United States Real Estate Investor

United States Real Estate Investor

United States Real Estate Investor

United States Real Estate Investor

United States Real Estate Investor

United States Real Estate Investor

Revealing the Keys to Real Estate Success Through Powerful Life Lessons with Nick Krautter

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Revealing the Keys to Real Estate Success Through Powerful Life Lessons with Nick Krautter on The REI Agent
Discover how Nick Krautter’s The Golden Handoff redefines real estate career transitions, empowering agents to grow through referral-based systems, partial handoffs, and intentional strategies for sustainable wealth and personal freedom.
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United States Real Estate Investor
Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

  • Having a “guiding star” or clear direction in your career ensures success and prevents burnout while building long-term wealth.
  • Nick Krautter’s The Golden Handoff introduces a proven framework for growing businesses by acquiring and managing retiring agents’ client lists.
  • Transitioning agents can embrace “partial handoffs” to balance scaling back their workload while maintaining client relationships and income.
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The REI Agent with Nick Krautter

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Investor-friendly realtor Mattias Clymer
It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team!
Investor-friendly realtor Mattias Clymer
It's time to have an investor-friendly agent on your team!
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Charting Your North Star in Real Estate

The latest episode of The REI Agent Podcast takes listeners on an enlightening journey into the heart of real estate success.

Host Mattias Clymer starts the conversation with a powerful message: the importance of a guiding star in life and business.

He passionately urges real estate agents and investors to focus on long-term goals rather than fleeting luxuries.

“Too often, we find ourselves living paycheck to paycheck, just trying to keep up with expenses,” Mattias reflects. 

“But with a guiding star, you can live intentionally and reach your goals with sacrifice and hard work upfront.”

This thought-provoking introduction sets the stage for an insightful discussion with Nick Krautter, a seasoned real estate professional and author of The Golden Handoff.

From Music to Mastery: Nick’s Real Estate Transformation

Nick Krautter’s story is nothing short of inspiring. Transitioning from the music industry to real estate, Nick found his calling in helping people build wealth through homeownership. 

“Real estate was a perfect fit for my personality,” he shares. 

“It combined the relationship-building skills I honed in music with the immediate results and tangible impact of closing deals.”

Nick’s move to Portland in 2005 marked a pivotal moment. With housing prices vastly more affordable than his previous home in San Francisco, he seized the opportunity to create a thriving career.

His adaptability and dedication propelled him to build a successful team and eventually establish his own brokerage.

The Golden Handoff: Revolutionizing Business Growth

At the core of this episode lies Nick’s groundbreaking concept from his book, The Golden Handoff.

This innovative strategy empowers real estate agents to scale their businesses by taking over the client lists of retiring agents.

Nick’s journey began in 2010 when a colleague transitioned out of the industry. He turned this opportunity into a transformative business model.

“I didn’t write the book based on theory,” Nick explains. 

“I wrote it after successfully implementing the process multiple times and growing my business by referral.”

The method combines the power of trust and referrals to create a win-win scenario for retiring agents and those looking to expand.

Nick’s process involves seamless communication with clients, ensuring they feel valued and supported throughout the transition.

Partial Handoffs: A Path to Sustainable Success

For those not ready to retire completely, Nick introduces the concept of partial handoffs.

This innovative approach allows agents to collaborate while still maintaining a presence in the industry. 

“The worst thing you can do is phase out unintentionally and lose the clients you’ve built relationships with over the years,” Nick warns.

By partnering with enthusiastic agents and tapping into their systems and marketing strategies, retiring professionals can preserve their legacy while lightening their workload.

Building Wealth with Intention

Throughout the conversation, both Mattias and Nick emphasize the importance of living intentionally in real estate and life.

From creating sustainable wealth to maintaining meaningful relationships, the key lies in aligning actions with long-term goals.

Mattias underscores the value of patience and sacrifice, urging listeners to delay gratification for greater rewards. 

“Build your asset column first,” he advises, “and you’ll be unstoppable when you start enjoying the fruits of your labor.”

Crafting Your Real Estate Legacy

Nick’s final words resonate deeply with real estate professionals at all stages of their careers: “You don’t have to burn out or let your business fade away. With intentional planning, you can pass the torch, protect your clients, and create a lasting impact.”

Empowered to Thrive

This episode of The REI Agent Podcast serves as a masterclass in transforming real estate careers with purpose and strategy.

From setting a North Star to building a legacy, the insights shared by Mattias and Nick inspire listeners to elevate their businesses and lives.

As Nick puts it, “Real estate is not just a job—it’s an opportunity to create the life you’ve always dreamed of.”

Whether you’re an aspiring agent or a seasoned professional, this episode reminds us all: the power to succeed lies in intentionality, resilience, and a commitment to growth.

Stay tuned for more inspiring stories on The REI Agent podcast, your go-to source for insights, inspiration, and strategies from top agents and investors who are living their best lives through real estate.

For more content and episodes, visit reiagent.com.

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Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. I am here solo again, but I wanted to talk quickly about, before I get into our guest, just kind of the idea of having a guiding star to follow when you are in this business, in life in general. I think it’s just really important to have some sort of guiding star that you follow.

I think it’s too often that we have life happen to us, that we have things happen to us that we just feel kind of like we’re going through the… We have to just get by. We have to live paycheck to paycheck.

We have to provide for the situation we’re in, our kids, our family, ourselves. We make a decision to buy an expensive car, one that maybe is more expensive than we should be. And now we have to pay the bills on that.

We buy to the max of what we can afford with our house that isn’t going to be a good rental. And then we have to kind of live. We have to keep going.

We have to keep hustling to be able to get that sustained. And I think if you have a guiding star, if you have this kind of direction in your life where you are going towards a certain goal, you can live in a slightly different way that will get you to that exact same spot. But you might just have to do a little sacrifice and hard work at the beginning.

That’s really what my book is all about. And I think there’s traps in real estate when you are starting out. There’s a lot of people that just want to look flashy.

They want to have that expensive suit. They want to have that expensive car. They want to live in a nice neighborhood.

And I’m not saying that’s anything wrong with that. But if you’re doing that before, you are actually able to afford that stuff reasonably. It’s just not a good idea.

You’re going to set yourself up to be in a position that you’re going to get kicked out of the business because you can’t make enough money. Market slows down. You don’t plan for taxes right or whatever.

You might just be put in a position where you will need to be forced out of the business to get a full-time job to sustain the lifestyle that you now have created. And so I think that it is just a good idea to think through all these items. Have a guiding star as to what you want to do.

Build up your asset column before you start building up your luxuries. And you will become a much more stable financial aid person that can go out and take risks, that can go out. And I had a friend here recently who started his own business, left a very, very good paying job, a very sought after job that probably a lot of people thought he’s crazy.

But he had been setting himself up to financially saving. And he does stocks before he made this move. And he was able to make this move because he has some of this cushion built up.

He could have been driving probably fancier cars and be living in a much fancier house if he wanted. But he was focused on building up his wealth to be able to have freedom to do something like this, which is a lifelong dream of his. And if he was in a position that he couldn’t afford to take this jump, take this leap, it would have been really difficult for him to do so.

And now he’s living out his best life. And really, that’s what it’s all about. I think it’s not just about wealth.

It’s not just about money. It’s not just about finances. But if you’re not following a North Star, you will let your health go.

You will miss your kids growing up. You will get in a bad relationship or, sorry, your relationship will go bad with a spouse. And you just have to live in an intentional way to have this North Star.

Again, this is all what my book is covering. It goes over. It’s really about living the good life intentionally.

And I think it’s just something that is so important that I want to preach again here on this platform. But in the REI Agent book that’s coming, I get into investing in real estate as a way of kind of getting through the ups and downs of the markets that you might experience, the fluctuations of your own personal income. If you have a good stable income, if you have enough money passively to cover your mortgage payment when you do finally buy a house that you’re not renting out part of it or something, that’s a strategy I’ll get into.

You’re going to feel a lot better going into full-time real estate sales or whatever because you have some of your bases covered. So it’s just, I think it’s a lot of build the iceberg, build the bottom of the iceberg first. And then whenever you finally start coming at the top, you’re going to be unstoppable.

And you’ll start being able to live a life that appears very flashy and whatever to other people, but really you’re still being conservative in your finances if that’s what you want. Some people don’t want to have any of that stigma with them. They will continue to drive a Dodge Stratus for the rest of their lives.

Because nothing wrong with Dodge, just referencing SNL. Because people don’t want to have, they don’t need the nice things. They know that that just goes down in value.

They’re not, that’s not what they’re about. But I’m saying if you are one of the people that are motivated by those things, it’s just about delaying the gratification a little bit. So that when you are able to buy it, you are able to, you know, you would be able to buy 10 times what you end up buying.

Or you’d be able to, you know, have 10 Lamborghinis instead of just one. I don’t think I’ll ever own a Lamborghini. But anyway, part of the reason I was getting into this is that I think there’s a lot of different problems in the real estate industry.

And we kind of get into this with my guest, Nick Krautter. He has written a book, The Golden Handoff, which we’ll get into in detail. So I won’t go over that now.

But I think that it’s a problem that a lot of people face. And a lot of people don’t think about their exit strategy for real estate. And it’s something that you should know about.

You should think about. You should research. You should think ahead of time.

And, you know, I think that what I am preaching here is real estate investing as you go. But there’s definitely other routes too. And I think you could also do real estate investing in what he talks about simultaneously.

And in different routes, you could build your business with what he’s talking about to sell more. You could scale back your business in a systemized way and still have income and not be losing the momentum that you have to continually grow. So anyway, it was a really good conversation.

Nick’s got an awesome experience. He is coming out of Portland. That’s where he sells at least.

And he is a team lead. He’s built a successful business, successful team. So really good conversation.

I hope you all enjoy Nick Krautter. Welcome back to the REI Agent. I am happy to have Nick Krautter here on the podcast.

Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, man.

[Nick Krautter]
Happy to be here.

[Mattias]
Nick, where are you coming out of?

[Nick Krautter]
I’m down in Palm Springs right now. So soaking up the sun in Southern California.

[Mattias]
Okay, that’s awesome. Man, we have a lot of people on from California. It seems like it’s a populated area, right?

There’s a lot of people here. No, it’s awesome. I’m jealous.

I love the climate over there. And it seems like a great place to live.

[Nick Krautter]
Awesome.

[Mattias]
But yeah, anyway, so you are an agent. You are an author. Tell us a little bit about what got you into the business.

[Nick Krautter]
I got into the business kind of on accident like a lot of people. My first career was in the music business. And I’d done that for, gosh, since I was like 21 years old.

And then I got kind of burned out on that. I moved to Portland, Oregon from San Francisco. In 2005, the market was booming everywhere and especially Portland.

And I think the thing that also tipped the scales for me is at the time, Portland was so incredibly affordable. Coming from San Francisco, even then in 2005, I think the average home price was like getting close to a million. And no one I knew in our 20s could afford a house.

The only people I knew that owned homes were like stockbrokers that made a million dollars a year and people like that. That was not my reality. And then I get to Portland and you could buy a house for like $100,000 if you were willing to fix it up.

And it kind of just blew my mind that that was possible. And I was also looking for a career change. And I honestly got into real estate thinking I would work part-time for a couple years at it until I figured out something else.

And it was just a perfect fit for my personality and all the things I loved about working in the music industry, getting to meet lots of different people, helping negotiate, and building relationships. But without all the downside, which in the music business, those relationships can take years and years and years. And sometimes it just never pays off just because it’s a very difficult world to work in as an artist and also in the industry.

And I got into real estate and you start helping people buy houses and it closes and you get paid. And it was just kind of mind-blowing. And it was just a perfect fit.

And I had a ton of energy and all of a sudden, I went from thinking I was going to do this part-time for a couple years to building a big team and eventually having my own brokerage and office building and all these things that I never dreamed were going to be part of my future kind of eventually unfolded. And it’s been a really amazing journey and I feel really grateful that I ended up in Portland at that moment in that industry. And it was just a perfect fit.

Perfect timing.

[Mattias]
Okay, I have a quick meme I wanted to reference and maybe think of that you’re talking about it. There was a guitar player that’s sitting in front of the camera with his guitar. He’s like, I want to show you the hardest thing to do on the guitar.

Many of the top, most skilled guitarists can’t do this. And he’s like about to play it and he pulls like bills like pay the bills. You can’t make any money playing music.

And it’s unfortunate. I love music too. I love to play guitar singing and all that stuff.

So it’s unfortunate that that’s the reality, but it can be. And it’s a good thing for people to think about when they’re selecting their careers, when they’re kind of going through life, going through college. It’s kind of what’s the end game and factor in what does it cost to get there and how much are you going to make when you’re there?

I definitely didn’t think about what I would be earning based on my career path decisions I made in college. It was never really something I thought about. And it’s silly because you’re investing a ton of time and money.

[Nick Krautter]
Oh yeah, especially with college, with specialties like that. I’m dating myself a little bit. I’m in my 40s, but I went to a state school in California, in-state tuition, and it was very affordable.

I can’t remember. I think it was like $5,000 a year. And now I have friends that are saving $300,000 to send their kids to college because out-of-state tuition is $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year.

And I’m not even talking about Harvard or Stanford. I don’t want to say average schools, but just not marquee name schools are now a quarter of a million dollars to get through, not including living expenses. And I think that you’re right.

I think if you’re going to spend that much on college, you might want to think about what kind of return you’re getting on that investment. Or I read a really interesting article about that, where if you want to go to college to get an arts degree, save up the money to pay for it so that you can acknowledge that this is not a financial decision. This is more of a life enrichment decision.

So kind of looking at it a little differently.

[Mattias]
That makes a lot of sense. And I think just having the thought process in the conversation about at the end of the day, what are you going to do with this thing that you’re working for and paying for is just something that I don’t think people did. But anyway, so you eventually moved from Portland to back to California?

[Nick Krautter]
Yeah. So I started snowboarding. So basically I built a big team and kind of during COVID started coming down here more.

And so I’m here basically in the winter and then up there in the summer. So try to chase the sun back and forth.

[Mattias]
Do you sell in both states then, both areas?

[Nick Krautter]
No, I’m just licensed in Oregon. And so focus there and helping our clients up there.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s really cool. I don’t want to jump the gun here because we can talk about what your book is. But I think that the world can open a lot more than in this space.

I think a lot of people get stuck in that solopreneur kind of world. And I’ve interviewed people now that are actually somebody from San Francisco that’s selling there, but lives in Panama for the majority of the time. And it’s just, it is your world.

You’re creating your life. You’re creating your world and you can make it fun. You don’t have to be stuck doing what seems safe and what seems like what everybody else is doing.

You can kind of live half place in one area and then live somewhere else. Or just, yeah, there’s so many different ways. I have another person I interviewed that is selling in Tucson and Minneapolis.

And has thriving businesses in both locations 24-7 no matter where she’s at.

[Nick Krautter]
I know some people that feel like pulling themselves out of the day-to-day kind of grind of going to the office and sitting at your desk has actually helped their productivity. I know for me, I feel like that did that. And objectively, some of our best years were 21 and 22, kind of getting through COVID and then kind of the upswing there.

And I know a lot of people had good years with low rates and a lot of people moving but I think for me, my productivity went up because if I was in Portland, it’s going to be gray and rainy. And so you kind of just hang out at the office and you’re not super motivated because you’re going to be indoors there or indoors at home. The same thing with Minneapolis and all the northern states in the winter.

Unless you like snowshoeing and walking in the rain, there’s not a lot to do. But it made me more motivated because down here I can go out and go for a jog or go play golf or go hiking. And so I would be much more focused on being productive and actually calling people and doing activities that turn into results versus just taking all day to do that stuff.

So I think you’re right with the right partnership and the right team. I’m excited to talk to you about the book because I think that there’s tools in that that allow you to live that lifestyle. And it isn’t being negligent to your clients at all if you have the right people helping on the ground.

Like I said, I feel like sometimes you can be more productive. And the clients now, when I started, you would meet at the office. You would go over the contracts.

You would do in-person meetings. And then you would go look at homes or take a listing. And when we got offers, you would come to the house after dinner.

We got three offers and we’d put them on the table and go through them and have paper copies of everything. And so it was slower, but it was way more time connecting in person. And especially since COVID, when we had a lot of things switched to Zoom and we had homes we were selling where the sellers didn’t live in Oregon and the buyers didn’t even come see the homes in person.

It was just all video. And so the next step, obviously, is if you want to be there, you can be there. But if everyone else is just relying on Zoom and email and phone calls, you can do that from anywhere.

And you can’t really do listings, I think, because you have to go see the property. But if you have a team or a partner you can work with, you can kind of solve that problem. And tons of people have figured that out.

[Mattias]
Yeah, because I think what we’re kind of getting at here, too, is there are boots on the ground activities, but then there are the core, the fundamental thing about real estate is your sphere, who you’ve connected with and how you can help them in a great way. How big your sphere is, all that stuff is stuff that you can still maintain elsewhere, right? I mean, I think that’s what this guy in Panama was doing.

He had boots on the ground that was helping him. He was listings primarily. But he worked his sphere from Panama.

He just was on the phones and making emails and connecting with people. And then he had people that helped, boots on the ground. But yeah, let’s get into your book.

Tell us about your book so we can kind of get into that concept a little bit more.

[Nick Krautter]
Yeah, so before I tell you about the book, I think it’s important to explain that I didn’t write a book based on a theory. I wrote the book after I actually had implemented the process multiple times and had a ton of success growing my business by referral. And one of the things I think everyone would like to do is work all by referral.

And the reason they don’t is they can’t scale it up quick enough. And so then you’re relying on prospecting, marketing, advertising, calling, you know, all the million things you do to meet new people in real estate. But what happened is in 2010, the woman who had the office next to me decided to get out of real estate.

And it wasn’t because she was struggling. She had a great business, really good client list. She had her second child and the hours just weren’t working.

She wanted to be more present as a mom. And with her real estate business, she was just working way more hours than most people. And so she switched to a corporate job where she was working nine to five and could put work away when she went home and had weekends off.

And so I took over her business. And at the time, we didn’t really know how to do it. It just kind of said, I’d love to help your clients.

And then from there, we figured out, how do we want to explain this? And that became the announcement letter. And then what is the marketing plan going to be for all of these new clients?

And how are we going to kind of do the messaging? And so I worked with her and then I ended up buying five more businesses that way. And so I was like killing myself working 14, 15 hours a day, six or seven days a week for years to go from zero clients to 200.

And then very quickly, when I started buying businesses, we went from 200 clients to 2,000 clients. And I think it’s important to understand that I’m not buying leads. These are people that have a relationship with their agent.

And now they’re being endorsed to me as the person that’s going to be there to help them and be their agent. And that’s really the magic of it. And then the next step is just kind of what you were talking about, is the gentleman that’s living out of country but doing well, is you do the work.

You make the calls. You send updates about the market. You make sure you schedule follow-ups and answer people’s questions.

And you’re there to serve them when they need you. And so I started buying businesses in 2010, started writing the book a couple years later, and then it took a couple years to write it and edit it. I had a great editor and that process took a lot longer than I expected.

But I’m glad I took the time because the first draft to the final was six edits and the final draft is so much better than the first draft. It’s kind of funny. I still have a copy of that very first draft and it’s not very good.

The final book is so much better. So it was time well spent. And that book has helped thousands and thousands of people, whether they’re looking to grow their business or looking for a way to retire.

And the new version of the golden handoff, the one with the blue cover here, this one has a whole new section on what I call partial handoffs. And a partial handoff is basically what happens to all the people that don’t want to grow their business but don’t want to completely retire. And it gives you a framework to work together before the retiring agent actually retires and to collaborate and connect.

Because the worst thing you can do as a realtor is just kind of slowly phase out and stop marketing and stop calling. And so you’re doing $30 million a year for like five, ten years and then all of a sudden it’s $20 and then $10 and then $5. And the reality is at that point your clients have already started working with other people and they’re not connected to you anymore.

And so there’s nothing wrong with phasing out or slowing down or changing how much you want to work. I did that through building a team and a golden handoff is kind of a way to basically hack that process without having to hire and train everyone. You just plug in with a partner or you plug into another team and access their systems and marketing and get to bring your relationships and just focus on what you want without losing everyone.

Because if you do it unintentionally you eventually lose all of these clients that you’re not staying engaged with. And so just be real with yourself about am I in a growth mode or do I want to slow down? And if you want to slow down you need to start today looking at ways to partner or collaborate with a golden handoff so that you’re not losing the people you’re not going to stay engaged with.

Let someone else who’s excited about that take care of those people.

[Mattias]
Now have you found that it can be difficult to convince the other person if let’s say you’re interested. You notice this happening to somebody. Hey you really seem like you’re slacking off over there.

Your heart’s not in it. I mean that’s a tough conversation to have. But you are really after their best interest and you see an opportunity that’s a win win.

Have you found that to be a difficult conversation to have?

[Nick Krautter]
I think there’s two things. I think there’s two myths that retiring agents or people that are phasing out have. But I think kind of your point it’s a difficult conversation if you’re not messaging it right.

And so it’s really important to approach it from a perspective of trying to help someone and to respect them. And if you come into it saying oh man you know you used to be the number one and now I’m kicking your butt. Yeah obviously that conversation probably won’t go very well.

Right. But if you approach it like this. Hey I’ve always really admired and respected your business and how you help people.

And I’m curious what are your plans with your business when you want to be done selling? And most people, 99% of realtors you talk to about this will have no plan. And so it will trigger a oh I don’t really know.

You will be shocked at how many people will say oh my god I would love to slow down or retire but I don’t know what to do. And you can provide that solution very easily with a golden handoff once you know that process. And it’s not complicated because it’s basically like a referral agreement but for everyone they know.

Yeah. The two myths that I mentioned are agents believe that they have some kind of deep love connection that no one could ever possibly take away. Right.

Which if you really are being honest you know this is completely crazy because if a realtor stops selling and they don’t call people back all of their clients already know five other realtors. And so they’re going to very successfully find someone else and do what they need to do. The other thing I think is the big myth is that people think oh well people will still call me and I’ll refer it to a friend at my office and I’ll get a referral fee.

But the truth is if you’re in business in real estate your job is to try to convince everyone every day that you are not retired and that you are available. So the second they think that you’re out of the business or you’re not engaging proactively you’re losing people. And so you’re not going to get a bunch of calls from clients even if you did have a great relationship and you were really connected and you worked on multiple things.

You know you’re and again it just depends on the person but some clients you know you don’t call them back in five minutes and they think that you’re ignoring them. Much less if you’re on vacation for two weeks and I’m not going to check my email or my phone for two weeks because I need some space. It’s like that’s great but like your clients don’t care.

You know they if they need to do something or they have a question they want they want to do it now. And so you have to have someone that is active whether you build your own team whether you have a partnership or whether you join a different team. If you’re in that in that space where you want to take more time and a golden handoff and a partial handoff.

I’m so excited about it because the number one objection I got when I was buying businesses was well this sounds great but I’m not ready to really retire yet. And now there’s a way to connect with those people and start working today before they ignore their clients for five years and there’s nothing left because that’s that’s what 99% of realtors do. Unfortunately they kind of just slow down and drift away and by the time they’re done all of their clients have probably already engaged with other people.

[Mattias]
Yeah yeah no I think I’ve heard that about business in general and I don’t know if people apply it to or think about their real estate sales as a business or that it applies to them as well as that if your business isn’t growing it’s dying. And I think that’s very much true. I think people can sense that with your engagements if you are focused on other things if you have other things that are more important which I’m not saying like that that’s valid.

There are many many people that should focus on other stuff or should you know that you know rightfully times in their lives that they don’t want to do real estate full time and that’s great. But yeah what a great opportunity to systemize and really think that make a decisive decision. I think that’s probably difficult for a lot of people too but it sounds like you solve that with that partial handoff where you know they’re not ready to like you know hand in the keys and be completely done but they exceed the logic and transitioning.

So that’s that’s really cool. I don’t know if I’ve heard people many people talking about this so it’s I appreciate you doing this work and providing this information.

[Nick Krautter]
Thank you. I appreciate it too. You know it’s my people ask me what my goal was in writing the book and you know I do really well in real estate and I have other investments and so the book is not a huge financial component of my life but it was never intended to be.

You know it’s a nice little subsidy basically but the goal really was to change the industry and to change how realtors look at their businesses and how they look at retirement. And one thing I think is really weird about real estate is that have you ever been to a retirement party for a realtor? No.

I just presented at a conference in Dallas and there was probably three or four hundred people in the room and I asked that question. One person raised their hand out of four hundred realtors and there’s this weird guilt with real estate that everyone wants to be like the busiest most successful person and there’s like this weird sense of shame that like if you retired it’s because you couldn’t cut it versus you did so well and you invested and planned for your future that you don’t need to do it anymore if you don’t want to. And you know there’s a very big difference than someone that’s in their 70s that does it because they love it and they get a lot of excitement and engagement out of it and they love their community and their clients versus someone that has to do it because they can’t afford to live without working and they’re kind of so far behind at this point that they’re kind of just stuck forever doing it.

And I think that that is just incredibly tragic and so you kind of have to commit one way or the other. You’re either going to bust your butt to build something big to be able to invest or you’re going to have a more lifestyle based business that you can do longer because it’s less stressful but you’re not going to really get ahead of the curve far enough really to achieve financial independence and I think that that’s a mistake. I think that everyone should strive for that without sacrificing everything.

I don’t think that you should work 100 hours a week. I worked a ton my first two years. I wouldn’t go back and change it.

I would go back and tell myself, hey you can still like eat okay and exercise. You don’t have like zero hours left in the day because I definitely let my health slide and I didn’t need to. You know I had excuses and so I was on a hamburger and beer diet for about two years and that wasn’t great for my body but other than that, the effort I put into it and learning the trade and getting good at it was incredibly exciting and so it’s what I wanted to do.

It was kind of like when you’re a kid and you get a new video game, you just want to play it all day long and that’s how I felt about this business and kind of continuing to level up and grow and it was super exciting and it really went crazy once I started buying the businesses. That’s where I really kind of figured out a little bit of a secret that no one else was doing and went from 200 clients to 2,000 clients and our database now has over 20,000 people in it and not all of them are clients. There’s leads and other people but thousands and thousands and thousands of those people are potential clients and clients we’ve worked with and past clients and so that gives you an incredible amount of power to have that many people that are willing to listen to you and ask you questions and connect with you.

[Mattias]
Nick, what about when you’re buying, when you’re approaching these people, when you’re thinking about people who might be interested in selling their business, are you crossing company lines? Are you able to approach people from other companies or is this pretty much a system that only works if you have a large company that has people that are retiring in that company?

[Nick Krautter]
So I’ll say this, the system is completely, does not matter what brokerage you work for. So you could buy businesses from 10 brokers at 10 different brokerages and you can be successful with it because you pay everyone through referral fees. So if they want to stay where they’re at with their license, you can send the referral fee there or they could come to your brokerage.

It really doesn’t matter. With the partial handoffs, it gets trickier if you want to co-list and co-market. What most people end up doing is they end up moving to the same brokerage whichever way that is because some brokerages are okay doing a co-marketing agreement but many of them aren’t comfortable with it and that’s really maybe the only catch there.

I feel like some people are very loyal to their shop but it seems like lately everyone’s bouncing around a ton. What worked for me is I would put people on my team and I would make it so they owed the brokerage no money so that when they got those referral fees, they kept 100% of those referral fees so that all their expenses were for the year were to do their continuing education and their license renewal, which is a couple of hundred bucks a year in most states. If that, I think in Oregon now it’s with continuing ed, $150 a year, $200 a year maybe.

When you’re talking about getting $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 referral checks or higher on a regular basis, that’s clearly a good investment. No, you don’t have to be, especially in a traditional handoff where someone’s retired and they’re not active, they have to keep an inactive license so they can get referral fees but they don’t need to move brokerages. I would just warn people, make sure you talk to your broker first before you go to a non-selling status so that you’re not paying a full desk fee just on referral fees.

I just don’t think that’s fair. If they’re not willing to work with you on that, I think it makes sense to move because you’re not using the resources of the brokerage really at that point. They’re just processing a check or two a month or however many referrals you’re getting.

[Mattias]
Right. No, that makes sense. Yeah, I guess I could see maybe some brokers also getting a little bit territorial or wanting them to refer the business to somebody in their own firm.

But I guess if you’re having that conversation prior and they just tell them this is what I’m doing, it kind of is what it is.

[Nick Krautter]
Well, and that’s fine. But the problem is that still most brokerages are not providing a solution to their agents. Right?

Right. I mean, I’m trying to work with some big brands right now to implement this through their management but I feel like there’s always something more pressing in real estate.

[Mattias]
What could that be right now? Yeah.

[Nick Krautter]
A couple years ago it was COVID and then now the interest rates are really high and we got to figure that out. Everyone’s volume is dropping and then now it’s the buyer agency and all the new changes because of the NER lawsuit. And so, I’m sure next year will be something else that’s more immediate.

But the compounding effect of these relationships and setting this up with your brokerage or for you personally as an agent, even if you only buy one business, it could literally double your production tomorrow. This is not an incremental slow like 5% to 6% growth. I went from a part-time buyer’s agent and a part-time assistant to 12 people on my team and we had to stop buying businesses because we couldn’t hire enough agents to do the calls we needed to do to stay engaged.

And I had people that wanted to sell their businesses and I basically just said, I think we’ve got enough. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves because the last thing in the world you want to do if you’re running a business based on referral is to start providing poor service because you have to maintain five-star service and communication and there’s a limit to how many people you can do that with. And as much as people are obsessed with AI and automation and everything, I just feel like that human connection is still going to be very important on big ticket things.

You don’t need that to go buy a phone or necessarily pick car insurance or something like that that’s more commodified but to try to buy a home or sell a home when it’s for most people the biggest asset they own, you probably also live there so it’s incredibly emotional. That is something that I just don’t think you want to automate away that human connection and so there is a limit to how many people you can maintain healthy relationships with.

[Mattias]
No, that makes a lot of sense. I think that’s the fundamental thing about real estate that people shouldn’t lose is that connection you have with people. It is a people business.

You want to be a valuable person to your sphere. You want to provide valuable insights. You don’t want to just spam them with stuff they don’t care about.

They want information that they care about and so if you can just build your systems and communication around that, I think it’s a huge element to this. Yeah, that’s really, really interesting. I love this.

I want to get it. Is your book out now, the second edition?

[Nick Krautter]
It is, yeah. It just came out a couple months ago. This is fall of 24, so it came out I think September 1st or 3rd, September.

It’s been out just a little over two months now. Yeah, the new edition is available. I’m still looking at the workbook.

There is a Kindle version as well if you do that. I’m in the process of updating the Audible. The Audible version is the original book, so it doesn’t have the new section, but I’m going to be adding that.

[Mattias]
Do you record it yourself?

[Nick Krautter]
I do, yeah. My background in music, I have all the microphones and all the recording stuff, so I really wanted to do that one myself, which is good and bad because I should have done it years earlier, but when I finally did it, I did produce it and do it myself and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I think it’s the best if you can do it. I think it would be such a stumbling block. I’m in the process of writing a book as well and I’ve thought about that and I obviously have equipment to do it with, but I feel like it would take me way too long to get it done, so we’ll see what happens with that.

Amazon, is that the best place or do you want people to go to your website?

[Nick Krautter]
Yeah, go to goldenhandoff.com is the best resource. I also want to mention there’s a bunch of free resources you can get. If you go there and scroll down, there’s a spot to put your name and email in.

If you do that, you’ll get an email back from me automated with a link to download the contract, the scripts, marketing pieces, the announcement letter, a bunch of great tools that will help you implement the book really quickly. If you’re listening to this right now, I think the number one thing you can do is if you’re already slowing down or you’re looking into the future and you want to be retired or you’re going to move to a different state, if you’re going to slow down in any way in your home market, write down the names of three agents you think could do a good job taking care of your clients and reach out to them and start the conversation today.

If you’re listening to this and you’re looking to grow your business, kind of the same thing but in reverse. So write down the names of three agents whose businesses you would love to have, that you would love to buy and help their clients. A perfect fit is if you have a certain neighborhood you work and there’s one other agent that you seem to compete with the most, that’s the business you really want.

That would be like the home run. Then other than that, just trying to talk to agents who have a good referral based business. It doesn’t have to be 100%.

I think as long as it’s not just strictly a marketing prospecting business where they do get repeating referral clients that shows a standard of care and relationship building, that their endorsement will mean something to you and their clients are very likely to just work with you. I almost never competed when I was meeting with clients that were referred to me by these agents through a golden handoff. It was very rare that I was competing for a listing or a buyer.

It would happen but it was way less than normal.

[Mattias]
Yeah. This is an interesting thought here. That’s good you said that.

I read a book here recently, The Full Fee Agent, I believe. Have you read that?

[Nick Krautter]
I haven’t read that yet.

[Mattias]
To discuss this topic or this thought process that if you are in a listing presentation and they are interviewing multiple agents, basically that unless you can tell that you are their favorite, that you’re going to likely get this business, that you should just say, I’m not going to participate in this. If you decide to work with me, I’m happy to provide you with my market analysis and my advice about getting your house ready for the market. But until that point, I’m not going to do that.

I’m going to wait until you’re exclusively working with me. It makes you think about it on the inverse with a buyer. If you think about how you might work with a buyer that is also working with other agents, you wouldn’t do that.

You get a random Zillow lead. People talk about this. I don’t do Zillow leads.

But you get a random Zillow lead and you show up and you show a house for somebody who has actively worked with another agent. That’s obviously not something you really want to do. In the same regard, the theory is that they will use your information and they will decide to work with the person they wanted to anyway or decide to work with the person that’s going to say their house is worth $100,000 more than it is.

[Nick Krautter]
Or they take the, hey, this person has the best marketing and best intel, but we want to work with someone cheaper. So we’re going to just take their marketing plan and their number and work with someone else. I had a mentor that would do that.

And the way he described it, and I think this is really good, is who you hire as your agent is the decision on who you want to work with and the price of your home is going to be dictated by the market. And so, we sell X number of homes in this market for X percent of list price in this many days. And if you can say just statistically that you can beat the average in the market in any of those categories, I think that’s really important.

I used to do that. We would say, the average home sells for 97% of list and we sell it for 99 and average home takes two months and we sell ours in three weeks. Now, obviously, market trends and stats change all the time.

So it’s relevant to your time and place in the market. But I do think that, yeah, the relationship is based on who you trust and want to work with. And I don’t disagree that if you give someone the entire game plan upfront, I would always still just do that.

I would try to just come in. If I’m going to meet with someone, I’m going to just try to get the business and understand. And there’s other little things you can do to try to differentiate yourself.

I do mostly commercial real estate now and I think people will interview multiple agents. But I’ll say, if these other agents aren’t asking you about what you want to do next and what your goals are for the next 10 years, then they’re probably not really there to serve you. They’re really just trying to get a deal.

[Mattias]
A quick deal, yeah.

[Nick Krautter]
And so, do you want a relationship or do you want someone that just wants to do a deal that you’re never going to hear from again? And that really makes people pause and go, oh, actually, I do want to work with someone that cares about my goals and my interests. And I didn’t even think about that.

And what should I be doing?

[Mattias]
I definitely see the role as a bit of an advisor to people. And that often is inversely. It’s not always a good thing for your business to be an honest advisor.

But it is because they’ll be loyal to you and they’ll want other people to work with you. You might talk them down off of buying at their max of their budget or something like that. Or just in a house that seems to be a bad fit, giving them honest advice, giving them honest feedback, advising them to make the best decision they can for themselves.

[Nick Krautter]
Yeah, I think if you’re in it for the long game, there’s 100% the way to go about doing it. If you’re thinking like, I’m going to sell real estate for a couple of years and you kind of treat it like you’re selling phones at the mall, then you’re probably not going to approach it with the same diligence and care. And you’re not going to be thinking, boy, I really hope these people work with me in 15 years when they’re ready to sell this house when they retire.

And I’ve got clients that I helped them buy their home before they started a family and now we’re helping them sell the home because the kids are in college, which is kind of wild. I didn’t think of it in those specific terms when I started, but I certainly wanted to take care of people. I wanted to honor their trust.

And it turns out, I think that that works better anyway to do the right thing. You can always point to one thing here or there where, oh God, I could have gotten this deal. And there’s some people that do some really shady stuff.

But in the long run, I just think even if someone who doesn’t do it right beats your production, you never really know what’s going on. Usually those guys are spending a boatload of money on marketing and advertising and paying out for settlements and they might not really be taking home that much. You might be cleaning their clock on a net basis.

And at the end of the day, honestly, it doesn’t even matter if you lose to the people that are doing that. It just matters that you’re doing the right thing because your integrity is something that I think for people that have it and care about that, there’s no price you can put on that because you can’t buy back integrity if you’ve lost it or if you’ve wronged people. And I think that in the game of life, that is so significantly more important than was your production.

Were you number nine or 10 in your market that year because of your production or your volume or whatever? I think have whatever ambition you want, but don’t compromise yourself or your morals to get it. It’s just not worth it.

[Mattias]
100%, yeah. I mean, there’s so much more than being successful. I mean, successful is a lot of different things.

It’s not just the money. It’s not just the stats. So I mean, yeah, don’t sacrifice yourself, your health, your integrity.

It’s about doing your family. I mean, that’s another huge one, right? So just focusing on the big picture and kind of having a guiding star.

I mean, that’s kind of what we’re all about, what my book is going to be about. Investing in real estate as well as you go is another aspect of it. But this is also such a beautiful way of making it more than it doesn’t have to just be you that is doing everything you can earn money and partially hand off some of the business.

I love it. This has been a really great conversation. But before we wrap up, I do want to ask you about your favorite book, one that’s been fundamental for you, one that you are currently really liking, or one that you think everybody should read.

[Nick Krautter]
I think there’s three books every realtor should have on their shelf and read and prioritize over everything. Like Turn Off the TV, Skip the News is The Conversion Code by Chris Smith, I think is a phenomenal book. I’ve read hundreds of books on sales and marketing, and I think it probably takes all the best ideas of that.

It is specific to the real estate and mortgage industry in a lot of ways. That’s Chris’s background. Exactly What to Say by Phil Jones is a phenomenal book.

I actually just did a presentation with Chris Smith and I actually just spoke with Phil Jones last week. I’ve done so much in terms of learning how to ask questions and dialogue and scripting in an authentic way. I think Phil Jones’ book, Exactly What to Say, still has a ton of just gold in it.

It’s very short. It’s kind of a playbook. It’s not a novel.

It’s fantastic. Kind of the OG version is The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller. In terms of running a business as a real estate person, as an agent, it’s still, I think, the gold standard.

I think there’s still a ton of lessons in there that might change a little, but I just don’t think that the fundamentals that they uncovered in tracking all of their most successful people when they wrote that book, those lessons and that process, some of the tools might change, but I think that the idea of how it works in the big picture is still very much the same. Those are my top three books for realtors. I think if that’s the only three books you had, you would still be just light years ahead of your competition if you actually learned what’s in those books.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I mean, two of those are, I think, new to the podcast and to me, the first two. Oh, good, good. Yeah, I’m excited.

My list of reading is so long for this podcast. I’m going to have to stop people from doing more than one because I can’t keep up.

[Nick Krautter]
Well, read Phil’s book because it’s the shortest. Read that one first because you can implement it. One of my brokers, his son is thinking of going to college or not, and he kind of doesn’t want to go to college, and his parents are trying to encourage him.

He actually used some of the questions from the book to talk to his son about being open minded about going to college. He’s like, he’s actually going to apply. I was like, good job.

I mean, you can use these things in more than just business.

[Mattias]
Well, I mean, communication, right? Oh, yeah. It’s an art.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I’ll have to check them out. I’m excited for that.

And we already covered where to reach out to you. It’s the goldenhandoff.com.

[Nick Krautter]
Yeah, goldenhandoff.com is the best place. We’ll keep updating that with resources and tools. And like I said, if you scroll down a little bit, you can put your name and email in.

I don’t send anything to that list other than stuff about the Golden Handoff, so presentations, training, things like that. I’m doing updates to the book, resources. So you won’t get anything other than Golden Handoff stuff if you sign up there.

And again, yeah, if you’re looking on Amazon, the blue version is the new one. And yeah, if you’re not growing, you’re dying. Like you said, it’s kind of a harsh truth, but be intentional about it.

If you’re looking to take it down a couple of gears and if you’re looking to ramp up and grow, there’s just nothing you can do that will help you grow your business this fast by referral than just connecting with a couple agents in your market, adopting their clients and just treating them like you treat your own clients and having this incredible referral based business.

[Mattias]
I love it. Hey man, this has been a great conversation, Nick. I really, really appreciate your time.

I enjoyed it. We’re reading three books, your book and two of the ones that you recommended. All right.

Love it. Thanks.

[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.

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