The Business of Homes Podcast

007 Episode Transcript

Zach Brickner
I think I would start out by saying that change is inevitable, so you better be prepared for it. And I think that's one of the mindsets that I come into real estate with. And I think a lot of people look at change as a negative or scary, and it took a different mindset or it took kind of rethinking that mindset to look at change.

Zach Brickner
As always, an opportunity.

Michael Conrad
All right. Hey, thanks, everyone, for being here. This is Michael Conrad with the Business of Homes podcast. And today you're very fortunate to hear Zach Brickner with Parks, who is a close friend of mine and a great real estate agent. And he's got some really interesting things to share from, I think a really interesting perspective that not a lot of people are capitalizing on these days.

Michael Conrad
So, Zach, thanks for being here.

Zach Brickner
Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it. Yeah, I jumped into the real estate world. I have an environmental science degree. It has nothing to do with real estate, but that's not quite that important really, when you kind of break it down.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, I don't think anyone in real estate is using their degree. Yeah, I have a theater arts degree, but I think the background that people bring to the table is important. And maybe what sort of career you were in can oftentimes be a big benefit. So what were you doing before you got into real estate?

Zach Brickner
Yeah, so before I got into real estate, I was coming. Well, I came right out of college, so I my jobs were lifeguard. I worked on a golf course. All things very.

Michael Conrad
Useful.

Zach Brickner
Very useful. All things that I learned that I did not want to do as a full time profession. It funny, I worked for a environmental consulting company at one point where I worked in the cross spaces of houses, and when I would go in the main houses, I really wanted to be in that part of the house. When I was on the job.

Zach Brickner
So that's a little bit of where it came from.

Michael Conrad
I do love a crawl space. Not well, that's good. Okay, so I. You didn't have the experience. How were how was anyone letting you sell at home if you didn't have any experience?

Zach Brickner
That's a great question. I think. Well, a lot of it starts from when I was born and raised in Nashville, so I'm still here 32 years later.

Michael Conrad
I only know a real unicorn.

Zach Brickner
Nashville is a real unicorn. I'm only called that like twice, two or three times a week. But yeah, born and raised in Nashville, I'd like to think of myself as a people person. I like to think of myself as an extroverted introvert. I recharge by being by myself, but I love the relationship aspect of things and after talking to a couple of mentors, really, they broke it down.

Zach Brickner
That real estate might make sense for me.

Michael Conrad
The story that I think that you have to share that may be a little different than other folks in real estate is that you have embraced this millennial mindset as well as really that's kind of the buzzword for what's underneath it, and that is real estate's changing, business is changing, the world is changing. Real estate flow and workflow and process is changing.

Michael Conrad
A paradigm is changing and I must change with it and maybe even be a spearhead, a leader in that change. And so, you know, real estate kind of hasn't changed a ton.

Zach Brickner
But we think I would I think I would start out by saying that change is inevitable, so you better be prepared for it. And I think that's one of the mindsets that I come into real estate with. And I think a lot of people look at change as a negative or scary, and it took a different mindset or it took kind of rethinking that mindset to look at change as always, an opportunity.

Zach Brickner
So when change happens, when turnover happens, when the market goes up, when the market goes down, I always in this took me years to figure out, but always look at it as a positive that I need to take advantage of. And one I would say even recent application of that is the COVID shutdown. COVID shutdown changed so many and I'm going to kind of shifted into restaurants, changed so many operating kind of systems that they did.

Zach Brickner
But the ones that changed on a dime or that were able to adapt to those changes quickly pivot were incredibly successful. I was waiting in a 20 minute line outside of Rose Pepper Cantina because they were selling margaritas to go right while there were other restaurants that were complaining that they were shut down. And I'm like, Rose Pepper stayed perfectly fine, is still around Those other restaurants.

Michael Conrad
Shout out to Rose River.

Zach Brickner
Yes, exactly the least natural.

Michael Conrad
Amazing.

Zach Brickner
Local.

Michael Conrad
Yeah I. I think that there is a moment of fear that strikes into the heart of every business person when big change happens, a market shift, a pandemic, or whatever. I have felt it. I can feel that feeling now just in my memory. But it's that moment between fear and then, like pivoting into action. How long is that moment?

Michael Conrad
How long is that moment? Because some people it's short, some people as long. Another quicker you can make it, the better and more successful you're going to be.

Zach Brickner
Yeah. And I think it always is dependent on what that moment, what we're dealing with or what came at us. My mother, I will quote my mother a million times, but one thing she always said is you can never control what happens to you, but you can always control how you react. Totally. And it is a mental it is a mindset that is once again, it's not easy.

Zach Brickner
I don't want to act like the the, you know, the soothsayer here and know exactly how I'm going to react to any scenario. But if I can remind myself of that as it's all about how I react, I'm trying to get out of that kind of concerned mindset, change it into an intentional and positive one. And I think your mindset is how I mean, I'm sure you probably do mindset things every day to like get you in the right headspace to be successful.

Zach Brickner
That's one of the biggest things because if you're negative or if you're not intentional and by accident, you probably aren't going to be successful or it'll be a lot more difficult. And I think that's where you're just where like where is that marketing efficiency and where can I jump on that so that I'm solving a problem or I'm solving a pain point for somebody?

Michael Conrad
You know, the mindset piece is something that I have actually put to the back burner for much of my career because I was sort of a naturally buoyant and optimistic person and I didn't feel like I needed mindset, mindfulness or exercises or encouragement. The entrepreneurial journey is full of ups and downs, and I had a lot of ups.

Michael Conrad
In fairness, I want to call it out. I wrote a it was a good way. There was a good ride and it was mostly up. And in the recent intervening years that have had big dips and downs and that pandemic sort of fear in all of us, and then really to be in a kind of a a nuts year where there was just a lot of market shift, a lot of up and down.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, that fear began to set in and I started to realize, oh, you don't rise to necessarily the occasion. Like they say, you sink to your training and if you're not training yourself in mindfulness and in positive mindset shift, then it's not there when you really need it. And I kind of hate that that's true because I saw myself as this sort of Enneagram seven super buoyant, always positive.

Zach Brickner
And you're and.

Michael Conrad
I'm yeah, buddy. And so I, I was I was frustrated with myself but frustrated with the external circumstance because there I was railing on Tony Robbins and his silly mindset, you know, I'm a dragon in the mirror exercises, but all of a sudden I was feeling like I really needed that and in those low moments. So yeah, that's been much more important than I thought.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, I think it's, it's super important and it's not always easy. I think that's one of the biggest things I, I preach to my agents is like mindset and getting in the right headspace is not something that comes easy. It's not something that is inherent. It's an intentional thing. It's an intentional thing. And a lot of the agents are, I call them by accident agents because they don't have a system in a process.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, because the system and process is like, that's why people use you and that's why you can train yourself to do the same things, to be successful, doing the same things. But a lot of agents kind of wake up in the morning and what do I need to do today or what can I do today? Can I make some money today?

Zach Brickner
Like, do I need to talk to somebody? But, you know, that doesn't that's not a replicable process that is successful, in my opinion.

Michael Conrad
Yeah. Someone made this reference to a library of fires every day. You just kind of go to the library in which fire is on fire. Can we deal with that? I think that our listeners here to this podcast are going to start to hear themes over time as we repeat this idea of systems and automation and commitment to time management.

Michael Conrad
And so these are the the things that ultimately make an entrepreneur really successful and really make a business person survivable and sustainable all through the market shifts. And so you're a broker now and you are in a place of advice, dispensing and guiding others, and you have this really unique perspective being someone that has been in real estate for kind of a good number of years now, but you skew on the younger spectrum.

Michael Conrad
And so what is one of the mindset shifts you bring for this sort of like younger crowd, sort of millennial crowd to the table? That is been great for your agents.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, so I've been ten years now and I can't believe that I so I'm 32 years old, been in it ten years. It was a slog at the beginning. It was definitely a grind at three different jobs.

Michael Conrad
Nobody wants to have a 22 year old sell their house.

Zach Brickner
No, I can't believe anybody trusted me at all to sell their house. That's kind of terrifying. I wouldn't trust a 22 year old today. I think one of the biggest mindset changes for me, and I want to keep emphasizing this, that it's not something that happens overnight. It's not something that you perfect on a day to day basis.

Zach Brickner
I had a real shift in my business, and this is even before I became a broker to remind myself that I am the CEO of my business, to treat myself like the CEO of a business. Does a CEO of the business like empty the trashcans at their office? Probably not. They offload a lot of that work. And so my mindset when I shifted to thinking across everything, Does the CEO of the business meet one client at one house to do this?

Zach Brickner
That's that's a $10 per hour wage. I need to be doing 250. What is what is my hourly wage, 200, 300, $500 per hour? I need to be writing contracts. I need to be showing houses. I need to be working with clients that make money. I think about that in every scenario that I possibly can, is that I am the CEO.

Zach Brickner
I make my hours. The CEO of Nike doesn't shake the hand of every single client that buys a pair of shoes. The CEO of Nike does not, you know, answer his phone at 8:30 p.m. to answer questions like, What he has done is set a system in place that handles all of these things. And when he is needed, he does the high level thinking and he does the big moneymaking, whether that's, you know, conversations, meetings, deals.

Zach Brickner
But he does the he's probably more on like the $20,000 per hour scale. But I think that mindset shift in every everyone can do it. It's whether you're going to be intentional or not intentional about it. It's super important. I have I tell this to a lot of people. I don't take any meetings on Friday afternoons at all.

Zach Brickner
Zero. Do I take phone calls? Do I do I do work? Sure. But I don't take a single meeting on Friday for news because that's my time. I tell each and every one of my clients and my agents that so they all are aware of that. I have not lost a single client. I've not lost a single agent because of that.

Zach Brickner
I tell them on the front end, they understand that that's my time. I work on weekends, so I need that time to like, hang out with my family or, you know, go have a beer at lunch and not have to worry about the after, like that type of thing. But I tell people on the front end, no one's leaving me because I'm not working on Friday afternoons because they know that I'm working the rest of the time.

Zach Brickner
But either way, that kind of full circle, you are the CEO of your business. You need to think about it that way. The CEO doesn't do the $7 an hour job.

Michael Conrad
Okay.

Zach Brickner
So difficult to kind of you.

Michael Conrad
Verge on almost sounding elitist to some ears. Mine. I came up so listeners here will know that I came up in sort of a blue collar world, you know, I was a construction worker and so there's this sort of American sort of grassroots feeling like, oh, I shouldn't be too proud to sweep the floor or take out the trash.

Michael Conrad
But it's been a bit of a hard education for me as I've gone and sort of I didn't go to school for business. I've kind of learned it along the way and I've been almost embarrassed to ask, Would you like adopted a CEO mindset? Because you probably did it like way younger than I did to your credit, because it took me a long time to get it through my head that you're right, there is a great benefit in delegating because it's really not about an elitist attitude or I'm not.

Michael Conrad
I'm above that. It's about where's the best use of my time, right? Gary Keller's classic one thing. What's the one thing that you're good at? Do that do the thing that only you can do and delegate the rest. Yeah. And once you begin to set up those automations systems, delegation, delegation, then everything starts to fall into place and your time is much better spent when you don't have a lot of money early on.

Michael Conrad
What is one thing that you feel like you can offload that can make a big difference in your business but buys you that time back?

Zach Brickner
Yeah. Okay. So another a really good example of this is I'm going to talk about my team as a whole. Here is I recommend a lender. I have two lenders that I use, but each individual client that I work with gets one lender. This is the lender I recommend. I work with them all the time. Yeah, but I don't know.

Zach Brickner
I don't give them an option. I say, this is the lender.

Michael Conrad
You have options for different types of transaction, correct?

Zach Brickner
Beautiful. But they are. But but my client doesn't see the options. It's a decision I make because I'm the professional. Right. They with anything regarding money. I have offloaded this where they talk you know, hey Will, should I do this and should I move the money around? What is this? What am I preapproval? I'm like, I know the very baseline level of this.

Zach Brickner
You need to speak to lender. All of the lending stuff that is can be entirely handled by them. They are the professional. They are the expert in this realm. I my job is not to to to figure out what your loan will be and how much it'll be per month. Like you, this conversation needs to be entirely handled by this other person.

Zach Brickner
So I at the beginning, you think you think that you need to be the expert in all realms and actually you need to stay in your lane. That is probably one of the biggest things is my job is to get the best deal for you in this real estate transaction of that you want to have. But my job isn't to kind of advise you on finances or advise you on inspections or advise you on insurance.

Zach Brickner
Like I know very little about all of that stuff, but I have the best team in place to kind of handle it.

Michael Conrad
I want to dig into that because I think this is one of those kind of hard conversations that isn't really taking place in real estate. And you go to real estate school, you take your take your test, you get your license. But no one's really talking about this concept of what is my day to day supposed to look like?

Michael Conrad
I like that you drew out this concept that delegate thing early on in in your time in your career. It doesn't look like hiring someone is spending money. It looks like taking the partners that you already are needing to get to the end of the transaction and not only empowering them just to do their job, but mentally offloading that from yourself, not giving that time that effectively isn't as useful.

Michael Conrad
It's getting that time back to spend on something else. But this idea that you're not taught how to operate, how to think, you know, I don't know if you could teach it, but this concept of I don't have to be the expert, Oh man, I think that this is a really tough issue because if we haven't looked around in the last like four decades, real estate has change.

Michael Conrad
And the technological disruption and the actions that a realtor does on a day to day has completely changed. And so I think that there's this subtle, almost unspoken, I need to make sure that I'm valuable. The mentality that's in every new realtor, every realtor for that matter, and this I have to be valuable makes you do certain actions or say certain things or, you know, that I'm not sure is entirely always helpful.

Michael Conrad
And so how do we begin to settle into this peaceful mindset of like, I don't have to be the expert, but that doesn't mean I'm not valuable. But then am I ripe for disruption? It's very complex. How are you thinking about this?

Zach Brickner
Yeah. So first of all, real estate. Back in the day you had a giant book or the MLS book that had to be updated every day. You, the real estate agent, had the every listing. So, you know, Joe Smith on the street who was buying a house, had to come to your office to look at the available listings and then you would go and you'd have to drive to a separate office to get the key to the specific listing.

Zach Brickner
Your day to day business was a completely different world. I mean, you didn't have the there was no Internet, obviously, but the MLS book would have to be updated daily, etc.. So yes, it's completely changed. Now where your value is. And this the beginning of it is experience. You have to know where and have those conversations. So you need to be doing Open House is doing all these different things to have the conversations, to see where you can meet your clients.

Zach Brickner
Where they are is my opinion, because I think it's really difficult to know what the value is until you have 100 people ask you these same questions. You're like, That's what that value is. And then, I mean, this is this is something that's pretty that goes throughout any business. Look at your peers, see what they're doing, and you need to copy them in your authentic way.

Zach Brickner
So don't copy them identically, would you? Please don't. But copy them in a way. Say they're doing this system. They have this system and their clients love it. You can replicate a system like that relatively easily and put it in your own way. I mean, so. So where does value come into play? It's kind of an abstract idea today in real estate, because we don't provide the listings.

Zach Brickner
They can go to Zillow, Redfin, whatever place, get a sponsorship for one of those places, but they provide all of the listings. So you your relationship with the person is the was where the value starts and ends. If they don't if they don't, I say this often if they don't know like and hopefully trust you, they are not going to use you.

Zach Brickner
I mean, no they can trust. Those are the three kind of levels of the funnel, right? They have all three. There's a good chance they'll use you if they just know who you are. I mean, you're talking about like a 5% conversion rate. But if they know and like you, maybe it's a 40% conversion rate. No, they can trust 65, 70% conversion rate.

Zach Brickner
So my entire philosophy of providing value is to start with that. And then at a bare minimum, they know they can trust me and then I can build a business around taking care of those people. I mean, my gosh.

Michael Conrad
So many truth bombs just then. Just now we're dropped. So for all of you listening, go ahead. Rewind. I heard a funnel of relationship. That's a really good concept. You got to start by getting yourself out there so people know you. Absolutely. And then you got to start creating opportunities for interaction so that they like you. And then you've got to show a certain level of experience, knowledge or willingness to go work on their behalf.

Michael Conrad
That creates a trust quotient. So yeah, that funnel of relationship, that is basically the recipe right there.

Jake Hall
Hey, everybody, it's Jake, director for the Business of Homes Podcast. I hope you've been enjoying today's episode, starting with Zach's outlook that change is always an opportunity for growth, the value of adopting a CEO mindset and how it can be disruptive to try and be the expert in all aspects of your real estate business. When we return, Michael and Zach dive into how real estate has shifted into a service industry, the importance of continuing education and how to place yourself in the top 5% of agents.

Jake Hall
You don't want to miss it. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @thebusinessofhomespod, where you can interact with us and see some great bite sized pieces from all of our episodes. for you listeners out there, did you know our entire podcasts are filmed and are on our YouTube channel? Check it out next time you want to see our amazing guests tell their stories.

Jake Hall
And are you currently watching this episode in video format? Don't forget to follow us on your preferred audio streaming service to take us with you on the go. Lastly, do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcastgmail.com. Please enjoy the rest of today's episode with Zach Brickner.

Jake Hall
Let's get back to it.

Michael Conrad
And then the other one you said was that the value is not intrinsic meaning. It's not the same way every time in a transaction, but that it has a high level of variable value based on the type of person that you're working with. Yeah, I think that's a really big one. So are we asking our buyers or our sellers some sort of pat set of question like a questionnaire to dig out of them, how I can better serve you?

Zach Brickner
So yes and no. I think each client is different. I like to think of it, is that we're in a service industry now. We are we are not the gatekeepers for the houses. We are providing a service. And the service is what is is almost entirely important because if they have a bad experience, if they have a bad expense at a restaurant, you're not going anywhere.

Zach Brickner
I mean, you can kind of apply through. So with regards to questions asked, I think this goes back to the process system. When I sit down with a buyer, when I sit down with the seller, I ask all of the same questions, but they're asked almost entirely different depending on the personality. Totally, because sometimes people want to sit down and have the first meeting where I've put a a list in front of them.

Zach Brickner
Every question, we fill the blanks and we can move on from there. Some people send me five houses and we have a conversation on the phone about what they're looking for. It. It can be molded. Everybody's business is different, but the process, the same system remains. The same is that I do learn these things. It's just a matter of it's an in-person meeting.

Zach Brickner
If it's over coffee, if it's over drinks, if it's a phone call before we go see houses, it can change every time. And being flexible is important because once again, it all comes down. Your real estate is not selling house is real estate is selling yourself, and you have to be able to be flexible and be a good kind of servant for them.

Michael Conrad
Okay, so we talk about this paradigm changing, and I feel like you've been someone that has been attempting to wave the flag and say it's changing and the audience is changing, and that you are someone who's trying a position yourself as wanting to be participating in that change, participate in that conversation. Okay, So you have an I use this phrase, an increasingly younger buyer.

Michael Conrad
Mm hmm. Who have a different set of needs than buyers from 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50, 60 years ago, whatever. And so if we are looking for the value of what a younger buyer is looking for, you know, classically they're calling you with the houses, right? Instead of you telling them about the house is right. So what are some of these things that these younger buyers are needing out of their real estate agent that is identifiably different than maybe what things were ten years ago or 20 years ago?

Zach Brickner
Sure. I want to start by saying big picture the you have to address people's fears and and different generations, different buyers, different sellers have fears. The biggest fear with a buyer today, the two biggest fears really is they don't want to miss anything and they don't want to overpay. Those are their two concerns that you have to address almost immediately Now when you're addressing.

Zach Brickner
They're going to miss anything that's relatively you can sit down and explain that Here's where all the listings are. You're seeing a vast majority of them. I have some that are in house that I'll tell you about. There's new construction. There's for sale by owner. There's a million of these things you basically walk them through. Here's what all the houses are.

Zach Brickner
And they're like, okay, well, that kind of fear is solved. I shouldn't miss anything. The next one is the is the fear of overpaying. And you're like, I have ten years now of experience where I've done these negotiations from time to time. I know exactly how to do this, and I will walk you through every single scenario. So the fear maybe that the Gen Z is is it's funny.

Zach Brickner
Well, currently, statistically, millennials and Gen Zs are behind lagging behind their previous generations in homeownership. So fewer and far.

Michael Conrad
Less like the world has been really hard around us for the last couple of decades.

Zach Brickner
I think millennials aren't the scapegoat for everybody's problems. I you know, that's we don't even get that deep.

Michael Conrad
Anybody's been the receivers of a hard world.

Zach Brickner
It's we talk about a participation trophy world and I'm like, who is giving out those participation trophies? Yes. The people who are complaining about the millennials don't. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah, we can't go to live there. So, yeah, what are their concerns? I think one of the biggest concerns is they feel like they've not been taught the pathway.

Zach Brickner
When I got into real estate, I sat down with a good friend of mine, Christie Wilson, and she explained how real estate worked. I was 21 years old and I had never understood how commissions work, how title insurance is, what an inspection is. I knew I'd been through. I mean, how many years when graduating college and had never understood how a real estate, a real estate transaction occurs, who gets paid, how people get paid, how a loan works.

Zach Brickner
I knew talk about like financial literacy. I knew nothing. And so I really feel that the generation millennials and then the generation after us, they just don't know. You're only given houses on selling Sunset and you see a $5 million, you know, beautiful house. And I'd get sold and here's the commission. Great. And but there's no explanation. It's like that's what they always talk about.

Zach Brickner
We were never taught taxes or how to write checks.

Michael Conrad
But I feel.

Zach Brickner
Like real estate is a very similar kind of proposition.

Michael Conrad
They're investing financial education. Yeah, that's a great point.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, there's you have to be really that's why you see so many people who are repeating real estate is like a family tree thing. Like it's their mother and the grandmother, etc. It's because they know, they know and they're like, This job is pretty great if you do well at it. Yeah, but it's just.

Michael Conrad
Okay. So I feel like you heard to hear folks one of the biggest and easiest ways. If you are getting into real estate or early in your career to get ahead is to push education. The education of your outer sphere will bring them closer to you. Education of your inner sphere will create trust because it shows a lot of knowledge.

Michael Conrad
And the beautiful thing about education and knowledge is it's totally irrespective of age. You know, I actually struggle with that early in my career when I got in to this real estate sort of related business in Middle Tennessee, I was skewing younger than all my counterparts and they're definitely like you. Was that like, what's this guy? No, he can't possibly have seen very many houses, you know, blah, blah.

Michael Conrad
And so I just went hard into the books. You know, I use the Internet and all of the available inner information in around us to sort of really go hard into the information. And in that I was able to build trust just like what you're talking about, because people said, Oh, he might be young, but he can spit that game just as good as anyone else.

Michael Conrad
And so for a relatively younger audience, education is the way in. It's got to be.

Zach Brickner
It's it's where I start. So once again, when I was 22 in real estate, I can't believe anybody trusted me. But the same barrier speedbump, whatever you want to call it, continually came up that I wasn't experienced enough. I was too young. I wasn't the expert in the field. So I made it a point that I was going to solve that problem before they would ask it because they asked it so many times.

Zach Brickner
But there's there's a saying to that like solve it before they think it, etc.. But that's kind of the the idea. So I every opportunity when I wasn't busy, I was getting additional credit hours, I was getting designations from the National Association of Realtors. I think I've got four or five. And it's funny, I remember starting and seeing this be like, who?

Zach Brickner
Why do they do through all, you know, golf all the way to get all five of these? And it's like, I just wanted to have letters behind my name because I remember doctors had letters behind the name and I felt like they were it feels good. It feels good.

Michael Conrad
Not sort of super useful, but it feels good.

Zach Brickner
I'm not sure it's ever useful, but it feels great. So my whole thing was when they say, I'm not sure that you are, you know, I don't know if you had the experience. And I'm like, Well, I actually like I'm actually a broker, so I actually got my broker's license. Like what level of education is the other agent you're interviewing?

Zach Brickner
And they'd be like, Well, I, we didn't have a conversation. And I'm like, interesting that you're so you're not concerned about how educated you're, you know, your agent is and they'd be you know, kind of taken aback. Yeah. I mean, I just I wanted to be the most educated. I wanted to be the furthest along with my licensing.

Zach Brickner
I wanted to be in a position where that question, that question of experience, or if I knew what I was doing, it was infallible that I was the most experienced or knew the most. And that truly was. That's effort. I mean, that's kind of it's being intentional about getting those things. And it's, you know, we live in such a quick twitch world and I look at the pathway that I took and there are times in year four and a half that you're like questioning it and that's fine.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, but just remember that that consistency in effort over the long haul is really where you see the results after ten years. I mean, we got into the business right around the same time. That's right. You probably had the same thing where you're like, is it do I pivot? Do I look at different thing? Like, but it's it's the the time and the effort and still going to the office when you're miserable in a down year to do the same work that you've been doing because you know that it produces those.

Michael Conrad
Results consistency is king It.

Zach Brickner
Is.

Michael Conrad
So there's this idea that actually this is a call to arms. I mean, if you really think about it, this is a call to arms to all of our listeners, because I'm not sure people are always willing to put the work in. And I see a lot of folks do in real estate because it feels good or it feels easy for a time and it's not always going to feel like those things.

Michael Conrad
And so this is a bit of a call to arms that for an increasingly younger buyer to acquire them as a client and to remain relevant in a changing landscape full of tech disruption, you really got to go and get that education and talk ball so that you are ready to build that trust with other people. So I mean, this is a call to arms.

Michael Conrad
People got to go do the work. You can't get around it. There's no easy shortcut.

Zach Brickner
There is nothing great was achieved without a little bit of sacrifice. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things I tell my agents, too, when I'm interviewing them is real estate is incredibly easy. It's a low barrier of entry. It's amazing. Lenders, you know, not even lenders, but appraisers have years of infancy where they're under someone in all these hours in real estate, you take two weeks of class, you get a GED or a high school diploma and you're a real estate agent.

Zach Brickner
It's wild what real estate agents should always be trying to do. If they're trying to be successful in this world, is try to be the top 5%. And it's not that hard. It's actually really easy. You can do five things and it makes it sets you apart from that many real estate agents because there's so many. And so I'm always trying to kind of impart that wisdom of like, what are the things that set people apart?

Zach Brickner
Because you have to differentiate yourself in a market. One thing you know, we talk about the information or I don't think it's the information or it's the noisier. You're hearing noise way more than you are hearing information necessarily now. But when you sit down and you have that conversation, you're like, here are five things that you can do on a weekly basis.

Zach Brickner
On a yearly basis, all these different kind of, you know, benchmarks that will set you apart. And some people still look at me and say, you know, I don't like is that really going to make a difference? Well, that seems kind of difficult. Yeah, it is like it. But this is a job. Just wake up and sell 10 million.

Zach Brickner
I mean, it's just not going to happen that way. So, yeah, it's. Yeah, you're always trying to overcome that and it's you're trying to separate kind of like the real real estate agents, the ones that are going to be successful and the ones that watched a little, you know, love it or list it and really loved that show.

Zach Brickner
And it's you know, it is.

Michael Conrad
So you've worked these ten years, you've worked all sort of different transactions. You've been a different real estate agent at different times of your career. Success is something we talk about on this podcast a lot because different people define it differently. Success could look like time freedom, or it could look like money, or it could look like just your reach.

Michael Conrad
How well-known you are, you know? How are you defining success today? Because I know it will change and has changed. But how are you defining success today?

Zach Brickner
Success is something that is. It is. You're right. It changes. The biggest thing for me is that I care so much about my flexibility. I want to have as many options and as many doors open at any given time and I want to be able to decide. I want to write a book, decide I want to travel for two months, decide I want I want the ability to retire at 45.

Zach Brickner
If I really want to retire at 45. That is truly success to me. And it's so it's more of a time thing than it is money. Money matters to me, but it matters as a means to doing things that I want to do.

Michael Conrad
Give you the time.

Zach Brickner
Back to give me the time back. You know, if I if I accumulated X number of dollars, I would never need to times X, if that makes sense, I would. I don't need more money matters less if it it's kind of law to mission diminishing returns at some point. I don't need a bigger yacht. I don't. I don't have a yacht, by the way.

Zach Brickner
But but that's that's never mattered to me. But what has mattered to me, this is a funny story. So I got really bad grades one semester in college and it was it was bad. It was. It was not. Let's put it that it was a little lower than C. I wasn't graduating with these grades, okay? And I came home and my parents were were livid with me.

Zach Brickner
And I sat down. We had this conversation, you know, is is school right for me, etc.. I said, all I care about is I don't want you guys to bother me anymore. And they said, if you get a 3.5 or 3.0, we will never bother you. I said, Done, I can do a three, but I never got below 3.04 and it was like six more semesters that I had in college.

Zach Brickner
So I say flexibility. Maybe. I just don't want people to bother me to.

Michael Conrad
Leave me alone.

Zach Brickner
Motivation. It is the leave me alone motivation. And now, you know, when people don't fulfill what they say they're going to do, you have to bother them to do the things they say they're going to do. Yeah, I just do what I had. Don't bother me about it. I'll get it done. Like, that's my thing. I don't know if don't bother me.

Zach Brickner
Yeah.

Michael Conrad
This idea of recapturing time, I think there's probably a lot of people that have entered into some sort of entrepreneurial sort of stance or business because we're seeking that time, and I think that's an important piece of it to figure out how to balance. You can't stop working and get the time back that way. You have to build up your sphere.

Michael Conrad
You have to build your automation to sort of recapture that time. I got to tell you, my own personal experience, I have had a vision of automation and a vision of of time freedom over and over in the last 12 years. And it always seems to be just slipping out of my fingers as I sort of complicate my world on a yearly basis.

Michael Conrad
And so it's difficult. It sometimes it feels like a mirage that I'm always going after, and yet I am going to do some travel this this year so that hopefully maybe will prove out that I do have some time freedom. We'll have to see how that works and. I want to give you a quick second to talk about the book that you referenced.

Michael Conrad
I think when the rest of us were baking bread and building things in our backyards during the pandemic, you were doing something else.

Zach Brickner
Yeah. So I the I'm going to start out by saying one of the things that I love to do is I love to stretch myself and put myself in uncomfortable positions to to grow. I think if you're if you're sitting still, I think that's kind of a sign that you're getting yourself comfortable. And I don't feel like that growth or that reaching the next plateau or however you kind of define success, if you're sitting still, you're not kind of moving towards that next plateau.

Zach Brickner
So during COVID, I quit all networking. I decided that everyone sort of did. So it was an easy decision and I wanted to write a book. I never had written a book. I don't know how to write a book. I don't know where to start, write a book. I don't know who to talk to. I knew nothing, but I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on the real estate transaction and how to be a real estate agent.

Zach Brickner
So I sat down, I ended up meeting with there was a couple different platforms, a couple different ways. But basically you can either self-publish and have somebody write it for you, or you can write it yourself and then give it to somebody who will publish it and put it in all the right places and Amazon, etc.. So I sat down and I did it took about a year and a half and it was it really stretched me to a point of writing 110 pages.

Zach Brickner
I think it is single spaced. What? I don't even remember what the numbers are because I've sort of done a a brain for.

Michael Conrad
It you ever wrote.

Zach Brickner
But yeah, it was, it was a great experience. I say it's a great experience. It's the feeling of having something that you've created that you can put your hands on is a great experience and the work put in was all worth it. Am I going to write another book anytime soon? Probably not. Do I advise people? I'm like, It was a wonderful I was totally out of my comfort zone.

Zach Brickner
And that's that's what motivated me in some everybody's motivated different, but that was something that really, really, really drove it home for me. So it would be about a year and a half. I wrote the content and then had someone publish it, but yeah, Amazon, it's in a couple of bookstores, but it's the Millennials Guide to Real Estate.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, yeah, I would definitely courage folks to check that out. It's less a narrative and more a how to. And I think there's a lot of benefit in that, particularly for a younger audience that's kind of driving for that that heavy bullet point detail.

Zach Brickner
It's education like we talked about very early on. It's education and it is if you guys have seen the yellow dummies guides to it is the effectively that but it's the millennials guide to real.

Michael Conrad
Estate amazing that's good Zach thank you so much Really excited to have you as a friend and colleague and glad to have you here on the podcast today and we'll catch you later.

Zach Brickner
Yeah, I appreciate you having me here and thank you.

Michael Conrad
Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you next time.

Jake Hall
Hey everyone. Jake again, director for the Business of Homes Podcast. I hope you have enjoyed today's episode. A huge thank you to Zach Brickner for being a part of the podcast. Go follow him on Instagram z_bricksquad and let him know how much you enjoyed his story. Check out the show notes of this episode to learn more and read Zach's book, “Millennials Guide to Real Estate”. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and make sure to follow us on Instagram as well@thebusinessofhomespod. Do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening and we'll see you soon.