905: Consistency: The Key to Converting Real Estate Leads with Julian Colvard

Aaron: Rockstar Nation, this is Aaron Amuchastegui. Hey, I am interviewing today Mr. Julian Colvard from Atlanta, Georgia. Julian has been a listener of the podcast. He’s been interacting with a lot of our team on Facebook and email through Rebus University in every other way. One of my team members reached out to me and said, “Hey, I love what Julian’s doing. I love the interaction he’s doing on Facebook. You really need to get him on the show.” Today’s the day, Julian, we got you on the show. How you doing, man?

Julian: I’m doing great, man. You doing all right?

Aaron: All right. So out in Atlanta, what is Atlanta like right now during coronavirus? What’s the lockdown status? What’s the law? How’s everybody feeling?

Julian: Atlanta is deserted. Nobody on the streets. Everybody’s got the mask on, the gloves on. The people who can work from home, they’re working from home but it’s really nothing going on. In our house, supplies are non-existent. [laughs] Yes, that sounds like out here. If you drive out here usually is bumper-to-bumper traffic. Hundreds of people on a street at all times but it’s the complete opposite now.

Aaron: It is opposite. What a trip, right? You live in a busy area of Atlanta?

Julian: Yes, West Midtown. To give you an idea of how many people stay where I stay, there are seven apartment buildings being built within half a mile of me. All of them are in walking distance. It’s around I think it’s 1,400 units, somewhere around that, 1400 units total that are about to be available. There are already five or six existing apartment buildings with at least 200 units each within half a mile of me. To give you an idea of how busy it is.

Aaron: Yes, I’ve heard a lot from– In the core of the big cities. That’s where it really feels crazy. I mean, everybody’s working from home right now that feels crazy. If you live out in the suburbs, a lot of neighborhoods, there’s people walking around. They’re out, they’re functioning.

In gated neighborhoods, maybe you don’t always see a bunch of cars driving around, but in the cities where people are used to seeing just a ton of cars all the time, what a weird vibe, right? Like people that live in the city, they love the hustle-bustle of the city. They like the energy the cars, that everything. How has your mood been with that? The people that you’ve talked to, are people dying to get back out? Are they talking to people? Are they staying inside?

Julian: Oh, yes. It’s all pent up. We do come off of quarantine– I don’t know if you have to been to Atlanta but it’s like the club city. There’s clubs everywhere. When we do come out of quarantine, it’s going to be a party probably every day for two weeks straight. I’ll be honest with that.

Aaron: I think you’re right.

Julian: Yes, I’ve heard people get laid off but I only know one person who’s gotten laid off, but I know a few people who have been furloughed. That’s how my experience or the other people’s experience has been as far as job security that I know of.

Aaron: Yes. We’ve got that pent-up demand from people wanting to go outside. You also said there’s not much real estate available right now. Is there not much on the market? Is not much transacting with what’s going on?

Julian: Yes, it’s not much transacting. Well, a lot transaction but it’s not a lot listed for sale on MLS or on Zillow. For Sale by Owners are having a hard time selling their house too because they don’t want– I call them FSBOs and they don’t want anybody to come over to their house unless they have a qualification letter, a pre-approval. As you know, most people who call FSBOs are just listing agents.

They’re having a tougher time. Lenders have gone up on their requirements. The big banks like SunTrust and Wells Fargo, Bank of America, those guys have gone up on requirements. A lot of folks took their houses off the market. They said, “Yes, we just wait it out. We wanted to move out before our kid’s transfer schools, but we don’t even know how next school year is going to look. We might be in quarantine for up to a year. It’s really no point of moving.”

“If our whole purpose for moving or holding off on moving was to wait till our kid got out of school. Now, our kids out of school, we don’t know if they’re actually physically in another school by the next time we move, so there’s really no point of moving.” That’s what I’ve been hearing talking to folks.

Aaron: That makes a lot of sense. You’re talking about people taking it off the market to wait it out and try to see what’s out there. You talked about this pent-up demand where you think everybody is going to be partying in the streets. Now some of those people that are waiting to sell as soon as we get released. They’re not necessarily going to be ready to sell yet because they still don’t quite know what it needs. You’re right, people that were motivated for specific reasons.

“Hey, we’re moving because of this job. Hey, we’re moving because of school.” The college scene type thing, that has changed so much. I know that the school’s out in California a few months ago, they said, “Hey, go home, even if you’re staying in on-campus. Schools canceled, go stay at your parent’s house. Go back to where you are in the offseason.” Those are big fundamental changes.

For the other people, do you think as soon as they get us off sheltering place, a bunch of people are going to list the houses on the market again, do you think the FSBOs, they’re going to go back to normal or do you think they’re going to be cautious for a while?

Julian: They’re probably just throw their houses up on the market as soon as we come off a quarantine. They’ll go, “Oh, this is our opportunity.” A lot of those FSBOs need to sell too. They’re in a position where they have to. They’re definitely going to put their house back on the market. At least from what I’ve heard in Atlanta. I talked to 10 FSBOs, 9 out of 10 of them have a situation where they have to. It’s not that they want to.

I don’t really know because I’ve never dealt with anything like this before in my life. Neither has my grandma. I was looking up some stuff on the 1918 Spanish Flu to see how things were handled then but I really couldn’t find much. I just really don’t know what’s going to happen as far as the housing market when we come off a quarantine.

Right now, prices are still going up. People are still getting over at list price. Houses are still going under contract within the first week in Atlanta. That’s right now.

Aaron: Right now everything stops. The For Sale by Owners are going to put the stuff back on especially because they need to sell, just like you said. A lot of those people, they need to sell it right now. They’re going to be willing to do that. Do the For Sale by Owners become a bigger opportunity for you right now? Is that something that’s a big part of your business plan?

Julian: Yes, man. For Sale by Owners, the first time they were putting their house up because it was just so easy to sell. Just boom, boom, boom, it’s just a hot market. Everybody’s in, everybody wants to buy but now a whole bunch of buyers have gotten eliminated because lenders have got stricter requirements. It’s like you can’t just put your house on Zillow and just get an offer within the first week anymore. You actually have to work to sell it you have to expose it to the folks who have the buyers which are the agents and they’re not doing it on Zillow.

Then on top of that, they might have a nice house but it’s something like the smallest professional pitchers. Even though people might hear, they’ll say, “Oh, pitchers don’t mean nothing.” Well, yes they do. They take pictures of the app with their app phone and they put it up on Zillow. It’s like, “No, your house looks worse than it actually is.” Or “You will probably lose out to a house that’s for sale that’s worse than yours than somebody who’s probably likes less but it just looks better online and it attracts them.”

FSBOs are definitely a target. This guy, Jeff Glover, he’s been on Real Estate Rockstars one or two times. He was saying that when the market starts to get– When it’s especially tougher to sell– Even though in Atlanta, it’s not really like that. He was talking about the market going down. FSBOs they have a tougher time selling the houses so they need agents more. Even though the agent is not going down, it’s still that type of environment for them right now.

I’m definitely targeting FSBOs calling them up every day in the morning starting at 7:50 AM and trying to get face to face with them as soon as possible. I think some type of narcissistic say like 80% or 87%, or I don’t know, but it was like the majority of people go with the first agent they meet. Not the first agent that they hear from or the first agent that persuades them, it’s just the first agent they meet.

I’m just trying to get face to face with these people as fast as possible. Some of the FSBOs, I tell them like, “Hey, if you don’t want me to come over the house, that’s fine. I wear gloves and mask. If that doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. I can call you on Facebook or I can call you on Instagram. We can FaceTime over there and we can talk about it.” That has worked. They’re probably going to go with me after they get tired of having a house up on Zillow for about two or three weeks.

Aaron: Yes, I think that’s great advice right now because people have to work a lot harder to sell right now. The for sale by owner that pops up in a booming market where people are getting multiple offers and I don’t think they need to pay the commission but in times like this, you need great pictures. You need virtual walkthroughs. You need agents that are going to respond, the agents that are willing to walk through the house and do video calls with people. People are also nervous. They don’t want to go walk through 10 houses, where’s that used to be fun.

Two months ago, the families loved walking through 10 houses to pick one. Now people are like they only want to walk through one because they’re scared. They want to see the Zoom calls ahead of time. They narrow it down. They’re not going to go into 10 just for the heck of it. They’re going to say I want to go to one or two and make my offer. You’re going to reach out to those FSBOs. You’re going to call them in the morning and say, “Hey, do you need help selling your house?”

I love the statistic you talked about too of if they actually meet you, there’s a better chance of getting them to hire you as their agent. How does that phone call go? Like what is your script for the guys that you call this morning that were the for sale by owners, because right now it’s like coronavirus time. Are they like why are you calling me? When they answer, what do you say? What’s that conversation like?

Julian: Like, “Hey, so and so, is this the property owner for the house on Zillow?” “Yes.” I’m like, “Okay, this is Julian. I see your house went up for sale, I see that you’re selling on your own.” I get all of this stuff from Brandon Miranda who’s been on this podcast twice. “I see that your house is for sale you’re selling on your own. I totally respect that. Just wanted to know, would you be open to working with agents that they can bring you a fully qualified buyer at this time?” Say, “Yes, we will.”

“Okay, well, look, I’m not calling you– I want to be totally transparent. I’m not calling you to because I have a buyer, I’m not going to lie to you like you’re probably going to get lies from other agents or whatever you’ve heard. I just want to be here in case the house doesn’t sell and serve as a backup plan. I’m going to be in the area tomorrow previewing homes. I might as well stop by and share some information with you to cause the home to sell some market information and real life up-to-date stats of what’s going on.”

“I have a for sale by owner backup plan that I can share with you as well, just in case. If you don’t sell the house on your own, which you probably will because we’re in a hot market right now, you’ll always have that as a backup planning backpack, just in case, you want to go that route if it makes the most sense for you.” Then they’ll say no, then they give me some reason I just repeat what they say. They say the exact same thing over again. I’ll probably do that two or three times a day.

I always ask them like, “You’re not going to do anything unless it makes sense to you.” They’re like, “Right.” “Okay, well, I’ll be over there. I’d be in that area. I could probably stop by two or three typically work better for you,” and they’ll just say, “Just give me a time and we’ll meet.” Right now, it’s going like, “I don’t want to let anybody out in the house at all unless they’ll submit an offer.” I totally respect that.

I say the same thing like, “Look, I can share some information with you, some market stats that are currently going on right now so you can be up to date on the market. So you can see just see some stats, so you can know what like how your house fares in competition with other houses for sale. I have a for sale by owner backup plan just in case that you don’t sell the house on your own. I don’t have to come over the house. I can share that with you over the phone or I’d rather much show it to you so you can have a better understanding of what was going on.”

“Do you have an Instagram or Facebook? I can call you through there you can see exactly what I’m talking about.” Like almost always, they just say, “Yes. Yes, sure.” I’ve never heard them say, “Why do you need my Facebook again? Why do you need my Facebook, my Instagram?” “Look, I don’t have an iPhone so I can’t FaceTime you and show you this stuff. I can email it to you.” I’d much rather just go over it through the FaceTime you can see exactly what I’m talking about but that’s not the reason why.

The reason why I want to get them on like FaceTime, so I can be like more of a person and like humanize myself and I’m not just some agent, but, “Oh, he’s Julian,” instead of the agent. That’s why I’d go for that. That works.

Aaron: That’s great advice. I love the technique there. So you’re saying like, “Hey, this is this. You’re going to do fine without me. You don’t even need me, but if you do need me as a backup plan, I could show you this stuff and then I could even just drop it off tomorrow.” They go well, “I don’t really want anyone in the house right now.”

You’re like, “All right, you don’t want anyone in the house right now.” Your goal is to get it from a phone call to a face-to-face in person at the house or a face-to-face video conversation, then they humanize you, and then go, “All right, this is who Julian is, let’s do this deal.” I’ve seen on Facebook, you’ll do posts like, “I had 28 calls this morning. I had this many.” How many calls did you do today? How many did you do on Friday? How many people or appointments that you got?

Julian: Today I had 30 contacts and one lead. Typically, I do like 30– I do 150 contacts a week, 600 a month, and off of social media– Geez, I only count voice, the voice contacts, I don’t count social media contacts. If we were counting social media contacts, it would probably go from like 70. It’ll go from 30 to 70 because I get about 40 contacts on social media. Because once I wake up from 6:30 to 7:30, all I’m doing is sending out messages.

I probably get about three leads. I get three leads from social media almost every day ’cause I send out 100 DMs, and those 100 DMs almost always give me 300 leads, whether that– Most of them are traditional buyers and some of them are also investor leads. I also like flip houses and wholesale and stuff like that. They’re like, “You still buy houses? You still doing that?” I’m like, “Yes.” They’re like, “Oh, my grandma, my mom, trying to sell her house is not in the best shape and I know you buy houses cash, whatever, can you talk to her?”

That’s what it would look like typically, but those are my numbers. The lease very voice to voice, I’ll probably get about two leads per day, 10 a week but the thing is I’ll talk to FSBOs first and I do some circle prospecting. Then I’ll talk to a specific list that I’m targeting like I text a link when or probate or evictions are, like, “tied landlords,” people that own the house for a long time, just different, like list niche, people with different situations. The list vary based on who I’m talking to.

Aaron: Even just an outbound Facebook direct message to somebody, you’ll message somebody you’ve never talked to before and say, “Hey, I’m Julian, I buy houses,” or, “I’m Julian, I’m agent.”

Julian: I only introduce myself. I’ll just say which one of your friends is looking to buy a house or who do you know who wants to sell the house. I send that out to 100 people. I don’t really need you to engage with it too much. As long as I send a message, because like Facebook and Instagram, their logarithms are funky now. You’ll wake up and you’ll see the same people over and over again on your Facebook and Instagram feed.

If you’re able to DM a whole bunch of people and depending on how often they use it, if they respond to your DM or like your DM, you have a higher chance of popping up on their feet on there. People call it a timeline but it’s not a timeline anymore.

That’s my goal with that and it has proven. It’s proven itself to be true because I used to have– Typically, I do my little Instagram stories. On average, I probably had 120 people who watch my Instagram stories since I started doing the DM thing, and I’ve been doing this for about two months, it’s only 60 days, it went from 120 to about 250.

My engagement has went up. Let’s just offer doing the DMS. I send 100 DMS a day from 6:30 to 7:30. Then on Facebook, I get a lot more people who will they won’t engage necessarily my posts, but they’ll see my posts. They’ll tell me about it like if I call them on the phone or we meet in person, but I did my Facebook stories, this is the one that just like blew my mind. I only have about 1,900 friends on Facebook. I don’t know how many are active.

I went from about 10 people view on my story every day to 170 people view on my story on Facebook. It’s like a gigantic leap and it’s all from sending messages because people are engaging with me more. Facebook and Instagram is saying, “Hey, they’re sending deals back and forth. They must like each other. Let us start putting Julian stuff onto their feeds, so when they pop up on their little homepage, they’ll see Julian because obviously, they must like each other.

Aaron: Yes, and then people might want to see it now. They’re going, “Who is this guy that sent me the message?”

Aaron: Right now you were just doing a lot of hard work. Every day you have a goal. You’re going to message 100 people on social media. You’re going to make so many phone calls. You’re going to do 150 phone calls a week. If you just put in the time and put forth the calls, you’re going to get a certain number of appointments and a certain number of people and be able to push through.

If there’s people right now on quarantine saying they can’t do much or they’re trying to figure out where they can is, that sounds like a business plan that anybody could jump into. Like make the phone calls, make the messages, just don’t give up until you– Do you ever have days where you’re like, “Man, I got 10 more calls to make and I don’t want to do it?”

Julian: Yes, I do. When I’m actually into it and I’m calling. I’m like, “I want to get done.” It’s just it triggered like, “I’m hitting a wall.” Like as a book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, he was like, “When you hit the wall, everybody else is too. Just keep going and so you can beat everybody else.”

I liked this guy, Mark Spain, which I think he was on his podcast too. It was like within the first 10 episodes, he was saying like, “Oh, Mark, why do you want to do it? What motivates you?” He just hit just straight up tell you, “I just want to beat you.” I’m thinking if I’m hitting the wall, everybody else is hitting the wall and I see the agents on IG and Facebook and I’m like, “I’m better than them,” so I can go on.

Aaron: I love that advice and that everybody could be doing that right now. You have listened to hundreds of our podcasts from the Real Estate Rockstars. Did you have any favorites? You’ve already named like six or seven people that you heard from on here that now you look to, do you have any that stick out as some of your favorites?

Julian: It was one with a guy from Caldwell Daycare. He was talking about a listing appointment. I can’t really remember the episode or his name, but I remember what he was talking about. I liked the Mark Spain when at the beginning, I liked the Jeff Glover one, I liked the two Brand and Marina. I don’t know the numbers. I like the two, both the Brand and Marina ones and I liked everything that David Osborn gets on.

Aaron: Those are awesome. David was back on just like two weeks ago. I had David on here, we were talking about what agents can do to come out of this. If you listened to that one, he talked about now we’re in a crash. Whenever we’re in the good market and you have to worry that you’re always so much closer to a crash. Then now that we’re in a crash, they were so much closer– Every day we’re one day closer to the recovery. The people that do focus and work hard right now, like every day, we’re a step closer to the recovery was going to boom, so let’s be ready.

Let’s be ready, let’s work hard. Let’s make those phone calls. You’re going through a ton of stuff. You also wholesale everything else, so how long have you been a real estate agent? How’d you get into real estate?

Julian: I have been a real estate agent for two years, so I got my license in January of 2018, so two years and like three or four months. Then I’ve been in real estate since 2017. The way I got into real estate was I was at this fundraiser and I was just talking to people here and there and then this drunk guy came out of nowhere. He was like, “Oh, well, real estate, this is the $20 million a year. My girlfriend wants me to stay home sleep, but I can’t sleep because the money’s calling me, blah, blah, blah.”

This guy who I was talking to, he was like, “Yes, Julian’s looking for an internship,” and the guy was like, “Yes, I’d take intern but I ain’t going to pay. I ain’t pay you nothing.” He’s like, “Oh, that’s my money.” I was like, “Okay, I’m fine with that.” He’s like, “Meet me at my office tomorrow.” I hit him up on and got his office address, got over there.

In that office, there was a guy who owned a whole bunch of motels. he was a developer. He was building condos and stuff down in Florida and then we had Ryan. Ryan flipped houses. Then we had Kenny, who was the crazy guy I was talking to. He was the accountant and he flipped houses. Just being around them, look– Hey, you’re in ,right?

Aaron: Yes, that’s one of the masterminds that I’m part of.

Julian: Yes, y’all came out with the book Travel of Millionaires, about what a decision could change everything. That one decision is changing who you’re around. I was around those people and I just started doing it because they were doing it.

Aaron: Yes, that is awesome. Yes, and what a great shout out to the book. Tribe of Millionaires talks about that. It talks about guys, like a guy going along, living his life the normal way, and then not realizing that there was even masterminds and everything else and that you made that one decision to go be somebody’s intern, for free even just to see where it turned out to.

Now you’re your own boss, pretty much, like you’re doing deals. Nobody’s telling you what time to wake up. Nobody’s telling you how many calls you’re going to make a day. You’re doing that now. Especially now in tough times is when we talk about some most important for people to find peers to talk to. Are you in any mastermind groups? Do you interact with other guys and people you bounce ideas off of?

Julian: I’m at one, Scott, a real estate pro with Danny Noma and Kenny Klaus. They’re out in Arizona’s for the ad buyer thing. That’s the only mastermind group I’m in, but I talk to a lot of real estate folks. I got my own little board of advisors like in Napoleon Hill saying he liked to envision Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan on his board of advisors. I have the board of advisors, but it’s like people I actually talked to.

I’m not in a mastermind group, but I’m talking to people who are bigger and better in real estate every day. Learning from guys like Pat Habin, read his book twice, all the way through. Gary Keller, read all their books, Dave Osborn, Tim Rowe, all those guys. I pay attention to every single word they say in every single podcast they jump onto. Even this podcast, I listened to it and it’s like if they’re having a conversation, I’ll just pretend like I’m there. I guess I have my own makeup mastermind.

Aaron: No, that’s the truth, man. Anyone out there that doesn’t have the resource out there, podcasts are free and you find your people and you’re following around and it’s like hanging out with them. Because you and I are just having a conversation. You’re getting to know each other right now. Other people are getting to hang out. In my office with me and in your car with you and they’re going to hear it. It’s just like they’re here along for the ride and so I think that is a great perspective to be able to do that.

When it comes to deals, how many real estate deals are you doing as an agent? How many are you doing as an investor right now?

Julian: In January, I had 10 closings and those were all ad buyer closings. In February, I had four. In March, I had three. In April, I had 2 and then I have some other two line up for May.

Aaron: What are the average price of those deals?

Julian: Average sales price is $153,000, but a lot of those– People will say, “Oh, the average–” I’m not getting the 3% commission. My commissions are usually 4.5% and the biggest one I’ve got was 11% on a $158,000 sale.

Aaron: All right. Because you’re hustling, you’re going to find that you’re doing some of the I buyer stuff or you’re hooking people up with a buyer and you’re putting a buyer and a seller together almost like wholesale. You’re not just getting 3% on those, so $145,000 as the average price for your profits, like an average, like $10,000 a house you want to say, or more than that?

Julian: Average would probably be like six. It’d probably be a six because the average sales price would probably be like four, that’s not four and a half. The average commission is 4.%, but then you’ll have commissions that are bigger. Like the 11% one and they’d be $11,000. I’m doing the math on. Yes, say 6.75% commission.

Aaron: The average is about 6.75% of your commission. Well, I think that is a great way to do it. As you jump around and you get to be out there hustling, it makes sense. You’re working hard, you’re finding people and you’re having to convince them like, “Hey, you haven’t been able to sell on your own, so I’ll be able to help you now.”

What are your goals over the next year for this. Right now everything is in this crazy limbo. Are you still making as many calls as you were before? How many deals do you have before the end of the year?

Julian: My goal was to do 40 and I was on track to do way more than 40. I don’t have an income goal anymore or a closing goal, so my income goal was 250 then my closing goal was 40. Let’s do the math on that. I think I was dead on, hold on 250. Yes, so if I would have 40 closes with an average commission of $6,250 then would have been, I don’t know, you could see that, that would have been right on the right hand.

Aaron: Yes, the six and a quarter– Yes, you got this–

Julian: Now my goal is just to be consistent because I don’t know how everything’s going to play out because of the quarantine thing. I just want to be consistent, talk to a lot of people on social media, talk to a lot of people who goes to Meet with for sale by owners as possible and try to find as many hedge funds as possible to sell so houses too. Because they’re the ones with the money. Those are people were going to buy the ones with the money and nobody has more money than hedge funds.

Aaron: Yes. The hedge funds are able to, especially if we’re going into this rough market. One of the things you said there, Julian, is you are going to focus on the stuff that you can control. You said your goal right now isn’t necessarily how many closings you’re going to get, but you can control how many people you call per day. You can control how many DMs you send on social media. You’re saying instead of setting your goals for what your production is going to be, you’re just going to just set your goals and the things you can control.

You’re going to make sure that you’ve talked to people and make sure you make the phone calls. You reach out to people and then it’s all going to come out in the wash anyway, right? If you focus on making those phone calls and you don’t stress about the outcome, then you’re going to get those deals to happen. How old are you? Where did you grow up?

Julian: I’m 25. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in a neighborhood called Joyland. It has been mentioned by a lot of rappers and gangster movies [laughs I’m from Atlanta. I grew up in Atlanta.

Like you were saying, the thing is, I think it the best time to be a real estate agent right now. It’s not to make money because anybody can make money when the market’s hot. If I want to sell the house on the market, it’s not hard. It’s real estate power.

I think right now it’s just, and Jeff Glover said this, “All the conversations that I’m having right now will like set me up for next year. Just sent me whenever the lockdown is lifted and the lenders come off of their requirements.” One thing I’m really good at is follow-up. I will follow up with you until you die. I still keep it, and it’s just a habit. I keep in touch with all my second and third-grade teachers.

The last time I talked to my second-grade teachers probably about two weeks ago. I’m following up with every single body for my whole life. I know I have all my teachers on Facebook. I have all their numbers. I talked to all of them. I’ve got some of them buy real estate.

Aaron: How do keep track of everybody?

Julian: Mojo, just put them in Mojo. You can set little follow-up reminders in Mojo and you just get on Mojo every day and make your calls and it’d be right there. Then on Facebook, it’s hard not to keep track of everybody because once you DM so many people, your DMing the same people over and over again.

Aaron: Yeah, just see the list. I like that. You’re using Mojo as your CRM to make sure that you continue to see follow-up. awesome about your story too that you talked about. You didn’t grow up in the best place. You grew up in the place that are on the gangster movies and the rappers are talking about, but your education has been, like you named off like 20 books you’ve read.

You’re reading books, you’re listening to podcasts. You have different coaches that you hear, you’re following those methods and you are just working really, really hard. Have you done anything else for education or are you just completely self-educated in books that are out there?

Julian: Yes, just reading and Ray Dalio said, he was like, “A lot of our best learning will be through experience then reflecting on it.” A lot of the stuff I do with ad buyers, I’m pretty sure. I’m probably like, “It can’t be mortified agents though, what I’m doing, in the whole world with ad buyers. It can’t be.” Because I’m not representing anybody. I’m just brokering deals. The same thing with the hedge fund and well what Ray Dalio say, he say a lot of our best learning will be through experience and reflecting on it. It’s like that is the best way to learn.

When you think about it, Ray Dalio has this hedge fund really big, got to have with $5 billion net worth and $100 million cash to be his client. He’s not even accepting people. That’s just for him to take a look at you. He’s got investment strategies that he will never share with the world. You can’t find it in any books. and he is able to develop those strategies, offer reflecting on his experience.

That’s where a lot of my education’s mainly coming from. It’s just like do something, mess up or not even mess up just like, “I could’ve done that better. How could I have done it better?” Then just figure out. Just think of a way and just implement it next time and just keep doing that over and over again. Just keep refining your own process. A lot of the thinking and reflecting is done when I walked my dog in the morning and that night, that was probably like my most valuable times.

Then going back to this got real Nightingale, he has a video on YouTube really, really old, probably 1930s, it’s like 19 minutes that changed your life. He was like, “Oh, there’s a lumber dealer who’s making a big money in a recession, making big money in the hardest times during the great depression.” They say, “How do you do it? How do you do it?” The guy says, “Well, I just go in my office. I locked the door, I set my chair and I just made sure the life stop, and I think.”

They ask, “Who’s doing it?” Ray Dalio say reflect on your experience. I was like, “Oh, okay. Those two together, I need to make my own processes.” What is that saying you can’t learn how to ride a bike on a seminar or something like at a seminar or something like that?

Aaron: Do it. You got to learn from experience and you got to reflect on it. That’s an important thing that I think a lot of people miss too. Actually, just reflecting on the experience afterward. I don’t know if it was somebody that I interviewed or I was listening to a podcast where there was a guy that was booking in his thinking time.

I’ve got a few days a week now on my calendar, I have two hours and it says thinking time, and that’s like just sitting in my office and just like a piece of paper, just start writing down stuff. What ideas do I have? What did I learn this week? That sort of thing.

Julian, your story today is really super inspirational. As we’re closing up the end of the podcast, there was so much info you just went through. When I say it’s inspirational, it is an example of, “Hey, there are no excuses out there.” There are no excuses just to like, you have worked hard. You took a free internship to learn how to do stuff. You’ve gone and tried and you failed and you learned and you failed and you learn and you’ve read every book out there. You listened to podcasts that are out there.

You watched YouTube videos from like 80 years ago. You’re doing everything you can. Plus you’re making a certain amount of phone calls every day, coronavirus or not, a certain amount of direct messages to people, coronavirus or not. It’s just waiting to see what interactions you’re going to get. You’re using some of that technology, Mojo dialer and some of those other things, but it’s really cool to hear how active that you’ve been.

With that, with being self-educated, other than mentors and your own people on there, you’re doing 30 to 40 deals a year and you’re out. One of my favorite things you said today was you’re not going to focus on your production right now, you’re going to focus on the things that you can. On the phone calls, on the messages, like you can’t control what’s going to go on in the world. You can’t control which ones are going to close or not, but you can control how many phone calls, how many emails.

In closing, is there anything that you wish you would have said? Or if people want to reach out to you, they want to say, “Hey, I’ve got a referral in Atlanta,” or, “Hey, I’m a hedge fund buyer and I want to buy some stuff in Atlanta.” If people want to find you, what’s the best way they can find you?

Julian: Instagram, Facebook, Julian Colvard is my name. Very active on there. I got two Instagrams, juliancolvard.realtor and then juliancolvard.

Aaron: You spell Julian’s last name, it’s J-U-L-I-A-N. His last name is C-O-L-V-A-R-D. It’ll be in our show notes. There’s a lot people driving in cars right now so you’re going to see the show notes on your computer or on our YouTube video. Julian, any last pieces of advice that you’d give to agents out there right now?

Julian: It’s very, very, very simple. If you listened to this podcast, you already know what I’m about to say. The only thing you have to have is your skills. You can be enthusiastic. You can be monotone. You can just be horrible. If you just talk to people every day, you will succeed. That’s the common thing. If you listened to any podcast having to do with real estate agents, any YouTube, just talk to people, you have enough conversations. You’re going to put in the path of opportunity.

My first– Not my first, my second traditional buyer who I’m working with or we’re on a contract right now, he was a FSBO and he’s like, “Can you help me buy a house?” I was like, “Yes, sure.” He had his office sends them to me like, “I’m going to look at this.” He’s outworking with me when it comes to finding houses, but I met him through just talking to somebody and you don’t have to– He asked me, can I be his agent. There wasn’t really a buyer consultation. It wasn’t really any skills put into that to get that client. If you just talk to a whole bunch of people, you’re going to see.

Aaron: That is awesome. I love that. If you just talk to people every day, whether you’re answering the phone or dialing and you talk to people every day, as much as you can and you will be successful. There’s just the example. Even from the Facebook message, it’s such a simple one out of nowhere, like, “Hey, who wants to sell me their house?” Half the people ignore you and then some people reply back and then they are real leads.

Because you did that, I had never even heard of this, you could message 100 people and now you’re going to show up in their stories more than you would before. Great tips from Julian. Thanks for coming on the show. Especially as an avid listener, that’s listened to a couple hundred of our podcasts. I am excited that you got to come on here today and share with the people out there. Thanks for joining us.

Julian: Nice to have me on. This is a life milestone for me being on here.

Aaron: Awesome. Check it off the bucket list, man. Thanks for showing up.