So I don’t know. I don’t know if that answers your question or not.

Aaron Amuchastegui  09:35

Yeah, no, the 25 years old. You’re new in a college town. Did you have a lot of people that questioned you being too young to be an agent or too new.

Luke Newcomer  09:46

I still get that pushback all the time. And the one thing that I take a lot of pride in is like there’s so many things in this business that you can’t control and there’s all these moving parts. And I just had to outwork the industry, and I took a lot of Time to get very smart about the neighborhoods and areas and zip codes that I wanted to be the best at. And I’ve always been of service, you know what I mean? It’s just like, I don’t know how healthy it is to do forever. But I mean, my first two years, it was like, seven days a week saying yes to everything, bending over backwards, because I didn’t have much value to bring other than that I will outwork everybody and, you know, take service to the next level. And in that process, I’ve been able to kind of put systems in place to, you know, not have to work 24 seven to provide the service that we provide. And now I have the knowledge and the network. And, you know, the connections that have made me the market expert in some of our niche areas. Yeah.

Aaron Amuchastegui  10:44

Real Estate Rockstars. This is Aaron, and would you stay for a quick commercial break. So during 2020 2021, the real estate market completely changed. There’s so much competition in the market, so many people trying to buy and sell houses. But there’s hardly any supply hardly any product, or anyone willing to list their homes, it’s time for every agent out there to become a hybrid agent investor, to be able to reach out directly to homeowners to try to get them to sell or list their house, you’ve got a new website, go to lead propeller calm. And you can set up your own investor buyer website in just minutes, you’ll set up your own URL set up the phone numbers help go through the leads, help reach out to people that aren’t listing their their property currently, and have them fill out a form that says hey, I want to sell my house. And then as an agent, you can go through and make them a hybrid offer, you can tell them, Hey, I think your house would sell for $220,000 on MLS, but I can either write you $180,000 cash offer right now, or I can help you fix it up. And you’ll list it for 220,000 on MLS, these are buyers that are looking for quick cash offers 10s of 1000s are submitting these forms every single day. And they’re skipping the listing process that so many of you guys out there are such good agents, it’s a great opportunity to get that lead and help them maximize sales price for their home. They’re getting go to lead propeller calm and think about signing up for your own investor site. So buyers will start reaching out to you asking you to make an offer on their home. So if you were going to go back and do it different, would you do anything different that first year?

Luke Newcomer  12:20

You know, we started? Probably not, except for maybe managed my expectations up front. And what I mean by that is, I wish I focused more on setting a schedule and boundaries and really sticking to them. Because I think everybody I mean, I’m still heavily in production. And I have avoided that. But when you’re new in the business, and it’s like, you really want to take that Sunday off, right? But you make that one exception, and you don’t tell the buyer that you don’t work Sundays, well, now you’re eight months down, they still haven’t found a house. And it’s like the only day they look at houses is Sundays, and it wrecks the next eight months of your schedule. So I think if I was very disciplined with my schedule, up front, that’s one of the major things I would have changed. Most everything else. I think I wouldn’t change a thing as far as how we brought in customers capitalized on our database, I think I would have leveraged more what our CRM is now we use Boomtown. I wish I took the time to understand Boomtown a little bit better as well, or any CRM for that fact.

Aaron Amuchastegui  13:20

So the how many deals you guys can do this year.

Luke Newcomer  13:22

Okay, so I’m gonna I’m on pace to do 100 deals personally this year, my team is on pace to do 300 deals total. We started the year out with four agents. Now we have 10 agents, including myself. So plus, we have my wife who does all the admin on the backend, we have a full time administrative assistant and a full time transaction coordinator. And we also have an in house videographer and photographer.

Aaron Amuchastegui  13:49

Wow. And what’s the average sales price? Our average sales price was 405,000. Shooting to 100 deals this year, around 405,000. yourself plus your team as a few 100. You’ve got a pretty big team, like your team is like a company all by itself.

Luke Newcomer  14:04

Yes, or no part time agents, everybody. If you want to be at the brokerage, you’ve got to be a part of the team. So we we keep it super simple. And it’s really cool. In fact, everybody that’s been on our team, we have really high retention. And look, we’ve got people that have been with us since day one. And we wouldn’t be here without I mean, every single person on our team, it’s just such an incredible asset. And I hate to use that cliche, like we treat everyone like family. But yeah, I care about everybody’s success just as much as my own.

Aaron Amuchastegui  14:32

What was growing that team like, like and just and mostly like you could, if somebody right now is early on, and they’re like, hey, I want to grow a team. Now you’ve got a high performing team where you have, like you said, admins and transaction coordinators and like in like, photographer videographer, what were the stages of that like and what were the challenges of building a team?

Luke Newcomer  14:53

That’s a really good question. So so it’s so funny because like as an agent when you get started, you’re consumed with the deals, right? Like you’re staying up at night like, Oh my gosh, it’s day four. And the escrow was due yesterday at day three, oh my gosh, once the inspection period up how we’re going to negotiate these little things. And that stuff now is so I don’t even think about it. It’s like clockwork because I know of a transaction coordinator. I mean, I can’t remember the last time a deal truly stressed me out, I lost sleep over it. But then you ask the question, where there’s, you know, maybe people like myself, and I’m still trying to figure it out. But growing and scaling a team is like, our first agent who’s still with us, Zack, I mean, I, I apologize to him, we were so scattered. When we’re getting started. It was just like I had so many leads come in, I’m like, Hey, man, here’s your phone, here’s your laptop, just start talking to these people book appointments. And just, you know, it was like throwing darts up in the air and hoping something would stick. So it was very unorganized. And as we grew, we realize it’s like you need to take time to focus on the business. So we, you know, we’ve got processes in place, we have mentorships, in place for when people get started. Zack who started with us day one, he’s the vice president of sales. Now, he does a lot of training and one on one coaching with the team. So we have onboarding, I guess is what I’d say we have onboarding in place and systems in place. When we bring new people on and training. We record all the videos, we have tutorials, it’s all saved in a drive for the newcomer group that goes from how to talk to online leads, how to talk to open house leads, how to write a contract, it’s all in the drive. And it’s great, because it’s like, the first week for a new agent, they’re going to get one on one time with me, they’re going to sit in front of a computer, they’re going to get one on one time with Zack, they’re going to get another session as far as looking at what our systems are like, after those seven days, it’s game on and then Zack stays on top of them for their first three deals. And then after that you kind of graduate and you’re it’s full throttle,

Aaron Amuchastegui  16:48

and they’ve got their videos to watch. And so they’re really up dead time. They’re first.

Luke Newcomer  16:53

Exactly and I do I do workshops every single Wednesday with the team and if you can come great. If not I record it. We throw it in the drive. So we constantly have sales building seminars within our team as well.

Aaron Amuchastegui  17:04

You’re gonna make them listen to our podcast 1,000%. growth, you’re like you like to watch these last, the 10 most recent Real Estate Rockstars podcasts and then especially the one when Luke came on it.

Luke Newcomer  17:16

Yeah, no, I mean, look, I hope they listened to it. I know, they all listened to podcasts. I think everybody in our team has a very coachable and growing mindset instead of a fixed mindset, which is important. But yeah, I mean, it was very challenging to kind of build it out. And, you know, I’m always willing to take advice from anyone that’s doing more or less than me, that might know something. So I’m never afraid to ask to get

Aaron Amuchastegui  17:40

better. What’s your favorite thing about being a real estate agent.

Luke Newcomer  17:45

So I, I love putting deals together, I love finding solutions to people’s problems. And I think that your income is a true correlation on the problems that you solve. And I’m a musician, I play about five, six instruments, I can’t read a lick of music, and I can improve them and I can get on the stage and play with anybody. And I like that about real estate because it’s just, there are so many moving parts within a transaction from finding the lead to converting that lead to a customer to a lifelong client, then you got to find them that dealer list that property and there’s a million things that you got to figure out from start to finish. So I like all the moving parts. And I like helping people create wealth. I mean, I’m doing it myself, my wife and I are purchasing real estate left and right when we can. And I think the simple answer is I love all the moving parts, because every day is different. Yeah, you got to do the daily things that everybody else is willing to do. So I’m very disciplined with my schedule.

Aaron Amuchastegui  18:45

So what’s your favorite part about having a team like the now that you’ve built out a team?

Luke Newcomer  18:51

I think doing this alone is very lonely. You know, that person that goes out there, and they’re doing the marketing and they’re doing everything, you can’t do everything. I like that you get to do it with a group of people you like, I mean, I just really thoroughly enjoy and love everybody on my team. It’s fun to be in the trenches with them. And you learn from everybody. I mean, one of the process, I’m actually at my house right now, because we just, we bought a commercial property. Back in October, we were in a temporary space. So we moved out of that, and then we’re moving into our new office on Sunday. But um, favorite thing about a team is just you get to celebrate the wins and losses with people and you’re not alone. And I think this industry is a very lonely industry if you try to do it all yourself.

Aaron Amuchastegui  19:33

Yeah. I think that’s that is a great point. Yeah. Before we hit the record, you talked about you like you stumped. You found the podcast right after COVID hit. Yes. And I was telling you too, that was that was the time we really went went all in to try to figure out what value we could add for listeners. Now. One thing is less people a lot. There were a lot less people listening to podcasts, driving in their car, because People weren’t driving and commuting to work as much. But the people that were listening, we’re listening very intently. They were like needing to study. It’s like when COVID hit, it was like, what are we going to do to be okay? Because it was also it was a very stressful time. There are podcasts from you from

Luke Newcomer  20:15

you know, I love Real Estate Rockstars podcast, I love the Tom Ferry podcast, and I love bigger pockets. And you know, there I remember many of yours Oh, come on, I would literally listen to it maybe three times in one day because it was like reading a book that over and again, we pull different little nuggets every time and your podcast, it helps shape my business in different ways, and fixed my mindset a little bit. And I started listening to a lot more podcast during COVID because I’d get up in the morning and walk the dog around the neighborhood and then come back. And while I’m checking the MLS and sending out emails, just I’ve got podcast going non stop. So I’m a I’m a big consumer of it, which is funny. He said, everything really kind of ticked down a little bit. Yeah.

Aaron Amuchastegui  21:00

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Luke Newcomer  24:04

That’s actually an awesome question. I think everything that we did from the time COVID happened has shaped our team into what it is today. So we like literally right before the lockdown. My wife and I were in Barbados on vacation. And when we flew back from Barbados, it was like, definitely a little weird. And then a week later, things really started getting weird. And during that week later, we just told our whole team at the time, which was I think, for agents, that administrative staff and then my wife and I was like, hey, let’s all get out of the office. Let’s all work from home. And we’ll just do zoom meetings in the morning because we religiously calling prospecting nine to 11, Monday through Friday, no matter what myself included. And I was like, let’s just all hop on zoom. We can meet ourselves, like let’s make the calls together, you know, on zoom together, at least we’re still together, that kind of thing. And then a week later everything shuts down. Right people start getting scared to leave the house. Everyone’s buying stuff, you know, buying out the grocery store, my mother in law who was living in Manhattan at the time, which was having some, you know, yeah, a different experience. And it was, we were like, let’s just get down here. We own a duplex across the street from us that we utilize as an Airbnb, we shut that down, we put a long term tenant in the one side, which actually converted from the zillo lead, which, and then we just opened up that space. So my mother in law stayed across the street. And we just, we worked from home, we all work from home, we had our Tuesday meetings, which we had on zoom, we all have like a quick check in. But for me, I would just encourage everyone like look, now’s not the time to sell, now’s the time to follow up on your past customers check in see how they’re doing, right. And I’m basically dedicated two weeks of my life where all I did was I called people that I cared about, asked how they’re doing anything I can do to help. And in turn, because of that, I picked up more listings I ever have in my life. So we had a very scary, we had four and a half million dollars of deals walk away from the closing table in March. And then April, our sales dipped like crazy. We spent April just calling out of care, instead of like, let’s book an appointment, make a sale, it was just like, let’s just call and check in on everybody. And then April, we had a very bad month compared to the year before we basically broke even. And then things just started going bonkers in May. And it hasn’t stopped since

Aaron Amuchastegui  26:34

we talked about that a lot on the podcast in March and April was just like, just reach out to people just like you that do the Hello, are you okay text and how many people I was talking to Paul Morris in a big, you know, he owns a big office out of Beverly Hills. And he was talking about that. So I started, I said proactively doing that just reaching out to so many people, just the Hey, how’s it going? We haven’t talked in a little while. And then our foreclosure business where we have, you know, 1000s of monthly subscribers, the people that sign up every month to get this data list. And that team we started a daily, we still do it now a daily zoom every morning at Eight with everybody on the team. And I remember those that first month, we were like, what are we gonna do we essentially sell a product right now, which is a list of people scheduled for foreclosure, that now that list is like tiny, it’s like lost 90% of its intrinsic value, we’re gonna lose all of our subscribers. And we said, You know what, let’s just, let’s just figure it out. Let’s figure out if we’re going to I said, Let’s call our you know, our VPS success. It was like the next month, the goal is just to call every one of our members and ask how they’re doing. And man he would at the end of day, he’s like, these ones asked me to pray for him. I talked to these guys for an hour, I talked to these guys for three minutes. And yeah, at first, they’re like, we shouldn’t call everybody because you’re going to remind people and they’re just going to cancel, you’re gonna remind people to have a monthly subscription, and they’re gonna cancel and all he did was lead with, Hey, how’s it going? You know, how are you and those relationships that we created those first couple months of that of just reaching out to people expressing gratitude expressing concern, no expectation? was life changing for our business got a really need it when you reach out and ask how they’re doing. Because, you know, it’s just like, hey, just doing that standard, make the call to make the call and check in.

Luke Newcomer  28:23

It meant a lot to people. I mean, I can’t remember the last time someone actually called and checked in and I felt was doing well. I’m fine. But you know, when someone takes time out of the day to make that call, I think it’s very impactful. And then it’s like, well, Luke sells real estate. Let’s talk about the market, Jared COVID, what’s happening and then boom, it was just like, we got a bunch of listings, signed deals were getting done. And my team was so ahead of the curve from doing, you know, virtual showings, we’ve been doing that or in a very big second home market. And second home markets, as you probably know, are just exploding right now. Yeah. And we were already doing video showings I was already converting online leads at a high level, I wasn’t worried about my open house business dying because we never really do open houses because we do so much online marketing. And we double down on all of that. And it’s it’s paid off really well.

Aaron Amuchastegui  29:12

Yeah. So let’s look at now let’s fast forward to today. Sure, all of your leads are online leads or most of them are online

Luke Newcomer  29:21

lead or whatever the incoming leads for the team are coming through online. I don’t do personally any online leads anymore.

Aaron Amuchastegui  29:27

So where How are you doing that? Are you like let’s break down all of those leads, what stuff is natural social media, what stuffs video, what stuff is paid? How do you bring these leads to your team?

Luke Newcomer  29:37

Biggest lead source for us is Zillow right now. And we’re in very specific zip codes that I that I love the zip codes. So we’re getting a lot of Zillow leads and we have high very high conversion. You know, they I think the average online lead conversion rate for realtors is 1%. Our team converts online leads at 10% when we track and measure that very closely.

Aaron Amuchastegui  29:59

Yeah, I mean Would anyone out there that’s listening that’s in a second home market. I think that Zillow has to be one of the best lead sources for second home markets, especially because those are people that are. I mean, in New York thinking how I moved to Florida, they’re doing a quick search for what’s out there, they see that and they don’t know anyone out there yet.

Luke Newcomer  30:20

So the I imagine seeing deals I’ve closed is wild. Um, you know, people that I’ve never met, I build a lot of trust and rapport, off the rip, because we have really good videos and YouTube channel, that kind of stuff. But yeah, that Zillow built my Zillow leads built my business, which is probably not a safe thing to say now. But Five, four years ago, it built my business, and it streamlined me to scale and grow very fast. And because of those online leads that I converted and sold, two, three years ago, the amount of referrals and business and second third home purchases that I get from them, it’s amazing. And that’s a big reason that I trained my team, it’s like, hey, these online leads, whether it’s Zillow, or from somewhere else, it’s like, if you grow your business like that is the highway to doing more and more business in the future. And it gets easier. Because if you treat those people right, after you sell on the home, and you don’t just go to the next one, you’re gonna get endless referrals and business from those people. I mean, it’s it just is a snowball effect that you can’t stop once it starts. So I think it’s an amazing trajectory. But it’s very hard to convert those leads.

Aaron Amuchastegui  31:32

How do you decide which team members to send your Zillow leads to, and they come in,

Luke Newcomer  31:36

there is no structure. So we have so many leads that come in that we have an office line number that it gets directed to, and we have what’s called instead of floor time, we have lead shift. So we have someone that manages the phones from eight to 1111 to two, two to five, five to eight, and then anything after eight, it gets its gets round robin out. So it’s kind of like, Look, if you’re on the calls, you’re gonna get a $3 million lead, or you might get a $50,000 lead, but you’re going to work each one equally, to rotate those shifts. Yes, everybody signs up through the sling app. If you don’t know what sling is, it’s, I don’t even know really how it works. But my wife and our administrative assistant sends out the app, you sign up for your shifts. And when you’re on shift, you’re on shift and you might get five to 10 leads that come through. And that’s not just Zillow leads, that’s a sign calls. That’s an online lead. That’s a direct lead from our website. It doesn’t matter what the price point is, or where it comes through. You’re responsible for taking that lead. And it’s a very good value proposition when you’re sitting at a listing appointment, and you can guarantee a sign call will not get missed. Yeah.

Aaron Amuchastegui  32:44

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Aaron Amuchastegui  34:32

What are your other lead sources online? She’s and Zillow was the strongest. We’ve also talked about having these videos and things like that. So

Luke Newcomer  34:39

absolutely. So we have a marketing director that’s been outsourced. She does a lot of Google Analytics for us. So we’re getting a lot of direct, like just through Google. We’re getting a lot of Facebook leads and we also get a lot of Instagram DMS our YouTube page. Although I’d love to have more followers. It’s the newcomer group. We don’t have a lot of followers. Maybe 90 with the traffic and the views that we get are insane because we actually have videos that are not geared towards real estate. They’re geared towards kind of different neighborhoods and areas. So I’ll use, there’s a neighborhood called Lincoln bill. And my wife and I have a video, it’s professional, and it’s, it features, the restaurants, things to do different places to go and check out. So if someone’s coming to visit lincolnville, and they type that into YouTube, we are the first video that shows up. So we get so much traffic from people that are just like, we really love all the videos that you guys put out. It’s like I already know you and we get a lot of calls solely because of video.

Aaron Amuchastegui  35:42

Okay, that is everybody’s replied a video is that when people do call, they feel like they’re friends already. It works. And my best advice to anybody is, it is not instant gratification. I mean, it’s not it takes a really long time, it might take two to three years. But it, it’s like your marketing and your sleep. I mean, people can be watching these videos while you’re sleeping. And it only takes one person and it it drives so much traffic, we have it coming to our website directly. But um, I like having these videos, because if you get an online lead that is interested in we use lincolnville, which means nothing to prime any listeners, but an online lead that wants to find a vacation, rental and lincolnville. But they don’t know much about them about the area, I’m going to have a really good conversation with them, they’re out of state, I then send them the link to lincolnville. And they’re like, Okay, this guy has a professional video about everything to do here. He sounds great on the phone, he had awesome follow up and he’s giving me value not just about real estate. But literally, I know every restaurant I’m gonna go to when I come visit, because he just featured every single one of the mayor of your town. It helps. That’s, that’s really good. So it sounds like if people are getting ready to start that first video, being able to niche down to a neighborhood, and then invest some time, invest some money, make sure that you go do that great video that now anybody going to that town is going to want to watch that video. Maybe even people who live there for a couple years, they’re gonna want to watch the video and see, where should they go that’s providing value, no matter what one of the things that you said was I said, if you were on stage, what would your panel be? And it was a two part answer that you gave you said how to convert leads at a high level. But the second part that I’m more interested in is how to invest your commission checks wisely. The What do you mean by invest? Your commission checks wisely?

Luke Newcomer  37:30

You know, it’s funny, I don’t even remember answering those questions until you said them out loud. So what I mean by that is, look, I’m not I’ve done a lot of deals. And I, I’ve seen everything you can see in the last five years, but I haven’t seen everything in the industry. So I would say I’m relatively newer. And you hear a lot of stories, I think it’s what you probably know the stat better, but 87% of agents fail within their first three years. So there’s this revolving door of real estate agents. And I think a lot of people never got the what’s the word? They never learned how to manage money. So if you get a 10,000, commission $10,000 commission check, it’s like, well, you know, 3000 is going to go to Uncle Sam, another $15,000 is going to go to your broker, and then how much are you spending on marketing, you’re you’re really not making 10 grand. And I personally feel it’s like, okay, we’re making great money right now. But I also realized that it might not always be like this. And I want to put my cash into things that I understand such as real estate investing and other tools. So I hope you know, the one thing I could tell agents that are making good money or on the pace to make good money is just like, Don’t buy stupid stuff. Invest that into assets into business. I mean, we put so much our first two years, we put everything back into our business, and it’s paid off great. But now you know the last, in the last 12 months, we purchased a commercial building, we did a cash out refi on our duplex got a better rate lower payment and pulled about 80 grand out, we bought a lot that we’re going to build on the house that I live in is going to get converted into a vacation rental. we flipped a property. And we are closing on a complex at the end of this week. And I’m putting a lot of my commission checks back into real estate because I don’t think that I want to sell real estate as heavy as I do maybe 10 to 15 years from now, even though I enjoy it right now. And I think it’s foolish to think that if you’re making good money, that it’s always gonna be like this. And I haven’t experienced a challenging market yet. I’ve been in a good real estate market since day one minus COVID for a couple months.

Aaron Amuchastegui  39:41

Yeah, I mean, a lot of listeners have heard me say that COVID was such a big lesson to tell people diversify. Yeah, other forms of income the agents have done really, really well. Well, it’s like half and half. Some some agents haven’t some agents had a niche or a way that they We’re getting deals before that they just has gotten shut off and hasn’t quite come back yet. I get just as many messages from people saying we’ve had a really hard year because they struggle competing now. And they used to not have as hard of a time.

Luke Newcomer  40:13

This is if you are not in it full time, at least in our market. I mean, I think like 50% of agents in Florida haven’t sold a house yet. If you’re not in it full time, don’t know how to negotiate deals, don’t don’t understand the market. You’re you’re screwed. I mean, this is the hardest market I’ve ever seen to get deals done. But we’re doing like on Anastasia island where I live, we’ve got about last time I looked at the stat we have about 40% of the market share. And because we have that grasp, I mean, we’re getting a majority of those deals. But man when you’ve got six offers, that means five people, five buyers last out five agents aren’t getting paid, and they’re waiting another couple months for that next right property. So I think there’s a lot of people struggling in that sense to add, add what you’re saying,

Aaron Amuchastegui  40:58

What’s your, what’s your number one way to get an offer accepted right now? If you’re gonna represent a buyer, what advice would you give them get that offer accepted?

Luke Newcomer  41:07

And given the advice to the buyer, am I giving this advice to an agent to an agent? Okay, first off, I, I value my agent to agent relationships. I mean, I want to be the guy that when I put an offer in when there’s maybe five to 10 offers on the table that they know that it’s coming from Luke or from the newcomer group and that we have a reputation of getting deals done. So I first off up front that I’ve hedged is I have really good relationships with agents within my industry. And I’ve got massive respect and appreciation for all of them. So lose leave the ego at the front door is the first thing I would say. And before I even show the house before I even write an offer, I always call them and say what is most important to your seller, if I’m to bring an offer, and it’s not always price, sometimes they want to quit clothes, sometimes they want to leaseback there’s so many different moving parts to it. Also, I always reach out first to make sure that they can hear my voice. After I have that call, I always send a thank you text. That way it’s like and I do that with my leads as well, I always just send a follow up text, just saying, thanks for taking my call, letting me know what’s going on, I’ll be sure to give you prompt feedback, give them feedback. So after you do all that, I always write a clean offer. If you give up as a listing agent, if I get a really scattered dirty contract, maybe it’s the best one. But it’s like if you give a bad offer that’s just dirty on writing. I won’t even look at it because now I got to go back and change everything. My wife writes all my contracts because she’s incredibly organized. And she’s just the contract queen. But when I come and I give them that clean contract and offer, I also outline the important summary. So I say, Hey, here’s the purchase price. Here’s the escrow, here’s how much they’re putting down. Here’s the timeline. If this this and this are a problem, you tell me because they’re willing to make that difference. And then I just thank them for it. And I always let every agent know. I’m an advocate for the deal. If you guys take our offer, I’m going to make this as easy as possible for not only you but also your seller, because I want to get this to the closing table.

Aaron Amuchastegui  43:08

So the and then remind me again, your team size, you said you’ve got like 10 team members with 10 agents, 10 agents, what do you spend on marketing every month.

Luke Newcomer  43:18

So our marketing for lead generation marketing, everything is right at $65,000 a month.

Aaron Amuchastegui  43:24

It’s really important for agents to hear that part Yes, of that, like the like, so you’re building a team, but you’re providing value for that team. And you’re talking about any team member sits and takes calls for three hours, they’ve got a bunch of leads coming in. And that’s awesome, right? That’s how you run a team, you make sure that the phone is ringing for them, you make sure that you’re providing them training and you’re providing them leads that doesn’t come for free. So if you’re thinking about, you know, asking somebody and Luke knew his number, so if you’re thinking about joining a team, ask with an agent, right? Like ask the people like how much you spend on marketing, how many leads Am I gonna get if I’m gonna get on the phone for three hours? You know, how how many how many incoming calls Do you think I’m gonna get during that time? It’s a big investment. It’s another part of like spending your commission wisely.

Luke Newcomer  44:13

The best thing and people very much so. And that’s what you just said it’s a really good point is if you’re looking to join a team, which I think most people should, whether they’re new or experienced if they just want to be out there selling teams are a great option. But that’s an important question to ask is, hey, how many leads Am I gonna get a month? How’s the phone gonna ring? What are you investing in me? I tried to you know, I don’t think it’s important for my team members to understand all the moving parts, but I want them to understand how much it costs for every time a phone is to ring. Yeah, yeah. And you know, there’s more expensive zip codes that you know, 3200 I mean, it’s, it’s about $500 every time the phone rings for that type of lead to include I don’t know, but I know the ROI is absolutely through the roof for it.

Aaron Amuchastegui  44:59

That’s incredible. Your people need to know how much does it cost every time? Yeah, that call comes in, like, how much should they pay for that lead? That’s what that way they go for it.

Luke Newcomer  45:09

And they needed to know how much it costs to close a transaction. You know, and I think if a team leader doesn’t know how to answer those, then that might be a dangerous place to join. Because there might be, look, I’m, I’m definitely not 100% there’s always things to get better. But you know, you want to be joining a well oiled machine that’s willing to change, adapt, grow. But knowing your numbers is crucial. And we invest so much into our team members. And I think that all of them really appreciate it and do understand what goes on behind it all.

Aaron Amuchastegui  45:37

Well, we’ve just been so much fun to talk to you get to hear about what you’re doing out there. And, and really like you’ve obviously had a ton of success with your your five years in the business, and just how quickly you guys have done stuff. What’s next? What’s next, either for in real estate or for you or for you know, what’s what are you hoping to accomplish over the next five years?

Luke Newcomer  45:57

I think the next five years? That’s that’s a really awesome question. So we just opened the brokerage this year, it’s just the newcomer group, we’re moving to the boulevard, awesome commercial space will have great signage, it’s in the heart of St. Augustine beach. And you know, what’s next is, I don’t have a vision of having this massive team, I really like that we’re boutique tight knit. And I want hyper local focused agents, you know, I don’t want to just have pulses and bodies in the room, just to have more people and do more transactions, I want to be profitable. And my goal is to basically get everybody that’s on the team. And we’ll never say no to talent. But I want everybody on our team to just be super refined. And I want to get them performing at a very high level, which most of them are, I mean, most everyone on my team that has been here for more than 12 months will sell over 30 homes, which is which is great. And so getting everybody tightening on the team, getting even smarter and strategic within our markets. I don’t want to penetrate into new markets, but I want to stay as the local market expert. I see myself fizzling out a little bit from sales, but I really love selling real estate. But we’re getting to a point where we’re growing so much that I probably have to spend much more time on the business and in the business. If that’s the right term. Yeah, continue by indoors. I sell real estate, I want to practice what I preach. I like multifamily lien, we have an awesome vacation rental market here. So my goal is to buy one to two properties every year. And I’d like to have I’d like to have 20 doors by the time I’m 40

Aaron Amuchastegui  47:39

That’s awesome, man. So the so people want to come find your YouTube page. So that’s the newcomer group newcomer group. And then what about social media? Any other ways people should reach out to you they have questions for advice for you.

Luke Newcomer  47:51

I like Instagram a lot. My my personal is app just kitten which is kind of funny, but I haven’t changed it because it’s like when I hadn’t j us TK I remember at Just kidding. You could probably find me Luke newcomer if you typed it in. But um, and then we’ve got if you type in the newcomer group, we are on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, I love everybody to follow there, send a DM I think as agents watch, there’s some really great content that gets put out from it. We do a lot of video so and then you can email me at the newcomer group or the newcomer group@gmail.com.

Aaron Amuchastegui  48:24

Luke, this has been awesome man, so much fun. I know that our listeners are gonna get a lot of value out of that. And you know, and go back and listen to that very beginning where Luke talks about that little tip from the four hour workweek, you know, if you guys, there’s so much value you got out of this, but I would love it. If you guys went and picked some people out there in the world that you want to reach out to start reaching out adding with gratitude, see what conversations might come out of it. And I bet you guys will get a great conversation. So Real Estate Rockstars Thank you for listening. Luke newcomer, thanks for coming on the show.

Luke Newcomer  48:54

Thanks so much. Appreciate everything you do.