Real Estate Referrals: Susan Chung’s Key to Sustainable Success

Dylan Silver (00:00.674)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show we have Susan Chung. Susan aka Lady Realtor helping you understand the art of real estate. Over 70 million in sales in New York City. welcome to the show.

Susan (00:16.269)
Thank you so much, Dylan.

Dylan Silver (00:18.646)
I like to start off at the top. How did you get into the real estate space?

Susan (00:23.949)
So I’m in the business a little over 10 years now and I started off working for my dad who had a wholesale beverage distributor in Flatbush Brooklyn and I really really loved my clients. I loved my customers and I took really good care of them.

My sister at the time was also in real estate and he said to me, think you’d be a good broker. And then I couldn’t, I could not afford at the time to take off of work for the two weeks to sit for the course. So I ended up having to do it online, which I don’t recommend at all. And so it ended up taking me, they give you six months. I couldn’t finish it in the six months because I was working like six, seven days a week sometimes. I’m 10 plus hours a day.

So I literally only had this one hour window at the end of the night or a lunch break to read the questions and answer. So I ended up extending it from the six to nine months. And then I finally got licensed. I think it was 2014, 2015. My busiest season came around. It was Labor Day week, and I’ll never forget. had pallets of beverages just posted up outside my store.

And I remember having a conversation with my dad to say, you know, just want to know like what’s going on with the business, what’s the future of the business looking like? Because I wanted to make a lot of changes and he wouldn’t allow me to. And then when he said, I don’t know, when I was like, oh, well, I’ve got to figure this out for myself. So I said to him, you know what, I’m going to take the week off. And I did. And the first day I took off, was the first day I took off in about six years. And I went to the beach for the first time.

Dylan Silver (02:10.904)
No way.

Susan (02:12.737)
And I remember I was with my mom on the beach and I said, my God, I said, I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go back. Labor Day weekend. And so I went to the broke ride, hung my license with earlier that year, it like in March. And I literally the next day was like, hey, I want to come full time. And she was like, are you sure about that? Because.

Dylan Silver (02:20.066)
Labor Day weekend, gotcha.

Susan (02:36.781)
Like it’s lot, know, like you’re gonna need money. And I was like, yeah, no, I’m a hundred percent like, tell me what to do. And she did, and then that was it. It was game over. fell. The first month I made the same amount doing rentals that I would make at my beer store, getting paid from my family business. And I was young, I was very young. I was in my twenties. And so when I was able to supplement that part or the bulk of the income,

Dylan Silver (02:56.664)
Yeah.

Susan (03:06.209)
I said, you know what? I’m just gonna do this full time. think this is it. I think I got this.

Dylan Silver (03:11.768)
So you’re able to make a smooth transition. you were doing rentals. Was it property management? Was it apartment locating?

Susan (03:20.141)
So I remember my broker at the time telling me that if I wanted to get into sales, I would need to work with rentals first. I would need to work with landlords and tenants because when I understood what they wanted, then I could understand what a buyer and seller would want. So it was literally the most basic level of residential rentals that you could ever imagine. was like, this is going to sound

really crazy and I’m going to age myself a little bit, but we used to have paper magazines, right? And like actual newspapers and they used to be posted up in like the diners. I’m in New York. There’s diners in Brooklyn all over. And so I remember my broker telling me like, go across the street, pick up one of the newspapers. I wish I even had one here. could show you and read the classifieds, right? And all of those landlords and tell them that you are willing to rent this apartment.

and it would be no charge to them. You’ll advertise for it. And I had this really adorable work camera that was left in the office. And I would literally run from rental to rental, just taking pictures, posting them. I had a boyfriend at the time who was like, do you even know what you’re doing? He would drive me to the appointments. And I would say, I have no clue what I’m doing. I’m just going to do it. And that was it. So was like the most basic form of real estate that you could ever think of.

Dylan Silver (04:47.886)
That is a lot of hustle. That’s awesome to hear, this very humble beginnings. And so you were finding them tenants effectively, and were any of them reluctant to pay? Or was it very easy to collect your fee?

Susan (04:52.695)
Cool. Yeah.

Susan (05:00.777)
No, it was, it was, I never had an issue, knock on wood, wherever the wood is. I never had an issue, thankfully, with commissions, actually throughout my career. So I really have to, I really humble brag, I really do have wonderful clients. And if they feel like I’m not going to get paid on something, they don’t, they don’t mess with it, which is, which is really wonderful. And it’s just like, I love my clients to death. They are extremely loyal, but I never had an issue. No, because you know what? I would

Dylan Silver (05:05.709)
Yeah.

Susan (05:28.075)
At the time, and now there’s a bunch of laws that are changing now, but at the time you worked for the landlord, but the tenant would pay you. And so you’d work for this landlord and you’d say, you know, I’m going to advertise this for free. Like this is no problem. You don’t have to worry about it. And then the tenant would come in, you know, and they want the apartment. So they’re like, well, this is what you got to pay. And that was it. There was no issues. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:36.152)
Mmm.

Dylan Silver (05:47.598)
That was it. And so from there, I’m picturing you’re scaling with that, you’re realizing you have this niche carved out. You’re in Brooklyn, so you’re still close to home, right? And so you’re seeing, well, what’s the next step from here? And at that point, was it an immediate, okay, well, I’m just going to transition completely to more or less, this’ll be here, but I’m gonna transition to listing homes and making offers for clients. How did that transition go about?

Susan (06:13.357)
It took me about a year and a half to actually get my feet wet into sales. I would say I was little bit of a sheltered individual, so I really did not understand how things worked. And so a lot of it was a big learning curve for me. I was petrified to talk to a seller, which I mean, I would have colleagues that would just jump in and be like, my god.

They think they know what they’re doing. I have no idea what I’m doing. And this person is probably going to know more than I do. How can I talk to this person? So what I did was to make the transition from rentals into sales. Now, I know that this is not something that I advocate for now, but at the time, it did assist me in working. Zillow, used to sell lead. They still do. They do it now, and it drives me crazy because people are so dishonest now.

But back then you could buy zip codes and then you’d get leads to those zip codes. So, you know, I gave them the credit card. At the time it was like back in Flatbush and it was like $40 a month. Like it was no money. I mean, not no money, but it was like nothing, right? And so I remember I got this one client and I toured a house a couple of days earlier and I got this one client.

Dylan Silver (07:28.536)
Yeah.

Susan (07:36.853)
And then when I bumped into this guy, he says to me, was in contract. went, or I’m almost in contract. I was doing the inspection on this home and the inspection came out so terrible. And I said, you like that home? He says, yeah. I said, I got a better one for you. And I showed him the one literally right next door that I knew was a great solid home. And he was my very first, he was my very first sale, my very first buyer client. And I actually got it from Zillow, which, and now I don’t.

I mean, I don’t do Zillow leads now. And not that I have an issue with them. I think there’s a time and a place in everybody’s career where they need them. But, and I was always very honest. Like I would let people know like, I’m not the listing agent. know, like if you want.

Dylan Silver (08:18.082)
But if you could have gotten the Zilla lead for $40 at the time, that was the time to get in, come on.

Susan (08:20.873)
For 40 bucks, yeah, absolutely. And so this is like my really early on. Not only did I have that guy, but because I did such a good job at keeping in touch with my clients, he came back to me five or six years later, sold with me, referred me his neighbor who sold with me, referred me his across the street neighbor who sold with me, referred me another gentleman who worked with him who sold with me, and then the neighbor referred me her cousin who sold with me.

That was six transactions all in the same year from this one $40 lead. So I took that and I did transition into sales from that one gentleman. And then from there, you start getting acclimated on how the process works with buyers. You start understanding transaction timelines. And up until I got to Compass, which is the company I’m with now, 2017, 2018, I still could not talk to sellers.

It was like, I would be like profusely sweating. Like I was just like, there was no way.

Dylan Silver (09:22.254)
I’m having such a hard time imagining this because the person I see before me is so great, Gary is so full of life, I can feel the vibe through the screen. what did your, I’m assuming just like me and many other people, you realize over time that if you want to be successful in real estate, you have to be like fanatically networking. And that like being kind of in your shell a bit is hindering. For me it did. I was analysis paralysis Dylan. I was like, I don’t know how to get into real estate. I’m not, that’s not me.

Susan (09:27.059)
I think so.

Dylan Silver (09:50.712)
But then I realized people are actually very willing to kind of share the secrets of the game if you’re in the room with them. So I just started going to these meetups, meetups, meetups, meetups. And now I’m just like, I’ll talk to anybody. Like, who is it? I’ll talk to them.

Susan (09:59.597)
So So smart. So I actually come from a really big family of realtors. My aunt was very successful years ago before she retired. one thing that she did teach me was every single person needs to know that you’re an agent. And it doesn’t have to be flashy in your face, like, pick me, pick me. I’m your agent. Who do you know that wants to buy or sell? No, it can be more subtle, right? So for example,

I would go out for dinner and let’s say the waitress or somebody says to me, oh, you know, I live in blah, blah, blah town. I’d be like, oh, I have clients there. You know, and it transitions into, oh, what do you do? Oh, I’m a realtor. So it wasn’t very much like, who do you know that wants to buy or sell? It was more so like, how do I slip this into conversations? I think when it comes to being a broker, you really have to understand

mirroring so a lot of a lot of real a lot of getting clients keeping clients building your business is about its psychology a lot of its psychology and it’s like understanding people’s personality types understanding that there are different types of personalities and that you may have to speed up or slow down for certain people you may have to be a little bit more impulsive or a little bit more withdrawn you may have to be a little bit more in your face or a little bit more to your personal space so there’s a so I didn’t take the disk class but

Dylan Silver (11:20.494)
Have you taken the disk class?

Susan (11:25.389)
I take the Ninja installation, which I highly recommend to any newbie. They are phenomenal. It’s worth every single penny. I’m 100 % referrals and it is solely because of this installation. And they do a very good example. They do a very good job of explaining how the disc profiles work. But they use it, like instead of the dominant, they’ll call it like power, you know, the eye impulsive, they’ll call party people.

Dylan Silver (11:30.818)
haven’t heard about that.

Susan (11:54.765)
So they have like a different terminology for it, but it really does a great job at explaining how to mirror people so that people can understand that you’re a trustworthy person basically. It’s cross-country. They’re actually based out of Colorado.

Dylan Silver (12:08.012)
Is this a New York thing or is this all across the country and it’s digital?

Okay, I got to look into it for myself selfishly. But so you go and you have the you’re expanding within the real estate space. You’re gaining clients. You’re understanding mirroring. You’re understanding how to insert what you do into a conversation in a way that’s not abrasive. Right. And so over time, you’re gaining these referrals. You talked about six from the same point of contact in one year. Was there an aha year or an aha moment where things just

Susan (12:16.141)
100%. I highly recommend

Dylan Silver (12:42.658)
took off exponentially for you or was it more of a slow build?

Susan (12:45.856)
Yes, yes, uh, yes, so it does feel like a slow crawl until it pops So 2020 Which I know was a really rough year for everybody New York City had a mass of us So we had a tremendous amount of people who put their homes up for sale. I had already a tremendous amount of fire I do have really I do a lot of volume

And so I had a lot of buyer clients who had bought with me a few years before and now wanted to sell, upgrade, downgrade, leave the city, whatever it was. So that was my first year that things started to take off. And then 2023 was actually my strongest year, which is really interesting also because that’s when changes in the market started to sort of shift, right? Like interest rates started to shift. was a lot of question, excuse me, uncertainty in the market. But because I had

put systems in place that allowed me to defy market conditions. I remained successful, thankfully, throughout 2023.

Dylan Silver (13:51.352)
So as a realtor and then scaling, and if I heard you correctly, you’re a broker in New York as well. So as a realtor scaling, becoming a broker, what strategies did you use to scale your business and to really keep track of all the loose ends? Because that’s hard for a lot of people. And it can be stressful and anxiety inducing to work with a handful of sellers. But then you do this at scale and talk about volume.

Susan (13:57.218)
Yes.

Dylan Silver (14:21.484)
That can be a difficult undertaking for lot of people. So was that something that you had to learn and kind of prototype out? Or how did you learn to deal with this at scale?

Susan (14:30.317)
Yeah, so I would say I’m still learning actually. I average around 40 transactions a year, which is a pretty good amount. And I’m on my own. I’m on a team, but I’m pretty much by myself. I have hired a marketing rep who’s been with me since 2019. I love him to death. And I have recently hired an admin. And I think the biggest thing you can do is get yourself an admin.

or somebody, this is actually my recommendation. Hire a newly licensed agent who is really hungry in the business, wants to learn, but can also handle admin tasks in the beginning. For example, they can send out the deal sheets, they can send out the leases, they can send out the listing agreements. There’s things that they can do, they can respond to emails, they can set up tours. There’s things that they can do that…

number one teaches them how to do their business, but also allows you to leverage their skills behind the scenes, right? So like, so like anything on the computer, like I’m very good. Actually, you know what, let me just say this, know where your strengths are, right? That’s where that’s where it lies first, because if you’re better behind the computer, maybe you hire somebody that goes out and sits with your clients, I don’t know. But for me, I’m better face to face, to me, you know, sitting at the table together talking about the property.

Dylan Silver (15:42.658)
Yeah. Yeah.

Susan (15:56.073)
So behind the scenes, it would take me a whole day to do, my admin can do probably in an hour to two hours max. So I do keep very good track. I do have a business tracker to keep track of my current listings, anything that’s in contract, anything that’s coming soon, and then buyers, rentals, et cetera.

Dylan Silver (16:06.574)
Teamwork.

Susan (16:25.207)
But I would say that I’m still trying to master this. And it takes time because if you’re like, I’m a control freak a bit. like sometimes, especially when you’re teaching people how to do things, if you can do it faster, sometimes you’re just like, I’ll just do it quickly. You know what I mean? Versus like, versus like actually putting the leverage, like leveraging it out and actually giving it to somebody else to learn to do. then, and the benefit there is you hired somebody, you can make a little bit of a cutoff their commissions. They can assist you in.

Dylan Silver (16:29.432)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (16:42.776)
Yeah.

Susan (16:54.891)
open houses and talking to clients, you know, because they’re licensed, but they can also handle the admin work. So I recently hired a young lady who is phenomenal and she’s part time, but she’s learning. I’m teaching her. She’s also helping me with this stuff. So it’s a win-win. It’s a win-win all around.

Dylan Silver (17:09.88)
Win-win. I’m sure she’s thrilled to be working with you and getting all this experience from your years of experience. And then also being able to really dip your feet in the water without just diving head first in. And as you know, there’s a lot of situations where people are newly licensed and you’ll kind of get lost in the woods if you don’t have that direction. So because you need the assistance and because she’s newly licensed, that’s like

Susan (17:16.237)
you

Dylan Silver (17:39.34)
the ideal situation like she’s going to get involved in the contracts. She’s going to have to understand the discussions, the communications, and it offloads a lot of the overhead that you are having to wade through on your own. So to me, that’s a win-win. But I wanted to pivot a bit here, Susan, and ask you, is there a niche or an avatar of seller or buyer that you like to work with as far as the type of homes that they’re looking at? Or is it you see all different types of clients and different price points for homes?

Susan (17:52.086)
you

Susan (18:08.631)
Yeah, so when I first started my business, I loved the first timers. I loved the first time buyers. I loved the first time sellers. But it was more so like kind of going back to when I said to you was so nervous to talk to people because I didn’t think I had the experience. I didn’t know. Now that I’m a little bit more seasoned, I not that I am against any business at all, but it is a little bit. It is nice to have somebody that kind of knows what they’re doing, what they want to spend or what

take on a property, let’s just say, and we can just, you know, it’s cut and dry. It’s very like to the point that, you know, this is not, and then that’s it. While I still love my newbies, I love to take them through the process. It’s a lot of fun for me to do that. I would say that, you know, if you’re working with million and above clients, they kind of have a little bit more of an understanding million and a half and above.

of the industry, they’re still not professionals, right? So everybody needs some hand holding and in New York, a million dollars buys you nothing. Believe it or not, that’s the first time.

Dylan Silver (19:16.735)
Yeah, I was gonna say to our Texas listeners who are out here thinking like a million dollars in DFW like that’s a know, and I grew up in New Jersey I know what it looks like so it’s a different deal out there

Susan (19:23.755)
Yeah.

Susan (19:28.289)
Yeah, it’s still very much a first timer. But I would say, not that it’s easier, but you can kind of scale a little bit better the higher price points you go. I think when it comes to being a new agent, one thing I would definitely recommend is really understand where you want to be working.

Dylan Silver (19:44.589)
Yeah.

Susan (19:52.673)
Start there don’t start in the neighborhood you live in and then think that you’re gonna You know grow your business here, and then you’re gonna rebrand to some other neighborhood It’s a lot harder to rebrand yourself in a different neighborhood or not impossible but Farm a new neighborhood when you’ve already got you know of one very established So pick your neighborhood pick your niche start there and then and grow there

Dylan Silver (20:19.03)
At this point in your journey, mean, it really sounds like you have a tremendous network and so much referral, so much repeat. I’m imagining that because now you’re this far in, a lot of this is coming back full circle and you’re getting people who you helped them buy the house are now listing it with you and their family and so on and so forth. Is this a bulk of the people that you see coming to you are repeats and referrals at this point, or is it a fair mix?

Susan (20:45.869)
I’m 100 % referrals actually. I mean I get like the random one or two Google people who are like, found you on Google or I found you on Instagram or whatever. But my business is 100 % referrals. I actually get a ton of broker referrals as well because yeah, so certain parts of New York City, other agents maybe don’t want to travel to because it’s a little bit further.

Dylan Silver (20:57.048)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (21:04.823)
Interesting.

Susan (21:11.819)
Also, there are certain markets, like New York is very different, vastly different from other areas. And every market can be a little bit different, right? And so if you really don’t know, like where I live, for example, you can have, it can be different block to block, right? If you have a listing here, you think it’s gonna sell from here, because that’s what the comps say. But meanwhile, you know, it’s on a really busy road, it’s not near the subway, it’s whatever. Like there’s just random stuff that can really affect the market value.

that as an outside broker you just wouldn’t know. So I do get a lot of broker referrals as well, but I am 100 % referral at this point in my business. Thank you.

Dylan Silver (21:49.976)
Congratulations on that. That’s tremendous. think about my business, is not yet, it’s not listing homes, but I’m making offers on homes, I’m working with investors, and I’m thinking about like, man, imagine if I just had every investor coming to me being like, hey, Dylan, make this offer on this house. And that’s where you’ve gotten to. Like, people are just, it’s all 100 % referral-based. Do you have any general guidance for agents who aren’t necessarily brand new, but they’re still having to do a lot of prospecting?

Susan (22:04.321)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (22:17.92)
on things that you picked up from your journey that you can point back to and say, you know what, that’s what I did that really helped me get this volume of referrals.

Susan (22:26.497)
Yeah, so I mentioned that Ninja installation course and I’m going to mention it again because it really breaks down all of this for you. So you guys are going to laugh, but handwritten note cards for me went so far. So what I did in my business was I appealed to the emotional side of my clients. I do residential sales, right?

Dylan Silver (22:32.344)
Yeah.

Susan (22:55.233)
Things might be a little bit different with investors, commercial, et cetera, but with my residential clients, it is a very big deal for them to buy and sell property. It is the biggest ticket item they’re going to purchase or sell. So what we did was I would keep in touch with them on a daily basis. I know I took it down, but you saw my, had a business tracker here right behind me. just removed it. But every day when I was building my business, I would go through every single one of my clients and I would call them.

let them know where they’re at in their transaction, following up was huge. And then when it would close, I would send them a handwritten note card saying thank you for allowing me to work with you. And then I would stay in touch with them all the time. So like a month after the transaction, I’d call them and I’d say, let’s go get dinner, let’s go get lunch, let’s do this, let’s do that. The Ninja will teach you forward questions, which is like family, occupation, recreation, dreams.

So touching base on, how’s the family? Hey, how’s job? How’s your vacation? What are you guys planning on doing this summer? Calling your clients on a regular basis. Now, obviously, when you start getting more and more clients and then you have a ton of transactions that you’re working on, it’s a lot more difficult to make those phone calls, what we call forward calls. But it’s really, really important to touch base with them.

like as much as you can if it’s you know quarterly or once a year or just just checking in and the reason I say that is because what it does is it activates a part of their brain that they will consider you to be important right so for example have you ever got a new car red car let’s say you got a red jetta and now you see a red jetta everywhere oh my god this person has a red jetta that person has a or if you’re pregnant all of sudden you see a million pregnant women

Dylan Silver (24:45.229)
everywhere.

Susan (24:49.121)
because your brain’s now activated that as important, it’s registered as important. So what you wanna do is you wanna be the important realtor in your client’s lives so that when they go to work and somebody says real estate, they’re like, my god, you have to call my broker Susan, she is the best, right? If they go to the ball game and the kids are swinging the bat and the neighbor is talking to them about, we think we might wanna sell or we have to move to another neighborhood or Scottie got a.

a better job, whatever, whatever the situation is. my gosh, you have to our broker, she’s the best. And so you really want to, yeah, so you just want to touch them like all the time, like you want to just, that sounds funny, but you want to like touch base with them on a regular and consistent basis. Even if it’s just to check in, I never call my clients and they’re like, hey, are you guys ready to call, are you ready to sell? It’s always like, I was thinking about you, drove past your apartment or drove past your property. You know, remember that time we did such and such, you know, whatever. Any kind of conversation just to say,

Dylan Silver (25:23.021)
I love that.

Dylan Silver (25:36.536)
Yeah.

Susan (25:46.069)
You were on my mind and it connects them to that part of you where now anytime somebody talks real estate, they know real estate equals Susan Trump.

Dylan Silver (25:58.582)
I love that. That’s tremendous. You have like advertising space in their mind indefinitely. Every time that they think about real estate, they’re like, real estate, Susan, you know, it’s it’s that’s phenomenal. So I’m going to look into that for myself. Selfishly, I have to go look into this course. I hadn’t previously heard about it. But Susan, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Susan (26:03.679)
Yeah.

I’m a little bit tired.

Susan (26:14.733)
the best.

So you can follow me on Instagram at Lady Realter, Lady underscore realtor, which I’ll let you guys know more. Or you can call, I mean, anyway, call me, text me, email me. I’m always available. My number is literally everywhere on the internet. But definitely Instagram is the easiest place if you want to see what I’ve got going on.

Dylan Silver (26:39.288)
Susan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for your time and for providing our listeners some great value today.

Susan (26:45.355)
Sure, thank you so much for having me.