Forever Realtor: Tiffany Klusacek’s Impact on Clients and Communities

Transcript:

Tiffany Klusacek: We deem ourselves the forever real estate team. It comes from our brand from Forever Realtor. We really truly take that closing as the start of something way bigger with the people that we serve.

[music]

Lindsay Favazza: Welcome back to the Agents Who Crush It In Real Estate Podcast. I’m your host, Lindsay Favazza. Today, I have with me Tiffany Klusacek. Tiffany is a seasoned real estate professional with almost 20 years of experience under her belt. She’s mastered the ins and outs of the market, particularly in the middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky regions.

Today, she’s here to share some powerful insights that will inspire and educate you, including creative ways to generate leads without breaking the bank, how to lead and motivate your team effectively, and her journey of growing a team from scratch to being ranked number eight in her franchise. Get your pens and notebooks out my friends. Welcome to the podcast today.

Tiffany: Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be here.

Lindsay: I’m so happy to have you here too. Your background’s gorgeous, by the way.

Tiffany: Thank you. It’s a mural in one of our former team offices, one of our staff members painted.

Lindsay: Oh, that’s beautiful. I love it.

Tiffany: The vibes. All the vibes.

Lindsay: If you’re listening on the podcast, you’re going to have to check out the YouTube channel now. Little plug for the YouTube channel. You can check it out. Tiffany, let’s start at the beginning. Like I always do on the podcast. How did you get into real estate? What’s your origin story?

Tiffany: I’m a military spouse. My husband’s been active duty military for 26 years. Our first experience, like many people who enter this industry, my first experience purchasing a home, I felt like through that experience, I was like, man, I really feel like this is something I could excel at. Being a military spouse, being in a ever changing environment, I thought, what’s something that I could– it was dependent on me, that I could pick up and move around the country. Little did I know I wasn’t actually going to move around the country. That was the motivation to start with. It’s just a higher level of service, caring for people. Then taking a little bit of my marketing background and really trying to excel in a field that I had a little bit of interest in.

Lindsay: You would have started in what year? Take us back.

Tiffany: Right after the recession. The recession was still brewing in 2006. It was perfect timing. I think that was the best–

Lindsay: I guess.

Tiffany: [laughs] The best career choice I could have made. You’re working 60, 70 hours a week. It took six months for me to get someone that actually could qualify. People would raise their hands all the time, but people who actually could qualify, it took about six months from that first transaction for me.

Lindsay: What were those early days like going now through the recession now where the business was changing, there was a lot more short sales, there was a lot of that going on? What were some of those early days like for you?

Tiffany: Definitely priorities shifted. I started out young in my early 20s. I wasn’t as tired as I am now. The amount of grind that it took to really be successful in real estate, it looks completely different than now. I’m also, almost 20 years more tired to the right. I’m like, it looks so different.

Lindsay: So relatable.

Tiffany: It’s so relatable. I’m like, I feel like even if you’re in your 20s and you’ve gone through the COVID season, you’re more tired. It’s just the characteristic of realtors right now. I feel like I had the tenacity to open closed doors, to continue to look behind closed doors, to continue to do whatever it took. It really laid groundwork early on in a young married couple, no kids, no obligations, able to put a lot of time into figuring out how to prospect in closed circles, like continuously closed circles. I feel like that laid a really great foundation. Then I also was able to bring the experience into the process too.

The quality level of experience, the high concierge experience, was able to do that and not do that with volume because I was not selling a ton of homes. I was just one family to the next in those earlier years. That really helped with the prospecting. It’s funny now because we were sitting in a team meeting here recently and there’s a listing we have six months on the market like, oh my gosh. I think back and I’m like, 12 months on the market and we decided to go a different direction. It never even sold. What business did you gain from that listing in those 12 months? Really perspective was gained in those earlier years as well.

Lindsay: That’s good because you’re learning something. Whether or not you’re selling the houses or you’re learning how to sell them better in the future, you’re learning something during those times. It’s not a waste and it’s growing pains too.

Tiffany: Absolutely.

Lindsay: When did you decide to transfer from– were you an independent agent at that time and then you decided to transfer into having a team model? What did that look like?

Tiffany: Honestly, yes. I was an individual agent for over 10 years of my business. In transitioning into team leadership, I look back, I recently had someone ask, why did you do this? I look back and I honestly, I’ve always wanted to help people. We all want to help people, being in this industry. I wanted to help more people at the same level that I was performing. I felt that you can mentor, you network with agents, you can have influence in this industry, but the bigger influence and the bigger impact that I could be having really was from a close-knit mentorship level.

More like under your arm mentorship. I was surrounded at the time when I started a team with like-minded people that had the same hustle and drive. We were really all heading in the same direction, but independently. Then, bam, I started a team. It was that strategic. It was that strategic and thought out. Because of it, not really having a thought out business plan or structure, we all thrived.

We all were amazing impact in our local community. As a business, those first years, it was like we were just having fun and selling real estate and really impacting our community. It wasn’t being run like a business. That was probably half of my team leadership really was seed in my pants, the luck of the draw, surrounded by great people and doing a really good job selling real estate.

Lindsay: You say being surrounded by great people, but that takes someone interviewing and running them through the gamut. What was your interview process to have someone join your team? Did you really not have one and you were like, come on board and I’ll teach you, and then if it didn’t work out, it didn’t work out? What was that process like?

Tiffany: I’ve had really good team retention over the years. Even some of my agents that have left the team and gone solo have quickly come back to the nest. That’s always a little bit of a trophy from leadership that oh, you tried it on your own. Never mind, you’re better together, kind of thing. We’re right now in a growth period. We have recently broke from our main brokerage into like a marketplace independent office in the same brokerage. It’s just our team in an office now. I’m really now starting to have to interview and grow dependent on our own four walls.

That is tricky. That is definitely interviewing agents and knowing if you’re making that right choice is completely different than the employee’s standpoint of asking the right questions. Earlier on, and really up until this year, the interviewing process was more I took people, and even people who weren’t in real estate that I was like, you have the drive and the care and concern for people. We can figure out all the rest of this because we’re such a people driven success plan that I’m like, if you can just make sure that you are servicing needs for specific things and creatively thinking outside of the box, all the rest of the real estate part of that can fall into place very easily.

It was more so people that I had in different pockets, in agents that I’ve had really A-plus plus experience with that. We were like, come be a part of something bigger. Now interviewing, every day I’m like, please pray that I’m seeing the right things and the honest and forthcoming personalities, et cetera. It’s difficult interviewing and making the right choices. I have a mentor that says that you’re going to hire slow, fire fast. If you make the wrong choice, don’t be afraid that when you figure that out and you’re not aligning with the agents that you’re with, that’s okay. You’re not the person.

Lindsay: Same with clients. It’s like, yes, your clients start working with you, but if they’re not a good fit for you, then fire your client. You’re better off moving on.

Tiffany: That’s really [crosstalk] Just training on this right. I think when business is down, you’re more hugging every opportunity to your chest. Sometimes those opportunities take away from 20 other opportunities that are sitting there, but you’re so focused on what’s not right that you can’t see the goodness that’s right around the corner. I’d understand.

Lindsay: We literally do a training pretty much every year. Usually during the summer months or when people are really busy. We pretty much do a training where we’re like, this is how you fire a client. We first of all want our agents to know it’s okay. We support you in doing that if it means that you’re not the right fit for them, because someone else might be the perfect fit for them. It’s just like a personality mesh and that’s okay. Like you said, it’s going to take you away from doing the things that you should be doing. It’s going to be a drain on you emotionally. It’s not going to help them reach their goals either. You’re not doing them any favors either.

Tiffany: It’s going to take 10 times as long. The other thing we’ve been doing here lately, especially with different– we’re growing in numbers. We have way more diversity in personalities. Firing a client can be as easy as making the match to a better option, and making sure that we’re staying in what works naturally for you until when it starts to not feel like that, starting to bring someone that would be the right match in under your shoulder, to have a referral go out, that’s just as much customer service as you holding the wrong thing in. Having the freedom, it’s just way more difficult when you’re like, when is the next deal going to come around the corner?

Lindsay: In this same vein, what is a difficult transaction that either you or your team has faced? What were the challenges there, and how did you guys overcome them?

Tiffany: Oh gosh. We recently had a tornado come through our town that-

Lindsay: That’s my biggest fear.

Tiffany: -we set up.

Lindsay: It’s not a fear I should have because I don’t live in a place like that.

Tiffany: You’re not in an area that we have that. We did, and this is actually the second time this has affected me in my career. One, I was a week out from the easiest cash closing deal ever that turned into a six-month rebuild process. We still closed, but I think that there has been times here recently and again, we’re talking about this as a team where society is putting so many pressures on people, so much anxiety ridden in big decisions and really the uncertainty of just the people that we’re serving. When this tornado came through, the people that we were working with at that time, the contracts that we had going, where no one was in the city that we are in.

Remotely navigating things to closing through, rebuild, reconstruction, tear down, all of those things, the people part of that in a very high-stress situation, probably over all of the years of being a solo agent or a team leader, man, the society pressures that we are just seeing as a whole on top of a natural disaster, on top of them not being here locally, the most challenging thing to keep the concierge, the high level of service, all of those pillars that we hold in every transaction, you just wanted to be like, never mind, too hard, start button. We’re letting it go.

Just send the contract back, reassigned. Of course we got through every single one of them. Wouldn’t say that they were the prettiest things to get to closing. That has been super difficult. In general, you’re seeing people reacting and performing differently, and it has just been so much more of a stressor on us to maintain that roller coaster from start to finish. We’re taking a lot of that brunt to make sure that the process is seamless for our clients. I feel like it’s the season that we’re in, and I don’t know that that’s going to change with any outward scenario. It’s just where we’re sitting right now.

Lindsay: Yikes. It’s tough.

Tiffany: Didn’t see the natural disaster card coming.

Lindsay: I never can. That’s the biggest thing, but at the same time, everyone’s in the same boat. Everyone’s just going to try to come together and help. That’s great. As far as you as a leader, I’m going to ask you to humble brag a little bit because you deserve it. I want you to tell me what has been your biggest success as a leader of your team.

Tiffany: Honestly, for me, this is going to blow some team leaders’ minds. For me, biggest success is taking an agent or a person from a dead-end career, getting them into real estate, growing them into a well-rounded real estate agent, and then seeing them fly the nest and crush it on their own. Crazy, right? Crazy. I will tell you that the biggest trophy for me, and I think that the place that we find success in not determining the leave or the change isn’t a good thing. I think that seeing them go and be able to do things and implement things, sometimes where you’re like, wait, did you just take that from our file cabinet?

To a tee, being able to duplicate that without having mom and dad, being able to have that in several different scenarios across the board. Now, some of those agents that were crushing it as solo agents have determined that they can be great on their own, but they can be even greater together have come back around to the coop. I think that they come back with so many things.

We’re onboarding one of our original agents, actually, onboarding him back onto our team. I was like, tell us everything we need to know. You went out into the real world. What did you learn? Tell us everything that we need to be doing better. He’s like, I’m taking about half of what my bad habits that I acquired and I’m replacing them. Just having that growth mindset that the loss is not a loss, that in so many different ways really can be impacting so much bigger than the transactional numbers that you’re losing, et cetera. That for me.

Lindsay: I love that because you mentioned that it’s your why. It’s like you want to not just help your clients, but you want to help the people on your team to get to that point. I think that that’s amazing. That’s going to make more people want to work with you if they know that that’s your goal. They’re going to be better people at that point that will want to get to that level and not just take shortcuts and take handouts and do that thing, but they’re going to be people that ultimately want to do it on their own. I think that that’s amazing. Again, to get it back to you, there’s a level of you did that for them. They couldn’t have done that on their own and you’ve helped to change their lives. Way to go, my friend. Way to go.

Tiffany: Thank you. I’m just an average person that just really cares about making a difference in our community, really cares about connecting clients to community. I have an associate’s degree and way too many hours towards a bachelor’s degree in marketing that I never actually probably could turn it in for a certificate. I’m like, this is just about putting in the work, putting in the time, the heart and the soul, and connecting clients to community. It’s not rocket science.

Lindsay: Let’s get into the science. What is your team’s recipe for success?

Tiffany: Accountability. Honestly, accountability. Actually, it’s not just the nagging from the mom. It’s having people who want to be held accountable. We have let more people go from our team that don’t really want what they signed up for. They really don’t want to do the things that they know are going to deem them to be successful. The accountability part of it is so many different levels. It’s so individualized for every agent. We can sit there and we can say, and are very much lying to ourselves in business as independent contractors, we can say, oh, I have this accountability partner.

I have this coach. I have this mentor. I feel like what has really been successful is you can easily get behind a screen, a phone call, sit at lunch, coffee, whatever and you can be the Facebook fake, the social media, whatever in front of these people, but when you’re in raw, real, and daily relationships with your team agents and you as a team leader being vulnerable, there’s really no room for that fakeness. It doesn’t mean that you have to be, oh, I’m amazing every single day.

Heck no. There is seasons that we have gone through with our agents that it has just been like today you’re getting up and you’re getting dressed and brushing your teeth. That’s your mental health day today. Then there’s other days where it’s 20 deals this year. No, you need to be doubling that because you are massively over capable, for 20 deals is like a shoe-in. Where’s the challenge? You want to be challenged. For me, accountability is the secret ingredient. I think it is for individual agents, but it surely is for teams having that real success, that driven success.

Lindsay: What is your team’s push to clients? What is it that you’ve taught them to do to make the client experience? I know you keep talking about concierge and you keep talking about those things. What does that actually entail for your team?

Tiffany: Man, way too much for just one podcast.

Lindsay: We’ll send it off. We’ll just end with credits after that.

Tiffany: For me, it’s so many pieces to the puzzle, and it’s funny, as we moved into our own independent building and we had like different processes and organization of everything, it was like putting pen to paper to really try to start recruiting cold leads, cold agents for our team. We’re like damn, we do so much. We need to do a better job of expressing what we’re doing. We do a lot of behind the scenes. It’s like taking as much as we can off of the client place, but it’s really the experience. I think that we can talk about the weeds of like how do we best do buyer consultations and buyers represent, and all of the changes, and all of the–

Everything we really were doing but we need to be expressing more transparently what we’re doing. We can talk about all of that but I think that what sets us apart is we deem ourselves the forever real estate team. It comes from our brand from Forever Realtor, our Forever Agent, however you want to say. We really truly take that closing as the start of something way bigger with the people that we serve. It has everything to do with the reason that we are in business, connecting clients to our community, our events that we’re doing, the community events that we’re doing, the way that we market on social media.

The things that we’re pushing out in our newsletter, is really all about getting these people, these families, these entrepreneurs, whoever is using us for services, making sure that they didn’t just buy a house, they bought a home and that they’re connected to the community in every single aspect. For us, yes sure the process can be probably mirrored a little bit for the concierge aspect of that. It’s just how we package it up in our UVP, but really what are we doing to really truly get these folks either set on the direction that they’re headed or get them really plugged into the area that they’ve purchased in.

Lindsay: Wow. That’s really cool. What kind of things do you guys do for the community? Do you have some givebacks? Do you have some events that you do? Or client appreciation? What are some of those things?

Tiffany: We volunteer a lot. If you go to our social media, you’re not going to see a lot of the volunteering to the forefront. What is funny is when that natural disaster just happened, we had more people inboxing us going where do we go to help? You know the people that are needing the help, where do we go to help? We don’t advertise or market the volunteer work that we do besides highlighting the places that we are going like the food banks that you can go for assistance, the disaster relief companies, the this, that, and the other thing that we’re volunteering on a pretty regular rotational basis.

The work that we’re doing, we don’t showcase the actual organizations we do. A lot of give-back as far as that goes. There’s obviously monetary give-back that we’re doing with sports leagues and kids and school programs and all of that stuff, constantly trying to make sure if the clients are needing support for their kids’ football team, that they’re coming to us and seeing how we can help with that. Then outside of that, really getting people around other people in our community where we do about four to six client events a year. This is just specifically for clients.

Invitation only. They can bring a friend if they want to but it is an exclusive invitation. We change up our schedule. We do an ice skating event, a pool event. We’ve done a private event in our museum that has a children’s floor on the museum. We’ve done Santa pictures with Santa. We did an ice cream in the park event. All kinds of different things. We change it up year over year. That’s exclusive to clients with a plus one. On top of that, last year, we started doing community open events where we’re really trying to get, and this is really female driven, where we’re trying to get people out of the COVID isolation and into making meaningful relationships.

We’ve done girls night out-type events partnered with local businesses for their spaces. We’ve done vision boards, we’ve done a painting event, we’ve done a plant– learning all about taking care of plants and different things like that. We do an Easter egg hunt every year, a trunk or tree, just different ways that we’re out and just interacting and making a difference which is easily just a friendly interaction with our community on that.

Lindsay: That’s great.

Tiffany: All of that plus more, but that boxed into a small little window that’s like where we start. There’s way more VIP benefits and things like that that we do but really in a nutshell.

Lindsay: It’s funny because you guys are in very, very different markets. She’s in the Dakotas but our last episode with Amy Stockberger, it was very similar. you guys have a very similar model. I highly recommend our listeners and you listen to that episode and connect with her, because I feel like you guys could learn a lot from each other too. It’s very similar, which is wild. It’s so strange that no one really talks about some of these things and now you guys have both said it in back-to-back episodes, it’s very strange. Maybe this is the new way.

Tiffany: I think just it’s people driven. It’s like, what is the why of the people you’re partnering with, or what is your why? This doesn’t make sense to some people but other people are like, that’s the light bulb that went off. It all was driven really from we’re in a military town but we’re also just north of Nashville with a ton of relocation that is happening in growth in our region, and you have people coming here not knowing anything and then not getting out to figure it out themselves. We were like, okay, it started as simple as– this is for individual agents or teams.

On Thursday, every single Thursday, we go live on our Facebook. We tell them four free or low-cost things that they can do in their community that weekend. We have been doing that for eight years every single Thursday. If it falls on a holiday like sometimes– Thanksgiving always is a Thursday, we pre-record. There is not a Thursday in eight years that we have not given them– You don’t have an excuse, get out and meet people. It started as simple as that for free. It got us meeting business owners. It got us identifying needs. It got us identifying small businesses that were at risk that were on the verge of closing. This is massively identified as a hole that we could be filling for our community.

Lindsay: For sure. We are at time, my friend. It always goes by fast.

Tiffany: Really so fast.

Lindsay: Especially when it’s someone that had such great insight. I love this.

Tiffany: Love it.

Lindsay: Let me ask you my final question which is, if you were to give advice to someone who’s listening today. We have a lot of realtors that are independent on their own, but there are also a lot of realtors who are listening that either are a team leader or want to be a team leader and that’s the next step of their growth. What advice would you give to that group? I feel like that’s where they can learn a lot from you. What would be your biggest piece of advice for those people who either have one or are hoping to start a team of their own?

Tiffany: I really think when you’re looking at the decision of stay solo, become a team, if you don’t have the right talent, you can spin that wheel all the time. All the time. The team can start with administrative staff. You can make a team of four and you’re the only licensed person. I still believe that in order for you to build that foundation you’re going to have to have to be surrounded by the right people. If you’re wondering, can I, will I, do I want to? Start with hiring exclusive to you a TC that only works with you and helps with assistance with any type of client retention activities that you’re doing.

Any type of prospecting activities that you’re doing. Start with that and see if you can attract the talent that aligns with your why. If you can’t, it is going to be extremely uphill battle. I would venture to say that right now you have so many wandering sheep in this industry wondering what to do and how to do it that you probably, as long as you’re putting out your UVP, as long as you’re being very transparent on what you’re trying to attract and the type of person that you are, not worrying about what people are going to think or people stealing my ideas or people doing it better, worse, all the things.

If you can’t learn to do that, it’s going to be a really hard uphill battle. I think that that’s where I would start. I would make sure that you can perfect that. If you can’t, surround yourself with people who have done that. Get advice and really start to train yourself on that. I don’t think anything that’s worth building can be built without that as a foundation. Without that skill set as a foundation.

Lindsay: I love that. Tiffany, thank you so much. I feel like I could have talked to you for four hours. I have your links here on the profile. If you’re listening, where you get your podcast, you could find them in the show notes. We really appreciate you taking the time today and educating our audience. We also love audience to get as many reviews as we can on our podcast episodes. Please, if you loved this episode today, give us a comment, give us some stars, wherever you get your podcast, so that we can get this episode, more viewers, more listeners. We really appreciate you all. Thank you so much, Tiffany.

Tiffany: Thank you for having me.

Lindsay: We’ll see you guys on the next episode of the Agents Who Crush It in Real Estate. Have a good one.

Male Speaker: Thank you for tuning in to the Agents Who Crush It in Real Estate Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it with your friends and colleagues and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you’re interested in being a guest, email us at info@crushitinre.com. Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to crush it in real estate.

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