Episode 304 – Katie Day, Team Lead, MoveMeToTexas Team, Powered by Real Broker, LLC

Real estate is not just grinding content for your online marketing strategies and waiting for people to come knocking on your door. In reality, you have to put in a lot of work and effort to produce engaging materials that resonate with your target market. Joining Bill Risser is Katie Day, Team Lead of MoveMeToTexas, powered by Real Broker, LLC. She looks back on her ups and downs as a college management major who jumped from one business to another until she achieved residential real estate success. Katie talks about how she builds a large following through her YouTube videos, the challenges of marketing in Instagram, and the needed mindset to win now that the real estate competition transcends to digital platforms. --- Katie Day, Team Lead, MoveMeToTexas Team, Powered by Real Broker, LLC Welcome to Episode 304. As always, thank you so much for tuning in and telling a friend. We're going to talk to Katie Day. Katie is the Team Lead of the MOVEMETOTX Team Powered by Real Broker, LLC. We're going to talk to another real operation. I'm excited to chat with Katie. She's doing some great things in the world of technology to help our customers with their marketing and other things. Let's get this thing started. Katie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Katie, thanks for being on the show. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'll start at the beginning like I always do. I did some digging, and somehow, I think there's a Florida tie with you. Is it possible that you're a Florida native, or do I have that part of it a little bit wrong? I am not a Florida native. I grew up in Maryland, so I lived there for the first portion of my life through high school. My parents were retiring to Florida when I graduated from high school, so they wanted me down there. When I went to the University of Tampa, toured it, I saw the campus and everything there, I was like, "How could I not go here?" That's where I ended up for college. I live in St. Petersburg, just across The Bay from Tampa, and that University of Tampa campus is spectacular. I think it originally 100 years ago was a hotel. Would you mind sharing your thoughts about that campus and your experience there? The University of Tampa was right on the Hillsborough River. It's an absolutely gorgeous campus and the hotel is now administration buildings, classrooms and stuff like that, but they have these big minarets. It's like the Russian-style architecture minarets. It's a stunning campus. They have Wi-Fi at the pool. It's 30 to 40 minutes from the beach. As an eighteen-year-old that's being told that they are no longer living at home and can do whatever they want, why wouldn't you go live near the beach and have Wi-Fi at the pool? I said it was to study. I never took a computer to the pool, but it was an amazing time. I loved living there. I lived in St. Pete for a little while as well, Orlando, Naples, but as my time in Tampa, especially as a young adult getting out of my parent's home, was an absolute blast. I loved my time in that area of Florida. It probably was the perfect distance away from mom and dad, right? Yeah. They live in Naples. That's where they moved to. I was looking at Florida Gulf Coast, which was like 30 minutes away. I'm like, "That's an unexpected pop-in." Two and a half hours, you've got to put some time and thought into coming to visit. I also looked at the University of Florida and things like that, but that was further away. It was a good happy medium between the two. Being close enough to drive home for the weekend or a meal or two, but far enough away that they weren't popping and I was popping on them on a regular basis. What area of study was your degree in? I got a degree in Management. I didn't know what direction I wanted my life to go in. I knew that business seemed the smart route as far as college went. I was like, "I'll get a Business degree." Getting a degree in Management, I'd like to manage people or things. That was my route and I got the General Business degree, figuring it would bode well in any circumstance. Part of my research showed that you worked for Carrabba's. It's part of Bloomin' Brands, a big company based here in Tampa. Is that right? Bloomin' Brands, that's not what it was when I worked there. I worked for Carrabba's. It was my favorite restaurant. Fun fact, I worked there in high school. In my town in Maryland, the city that I lived in, they opened up a restaurant and I saw it driving. I was 16, maybe even 15, but I saw it and was like, "I'm going to get a job there." I got a job as a hostess. I worked there throughout the rest of my high school timeframe. Once I was eighteen, I became a server. When I moved to Florida, they obviously had them all over in Tampa and Naples, where my parents live. I worked in both locations there, whether I was home for the summer or at school. I loved it. It's also great being a poor college student is getting money paid in tips. You come home with a couple of $100 cash at the end of the night. I was rich compared to my friends at that time. If there's food that's leftover or things that were cooked that were mistakes or that the chef or cook throw away for a couple of extra bucks, you're getting good food to eat. I was eating very well through college. The reason why I like to go back in time when I talk to my guests is for stories like that. I've been doing this show for a few years. It seems so many realtors have come out of either servers or bartenders, right behind that would-be teachers and nurses. Why do you think it's so for the real estate industry people to have that level of service? [caption id="attachment_4080" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Online Marketing: Many realtors originally came from hospitality jobs, with teachers and nurses following closely behind them.[/caption]   I definitely see a lot of the bartenders and servers. I think that hospitality is a hard industry as well. Not that real estate is easy, but I think that a lot of people see similar parallels of the harder I work, the more money I can make. I think it's the customer service and taking care of people aspect of things. People always need food and housing. I think both are high-stress environments. There are a lot of parallels. I do think that people in hospitality do well in real estate. I see a lot of that bartenders, servers, hospitality hotels, and stuff like that coming into real estate. You had a training role during your time with Carrabba's. Can we talk about that a little bit? I was a trainer with them throughout college, but when I was graduating from college, it was like, "Am I going to stay in hospitality and go into management? Am I going to go find a job? What am I going to do?" For me, in doing what my parents wanted me to do, I looked for jobs with law firms or business-type jobs. I did end up leaving the service industry. I guess that would have been 2008 throughout probably '06, '07 and '08. I did train and do stuff like that for Carrabba's. Somehow, we now have to get you into the wonderful world of multifamily real estate. How did that happen? I got into multifamily directly out of college. I interviewed for jobs for insurance agencies, law firms and legal assistance. I got a Management degree. It's not like I had this super-specific degree that I had a specific career path. I was like, "What business jobs can I get that I make decent enough money to be able to pay some bills now that I'm out of college?" I found a property management company that was hiring what they deemed a manager in training or a manager in a training program. Basically, their thing was they brought people on at leasing agents. Looking back on it, they bring people on as leasing agents and people that showed promise, they would show them different aspects of the business like the maintenance, management, budgeting, finance and paying bills. If we went through that program, they would potentially move us to another apartment community where we would become the property manager. It's a great program for them. Looking back on it now, I was twenty years old when I got my first property. I'm like, "What were they thinking?" It gave me so much business knowledge on how to manage. I don't think that I would be where I am now if I didn't have that. I totally now think that was too soon. I had too much responsibility and made so many mistakes. I don't think there's any other job or industry that I would've gotten that much knowledge, high-level management and business knowledge anywhere other than the path that I took and what happened there. Initially, you worked in the St. Petersburg, Tampa area, but I think this company took you around the country. Is that right? Yeah. Initially, I worked in South St. Petersburg, Orlando, Naples, Birmingham, Alabama and Houston, Texas. Looking back on it, hiring young kids right out of college, you normally don't have kids, spouses, pets and stuff like that. You're young and have nothing going for you. You have no ties. It's great for them to call and be like, "Do you want to move to Orlando next week for $5,000 more a year?” “Yes.” “Do you want to move to Birmingham, Alabama for $10,000 more a year?”...