Real Estate Sessions Rewind – Barb Betts, Owner/Broker – The RECollective

Do you want a steady stream of repeat and referral business? Bill Risser introduces Barb Betts, the Owner and CEO of The RECollective. Barb shares how building a real estate business through relationships is her primary focus. Even until now, she still receives referrals from the internet leads she met 20 years ago. That is why real estate agents should want to build the majority of the business by referrals. She shares some of the best ways to do that—from personalized postcards to social media. If you want more tips on how to build a relationship-based real estate business, tune in!—Barb Betts – Owner/Broker – The RECollectiveMy guest is as passionate about relationships as anyone I know. I’m talking about Barb Betts. She’s the Broker, Owner and CEO of The RECollective. She also has a couple of other marketing companies, Relately Marketing and Real Estate by Relationships Academy. She’s doing all great stuff and it’s going to be a blast chatting with her. Let’s get this thing started. Barb, welcome to the show.Thank you so much for having me, Bill. I’m excited to be here.I’m happy to have you here. Molly McKinley has been a source of guests for me. You and I get to meet officially at an event this past fall. I interviewed Sara Sutachan and now I’m interviewing you. This is a great day for me. It’s been a lot of fun. Let’s start in Southern California. Are you in the Long Beach area?I am in the Long Beach area which is situated halfway between LAX and Disneyland.Are you a native? Did you grow up in Southern California?I was born, raised and brokered in Long Beach, California.I grew up in San Diego. I lived there for almost four years. I got the Southern California thing going. I know you have a son who plays baseball at a very high level. Tell me about that.He was drafted out of Long Beach Wilson High School by the Tampa Bay Rays. He spent many years in the organization. He had some significant injuries that have been challenging, and you throw in COVID in the middle of that. He played Double-A in 2020 for them and was a free agent at the end of the season. There’s this little thing called the baseball lockout going on now. It’s been a little challenging this off-season.He signed the contracts with the Los Angeles Dodgers. We have moved into the Dodgers Organization now at the Minor League level. The fun fact is all my friends are thinking they are going to see him at the Chavez Ravine in April 2022 and that’s not quite the case. I’m super excited for him to continue his journey and play baseball at such a high level.What’s his position?You can balance being a mom and having a successful career in real estate.CLICK TO TWEETHe’s a left-handed hitting catcher which is unique to the catching position. He is naturally born left-handed. He eats, drinks, sleeps and golfs left-handed. My husband is challenged in the height department. When my husband saw him picking up Cheerios with his left hand, mom wanted to get him a glove for his right hand. Dad said, “I’m not going to have a 5’10” left-handed player that can’t do anything.” It’s a true story. My husband bought him a glove for his left hand and threw balls at him in our living room at a very young age. Chris can throw a baseball harder than I’ve ever seen anyone throw a baseball right-handed. He hits balls 400 feet left-handed.We get to talk a little bit about this because I worked for the San Diego Padres for twelve years. I love baseball. It’s my thing. The dynamics of a left-handed throwing catcher is an issue because the majority of batters are right-handed. They will be in the way of throws and it’s tougher to throw the third. It’s way easier to throw the first, I would think, because you wouldn’t have to twist around so much. Maybe pick a lot better. I was going to ask you before I knew all of this, “Are you a Dodgers or Angels fan?”Not so long ago, we were Angel fans, but we did own a Dodger hat, which is a good thing. I never thought I’d say I bleed blue being a SoCal girl and mostly raised in the Orange County side of town. We are Dodger fans overnight. We’ve made a lot of our friends very happy because we have a lot of Dodger fan friends.We probably should talk about real estate. The baseball fans love this but there’s always somebody who says, “Why do you spend so much time?” It’s because I love it and I want to have a great conversation. You’re approaching twenty years in the real estate industry. Congratulations. That’s amazing. There’s always something. I love the story of how real estate found you.I’m the typical realtor that had a bad experience buying a home. Many realtors can relate to this where I thought, “If they could do that poor of a job and make that kind of money, I could do better.” I was in accounting. I was a glorified bookkeeper/CFO, but I was not a CFO. I was a bookkeeper but I was good at it. I love spreadsheets but I hate debits and credits and that kind of stuff. I also was a young mom. We just had our son and our daughter was on the way.I worked for a very challenging boss who was female. She told me one day when my child was very ill that I needed a nanny for situations like this because I’m a working woman. I thought, “No.” I decided, “What can I do where I can have a balance of being a mom and having a successful career?” Since I had a child so young, we were eighteen when we had our son, I didn’t go to college. I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I wanted something I could own and say I’m an expert in. I wanted something that included a license or certificate that didn’t require me to go back to four years of college. You combine the bad experience of buying a home with me wanting that, and every one lands in real estate. That was the easy answer.I have over 300 interviews on this show and I’d say ten knew they were going to be a realtor at the age of fifteen.People are going through high school in career class, doing the course and then researching why they should go into real estate.You started with Prudential, which is not around anymore. They have been absorbed by a couple of places. They were well-known for their training, education, and setting you set yourself up for success. Is that what you found there?What I found there was the manager. I will never forget when I went to the career night that we used to have back in the days of real estate. It was pouring rain that night. I still went and no one else showed up. We were in a training room and he said, “Let’s go to the conference room and sit down.” I figured he had canceled.The RECollective: Learning the short sale market was the best thing we did, and we didn’t shy away from that. One person there is worth his time. I’ll never forget him, Richard Dewitt. He has since passed but he sat down and educated me. He gave me hope and told me I could do it. I know more now if you could fog a mirror and you have a real estate license, you probably can land in a brokerage somewhere. He made me feel special and heard. To that point, they had great new agent training and a mentor program. They had all the things I needed going into the career that I knew nothing about more than just my personal transaction. Education and support are what attracted me to Prudential.Something tells me that you took some of those lessons from him and you still use them. We were talking about early 2004, 2005 or somewhere in that range. You’re cruising along. I like to ask this question because you understand social media very well. You teach and train. You have an academy. You had to be an early adopter in the office. Were there old people running around going, “You’re never going to amount to anything. Why are you doing that?”This is really going back. Realtors who are reading who think that internet leads started with The Portal. Let’s call them that to keep names out of it, it didn’t start like that. It started with Yahoo.com. It was the first site to generate buyer and seller leads online. They partnered with Prudential only. It was called The Portal. Each office in our Prudential system had an assigned agent that was the Portal agent. I was the only agent that was willing to take it on because all the other senior agents were like, “That’s never going to turn into anything. The internet is never going to sell a house. No one is going to go online and look for an agent.” We know where we are...