From Stagnant to Unstoppable: Building a Purpose-Driven Life and Business with Justin Loncaric

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI agent. I’m here with Justin Loncaric. Justin, thanks so much for joining us.

[Justin Loncaric]
Amazing to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Mattias]
I got the last name right, and then I stumbled on saying your first name. It’s like, you know, you like work so hard to get something, then you just like forget about everything else. Hopefully the rest of this conversation goes well.

Justin, thanks for joining us. You are coming out of Canada, correct?

[Justin Loncaric]
I am. Yeah, I’m in just outside of Toronto, Ontario.

[Mattias]
Okay, perfect. Yeah, and I know that we have a lot of similarities. I think some things are a little bit different, but definitely a lot of similarities between our markets or the way we do our business.

You are a realtor. You want to tell us kind of a bird’s eye view about kind of what you do as a realtor, kind of what your niche is, what, you know, your business looks like.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, so we didn’t really have anything before. So I’ll note that first. Like before 2019, 2020, we didn’t have a niche.

We had nothing. We were flying blind, just trying to figure it out. And that was 20 odd years into my career.

So to put that into perspective. And so our niche now currently is move up buyers and sellers. So families that are looking to move up to their next home, their dream home, whatever.

And from that standpoint, that’s where our general focus is when it comes to marketing and the things that we do. And that has done very well for us. Typically in our area, our average sale price tends to be around a million bucks.

So that kind of, you know, gives you an idea of what our markets like here and how we do things. So, but yeah, no, that’s pretty much me. We work for, am I allowed to say our brokerage?

I know we haven’t even discussed that.

[Mattias]
Not that I’ve cared. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s fine.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah. So I work for Keller Williams up here. So it hasn’t been around for a while, but it’s a good, it’s been fun.

[Mattias]
So, yeah, that’s awesome. So, wow. Okay.

So you, you were in, in there 20 years and normally people kind of, when they’re at that point might be more like just sitting around, like the phone’s going to ring. You know, I have past clients I’ve, you know, follow up with them with a newsletter, whatever. And that, and they just kind of coast.

So you, but you turned up the volume, you went into it. I I’m going out of order here, but what, what kind of made you niche down and what kind of got you to yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
So we were, we, we were flow. So I had, let’s go, let’s go contextually here because I think I need, you need context with how my career has gone. So my, the first 20 odd years of my career, well, let’s call it 17 years of my career.

I was, I worked with my mom. So I joined my mom’s team right off the hop. I fought real estate.

I didn’t want to be a realtor. I tried everything to not be a realtor. And then one day I was like, I’m going to be a realtor.

Actually, what happened was I met a woman who was the most incredible woman on the planet. And I was like, I got to start doing something that means something. Otherwise this girl’s not going to stick around.

So I decided to become a realtor, joined my mom’s team, did about 17 years, went out on my own, spent a couple of years failing miserably thinking that I knew everything. And then one it was about August of 2019. My wife and I were talking about, you know, what do we do now?

Like, where do we go from here? How do we build this more? And she pointed out a training program that we, that we, that she had found somewhere and we joined.

And it was the catalyst of me going from, I know everything to holy cow, like I need help. And what does that help look like? You know, cause what you would expect a 17 year veteran to kind of know what he’s doing or they’re doing.

But I didn’t, right. I just, I realized there was so much more to what we were putting out there and what we were doing than, than I thought. Maybe I was sheltered by the team.

That could have been it. But ultimately I needed to learn more. And so we hired this coach and at the beginning of that coaching, I was wholly uncoachable.

Like I’ll admit it. And she’ll tell you, my coach will tell you, she said you were terrible until about six months in and something clicked with me. And I was like, I got to just do this and I have to be malleable and I have to be coachable.

And part of that process was learning about niching down to a proper market, understanding who that niche was, building a marketing platform around that niche and effectively marketing in a modern way, as opposed to the same old drudgery and same old crap that most realtors put out there, quite frankly. Okay. So there you go.

That’s the context.

[Mattias]
Okay. Well, I got some clarifying questions. First of all, who is this amazing woman?

And does your wife know about her?

[Justin Loncaric]
First of all, my wife chose her and sent me to her. So yeah, she’s, her name is Jesslyn Uvell. She’s a, she’s got a company called The Listings Lab and some, some of your audience may have already heard about it.

Maybe she’s even been on the show for all I know.

[Mattias]
I don’t know. She hasn’t.

[Justin Loncaric]
No. So we should get her on the show.

[Mattias]
But anyway, so she’s, I was referring to the woman you talked about at the beginning. So I assume that was, and then ended up being your wife, but no.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, right. Yeah. So fair.

Yeah. The woman at the very beginning. Yes.

That ended up being my wife. Yes. And then the trainer, I, I see what you did there.

You caught me off guard there.

[Mattias]
No, no worries. It’s, it’s funny how in my life as well, I think I started taking things more seriously when I found a girl.

[Justin Loncaric]
Well, you have to, you have to provide, that’s our job, right? We’re supposed to be the guy, right? So it is what it is.

[Mattias]
What was, what was your mom’s like sales approach with the team? Like, did, did you have, were you kind of like at first, like a buyer’s agent, like kind of, how did you start? What was the team structure like?

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah. So I was a buyer’s agent the whole time, right? So anybody that tells you that you can’t make good money being a buyer’s agent only is wrong.

Yeah. If you put your mind to it and do it, you can. So I spent all that time essentially working with mostly buyers.

There was a couple of moments where I had to work with her sellers because she was away or, and I needed to help them, but I just focused on that. And what I love about that approach and having those, those things separated on a team, buyers and sellers and capacity is the idea that you can really focus on those, that particular person. You’re really focusing on your buyers.

As a buyer agent, I would get up every morning and my tasks were the same. I would go through my lists of buyers that I had. I would go through all the new listings in the last 24 hours and try to connect all those people together and those listings together.

And that was it. And then I would show houses in the afternoon, right? As a listing agent, as I shifted over into my own team and I was a listing agent, my day consisted of handholding sellers day in and day out, especially now more than ever, because they need more than ever in this market.

And making sure they were taken care of and completely and utterly comfortable with what we were providing as a service, because the second communication breaks down and you forget about somebody or you’re not communicating with them, they’re not wondering, they’re out there wondering what the heck’s going on with me and why I’m not talking to them. And so being able to focus on those spaces separately allowed for Karen’s team, Karen’s my mom, to flourish quite a bit. She’d been, as of this year, she’s in the business about 50 years.

So she’s been doing it a while. My grandmother was a realtor in Montreal in the summer and Florida in the winter, West Palm Beach. So she did well.

So it’s in my blood in the end of the day. But having that breakdown and learning as a buyer agent was so critical because I understood what it meant to genuinely talk people through the sale of a home. Walking people through the idea of like, here’s what this house has for it.

Knowing what to look for in home inspections. I’m not a home inspector, but having some preconceived ideas of what to look for before the home inspection allows people to have expectations. And having been through hundreds and hundreds of home inspections, you can’t learn other than being in those inspections.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, I’ve suggested to new agents that it’s a good idea to try to get in as many home inspections as you can, even if they’re not your own, because you do start learning. And I think it’s a really easy way to build trust with a buyer. Or my favorite is when you show up to a new, you know, first time home buyer, you’re going to a new house for the first time, they bring their parents and the dad’s got a flashlight.

And you’re like- The best is the golf ball.

[Justin Loncaric]
The golf ball for the floors. Just put the golf ball down, let it roll. Oh, it’s so funny.

[Mattias]
What my goal is in those situations, which that’s like a meme for realtors, right? Like the, you know, the daughter’s dad or whatever is showing up with a flashlight or with a tool belt. And my goal is there is to kind of like, ease that guy up.

Like, look, I’m looking out for them too. Like I’m, I probably know more about this house than, or I’ll be able to discover more than this about this house than you will. And I’m going to show that by, because I’ve been through hundreds of home inspections.

And, you know, these are the common things that always come up. And I can see that right now. And there’s a crack in the foundation.

Is that something that can be concerned about? It’s technically, I’m not a, you know, an expert. I’m not a structural engineer, but normally, you know, a stairstep crack is not something that we are going to see raise a flag in the home inspection process, you know, depending on the stairstep.

But yeah, things like that.

[Justin Loncaric]
Your logic is very solid because that situation starts early on. You’re not the buyer and seller, the son and daughter-in-law or whoever it is, they trust you. They’ve been working with you.

The dad hasn’t been around, right? Whoever the, the, the relative hasn’t been, suddenly the relative shows up for that one showing right before they want to offer, or even just during the home inspection. And their whole goal is to crap on everything that happens in that moment, right?

They want to walk in and tear that place down so they can get a better deal or whatever the things are.

[Mattias]
That’s- Or save their kid from a horrible mistake or whatever, right?

[Justin Loncaric]
Exactly, exactly. But that comes from a place of, of, of protection for the, for those buyers, right? And so you’ve got to understand that, understand that even if you’re not a parent, because I’m a parent now, you know, understanding that a parent is always going to try to protect.

And so resonating at that level with that person separately is something that it becomes an incredible skill. And it just takes time because I’ve butted heads with those people. I’m like, I appreciate what you’re saying, but, or however, or whatever language you want to use for NLP or whatever otherwise, you know, here’s, here’s the reality of the situation.

And the beauty part is sometimes you can Google things and show them Google things and whatnot. But I think the hardest part is stepping back and not trying to be confrontational because sometimes they just want to say stuff for the sake of saying stuff and be proud.

[Mattias]
Or they’ll say wrong things like it.

[Justin Loncaric]
It’s never, it’s never great when they’re around. Let’s be honest. I had one.

My favorite one was a home inspection where house was built in the seventies. And as we all know, in the seventies, we had aluminum wiring wreaking havoc on houses across the, across the North America, quite frankly, because aluminum was the natives greatest thing. And and next thing, you know, houses are burning down everywhere.

And the reality that we now know about aluminum wiring is that it is safe if you have, if you use it correctly and you manage it correctly. So that’s, you know, that’s the simple solution. Yes.

People will remove it. Yes. People will pigtail it and all the things we go to this home inspection.

And the father was a fire captain in the seventies, the seventies. So he would, he put out fire after fire, after fire that stemmed from aluminum wiring. And I didn’t know that until he showed up, to be honest, if I had known that before, I might’ve been a little more prudent about what we were doing in the wiring in the home.

So we get to the home inspection and my home inspector does the outside first and then straight to the basement and works his way up every time. And so he goes to the basement, which is where the electrical panel is. And we were out of that house in 10 minutes, as soon as we discovered aluminum wire.

And it was the most devastating thing for me. Cause I was like, but what? And it was early in my career too, because I didn’t have much experience with it.

And we walked out of there and we shut down that, that deal. And we went and looked in, but see, that’s the thing. Now we shift to neighborhoods not built in 1970.

[Mattias]
Yeah. That’s a conversation you could have, um, beginning, um, kind of like lead based paint. Uh, you know, that’s, it’s like one of those things where, you know, I just tell people like, you know, assume that it has it, if it was built before 1978 and just kind of treat it accordingly.

If that’s a problem, it’s not like somebody is going to gut the house. Like there might be a paint over top of that lead based paint, but it’s probably there. And so if you take a wall out or you do something, there’s going to be dust in the air.

It’s going to potentially be an issue. Um, if that, again, if that’s an issue for you, let’s maybe look at newer houses and yeah, it’s one of those things you can try to be proactive with.

[Justin Loncaric]
Well, I wish I had to learn that before I’d see now that I went through that, right. Those questions come up now, right.

[Mattias]
You got to ask a lot of questions. That’s how you learn. I mean, like that’s how it works as you go through those things and you have those kinds of experiences.

And at the beginning when a deal falls apart, it is, it’s hard. Like it’s, you know, that’s, you try not to have the commission breath. You try not to like be, you know, thinking about the outcome.

I mean, you’re not trying to add up your commission. Um, but you know, it is harder at the beginning. And then as you go along, as you’re busier, like you realize, yeah, I will just get them another house.

It might just be, you know, another month.

[Justin Loncaric]
But at the end of the day, they’ll respect you more for what, for doing that and taking more time and walking away from the deal that was there than they will. If you’re trying to force through the deal, that’s making them feel uncomfortable.

[Mattias]
Yep. Right.

[Justin Loncaric]
So at the end of the day, you’re building more trust, more rapport and what we like to call my, my mom came up with this term. I don’t think she came up with it. I think someone else did.

She read a book somewhere called raving fans. I think the book was called. So you’ll have more raving fans if you’re, if you’re actually working with people in a meaningful way that’s not driven by your personal need to close a house or have a stat or make the money or whatever.

And I find that people genuinely appreciate the calm tempered time that I take. Maybe I take a little longer. Maybe I’m not as high pressure as some people.

Fine. I don’t care because I’ve developed a system that works for me that allows me to make good money, feed my family, but also create people that are just in love with the things that we do.

[Mattias]
Yeah, a hundred percent. I don’t think people enjoy pressure selling.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, that’s not a thing anymore. I mean, I don’t care. You know, even scripts, I love scripts for the sake of if you don’t know what to start with and you have no understanding of what’s next, but we just hired a buyer agent on our team and she was asking, you know, what am I going to say to these people that I call?

And I go, just ask them if they’re buying or selling. There’s no amount of like funky scripting, in my opinion, that’s going to get people to do something that they don’t want to do anyway. So when you call and you’re like, Hey, it’s been a while since we chatted with you.

Just wondering if you’re still looking for a home that starts a conversation. Oh no. Oh cool.

The email that gets the most traction when we send out mass emails is seven words. I think it’s seven words. The comment or the subject line is, and then it’s, are you still looking to buy or are you still looking to sell a home?

And we get the most traction on that email as opposed to whatever other emails, you know, newsletters and other stories and posts and things that we connect to newsletters with longer things. That seven word email gets the most traction out of any other email that we send. And you actually find clients because people go, yeah, I am.

And you’re like, Whoa, so I thought I had to kiss some babies first before I got right.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no. So, so I think also like the, you know, if we want to get back to like the buyer versus seller, the natural transition then to being a seller’s agent is that, you know, there, there, there was a time or maybe this is happening more for you again, where sellers are doing like, pre home inspections, like before they hit the market, that kind of stuff to try to get their house ready and not have surprises.

And again, going through a hundred home inspections, you can kind of do some of that for them. You can kind of see like what might come up. Like one of the common things that I like to do is if the HVAC is a little bit older, it doesn’t even have to be like five, five, six, seven years, like even that old.

Certainly if it’s like 13, 14 years old, like have it serviced, like just show that you’re taking care of it. And if you have it serviced within the past six months, that just gives them a lot more comfort. It had a clean bill of health from a certified technician.

And then also change your elf air filters before.

[Justin Loncaric]
Oh my God. Don’t get me started about that. Oh geez.

So funny. So simple. Like, but so funny that people don’t.

[Mattias]
It is the funniest thing to me in the world. When you go to a home inspection and there is like a air filter that has been like not changed for like two years plus. And it’s just like, that is just so easy to.

[Justin Loncaric]
And I think one of the, one of the forgotten ones is the, is the gas burning fireplace. I mean, I know like we, it’s just there and people get used to it being foggy all the time. And you’re like, wait, wait, wait, let’s clean that glass.

Shall we just get someone to service it, clean it up, make sure it’s working properly. And they’ll clean the glass. And by the way, just for anybody out there that’s thinking, Oh, I’ll just throw some Windex on it.

It’s not like glass class. It’s like a ceramic glass. So it needs to be cleaned properly.

So don’t be throwing anything that you don’t know on it. You need to do it properly or have a service guy come and do it or girl come and do it. Just, but yeah, like simple things like that, that are so obvious that people just miss.

[Mattias]
Yeah. Well, I would go, I’d, I’d add to that. Like, you know, we talk a lot about investing in this, in this show as well, and then flips and that kind of stuff.

But going through some renovations, it could even be for your client. I mean, like, like they want to fix some things up. But, but seeing some transformations, seeing some, having some connections with contractors in the area and, and yeah, kind of like starting to be able to see the vision of what it could be makes a huge difference.

And so like really getting good at like kind of getting this show, the, like getting the house ready for the big show, right. Like to, to unveil the, like the listing and, and like having staging, having like, you know, some rooms painted, you know, hardwood floors, maybe refinished. Like if it’s hard to recommend that it makes you nervous as an agent because you want to make sure they get the return on what they’re spending.

And it’s always common that they’re going to paint it anyway, they’re going to paint a different color, which is, could be true. But like, when you start seeing some of the transformations, I think that’s another area where you can add tons of value to a seller.

[Justin Loncaric]
Let’s, let’s, let’s, I got a hot take.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
Staging for me is BS.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah. This is a new thing that I’ve been talking about lately on my social. So I just want to bring it up and have a conversation about it because I think it’s an interesting topic.

The idea of staging is good. The, the, the direction that it’s going is not good in my opinion. I think we put too much emphasis as realtors on the value we bring and the only value we tend to bring is, I stage your home.

Right. And so what ends up happening is you get a home, just using generalized terms from 1973. That’s, you know, grandma’s moving out of, and you shove modern, interesting furniture in it that doesn’t match.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
When people walk in homes, what’s the first thing they say? Oh, this place is staged. They say that all the time.

Right. And so it gets a little bit dicey when you’re in that position where they’re focusing on the staging rather than the home itself. And I look at it like, I almost want them to feel like it’s lived in and comfortable.

And someone lives here for real, because this is what it’s going to look like lived in. Now, do I mean leave it all cluttered and gross? No, absolutely not.

There’s certain principles of staging that are incredibly important, but I just, I need people to understand that. I believe that you need to be more mindful of your staging and what you’re putting in homes. Because when you have a, I’m allowed to swear.

I’ve been dying to swear. It’s the internet. If you have a shit box of a home and you put this fancy furniture in it, it’s not going to make it better.

People are still going to go, this is a shit box. Right. And so my other problem with it becomes that staging is getting so expensive that it’s hard to keep up with being able to stage people’s houses in a market like this, where houses are on the market for 60, 90, a hundred, a hundred days, sometimes in certain circumstances.

And you want to, you want to just give it a good experience. So for me, what we tend to focus on is we’ll bring the stager in. We’ll have her or him come in and do the, do the breakdown and show them what they need to move around.

And yes, if there is certain furniture pieces we need to pull in and pull out, we will, but we’re very careful and selective about it on a home per home basis. Because, you know, we got a $5 million listing up a North of here and, you know, we put staging in and I was super worried because the house hadn’t been renovated since 1987. And I was super worried that they’re going to put this modern furniture in here and it’s not going to look good because it just doesn’t flow anymore.

And the stager did a great job. I have to give her credit. She, she came in and actually, you know, when that idea of like what’s old is new again, this modern furniture actually had a 1980s roundabout feel to it.

So it worked really, really well. And she was, I really applaud our stager for doing that, that well. So you have to be very mindful of the situation you’re in.

I think staging’s great, but you need to do it properly. Sorry, that was my hot take.

[Mattias]
No, no, I agree overall. And I think, you know, I think there’s a couple of goals here. I think one of the ways I explain getting a house ready for the market in general to a seller is that we, the goal is that we are going to have, like, we have your narrative of the house right now, right?

Like you have a narrative of, of what your, your, your 20 years you’ve spent in this house, the children that have come and gone, all this stuff is your story within this house, but we’re wanting the buyers to tell their own story and like in, in the house. And we don’t want anything to distract them from that story that they’re telling. So that involves getting the house ready.

As far as, you know, landscaping, we don’t want them to come and think, Oh, I’m going to be spending all the time out here, like, you know, taking care of this jungle because it’s really hard to maintain when, you know, what, if it’s just landscape, it doesn’t look like it’s hard to maintain because it’s all, that’s fixing things up, you know, like having some, if there’s like obvious things that need to be repaired, things like that, that helps.

And then, you know, obviously the depersonalization. So like having the pictures of the kids and that kind of stuff takes them out of their own story. They’re in somebody else’s house.

And then on top of that, I think it is also maybe staging would be explaining a weird space. Like that’s probably the most important thing. If there’s like a space that doesn’t really make sense, how am I going to use this?

[Justin Loncaric]
That’s correct.

[Mattias]
Having furniture there to kind of help explain it is, is important. And, and then, yeah, to your point, like if it just doesn’t fit, like it doesn’t really help them tell their story. They’re not like imagine themselves living there because they’re taken out by like, what is this like furniture?

[Justin Loncaric]
The thing about stagers, right? Those that they’re a bit artistic, right? So it’s a bit of an art, right?

So we find up here anyway, a lot of our stagers have a style. So we have one stager, for example, that all of her logo colors are golden black and all the things. And a lot of the things she puts in houses tend to be the same.

So you have to be mindful that like golden black may not fit in this house, you know, or that house, or, you know, the other lady that we know has a lot of teals and turquoise in her logo. And she brings that through the, through the, the home a lot too. And I’m like, I don’t think that color works here.

And if you try to ask, so you gotta be mindful of all those things. So finding a good stager, that’s able to be malleable to the each home individually is incredibly difficult because they all have their own style in this artistic way. And not to say that it’s bad.

I’m not, I’m not saying they’re bad at what they do. I’m just saying that sometimes it doesn’t work in certain circumstances with every home. It’s not a blanket thing, right?

Like it needs to be individualized. It’s a custom experience for each home. And that’s what it should be, quite frankly.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it almost reminds me of, and I have no idea who this photographer is, what her name is. She’s really famous. But she does portraits.

And like every portrait she does is just like very like the person. It’s just very, and I feel like that’s probably what you’re, you’re getting at. It’s like, it’s not that every portrait is going to be this editing, this light, this backdrop.

It’s like, you know, it’s got to tell their story.

[Justin Loncaric]
100%. We walk into listing appointments and part of the pre-listing package that we send with an email is a questionnaire called the story of your home. And we ask clients, what is the, what is the, what is your favorite room in the house?

What is your favorite memory in the house? Right? Things like that, that elicit the experiences they’ve had, because the reality for us becomes most of us anyway.

If you look at the demographic breakdown of each area where these houses are, it doesn’t matter where, almost anywhere. You’ll know who’s moving in and you’ll understand that these people moving out now, new people moving in are probably going to buy it for the same reasons they bought it when they moved in. So having those stories in a connection in a very raw way and using those opportunities to use for marketing and use for staging and to understand what the best rooms are in the house, to understand how they’ve used the house is highly important to be able to really tell the story of the home in a customized way.

To your point of like customizing for that house, right? That house is totally different than the neighbor’s house. The demographic may be the same, but the way it was used, because this one’s a side split and that one’s a two story.

So they’re totally different, but they have a similar, they have, they have the family in the home allows for the story to be told in a meaningful way, right? In a meaningful way that, that allows other people to absorb it. And when we tell those stories, so stories, for example, most people go three bedroom, two bathroom, natural light, beautiful, this beautiful, that, you know, we’re telling stories in our real estate write-ups about, imagine yourself sitting around a countertop with family, things like that.

It’s a whole different experience when you read our listing write-ups that connect to the story of the home that allow the end user. We have people walking in buyers coming into our open houses going, I totally felt connected to this home before I even showed up right. And that’s what marketing is.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
Marketing is not three bedrooms, two bathrooms, you know, 50 by a hundred foot lot, blah, blah, blah. That’s just telling facts. Stories are, are like 40% more memorable than facts.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
Right. So why not tell more stories for people to remember your home?

[Mattias]
I love that. And you know, you’re kind of making me want to rework some of my processes because I think it could be really helpful to have that story that, that written up before the photographer goes out. Because if they could read through that, they could then also make sure they’re highlighting the things in the way you’re describing it.

So yeah, I love that. It’s really cool.

[Justin Loncaric]
So we transitioned that into our videos too. So, so when we do a video on the home, if you, if you have five minutes and you’re listening to this podcast and you want to make me feel really good and boost my ego, go check out my, go check out my videos that we’ve done recently. And we genuinely like, first of all, humans in anything draws more attention.

So just the video of, of houses and, and homes and rooms and things with nobody and no talking, no nothing. It’s a little boring and a little drawn out. People don’t often spend a lot of time watching those, but if you have a human in it, walking and talking and telling the story of the home, again, more effective, just functionally and subconsciously for people to watch more.

But then when you read the stories, so you talk about having that done I write a script before we even get there that talks about the home and I do it in chat GPT. I’m going to be honest. I write it all out in the style that I want, and it writes me a beautiful script and I edit it as necessary.

And I get there and we video the home in that way with my story involved. And that photographer is now learning those things about that home for when they do the photography and they do the rest of the video. So it’s quite an integral experience to have that story written at a time, exactly as you mentioned.

[Mattias]
That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, this is maybe a good segue because you talked about off air before we got on here about your, your social media, your, you, you had a podcast, like what, tell me about how you’ve been attracting clients through social media, through videos, through, yeah, there are a lot of realtors that use just sold, just listed and maybe third party companies to post on their social media.

[Justin Loncaric]
And it’s the same as 4,000 other agents out there posting the same thing that that company provides. And a lot of that gets lost in the wash. There’s billions and billions of social media posts out in the world every single day.

You know, you gotta be different. And the thing is, is that real estate is a social business. We are human beings connecting with other human beings to do something for them.

It’s not just an online transaction. It’s not just a product that you use that, you know, is just a physical product that’s in your hand. That’s not, not alive.

We’re human beings. So at the end of the day, we try to post using three buckets of content. The first bucket being authority content, everything we know about real estate, you know, everything we know about high-tech plumbing or, or, you know, aluminum wiring or whatever, anything like that, we will do posting around that.

The second bucket of content would be PR or social proof. So being on this podcast becomes PR for me. You know, I’m going to then use this link out in my social media to be able to say, look what I did and people will review it.

And then hopefully get to know me a little better based on the conversation we’ve just had. And then obviously the social proof would be your client’s testimonial saying nice things about you and creating content around that. And the third bucket that most agents really don’t do that well or, or very at all in a lot of cases, because they don’t look at it that way.

And my mom, I’ll be honest, like 50 years in the business, she’s very old school, right? She has these, we’ve done content for her. She’s like, don’t do that.

I don’t like that anymore. Personal content, right? I’m a human being.

I have a family. I have two dogs. I live in a house.

I have a life. I had a whole set of life experiences before even becoming a realtor. And, you know, in the last five years doing what I do.

And so people like to know those things. They like to hear those things. They like to get to know who you are as a human being before they decide they want to use you.

So if you do this effectively and you create content around those three buckets, incredibly effectively and not just chat GPT content, I mean, you can edit it and make it more, you know, more real and usable. You got to be careful with chat GPT.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Justin Loncaric]
Too many dashes in chat GPT. But at the end of the day, if you use those three pieces of content, the three buckets of content effectively at about 33%, so 33, 33, 33 of the amount over time, you will start to attract audiences that are like you because there’s nothing worse than having a client that doesn’t like you and you butt heads and you’re constantly arguing about things. If you’re putting out content that is about you, that has your personality on show, and that is completely open and honest personal content, as well as really open and honest authority content that talks about real things like me talking about staging being BS, that could be construed as controversial.

Stagers probably don’t like me, whatever, it’s fine. But at the end of the day, that draws attention to me, but it also allows people to understand who I am. So if you’re able to effectively post that, like that for a period of time, and you have to be consistent with it, we’ve consistently now, this is going to be too much for most people, but we post every single day.

And we have done consistently for five years, six years almost. And so that’s difficult, but we have the support system in place to be able to do that. That’s just me, right.

And you know, there you can see top agents like big time agents around the country probably have the same facility, but you don’t have to make it fancy. And you don’t have to do it every day. You just have to do it and stay consistent with it.

Because most people will do it for like two weeks, 10 days, 30 days, whatever. And then, oh, shiny penny business, business, business, and then they’ve completely forget about the rest of it. It’s the same conversation we’ve had all these years about phone calls and things like that.

Oh, you phone, phone, phone, you get a bunch of business, you know, and door knock, door knock, door knock, get a bunch of business. And then you forget about all that stuff because you’re out doing business. It’s the same conversation just with social media.

So that’s what I do. It’s a pretty simple philosophy and how I do the content and who I am. That’s going to differ for everybody because everybody’s different, right?

I have a guy in Toronto that I know very well who said to me, my wife would never use you. If you talk to this guy on the podcast, he would sound like this. Hi, my name’s Dave.

He’s a super nice guy. I love him. And he’s super friendly and he’s really nice, but his personality is very flat like this.

His wife loves him. So of course she’s not going to use me. Look at me.

I’m loud and boisterous and all these things and we wouldn’t get along. And so you want to attract people like you because those are the people that are going to listen to you more and actually work with you better. And I can honestly tell you that over the last five or six years, I really don’t fight for commission anymore.

I just tell people, here’s my commission. I really don’t fight for too many listings against other agents anymore. I know this kind of sounds a bit too good to be true.

I do still have these things, but not as much as most agents probably do because people just call up because they’ve seen me so much on social media that they’re like, hey, come and list my house. So being consistent over five years has created this ongoing funnel where people just keep coming back, right?

[Mattias]
Yeah. Well, like you talked about the fighting for listings or having multiple, you know, a client’s going to have like five different agents over to decide who’s going to list their house. There’s a book called The Full Fee Agent that has this theory in it that they would basically not do anything to try to earn that business until they’ve decided they’re going to work with them or doing a bad job explaining this.

So the theory is that that person probably already has their favorite agent in mind. And if you can determine that you’re not that person in a conversation, you’re wasting your time. Would you go show houses to a buyer that’s also interviewing five different other buyer agents and they’ve all shown houses to this person?

Probably not. You wouldn’t waste your time doing that. And in the same regard, why would you spend all your time explaining to them how you’re going to list their house, give them all the strategies of how you’re going to get the most for them, do a whole CMA, give them valuation, do all this stuff that is really a huge part of what the value you give.

Having that expertise of getting everything ready and pricing it right to sell it effectively is a huge part of what we do. And so why would you just give that away when you’re probably not going to be the one that gets the listing? And so it’s something that, yeah, I’ve almost like more beta tested in the background.

And one of the times that this happened, I gave my analysis and I was thinking in the back of my head, I shouldn’t do this, I shouldn’t do this. They went with somebody who was going to list it for like $100,000 more. And it didn’t happen.

Nope.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, that happens too. Probably two years ago, I went into a house and it was this lovely young lady. She was a bit of a hippie, very unconcerned about money.

I gave her a price. Well, I gave her 1.4. That was the price I gave her. Went through all the things.

I lost out to a team that said 1.6. But guess what it sold for four months later, right? I mean, you can’t lose if you’re honest, right? Even if you lose the business, you’ve got your integrity.

And that’s the most important thing for me.

[Mattias]
And then this house, of course, ended up selling for less than I had initially said, because it sat on the market for too long.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

And that’s the danger in it, right? Yeah. At the end of the day, first of all, remember that you as an individual, no matter who’s listening to this, who you are, how many years you’ve been in the business, you could have got your license yesterday.

You are valuable because you’re you. That’s your value. There’s all these things that we bring to the table.

Great. We have tools and things. Cool.

But your value is you and you as a human being having care and compassion for the client that you’re working with. There’s a lot of agents that don’t. I’ve got to say, I’ve seen it and it doesn’t work.

And people come to me and go, wow, this is the experience I had. I’d never named names, but at the end of the day, your value is you. So don’t ever discount yourself no matter how long you’ve been in the business, because action is better than perfection, right?

Getting things done is better than not doing anything at all and being terrified of, oh, I’m thinking about, oh, I’ve been in this business two days and I don’t know what I’m doing. No, just go do it. Right?

And I think people forget that. Forget the fact that, oh, if I don’t have staging fully in my package, oh, people won’t use me. Well, of course they will because you’re you and you bring other things than just staging to the table.

Right? And that’s where you got to just shine and be you. And that’s where the social media thing boosts that process, right?

Being able to have that social media to back you up and for someone to go, holy crap, this guy’s posted 365 posts this year. I can’t even get to the bottom. There’s so many posts, like cool.

And it’s all value content, value driven content. They will learn the value of who you are through that. Now, again, it doesn’t have to be once a day, but you know what I’m saying?

[Mattias]
Yeah, totally. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Oh, there’s been many golden nuggets that we’ve shared already. But what golden nuggets would you want to share to the listeners?

[Justin Loncaric]
I heard this quote that has been incredibly impactful on me. And I was listening to another podcast. And it’s not his quote, but he quoted someone else.

It was Neil deGrasse Tyson, who I love. I’m so nerdy that way. It’s crazy.

That’s why I have glasses. I said to my wife earlier, I should have been an astrophysicist. That’s just me.

This quote is incredibly impactful for me. And I’ve been rolling it around in my head for the last 24 hours. Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

So that’s a bigger deal than just a golden nugget in real estate. This is a life quote. This is a life nugget for me, where it’s like, well, what are we doing to create some sort of difference in humanity?

Did you have kids? Maybe that’s it. Maybe whatever.

Everybody’s is going to be a little different. But at the end of the day, my job isn’t done until I’ve won some victory for the people around me and humanity as a whole. And your job is to go out and help people move, which is one of the biggest transactions in their lives, and create a wicked experience for them instead of having them feel stress and all the things.

They may still feel that. But you come out the other end, allowing them to experience something incredible and experience one of the biggest things they’ll ever do in their life, in some cases. And so having that impact on people that way, I think is an important thing to remember.

So treat it with respect. We need to treat this industry with a lot of respect and treat our clients with respect and treat the opportunity that we have to have an unlimited income in this industry with respect.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that should fire some people up. I hope so.

[Justin Loncaric]
I’ve been thinking about it. It’s just rolling around in my brain like crazy for the last 24 hours.

[Mattias]
So that’s great. How about a favorite book? It could be something you think everybody should read that’s getting into the business that’s been in the business or maybe a current favorite.

Oh, we got one.

[Justin Loncaric]
I got it. So this is one of my good friend’s books. And her name is Jessalyn Avell.

We talked about it a little bit earlier. She’s my coach. And again, I’m not trying to sell her product.

I don’t care if you like at the end of the day, she’s a great human. She wants to help industry get better. But more money, less hustle.

Think about that. And this book gives you the framework for being able to work efficiently using tools that are effective in today’s market. So the idea behind this would be to say, okay, listen, we can make more money by automating this and automating that and using this internet and using this type of online source, like being able to remove yourself from the grind.

Because the grind isn’t a thing anymore. It used to be. But I don’t think it’s a thing that people appreciate anymore.

Even you hear people like Gary Vaynerchuk doesn’t even use that word as much anymore. Right? So at the end of the day, this is an idea of using the tools and resources, AI, the internet, the things like that, that we have at our disposal to be able to create more flows of income for us with less grind, which sounds wonderful.

You still have to work. But this book is a great framework for it. And I hate to say this.

I don’t know if this is the wrong thing to say, but like the last chapter, the first line of the last chapter is, you know, I’ve told you about the system, put these pillars in place for the sake of anonymity. We’ll call this agent Justin. Who do you think that is?

So there you go. A little bit of a little bit of an ego boost there for me too. I like it.

Why not?

[Mattias]
Awesome. That’s great. And then where can people find you to get your, you know, one post a day?

What social media, what websites, etc?

[Justin Loncaric]
So we have 5000 friends on Facebook. So don’t friend me because I can’t friend any more people because it won’t let me. And all my agents are being culled off my list so that I can have civilians on there.

And my niche, which is cool too. So best to either follow my business page on Facebook, Justin Loncaric Realtor, or @JustinLoncaricRealtor on Instagram. And those are free and open for you to follow and see all my posts and take my content and look at it and understand it and how we do it.

And yeah, I am that type of guy that if you are watching this and you’re like, I have a question, and you literally reach out to me, I will answer your questions. I believe that this industry needs to elevate each other. I believe that we need to work together to elevate each other, quite frankly, and there’s too much infighting and trying to jump over each other for money and business and all this.

We don’t need that anymore. We need to work together to grow the business. There’s enough business out there for all of us to enjoy a good life.

Right? So ask me questions. I’ll answer.

I don’t mind. I love talking to people all across the country. I’ve even had people say, hey, next time you’re down here, I’ll take you to a San Francisco Giants game.

And I’m like, yes, that’s the only reason I do that.

[Mattias]
But no, no such thing as altruism.

[Justin Loncaric]
No, right. I’m totally kidding. Just so you know, I’m, I’m just trying to, but yeah, no, I’ve had, I’ve had agents from across North America, you know, from the training group I’ve been a part of and other or other groups on Facebook that I’m in a part of reach out.

And I just want to help people get better. I just like the idea of our industry being viewed as something respectable and something where people, you know, want to come to us with an open arms and open heart and say, wow, those guys are great.

[Mattias]
Yeah. So a hundred percent. Well, Justin, thanks so much for being on the show.

It’s been a lot of fun.

[Justin Loncaric]
Yeah, no, you, this is a great opportunity and I appreciate your time too.

[Erica]
Thanks for listening to the REI agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.