924: Under Quarantine and Killing It – Rebecca Donatelli’s Real Estate Team

Aaron Amuchastegui: Real Estate Rockstars. Hey, welcome back everyone. Today, I get to interview Rebecca Donatelli. Something that’s really cool is Rebecca was actually on our podcast a few years ago with Pat interviewing her. I’m going to let her tell a little bit about that story and why our timing of us reaching out this time was so fun, but we reached out to Rebecca because she just hit the 30 Under 30 for realtor.com for the year for 2019, which is a huge, huge thing, so it’s a big congratulations. We’d love to get them on there. Rebecca, thanks for joining.

Rebecca Donatelli: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be back. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes. Thanks for coming back. That does not happen very often. People that are our listeners, we have a few dozen maybe that have come back more than once, but you’ve had a lot of things have happened since then for you to be back. I think before you were on for all sorts of different reasons, but now you’re being nationally recognized and you’re up in Cleveland, Ohio. I guess right now is the best time of year to live in Cleveland because summertime is beautiful up there and wintertime everything turns to ice. Did I get that right? Is that generalization accurate?

Rebecca Donatelli: It’s very accurate. It’s blazing hot. It’s been close to a hundred here in the past maybe almost two weeks, but it’s– I love the seasons, I’m used to the seasons. I enjoy it. Even the winter times when it gets freezing cold, but now it’s prime time to be in Cleveland.

Aaron Amuchastegui: You’re definitely in a place where you get four seasons. In Northern California, where I was at, we never used to see snow. Now I’m in Austin, Texas and here we won’t see snow, but you get random– The seasons are definitely off in the places that I’ve lived, but growing up in Oregon, we saw all four, so maybe a little closer to what you have in Cleveland. What’s it like with the COVID craziness right now out there, are people still on quarantine? Do you get to go to restaurants now? Are the restaurants outside? How’s that work?

Rebecca Donatelli: All the patios have been open. I really haven’t been to a ton of them, to be honest, a, because I’ve just been slammed with the work and, b, I’m just really trying to still say pretty safe. I’ve been to a couple patios and things like that with my friends, I live close to the Cleveland beach, so I don’t hang out there quite often. I’m just still trying to stay safe and, like I said, work is crazy anyway, so there’s not a lot of extra time anyway, but people are out and about hanging out. A lot of them are wearing masks, which is awesome. Even outside. I appreciate that even going outside.

Aaron Amuchastegui: It’s getting a little– Some people are living life as much as they want to out there and you’re getting that option. Are you surprised that real estate is so hot right now considering what we’ve been going through?

Rebecca Donatelli: When everything hit and we were forced to stay at home, I was terrified that I was going to be sitting at home twiddling my thumbs bored out of my mind slow. It never stopped. In fact, it got crazier once that happens and it just continues to go up. The market is nuts. There are buyers out, interest rates are under three, every single house pretty much, if it’s priced to sell, it’s in multiples day one on the market. Things are just nuts. I know it’s like that pretty much anywhere. All my NAR friends have told me the same thing that all the markets are crazy, but even back in, when was that, March, when things started happening, we actually got busier as a team when it happened than even before. It’s been crazy.

Aaron Amuchastegui: A lot of people have said that, a lot of people have said that since this hit the– I thought for sure it was going to be a bigger slowdown. in January and February, Pat and I were on here talking about maybe Coronavirus was going to hit the US, and maybe it was going to crash realty. That was before anything got crazy. Then in March when we did get shut down, I was like, “Hey, I had some real estate stuff I needed to sell,” and I was like, “I’m just going to put it on the market now, I’m going to drop the price.” I was worried that maybe it wouldn’t sell during this.

Now maybe people are getting more used to it. The people are– they’re in their houses more than they’ve ever been. Like you said, rates are low. I think there’s less buyers out there just because of some people on unemployment and staying home, but I think what we’re seeing in Texas is the buyers that are out there are very serious. They’re very qualified and the sellers that want to sell are very serious. Is that in line with what you’re seeing up there?

Rebecca Donatelli: Yes. I will say the number of buyers that we’re seeing, at least for me and my team, is very high. It is crazy. The inventory has grown a little bit. I think because a lot of sellers are seeing how crazy the market is and they’re like, “Well, if I’m going to consider selling, now is the time.” They’re getting price points that they might not have ever thought they could ever get. A lot of these houses are appraising. It’s not like they’re driving the price up and then we’re running into appraisal issues where we can’t get them appraised. Currently, we’re working with a lot of buyers. It’s interesting to see.

Aaron Amuchastegui: I would have never guessed the market was going to be this strong during this time. Like I said, back in March, I was very worried and have been happily surprised with everything. Anything that we try to sell sells. We’ve been pretty lucky. Do you do mostly buyers, mostly sellers?

Rebecca Donatelli: We’re a good mix of both. Both buyers and sellers, my agents, they can work both if they want, one or the other, one designated the other, but we do a pretty healthy mix of buyers and sellers. A lot of our clients are both buyers and sellers, so we work with them on both sides. We have a good mix of both.

Aaron Amuchastegui: What’s your team look like?

Rebecca Donatelli: I do have a small team. I just hired my second agent, then I have an admin as well. Like I said, they can do whatever it is that they want. If they want to just work buyers, if they want to just work sellers, they can do both, but it’s fun. It’s been a little bit crazy when you start a team, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into and you don’t know what you’re looking for when you’re hiring or who the right person to hire is. I started my team back in 2017, right after, I think, the last time I did the interview on Real Estate Rockstars. I hired out of complete desperation. I was so busy, I just needed an extra set of hands.

I didn’t want to sacrifice my customer service to be able to juggle too many clients at one time. I hired an agent. It was a total bust. I didn’t really get to know him. It just wasn’t a good fit. He ended up telling me, “Look, real estate is just not for me.” He ended up just doing something completely different. It’s been interesting getting to know the right agents, making sure that they have the right expectations from the get-go and making sure that we’re a good vibe. The team is great right now, we were killing it this year. I’m really excited.

Aaron Amuchastegui: You were super, super busy. You got on the podcast last time, you got to hire somebody, and then it didn’t work out. What did you learn with that first hire? Was there anything afterward that you said, “Oh, I should have done this different,” or if somebody is about to make their first hire any advice, you’d give them?

Rebecca Donatelli: I really didn’t get to know this person. He was already licensed, which was nice for me because it took a little bit of the burden off of like training from the ground up. That was nice, but we just had very different personalities. Not every agent I hire has to be just like me. I don’t want them to necessarily be. Every agent that I hire, my name is attached to them and some of the communications and things that were happening, I didn’t want my name on them. It wasn’t a good fit for that reason. I felt like some of the expectations this person had just weren’t realistic. I think a lot of new agents when they get in the business they might have some unrealistic expectations. You have to know your first year, it’s hard.

There’s like an 80% failure rate of first-year agents in this business. A lot of it is just because they don’t know, realistically, what the first year looks like, there’s a lot of stress, where that business is going to come from. On my team, I do give out business, I do give out leads, but I expect you to also bring some to the table. I think there was also a little bit of misunderstanding on that side of expectations too. If you’re a new team leader, or someone maybe didn’t have a good first hire and trying to figure who next, I would recommend really getting to know the person. I also just started implementing doing the DISC test for anyone to see if our personalities are a good match. That’s also a great way to vet who might be a good fit for you.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes, do you use the Tony Robbins website for the DISC assessment, or do you have a customized one you use?

Rebecca Donatelli: No, just the general, the Tony Robbins’. There’s a ton of them I think, a colleague just sent one that worked well for them. I use that one. I know there’s a ton of different ones you can use.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes. I think the DISC assessment training, if listeners, if you guys haven’t done that before, the applicant takes a personality test. One of the best things ahead of time is before you hire you say, the person that would be great at this would have this sort of a personality, this sort of a personality and this sort of a personality. Ahead of time, you imagine the perfect person and then you do this test and it comes back and it says, hey, this is how they act in this part of the personality, they’re very social or they’re not, they like to operate by themselves, or they like to operate within a set of rules. I’ve only learned that the last couple years and it really changed the way– I hired hundreds of people before I ever knew there was analysis tests like that. Man, that would have saved me a lot of heartache before.

Rebecca Donatelli: Right. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: That’s totally good advice. You got on the show in 2017 and at that time, it was just probably just because you were growing so quickly in real estate. Tell me, right when we got on, you said that our timing was super funny, tell us a little bit about that.

Rebecca Donatelli: When you guys reached back asking for this interview, I filled everything in and got it scheduled. Then it was within the last maybe week and a half, I got a phone call from a buyer who said he had listened to this podcast I’d done back in 2017 and wanted to work with me and buy a house. This morning, I got him under contract for a $450,000 house here in Cleveland. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: The timing of that is so amazing to me. It’s always super exciting when– Because you don’t usually get a buyer lead from a podcast. Right now we’re trying to help agents, you get lots of agents that reach out, lots of people that want to join teams and help each other, and things like that, but we don’t get very many people that are buyers because of this. Just the fact that you got him under contract today is super funny.

Rebecca Donatelli: It is yes. It was really funny. I was like, “Well, this is some sign of some sort.”

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes, it was meant to be. You said you guys are crushing 2020. How many transactions have you done so far? What are you going to hit this year?

Rebecca Donatelli: Our projected volume to hit would be between 14 and 15 million this year.

Aaron Amuchastegui: How many houses is that? What’s your average sales price up in Cleveland?

Rebecca Donatelli: It’s really interesting that you ask that because the average sales price here in our market is anywhere between 175 and low twos. My team’s average this year will be close to 300,000. Well now we’re not doing less transactions, now we’re just still–

Aaron Amuchastegui: You’re just doing everything, you need more transactions in higher volume.

Rebecca Donatelli: We’re just doing everything, yes. A majority of our clients right now are on the higher end of price points. The sweet spot right now is 250 to 350, but I have a lot of buyers that are on the luxury end of the Cleveland market, which is, for us, really mid fours and up. It’s been cool seeing not only the business grow, but the average price point. It doesn’t mean that we’re not working with other price points. We have clients in every price point. It’s been interesting, especially with everything going on most, I would say 75% of our clients are over 250,000, which is on the high side for the Cleveland market. It’s been interesting seeing all of this stuff happen, especially during this global pandemic. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes. I guess that could be the move up. People like, “Oh, if I’m going to spend so much time in my house, it better be super nice.” Whereas before, people were only there at night to sleep in and now they’re like, “Oh, if I’m living most of my life there, I need to improve.” I think that’s a suspicion that I have that can maybe just come from conversations with things. Are you guys doing anything in particular though? One of my guests I just finished interviewing said they’re intentionally targeting higher price point leads and higher price point houses. Have you done anything different, or has it just you’ve been doing the same thing and people have naturally upped their price?

Rebecca Donatelli: Same thing. Nothing with our marketing has changed. A majority of my clients right now are referrals, almost all of them actually are either referrals from my NAR friends. I was just looking at my numbers the other day and probably within the past, let’s see, it’s July, since maybe April, 8 of my 30 Under 30 colleagues in all different classes have referred me business.

Aaron Amuchastegui: I was going to ask, how do you get other members of NAR to refer you so that just from the little things like that, you get to meet all the other people in the 30 Under 30 and then you start helping each other out?

Rebecca Donatelli: Oh, there’s my little office assistant. [laughs] Don’t mind her.

Aaron Amuchastegui: That is awesome.

Rebecca Donatelli: Yes. We met all together last year in Charleston, there’s a 30 Under 30 retreat every year. This year, obviously, we’re not having one. We have a closed Facebook group. Then I have NAR friends everywhere just from being in leadership through YPN and everything like that. They are a chunk of my business and the rest of it pretty much comes from social media. I’ve gotten so many referrals from them lately and they just happen to be really solid price points. Then recently, in the past maybe week, I’ve just gotten the most random phone calls from people looking to buy, like this one from the podcasts, and they’ve all been great price points. It just happened that way, we don’t target one way versus the other. We want to work with everybody. It just happen that way, I don’t know exactly why, but– [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: What a cool surprise as you’ve been doing the work and then not only are you getting more volume but people are increasing what they’re looking at, especially that– and that’s the top end of the market. I’ve bought and sold a couple of houses near Cleveland and those price points now you’re at are definitely top of the market. If somebody wanted to get involved, they want to get more involved with NAR or have chances referrals, you said your two different ways you get it is from referrals of people you met through that and then also through social media. We’ll get into social media next. If somebody was like, “Wow, I’m not getting any referrals, but I really want to get involved.” What are some steps you would tell them to go get involved, to go meet people to have a chance to be able to help each other out like that?

Rebecca Donatelli: This is what I love talking about is really getting involved. It’s not so much getting involved to get the referrals, that’s a huge bonus from being involved. Getting involved is really to give back to our industry and have a voice. That’s something that I’m really passionate about. What I tell people is it starts usually on a local level. Every realtor is associated with a local association minus the Lake & Geauga Area Association of realtors. I’ve been involved basically since the end of my first year in the business. I’m really excited, I was just voted to be president-elect of the association next year. I’ll be President in 2022.

What I tell people, it’s just learn more about it and just go to the events like our YPN, which is the Young Professional Network, best place, in my opinion, to start getting involved. It’s a great place to grow, we help each other out, we network, we evolve. I just wrote a blog for NAR about this last week actually about how YPN helped me go from absolutely knowing nothing about the industry, nothing about real estate in general, to now being in leadership on a national level under 30 Under 30 and Realtor of the Year by association this year. It’s not so much about the referrals, it’s just a huge bonus from being involved. It’s really important to have a voice in our industry.

We are able as realtors to change the law to make it better for our clients, to protect their private property rights, and then also to protect us as realtors. Someone has to do that. It’s really important to step up. Leadership on a local state national level has really put me where I am today for so many levels, my business included, my numbers are included in that. Just go, get involved, go to a YPN event, go to a meeting. It’s really just about taking that step and getting to know more people and then it’ll evolve from there.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Yes, start local, join the local association and then don’t just sign up, go to the meetings and then through that, there’ll be more events and more things, and then the international meetings, we’re allowed to have international meetings again. That’s where it’s the most fun too, when you get to start masterminding and working with people in other parts of the country, that’s when ideas really get to be inspired and people really up their game because it’s amazing, the wider you cast that net of people you’re talking to just the different levels that you get to improve.

Rebecca Donatelli: It is. It’s crazy, the first time I ever traveled for NAR, I went to Chicago. Some of the conversations I was having with some of the people who are now my best friends blew my mind the things that they were sharing about their businesses and they shared their team structure with me and they were so kind to just share anything I possibly could want. That’s the one bummer about this year is that the national stuff and travel won’t happen, unfortunately, but it doesn’t mean you can’t start getting involved now.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Tell us about social media. Part of it is networking and really, you went into that with the best intentions of just to go get involved and network and that has happened– I guess that’s really just increased your sphere. People talk about their sphere of influence and your sphere of influence is now just a bunch of real estate agents because that’s who you hang out with and who your best friends are. How do you grow social media and what ways have you done that? I’ve seen you have– I followed you on Instagram today to try to see some of the content you have out there. What are some of the secrets you want to share with people?

Rebecca Donatelli: For me, it was a trial and error. To be completely honest, I didn’t start the Instagram account with any intention of having it remotely what it is today. It really was just started as a hobby. I love real estate, I also love photography. I started it at the end of my first year in the business just to share my love of real estate. It just started growing from there. I started following pretty much everybody that I knew, all the local businesses here in Cleveland, my clients, the clients that I’d had thus far, and really just started sharing content regularly. When I say regularly, I mean daily, just letting people into my life, letting them allow them to know who I am as a realtor and as just a person.

Once I started realizing that that was actually allowing my name to grow, I started doing that more purposely and making it a daily habit. From then, it just blew up, to be honest. It’s really become a main source of business for me. Last year, at the beginning of the year, I launched a speaking consulting business or the seminars in consulting. I travel– I don’t travel right now, but, on a regular day, I travel around the country to help other realtors grow their businesses through social media and also do one-on-one consulting with them. That’s all obviously stemmed from Instagram relationships with builders, developers, meeting agents on my team from Instagram.

It’s really just getting on there, being consistent with it, and really sharing content that is going to draw people in. The one fail I see a lot of realtors do is that they think that they need to just share everything real estate and just house. I just sold this house. I just got it under contract, then I went to this inspection, then I listed this house. You never know anything about them personally. I think that they really miss the boat because when you’re behind a screen if I see you, I know you’re a realtor, I expect you to be selling houses, but I don’t know anything about you personally to where I would be inclined to reach out to you and trust you to be my real estate resource.

I think that’s where a lot of people miss the boat. I try to share more personal stuff. Anyone that knows me knows I love coffee. I just live for coffee, I always have it with me. I share a lot of that because people can relate to it and they know me as the Cleveland realtor, if you will, who loves her coffee. Those are just some of the tidbits that I’ve played with and realized since I’ve had the account that have really helped my business.

Aaron Amuchastegui: I’ve heard from several people that consistency is the biggest thing. For listeners out there that are trying, it really is. I’ve seen people say, “No, it’s just every day, it’s every day at something.” If it’s not real estate today, it could be, just like you said, your personal stuff, your personality, because your brand as a real estate agent is really who you are. It’s funny talking about who you are as a brand, but your brand is Rebecca. It’s going to be the things you do for fun, the things you do as an agent, the places you travel, your pet dog. Everything.

Being able to share every day, I think people get intimidated with the idea of going, I don’t have anything important to share today. Then they wait and they wait a week or two and they just can’t get any headway with it. When you go teach those classes, you said you had a consulting company now, is the consulting company just social media that you’re helping people with, or what is the–?

Rebecca Donatelli: Whether I’m either speaking in front of a crowd or just doing one-on-one consulting, a majority of the time for the consulting and for the speaking, they reach out to me for social media, specifically Instagram. I have helped agents, especially with the one-on-ones, just start their business, even if it’s not just to enhance their social media presence. I’ve had new agents reach out to me and say, “I just need help getting off the ground. Can you just help me start?” Maybe they’re a solo agent, maybe their broker isn’t really giving them the guidance that they need, or maybe they just don’t know where to go.

I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me for that, but a majority of them maybe are either not on social media and want to be on social media to build their business. I had a huge producer here. She lives about an hour and a half away from me. She’s like a $50 million team here, reach out to me and say, “Hey, I want to also build my business on social media. Can you help me?” Even though she is killing it everywhere else, she wanted that social media presence to even add more to her business. It’s really a mix of just those types of things. I’ve also helped people get involved on the industry side of things, like I said, and that thing. It’s mostly social media either starting or building some kind of presence.

Aaron Amuchastegui: The one-on-one stuff It’s funny. You’re so busy actually doing deals and transactions, it’s a surprise to me that you’ll help people with that other stuff too. It’s just because you love doing it?

Rebecca Donatelli: I do. I remember my first year, and I apologize if she starts snoring loud. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: No, that’s so funny. For people on the podcast, Rebecca’s dog came on and crawled on the couch behind her and she just–

Rebecca Donatelli: If you can’t see, my dog is in there. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: She is snoring just a little bit. I heard a couple of snores there. Don’t worry.

Rebecca Donatelli: I apologize.

[laughter]

Working from home, we got a lot– I remember my first year, I had a great first year, I was working my company. It was fun. It was successful, but it’s scary and it’s challenging. The best way to learn this industry is to have guidance from somebody else. Whether it’s a team leader, it’s a broker, it’s a mentor. I remember how inspired I was by my broker and now knowing so many incredible NAR friends who are in leadership really, really high up through NAR who’ve inspired me. I love just giving that back to people. It’s funny too. I went to college to be a high school math teacher. I originally wanted to go into teaching and I still love math to this day.

Even though that didn’t work out for me, it’s funny how it came full circle because now I teach about real estate. I love it. Some people ask me, especially if I help people in my market, like, “Oh, why would you want to help your competitor?” I feel like there’s enough business to go around. If you’re a hustler, if you’re a go-getter, you’re not going to be threatened by helping somebody else. I’ve gotten a lot from helping those other people. I genuinely love it, but my plate is very full. I am busy all of the time between teaching and holding and working and selling and managing my team and then industry stuff, but I love it. [laughs] I’m okay with it. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: You wanted to be a teacher early on and then you transition to real estate and now you actually get to teach it, which is pretty cool the way that things work full circle. What made you change from wanting to be a teacher to wanting to become a real estate agent?

Rebecca Donatelli: I went to college to a high school math teacher. In my senior year of college, I just basically had some panic attack. I went to my academic advisor. I’m like, “I can’t do this.” I graduated. I at the time was working as an assistant store manager in retail. I loved that job. I had been working there since my sophomore year in college and worked my way up into management. At that point, I knew I wanted to probably be in sales to some capacity, but not retail. It was fun as a job, it wasn’t a career path per se for me. I quit that. I took the first job that I was offered, which was an account manager position for an insurance company, lasted five months there. Here’s another office assistant. [laughs] I’m just surrounded by them.

Aaron Amuchastegui: You’ve got a full animal house over there.

Rebecca Donatelli: I do have a full animal house. This is the beauty of working from home. I lasted five months. I hated it. Then I decided to take a little bit of time off to just figure out where I was really supposed to go. Actually, my mom is the one that suggested real estate. We went to lunch one day and I was like, “Mom, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.” She was like, “Have you ever considered real estate?” I was like, “The commission freaked me out.” I’d watched my share of HGTV and that was all that I knew about it.

I couldn’t tell you the difference between colonial and a ranch at that point. I was able to link up with my now broker and just ask her some questions about the industry. I really connected well with her. I got my license and that was it. It just happened. [laughs]

Aaron Amuchastegui: There is no industry like real estate. It is so unique that people can go with a high school degree and go become an agent. Whereas commissions do scare a lot of people because there’s a lot of commission type of businesses out there in sales. I could see why gets to– At first that gets to be something people are scared of. How am I going to survive? Really when they realize there’s no ceiling, most jobs or careers, there’s a ceiling. Here’s your salary and you might get a bonus or you might get this, but it’s going to be within 10%, 15%, 20% of where you start.

Real estate there is no cap to what you can do. Especially with the level of entry. I don’t think there’s another business like it in the world that you can start with a low level of education. If you’re willing to work hard and get the right mentors, you can just crush it. What’s next for you up in Ohio? Any fun things that you’re super excited about?

Rebecca Donatelli: Really just focusing on building my team. We’re just so busy. I’ve really just been focusing on that. I am working on something really big on the side that I’m hoping to have completed by late fall. I’m not ready to share exactly what that is. For those that probably are going through your head, no, I’m not opening up my own brokerage. I’m very happy where I’m at. [chuckles] I am working on something really exciting that I’ll be sharing, hopefully, by late fall. Then just getting really excited for my role as president of LAC next year at my association, staying really busy.

It’s been fun. It’s crazy, hoping that everything calms down at some point. I miss traveling so much. I’ve been speaking a lot, but this is the way I’ve been speaking with people. That’s been a bummer, but [crosstalk]–

Aaron Amuchastegui: It is much different. The last few years I’ve flown over 1,000 miles and this year I think I’ve been on a plane twice. It is such a change for going and getting on a plane once a week to not at all anymore. You’re like, “This is a strange different world.” Rebecca, there was a ton of stuff there that you had and congratulations on 30 Under 30 again and becoming a president of the local chapter. Those are totally some things to be able to get excited about. If people want to reach out to you to book you for a Zoom speaking gig or a future speaking gig, or to learn any about that stuff, how should they find you?

Rebecca Donatelli: Most people reach out to me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is Rebeccadonatelli.realtor. Then on my Instagram page, if you click the contact, you can either call or texting or email me directly. If you don’t go on there. My email is rebeccadonatelli@mcdhomes.com.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Awesome. Well, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. In a few months when you’re ready to make that big announcement, let us know. Hopefully, we can help share the word for you.

Rebecca Donatelli: I will.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Thanks for coming on again and congratulations on getting into contract today from a client that you’ve met from Real Estate Rockstars. Thanks again for joining us.

Rebecca Donatelli: Thanks for having me.

Aaron Amuchastegui: Bye.