Beautiful Problems: Turning Life’s Challenges into Opportunities with Jessica Woodbeck

Transcript:

Jessica Woodbeck: The crying baby on the airplane, go sit next to him. Stop being the one that wants to avoid being by the crying baby. The chocolate chip cookies you want to eat, refuse it. He’s like, “It’s in these micro-moments that you build mental toughness.” You have to have tough skin and you have to want to get in the sandbox and battle it out with the best of the best knowing that’s just simply part of the game.

Lindsay Favazza: Welcome back to another episode of the Agents Who Crush It In Real Estate. I’m your host Lindsay Favazza and today kids, please earmuffs. I have a badass to introduce you to Jessica Woodbeck, the CEO and co-founder of Thrive Realty Company based in Michigan. Jessica’s journey into real estate began 16 years ago, transitioning from a corporate career to pursue her passion in this industry. She has been instrumental in shaping Thrive’s innovative tools and community-driven initiatives designed to strengthen client satisfaction.

Under her leadership, Thrive Realty is not only a successful boutique realty firm, but they have built strong connections within the community to wellness and other local business owners to give more than just real estate guidance to their clients. In today’s episode, we’re going to dive into Jessica’s career, her journey, the challenges and triumphs she’s encountered, and the insights she’s gained along the way. As always, if you’re a seasoned agent or you’re brand new to the business, Jessica’s story is sure to provide valuable lessons and inspiration.

Without further ado, welcome to the podcast today, my friend.

Jessica: Thank you. I am so happy to be here.

Lindsay: I’m so happy to have you. This has been a long time coming. We’ve known each other for a while now because of our John Sheplak connection from way back. I think we went to a bunch of different conferences and stuff together. You’ve just always been someone who’s been so consistent, so on top of everything. I’m thrilled to have our audience listen to anything that you have to provide to them today.

Jessica: Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I’m proud to share. I’m excited to share. I’m super happy you asked and let’s do this thing. Let’s give them something good.

Lindsay: Let’s do it. Dive right in. Take us back, 16 years ago. It’s funny because at first I had taken some notes from online and it said 10. There’s something out there you have to update, obviously, because I’ve found it. [laughs] When I did that, you were like, no, 16. It’s like, holy crap, the time flies by. Tell us what were your thoughts getting into the business. You had a different career. Take us back to those days.

Jessica: I’m in Michigan where the automotive capital and I was fourth generation at General Motors. Great job. Incredible career for such a young age. I started there very young, my young 20s. After a while, I realized not that the life that my family had been living was anything that wasn’t worth shouting from the rooftops. I felt a missing component of personal development. I felt a missing component of just people work like deep people work and always loved real estate. I love the idea of being a part of somebody’s journey and doing something happy, exciting, big. It drew me in. I got licensed and ultimately went full-time when I was pregnant with my second child.

Lindsay: Good times.

Jessica: That brought me to the bottom of the market. I’m like, “Let’s do this. Let’s see what happens.”

Lindsay: 2008, you said. 2008. That was literally when everything was crashing down and people were bailing. You were like, “You know what? This is the perfect time for me to do this.”

Jessica: This seems right. Let’s do this. I was in an old historic town and joined Century 21. Big franchise. I remember a lot of my mentors, family, friends, older men, truly, who were like, “Hey, kid, this is a bad idea. You should go back to work. This is not good. I’m getting out. You shouldn’t be here.” I remember being like, “Hey–“

Lindsay: “I’ll Jessia Woodbeck that.” [laughs]

Jessica: I’m up for the challenge. I’m really glad like many people say that join the market or the industry back then. It really taught you a grit, a grind, a focus of work ethic that I don’t think you could find other than that time. I’m grateful for the tough beginnings.

Lindsay: Yes, I think some people now getting into the business are seeing a little bit of that too, especially with the lower inventory. There’s a little bit of that. It’s definitely not what it was back in 2008. There’s a little bit of that, like you have to really grind now again, too. A little bit of that is like them getting in and seeing what it’s like when it’s bottomed out and now when it’ll start to go back up, they’ll be riding that wave.

2008, what were you doing? How were you getting your business? Were you focused on short sales? How is that working for you?

Jessica: I really cut my teeth on short sales and REOs and bank-owned, which was complex and multi-layered. I think it gave me a bit more skill set and foundation that you wouldn’t normally get getting into residential real estate. Then outside of that, as time went on, basics, basics that all agents should do in any marketplace I was doing cold calling, door knocking, open houses. I was creating relationships in the areas I was spending most of my personal time. Going a little bit deeper in parental relationships as a mom and going deeper in the school systems and anywhere you’re spending your social time is always a great bet to say, “Hey, practice your skills here, network here, social networking.”

The basics that we teach people today as what I was doing back then, with the layer of looking at where the market was and going where most of the business was being had, which was the bank-owned opportunities.

Lindsay: You had this other career. What was it like transitioning and really having to change your brand, if you will as people knew you, especially you said fifth generation? They always thought this was your career path. It was really embedded that this was going to be what you were going to be. Now you have to switch and get them to know you as this new career path and a realtor and all this. How did you do that? What was your strategy other than the relationships? Was there anything that really you helped to push your sphere into knowing that now you’re in real estate?

Jessica: Yes. It wasn’t rocket science. It’s not like I had some big pitch and I brought everybody together. It was like, “Listen, we’re changing the identity of Jessica Woodbeck.” It was pretty simple. It was at family gatherings. It was during phone calls and just talking about my passion and why I was moving into this industry, what I knew I could be able to give to the people that knew and trust me back then.

I think it’s something that agents today, especially new agents coming into the business, is they think just because they haven’t done it before, they don’t have much to offer. Back then, I think with the background I had already had at General Motors, I was confident that anybody working with me, regardless if I knew how to do a short sale or not, I knew the bet on me was sure. I knew I would find out. I knew I was fully capable of doing the research. I knew that I would take care of them.

It wasn’t a shift of who I was because they already knew me as that person. It was a shift in, “Hey, I’m moving into this because I know I can make a difference. I know I can be of service and I’m excited to do it.” It was simple conversations around taking my talents and moving it into a new industry and being backed by powerful people in the industry, in the surrounding area that had the answers I needed.

Lindsay: I love that. It wasn’t necessarily that your brand was switching. It was that you were just switching the focus of what your brand really was to them, which is hardworking, determined. It was an easy transition, it sounds like.

Jessica: Yes. I think that’s important to note. It wasn’t like I was reinventing who I was at the core. It was what I was now doing and offering the world was simply different and they could take advantage of it. I would love for them to do so.

Lindsay: All right. 2008 happens. Now, short sales are starting to dwindle and it’s getting back to some kind of a normal market. What was your career trajectory at that point? Did you start a team and then the brokerage? Take us back to how that roadmap worked for you.

Jessica: Yes. I think like most agents that entered the industry, I had no desire to start a team. I had no desire to be a broker. I really wanted what most people come here for, which is that flexibility. I quickly learned after getting good at it. I think that’s the thing we all love so much about real estate is you eventually get really good at it. Then you find yourself on this hamster wheel of, “Oh my gosh, I don’t own my time. I’m getting burned out. I don’t know how to get off this hamster wheel because I want the results of it, but I don’t want the time consumption.” When I hit that point, I was doing myself. I was almost 15 million, 20 million myself. I was a mom. I was a newlywed.

I asked my husband to get licensed. He was a Detroit police officer of, at that point, 13 years. I’m like, “Hey, I know this is way outside the box. I love to go outside the box. Here’s what I’m asking.” I was the breadwinner so I said, “If you could get licensed just to service my clients in between me keeping this baby alive,” because I had popped out another baby. He’s like, “Sure, let’s do it. If it’s temporary, I’m willing to do just about anything.” He got licensed.

In that time period, he picked up his own client through Detroit police. He made more money. in 30 days than he would make in a year.

Lindsay: He’s now hooked?

Jessica: Yes. At that point, that’s when he was like, “Wait, what? Is this real?” We went through that whole like, w”W don’t owe that money to anybody. That’s actually our money.” About five months later, he resigned or retired as a police officer and went full-time. That was the point in which we decided, okay, if this can be true for us, we’re just normal people out here working hard, making a living. We want to share this with as many people as possible. That was really, truly where our naive mindset was. It’s like, “Let’s share it with all our friends and family. They should be coming– [crosstalk]”

Lindsay: Everybody can do it.

Jessica: Yes. That’s how the team building began. It was in 2012 is when he ended up joining me. In 2014, we started a team. We hired an admin, was our first hire to get the contract work off my plate, the marketing off my plate. From there, we just continued to prong out in services and agents.

Lindsay: Okay, so now you’ve got that and now you have to recruit.

Jessica: Yes.

Lindsay: Take us back to recruiting. What is that like for you guys in the early days? What’s it like now? What’s changed? What have you learned? Because I know the recruiting world. You think that it’s going to be easy, like I’m going to get agents like you just said, like it’s going to be easy. We’ll bring them in and then they’ll like love to be here. I love to be here. Then it’s not the way it really goes. Explain that because there’s probably people on here that don’t understand how that aspect of the business works when you’re starting to grow. Explain that side of it to us.

Jessica: I think recruiting is one of those love-hate relationships that we all have. We love it and we hate it all at the same time because no one wants to feel like they’re convincing somebody to move their livelihood anywhere when it doesn’t make sense. How did that begin for me? Well, I think in the beginning it was actually, we lucked out and I really believe it was luck. We weren’t doing anything special or right. We just happened to be at a brokerage where there was about 400 agents between two locations and it was very common for agents that weren’t really doing well to be offered, “Hey, you should talk to this team. You should talk to this team.”

We got a lot of people that way, which looking back is hilarious, like, “Thank you for giving us the non-productive people. That’s fantastic.”

Lindsay: Thanks so much. [laughs] Yes.

Jessica: We grew fast. We grew to 15 agents quite quickly. Then we scaled down because obviously non-productive folks or people that really just didn’t want to be in real estate don’t belong on a team either. We had a core team for about three years. We rolled as about a 10-person team and it was phenomenal.

I think anytime you do anything where it’s at grassroots, you’re sleeping on the floor, you’re hanging out together, you’re doing holidays together, like a beautiful moment of team. From there we decided this was all fun and dandy, but the sole risk and very little reward was what Justin and I were dealing with. We had to scale. We had to get out of the whitewater rafting phase. It takes years to get out of that position because every time you add a dozen people, all of your services, and your processes, and your systems

Lindsay: Everything changes.

Jessica: Yes. It took years to get out of that. During the process, we had some really great coaches, really great mentors, which I highly recommend for everybody, training programs like Crush It In Real Estate. You’ve got to latch on to opportunity where you can leverage and not be the only thing they’re looking towards for moving forward.

Once we scaled to a point in which we could really hire talented staff, that’s what the game changed again. We had one or two entry-level administrative folks that truly got us from where we were to where we wanted to go next. Then once we got to that place, it was a combination of what got you here won’t get you there. We had to reevaluate the vision and staffing and services and revamp commission structures and I think anytime you get to that next scaling point, until you’re really here and you’re at a place where it’s fully sustainable, you’re reinventing quite a bit.

Once we hit about 50 agents, we were set in stone with what we knew was possible. From there, it’s like you got to get beyond 50 to be stable. Anybody listening that was as small as we were, 50 agents was always the goal. That was like, “That’s it, it’ll be fantastic.” Then we got there and we’re like, “Wait, we’re still whitewater rafting? Holy crap.”

Lindsay: What was the break-even for you? What was that sweet spot that made you go, “Okay, now we’re now we’re starting to cruise?”

Jessica: At 70.

Lindsay: 70. Got it.

Jessica: 70. Like in any business, I think it can look beautiful from the outside looking in, the highlight reel we all see on social media, the bigger you get, the more things and people you need to support that. Then you’ve got a whole different set of beautiful problems to solve and places to go. You’ve got staffing that you’ve got to lead and train and skill up and look over on top of agents.

When I look at scaling and real estate, which my God, what you guys have done over there is phenomenal. You guys certainly are in our North Star of like, wow, what’s possible has been done. That’s pretty cool. I would really beg the question to anybody looking to build a team, build a company, an independent company at that. Do you really want that? I’ve had endless conversations this year alone with people going, “I’m going to go independent.”

“I’ve been a broker for three years and now I really want to go independent.” When I dig deep as to like, well, what’s causing you to want to do that? Do you have a team now? Have you gone through the hardships of building just simply a team under a franchise or an independent? It really comes down to this unknown, “Well, I just want to see if I can do it.” My advice to folks like that is build where you are.

It is not necessary to go out and reinvent and recreate the wheel of your own full-on independent company. It’s hard. It’s harder than it looks. It’s harder than anybody talks about. It takes an enormous amount of dedication and it’s hard to find the right people that will stick with that dedication. I think it’s one of those things that looks sexy and you really got to want it. You really got to want to go there.

Lindsay: We’re going to talk a little bit too about the wellness side of the business for you and all of that because I think that it’s important aspect of it. I want to talk to you a little bit though about the mindset that it takes to be willing to pivot. It’s not just realizing whether or not it’s for you before you take that leap, but it’s also like, what mindset do you need to have? What advice do you have for people to get into that mindset? Because any mindset, it’s going to take work for you to get into that.

What’s that mindset that someone needs to have to be willing to pivot into the next stages and scale? Then, how do they get into that or what are some things that you would advise them to do?

Jessica: I had the honor of working with an Olympian for a long time in real estate. He was my productivity coach. I remember he used to always say like, “Mentally tough is the only way to go about life.” We would talk about, “How do you get mentally tough?” He’s like, “It’s in the simplest ways that we all avoid.” He’s like, “The crying baby on the airplane, go sit next to him.” Stop being the one that wants to avoid being by the crying baby. The chocolate chip cookies you want to eat, refuse it.

He’s like, “It’s in these micro-moments that you build mental toughness.” I think the mindset you have to be in any way, shape or form to build a real estate business is you have to have tough skin and you have to want to get in the sandbox and battle it out with the best of the best, knowing that’s just simply part of the game. No one’s out to personally hurt you or get you usually, [laughs] and, you have to be willing to go there because the higher you climb, the thinner the air. You’d better be really ready for that and not have these rose-colored glasses on.

How do you create mental toughness? It’s in those micro-moments. It’s in, self-awareness and self-development. I think a lot of people think they’re self-aware, they think they’ve done the personal development, but when push comes to shove, you see the reality of that. They’re not willing to lead in hard times. They want to take the easy way out. They want to blame others for why they aren’t performing or the business isn’t where it needs to be.

I’m a firm believer, speed of the leader, speed of the pack, and the buck stops there. You’ve got to be ready for that and want that responsibility.

Lindsay: Have a gut check, ask yourself, are you making decisions? It literally waters down what you just said, waters down to every day, do you make the easy decision with whatever the decision is? Do you make the easy decision or do you make the hard decision, because you know that that’s going to help you that hard decision. If that is you, then yes, you sound like you have the mindset to be able to make it to that next step. If that’s not you, then work on that first. That’s what I took away from that.

Jessica: Yes, absolutely. Then I would say more than skill, it’s your emotional maturity. If you are able to truly stand up on two feet and take a hit and take the emotional turmoil that comes from people work, then you probably got what it takes to go pretty far.

Lindsay: Without getting into any specifics, we’ll keep it super general. What is the craziest thing that’s happened to you either like a people situation, a deal situation? What’s the craziest thing that you’ve encountered that you’re like, this is nuts. This is the story that I will always tell people like, what’s that thing that you have?

Jessica: Mine is it is around mental toughness. We’ve got all sorts of crazy deal stories. If you can think it, we’ve of course experienced it. I think the most crazy lesson I’ve had as a leader and leading a team and leading a company is no matter how much you pour into somebody, you have to leave it there. The poor is the poor, there’s no return of that poor.

I’ve had employees where they’ve become family members. I’ve had employees where my kids call them aunt or uncle. Because I’m just such a teen spirited person, this, at that time, made sense to me. When those people leave you, it’s like a family member leaving you. You heart is ripped out of your chest. The anguish and what you feel from that is not appropriate in business.

I’ve experienced that more times than I can count. Actually, it was my buddy Anthony that told me one time I was telling him a story that was going on. I’m like, I just don’t know what to do. I love when Anthony gives me that like, right hook, just–

Lindsay: [laughs] He is not going to sugarcoat anything.

Jessica: [laughs] He’s like, “Fire her.” I was like, Oh, my gosh, whoa, give me some baby steps in between this and that.

Lindsay: No. There’s no baby step.

Jessica: He’s like, “You want to take the hits over and over, go for it.” He’s like, “Or you can stop all the battle and just move on.” I was like, “Ugh.” He was right. I took a few more rounds of hits and silliness. I was like, “All right, you’re right. Let’s do this.” Funny, crazy stories would just be that is, I think a bad apple is a bad apple, a stinky egg is a stinky egg. Poison is poison never going to change. You’re never going to adapt to it. Move on.

Lindsay: If it doesn’t seem right, then trust your gut.

Jessica: Yes. Yes.

Lindsay: For sure.

Jessica: Call it out, be transparent, and be brave. Just be brave.

Lindsay: Let’s talk a little bit toward we’re a couple of minutes left here. I just want to get into the wellness side, the business owner side, the community connections that you’ve built, and how that’s translated with real estate and how you’ve done that.

Jessica: Yes. Okay. We have two components to the business that I think make Thrive unique. We have Thrive Well, which is our wellness component. It is a committee of volunteerism within the brokerage. It’s been going on for years. There’s a board that oversees it. This allows us to really focus on body, being, balance, and business. It allows us to say, “Hey, we truly are holding the mission of we named the brokerage thrive. We want people thriving. We want our clients thriving. What needs to be true in order to make that true?”

We believe the focus of those four B’s body, being, balance, and business allow for those things to be true. At the brokerage, we do a lot of personal development. We bring a lot of practitioners like chiropractic people, nurses, fitness instructors. At one time we had a stress manager for a whole year that was free to the brokerage to utilize during COVID times. We bring in a lot of that to say, “Hey, we know humans are humans. Regardless of production, you need support and help and life conveniences, and we’d love to be a resource for you.”

By doing that, it allows us to create relationships through our Thrive Social project, which is us going out into the community. We give back to the local businesses around us from coffee shops to fitness buildings and gyms to anything, boutiques and delis, and anything that you would do in your own like after work. You’re probably going to go grocery shopping. [unintelligible 00:24:53] morning, you’re probably going to the gym.

We really went through life and said, “If you’re going to do business with us, how can we plus one your experience afterwards?” How can we say, “We know you got a life now that you got this house in the city in this neighborhood? How can we contribute to your life beyond the structure you live in? It’s allowed us to have these two prongs that really create a 360 with Thrive.

Lindsay: I love that. It drives home your mission. It drives home your brand. It also really makes your clients and the community be so much more connected to you guys. I think that that’s amazing.

Jessica: Thank you. Thank you. Yes, it’s been a passion project. We’re proud ofit.

Lindsay: I love that. All right, so what’s next? What’s next for Jessica? What is next for Thrive? Anything on the horizon that you’re willing to share anything like that?

Jessica: Yes. Oh, we have a lot of things next. There’s a few things I can’t share that definitely we will release. I think for Thrive in general, we’re at the point now with some really talented leadership folks here that I am now able to formally– I’ve been coaching for years, but now I’m formally offering coaching, which is transformational coaching. Then I’m able to do a lot more speaking and training, which I really love doing. Then Thrive will expand location-wise. I can definitely share that with you. We’re in three different locations in metro Detroit area, we’ll be in a couple more by end of year.

Lindsay: I love that. You just hired full-time operations, full-time marketing. You really have all the key people in place, it seems like, to really make those next steps-

Jessica: Yes.

Lindsay: -come to life.

Jessica: Exactly. Yes, we’ve got all our divisions sorted out and leaders within them. We’re ready to rock and roll. We’re excited to thrive this year, to thrive.

Lindsay: Thrive. You’re going to thrive. That’s what’s next. You’re going to continue to thrive. I love it.

Jessica: Yes. Yes.

Lindsay: What a full-circle moment. Jessica, thank you so much. Is there anything you want to close out on any advice you want to say– I got some white shining through here. I look like I’m from the heavens. I don’t know what’s happening. [laughs]

Jessica:  It’s raining and cloudy here.

Lindsay: Oh, yes, we’re sunny. It’s cold. It’s very cold. Any closing remarks, any closing advice that you want to give to anybody that’s listening? We have the gamut. We have people who are brand new. We have people that are seasoned, people that have done a bunch of deals, people who’ve done two deals. It’s a huge audience. What kind of advice would you want to give them to close this out?

Jessica: I would say to all of those, no matter where you’re at in your business, plug in and play at life. Sometimes real estate can eat you alive, it can become everything. The bottom line is your service at that level is mediocre at best. When you are able to truly develop yourself professionally, personally, take care of you and what you’re funding through this work, your service and your business will grow exponentially.

Lindsay: I love that. Thrive. It all just comes back to thrive.

Jessica: That’s right. That’s right.

Lindsay: [laughs] If you want to thrive or you want to ask Jessica any questions, she’s an open book. She’s very welcoming and wonderful. I’ve put her links right here below if you’re watching on YouTube. If you’re on the podcast, then you can see it in the show notes. Jessica, thank you so much. This was even better than I expected. Thank you so much.

Lindsay: It’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Lindsay.

Jessica: All right, everybody. Thank you all and we will see you guys on the next episode or you’ll hear us on the next episode of the Agents Who Crush It In Real Estate. Thank you guys so much. Have a great day.

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