How Stacy Had Her Best Year In A Bad Market | Turned Pain to Purpose Through Community & Referrals

Mike Hambright (00:33)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. really excited to have my good friend, Stacy Allwein here. We’ve been friends for quite some time and have an important relationship, I think. And we’re going to talk today about kind of finding your purpose. I think that’s one of the things that happens in a challenging market like what we’ve been through or when you lose loved ones, which we’ll talk a little bit about today, is kind of what is it all for? Like for most of us as entrepreneurs, our business

It’s meant to provide for the lifestyle that you want to live. But sometimes your cheese gets moved and you have to like refine what that purpose is to keep you going as an entrepreneur. It’s important so you don’t stay stagnant. So Stacy, great to have you on the show today.

Stacy Allwein (01:12)
I’m so excited to be here Mike and I just want to reiterate yes we have a very special long-term relationship so thanks for being there for me and my former husband Mike my late husband ⁓ always

Mike Hambright (01:18)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Bob was for those who don’t know her, Stacy’s husband. She may talk about this or not, but her husband Bob passed away a years ago. Very dear friend to us and the Investor Fuel family happened unexpectedly. Bob was the salt of the earth for sure. And Stacy’s a part of our family forever now because of that. So, but great to see you Stacy. So, Stacy ⁓ is the realtor side, the agent side of the business and has an amazing background and amazing business and is really

Stacy Allwein (01:42)
Have a seat here.

Mike Hambright (01:52)
used kind of finding her purpose and we’re to talk a lot about today about how focus on building your community and giving back and all these things can create an amazing business for you full of referrals and friendships and things like that. So glad to have you on show Stacy. Yeah, hey, tell us. So I obviously I did a little bit of an introduction there, but tell us a little bit more about about you and how you got into the real estate world.

Stacy Allwein (02:08)
Thank you, I’m looking forward to it.

Okay, so I’ve been a realtor for a little over 18 years. My previous career was human resources. And Bob and I own some investment rental properties. And back in like 2007, I decided I wanted to quit my job, get out of the corporate world and…

get my real estate license. I didn’t know what I was doing and the market crashed. it was a tough time, actually I always tell people it was the best time that I could have ever gotten my license because I learned that I had to do a lot more than put a sign in the yard. I needed to learn how to do foreclosures, short sales, and also build relationships. And that helped me also help in my husband’s side of the business, which was flipping and investing.

Mike Hambright (03:03)
Yeah, I’ve talked about that a lot. I started in Lindsay and I started investing in 2008. Also a time when most people were running away and we cut our teeth in a market that’s different but similar to today. know, more of a buyer’s market. A lot of people are on the sidelines or completely out of the game. But I’ve talked about that a lot lately. And by the way, I know you said you’ve had your best year ever this year, which there’s not a lot of real estate folks, especially agents that can say that. And so looking forward to diving in.

But I think, you know, one thing that I’ve talked about a lot lately is like this, a lot of times when people have a difficult, especially as entrepreneurs, they have a difficult year or difficult time. They often just go jump into something else that appears to be easier. And ⁓ the reality is, is there will be a turn in the market and a lot of money will be made during that turn period.

⁓ And if people are out of the game, they miss out on that. But most importantly, they miss out on the lessons that they could be learning right now that make them a stronger entrepreneur ⁓ than those that just moved to the sidelines and don’t. It’s almost like you stopped. You’re a professional athlete and you stop going to practice for a couple of years. And then all of you just jump back into going to games. It’s like you’ve missed out on a lot of training, right?

Stacy Allwein (04:16)
Exactly, yeah, yeah. And I think just like thinking about what you’re saying, it’s so true because I know there’s realtors and other entrepreneurs and things are slow, so they’re gonna go Uber or they’re gonna go do something else. Whereas I know obviously we all need to feed our families, but I feel like if you really just dive in and dig deeper, you will come out so much better on the other side.

Mike Hambright (04:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. So let’s talk about, know you’ve been on a journey here the past few years. It’s just like the importance of kind of finding your purpose in your business. Cause that’s what drives us as entrepreneurs to get to the next level is there has to be a why behind it, right?

Stacy Allwein (04:53)
Absolutely. So ⁓ I have found and I kind of always knew this but giving back, volunteering ⁓ in some way shape or form has always been like very important to me. It’s important to our family and you know not to dive too deep into this but you know in

When I was 24, my brother died in a car accident. He was 23. My other brother in 2006 died of a drug overdose. My mom passed away young from Alzheimer’s. Through all of that, Bob was there for me. And then he passes away from pancreatic cancer. So lots and lots of loss. there’s things I could do. could stay in bed every day and not get up. But instead of doing that, I tried to find my purpose.

I love giving back to the community and I’ve tried lots of different things and I always tell people that I feel very strongly that volunteering, giving back, is something we should all do and it might be something like you’re volunteering at a humane society or you’re doing this but you have to find what works for you. So a couple years ago I found out about this recovery high school for youth that are coming out of rehab and we don’t want to put them back into

Mike Hambright (05:58)
Mm-hmm.

Stacy Allwein (06:09)
⁓

their same environment with their same peers, but there wasn’t a school in our community. There’s actually the closest one, I live in Maryland, the closest one’s Philly. I think there’s about 40 or 50 of them in the whole United States.

got very involved. We opened in 2020 during COVID and it’s been just an amazing process. am now, I just got named the president of the board. And if I could work there every day and do that, that would be just the best thing in the world. I love it. I love seeing the growth from these kids, but I also love like the community running into people and they’re like, hey, you’re, you you’re involved with the Phoenix foundation. And I always just feel like there’s that

that if only that had been possible when my brother was going through his problems and before he passed away, my parents would have done anything. And that’s just really important to me and it’s important to my family. It was important to Bob and I love seeing my grandkids involved in giving back and doing those kinds of things.

Mike Hambright (07:10)
Yeah, that’s great. And I think as an entrepreneur, you just talking to entrepreneurs here, it’s important. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get comfortable. And it could be, you know, they keep trying to like push the bounds of their business or whatever, and they struggle a little bit. So they just kind of pull back and it’s like, I’ll just I’ll just keep it simple, you know, and I’m not there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, as an entrepreneur, you get to decide that. I think one thing that.

Stacy Allwein (07:33)
That’s really nice.

Mike Hambright (07:37)
that I don’t like and everybody is the ⁓ kind of master of their own ⁓ journey here is that when people get comfortable and they don’t like one of the benefits of being entrepreneurs to have the ability to kind of push the boundaries a little bit right and I think what happens is sometimes people are entrepreneurs and they might have done well might be doing well better than anybody in their family or their circle of friends or whatever and then they just get too comfortable with that.

⁓ They get comfortable being comfortable, I guess, and so I think ⁓ entrepreneurs grow if they stretch themselves and one reason to stretch yourself is to kind of tie your why to something bigger than your own ability to pay the bill. once you can kind of pay the bills and you have a business that allows you to live the life you want, like one way to kind of push forward and not get stuck is to tie your why to something bigger than you, right?

Stacy Allwein (08:28)
Correct, absolutely. And I think that, you know, if I talked about my first why, it would absolutely be my family, would be my kids and my grandkids. But there’s so much more to that, like I think that’s something that we can kind of all relate to. And I think when you find something that’s even like bigger than that, you can involve your family and you can, you know, it can be everybody’s why, if that makes sense.

Mike Hambright (08:29)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah, let’s talk about some of the things that kind of, you know, motivate you. I know you just talked about a lot of your volunteer work. I guess maybe you could also share some tips for other people to kind of find what that is for themselves. I think sometimes people don’t really know, like, how do I find that? Or maybe they think like, well, what impact could I really have?

Stacy Allwein (09:11)
Yeah, and I can totally relate to that because I tried a lot of things before I found what worked for me and what I felt good about and where I felt like I could really contribute. I volunteered at the Alzheimer’s Association. It just wasn’t for me. It’s a great cause. I will always support that, but I didn’t find any real…

passion there. And so I always tell people like, don’t be if you try one thing, and it’s not the right thing, don’t let that be your last last try. And you know, sometimes people welcome you with open arms, other times they don’t. So find what’s important to you. And it could be as little as you know, doing something once a year, or it could be as big as being involved and be on a board and helping.

just feel like what you get back from that is tenfold of what you get then. And I’m not talking about financially, I’m about yourself. And with me, it has helped with my business. And again, not intentionally, but I’ve sold several houses to people in the community that are involved with the Phoenix Foundation. A lot of people on the board, or just people that are involved in it.

We’ve made it a big thing for our community. We just got done having a gala where we raised over $100,000, which is big for just a small little school that we have. There’s only 10 students in the school. But I’ve been able to bring in my business partners, my lenders, and my title people. And it’s just a great way to add to your brand.

Mike Hambright (10:52)
Yeah, it’s, know, if you know that people want to do business with people they know like and trust and I think especially like realtors, there’s so many. So sometimes people, sometimes people by default just work with a family member that’s licensed. And sometimes people just want to work with people that they know that have kind of given back and made an impact on their community. And so everybody’s a little bit different, but I think it’s the bottom line is the more that you’re out there helping people, meeting people.

Stacy Allwein (11:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Hambright (11:20)
All those things it’s it comes back around, especially if you’re consistent with your with your efforts and how you spend your time, right? Yeah, yeah, so let’s let’s talk a little about like you talked about the five circle focus like this process for like planning your life and we have something similar called a Fuel Five sounds like they’re pretty similar, but just like I’ve kind of found along the same lines is knowing what this is all for. Because the business on some level for entrepreneurs is a game.

Stacy Allwein (11:27)
rubber saw.

Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:48)
On some level, it’s an enabler that enables the life that you want to live. So just talk about maybe, whether it’s your situation or how you think about it or how others should think about defining what their purpose is.

Stacy Allwein (12:04)
So I think it’s so important, like you said, with, you you guys have a very similar type of approach. I like to sit down and I’m in a coaching, I’m coached by the Buffini and Company and I’m not inventing this five circle focus. It’s something that we do with our coach and we do individually and it involves like business, financial, personal, family, spiritual. And try to figure out like where you are with all of these things. What’s important to you and how do you want to incorporate that in your business?

And we always, I always start and end.

with coming up with a word of the year. So my word for this coming year is gonna be rise. And it’s like, just wanna rise above everything that’s happened in the last couple of years and rise above with my business. And last year my word was perseverance and just to try to really get back in the game. mean, it’s been three tough years for me, but I was determined that this year I was gonna really take my business

to a different level and I was able to do that.

Mike Hambright (13:11)
Yeah,

that’s great. I think defining what those things mean for you and I know last year. ⁓ Last year, Lindsey and I went through kind of a plan, a planning process and you know the reason I created the fuel five and their systems like what you just talked about was that. Sometimes you realize like. ⁓ You have to you have to figure out like you know in our business we like have KPIs were tracking and.

We have a systematic approach to our meetings and what are our goals? And we have like, kind of EOS our life where we have like a systematic approach to how we do business. But then in our life, we’re just winging it. it’s like, and I think especially when you have a business partner or when you’re married or you have a family that you care about, not that you have a family you don’t care about, but when you take all of those into consideration, I guess there’s some people that don’t, but.

Stacy Allwein (13:50)
Exactly.

⁓ you never know.

Mike Hambright (14:04)
When you take all those into consideration, it’s like, what is this all for? Like, where do we want to be in 10 years? What do we want to be in five years? And if you think of like a system like EOS, or we have one called Investor Fuel OS, it’s like, where do you want your business to be in 10 years, five years, three years, one year? And then what do I have to do basically this quarter and this week to help be on track for my one year, three or five year goals, right? It’s the same thing in our lives. Like at the end of the day, like,

Stacy Allwein (14:27)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (14:30)
Our life is more important than our business. Our business is just enabled in life. But if your foundation is understanding where you want your life to be, then your business is built on top of that. And so if you haven’t done those things, you don’t really have a very good foundation as to why you’re doing it.

Stacy Allwein (14:44)
Exactly, and I’m a firm believer in, and I know you are, in writing down your goals. And I hope that most entrepreneurs are. But I also think, I flashed back to a couple years ago, maybe five years ago, Bob and I went to a conference, it was all about your bucket list. And it was more than five years, it was probably six years ago.

we both individually wrote our bucket list. And it was a real estate conference. And it was very funny to see how similar they were. But by writing those things down, I remember saying, I want to build a new house. I want to build a beach house. And there were other several things. But it was like a five year plan. Well, I started seeing that written down. And like a year later, we moved into our new house. And then two years later, we moved into our beach house.

Mike Hambright (15:22)
Mm-hmm.

Stacy Allwein (15:30)
It was like very much like hit me, my gosh, this is so much more important than I’ve ever realized before. Writing your goals and like really like visualizing them makes you really want to do them and they’re possible, know, anything’s possible.

Mike Hambright (15:46)
Yeah, I think especially as an entrepreneur, because when you have not to, mean, the probably 99 % of people watching my show are entrepreneurs. But if you have like a W2 job, like you kind of know, like, well, I’m in this position. And if I do a good job here for a couple of years, I might get this position and your path is really well defined. But as an entrepreneur, you can do whatever the hell you want. Like you just have to have a clear plan and a clear vision and do the actions to get you there. And so I think it’s maybe even more important to really know.

Stacy Allwein (16:02)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (16:14)
what it is you want to happen because you can make it happen as an entrepreneur on more so than anywhere else.

Stacy Allwein (16:21)
Absolutely, but you I think you have so much more responsibility to yourself to your business and Just know that sky’s the limit. You know that that’s what I always liked You know, there’s there’s no ceiling. Obviously there’s there’s no floor either like you you know, if you don’t do things Then you’re not gonna make it happen. But I you know, it took me coming out of the corporate world. I was very Like regimented w-2 employee like okay, and I’m gonna get my bonus this

Mike Hambright (16:37)
That’s true. ⁓

Stacy Allwein (16:50)
year and it was very hard for me to make that transition and now I can’t imagine ever going back to not having the ability to change things on my own.

Mike Hambright (17:02)
Right, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about the importance of building your brand and maybe some things that you do. Obviously we talked about a lot of volunteer work, a lot of your passions, having a very clear goal, but it ultimately, and I’m not saying you’re doing it for this reason, but the one of the benefits of this is it helps drive your business through the relationships. But there are obviously some people that, you know, I’m probably in that category of like, I want to do a certain number of podcasts a week or a year.

⁓ I try to do some stuff on social media. mine is probably maybe a little more orchestrated than everybody, but you should ultimately have a plan for how you want to build your brand ⁓ that ultimately helps your business. So just maybe talk about some things that you do and some things that other folks should do.

Stacy Allwein (17:44)
So obviously mine’s gonna be tailored towards real estate because that’s what I do. And I mentioned that I’m coached by Buffini and Company and Buffini’s whole premise is doing your business by referral. ⁓

Mike Hambright (17:48)
Sure.

Stacy Allwein (17:58)
It’s actually very simple. ⁓ It’s making calls, but not cold calls. It’s warm calls, writing handwritten notes, and ⁓ doing pop-bys. Pop-bys are just like little gifts that you bring to your clients, stop by and let them know, hey, I’m in the neighborhood. Here I just want to drop by and say hi. It’s not, you don’t go in, you don’t, ⁓ it’s not a big long process, but it’s letting people know that you care. Hey, I have a house coming on the market in your neighborhood.

And you would be surprised at how people, they feel so special that, okay, you’re dropping off something little just to make them feel special. And they do feel special. And they feel like, hey, I do like Stacy, I do trust her, and I wanna refer her. So that’s kind of the whole, part of the process that I simplified. ⁓ Having like…

strong goals of how much business I want to do each year. And I can see when I don’t do my activities and I don’t do the things that I’m supposed to do, I don’t have client events. Client events is another big thing. We just had a great event at a brewery. When I don’t do those things, I can see the dip in my business. When I do these things and do them, not just when I’m slow, but I need to do them when I’m busy as well, ⁓ then it’s more of a steady ⁓ growth to my business.

Mike Hambright (19:21)
Yeah, because the business you’re in that I’m into, they’re like long-term relationships, right? So it’s easy. And the truth is, I think there’s a lot of people that if they don’t, you know, we’re in this world of immediate gratitude. So you’re like, well, if I want a result that I want to do something today and get an immediate result, and that’s just not how the relationship business works, you have to build it over a long period of time and be willing to effectively play the long game, right?

Stacy Allwein (19:42)
out.

Absolutely and that’s I think what’s so important and I think that’s why so many people kind of get out of the business aren’t successful in the business because they give it a little bit of time and it’s not working and They’re like, this isn’t you know, this isn’t for me or I can’t sell a house and you know the like the

cliche or whatever that 20 % of the agents are doing 80 % of the work. I think I’m saying that right. It’s so true because there’s so many realtors out there and I saw something recently that the percentage of people, realtors that didn’t close a deal this year, it was just astronomical and I couldn’t believe it. I’m like, that’s crazy. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Mike Hambright (20:31)
Yeah, I think it’s not just in real estate. It’s in every business and I’ve talked about this all the time. Like, for example, I’m out of my ranch now. I wanted to get some work done, some plumbing work done. I called two plumbers. ⁓ One of them called immediately. We set up an appointment for them to come out like a few days later. One of them never called me back, like didn’t even respond to the call. And, you know, I’m

I very much believe that almost any small business could 2 to 5X the profit in their business just by doing just by doing basic follow up and basic communications like better than they do it today. It doesn’t take much.

Stacy Allwein (21:10)
Absolutely. Yeah,

and that’s funny. It makes me think of something. Back in May, I was flying for a conference out to California or Arizona, and I was in line in the airport. Started talking to this couple, and the husband said to me, what do you do? And I said, oh, I’m going to a real estate conference. I’m a realtor.

And he’s like, wow, he’s like, I live in Annapolis and I’m trying to sell my mom’s house in Baltimore. And I called an agent and we had an appointment and she just didn’t show up. And I was like, well, I would never do that. long story short, I ended up selling his mom’s house like four months later this summer. And he’s like, I’m so glad you showed up. Like, who doesn’t show up? don’t get that concept, but I think it happens a lot in every industry.

Mike Hambright (21:48)
Yeah.

It does, yeah, it’s

crazy. What tips do you have? maybe you could share, obviously, whether you’re on the agent side or the investor side, it’s important to build relationships. Like when you talk about referral partners or relationships, is you’re not necessarily going, in that instance, you met somebody and you did a listing for them, you did work for them. In some instances, I know that a lot of your relationship building is with.

essentially what I call a continuous business partner. Like it could be a title company. could be another, a other agent that’s in a different part of town. could be lenders. It could be folks that will send you continuous business. So kind of any tips on how to build and nurture those relationships.

Stacy Allwein (22:38)
Yeah, think so probably 25 % of my business this year, if not maybe a little bit more, came from agent referrals. So different networks. So one through the Buffini Network, agents all over the country, referring people to me both here in Maryland and I also am licensed in Delaware. Another just agents in general from my community from Maryland. A lot of people are moving from Maryland to Delaware.

either for a beach house for a second home or the taxes are so much lower. So I get a lot of agent referrals, lender referrals, some of my title friends, some of my home inspectors, like just keeping all of those like partners really close and take care of them as far as nurturing the relationship. And…

I believe that you can do a lot of business just based on referrals from other agents.

Mike Hambright (23:38)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. think at the end of the day, especially if they’re reciprocal, you find those folks that are like, when you need electrical work or insurance or whatever, I’m going to refer you to this person and you become important to them, you have to kind of lead with value. And then that ultimately kind of comes back around to you.

Stacy Allwein (23:42)
you

Yeah, absolutely, and I really, really work hard on nurturing those relationships.

Mike Hambright (24:00)
Yeah, so Stacy, if folks want to connect with you or learn more about you in any way, where can they go?

Stacy Allwein (24:07)
So a couple places, on Instagram it’s at Allwein Relator, which is A-L-L-W-E-I-N, Realtor. Facebook, we have the Allwein team on Facebook, or just personally, Stacy Allwein. And also my phone number, if you wanna text me, call me, I love talking about this stuff, my number is 301-606-6716.

Mike Hambright (24:33)
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me today. Great to see you as always.

Stacy Allwein (24:36)
of course, and have a happy Thanksgiving.

Mike Hambright (24:39)
Same to you, yeah, for those of you that are watching this now, we’re recording this two days before Thanksgiving, we’ll be coming out after that. So let’s just also add happy New Year and Merry Christmas just in case. Yeah. Stacy, good to see you as always. Yep, everybody, hope you got some good value for today. Stacy’s amazing. If you’re in her market, you should definitely check her out and learn more about her and learn more about how to network with Stacy and other folks as well.

Stacy Allwein (24:43)
⁓ Yeah.

Yeah, all that. Happy Hanukkah, happy everything. Like, just everybody having a holiday sequence.

You too.

Mike Hambright (25:08)
⁓ There’s a lot of opportunity in this business to build long-term relationships. I think it all starts with like knowing what your purpose is and then surrounding yourself with people that can kind of help you find that purpose and keep that purpose on track. So, appreciate everybody. We’ll see you on the next show.