How Alicia Holmquist Doubled Her Real Estate Deals to 60 a Year as a Solo Agent

Alicia Holmquist (00:00)

I got to talk a little bit and then this year I will be on stage twice with them one as a peer coach and one as I and I’m super excited I get to be on stage with Andrew Undem and he’s he’s

It’s like Tom Ferry Andrew Undem in my world and he was at the first conference I ever went to and he actually said don’t cry convert and that like resonated in me and that’s where zero percent of zero came from so it’s like you You got to convert leads. You got to be doing your job.

Cody Crabb (02:00)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Cody Crabb with Investor Fuel. Today I’m joined by Alicia Holmquist. She’s a realtor and peer coach out of Myrtle Beach, serving both North and South Carolina. Just in under five years, she’s scaled her business to like 60 deals a year. She’s a solo agent. And she’s known for her philosophy, we’ll get into that, about…

The number zero a lot of times in a row. So we’ll get into that. Alicia, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s good to have you on.

Alicia Holmquist (02:33)

I am so excited to be here.

Cody Crabb (02:36)

Great,

love it, loving that. So you told me before we started talking on the podcast, you said that you doubled your deals that you were doing. I would love to hear, well first of all, I’d love to hear how you came to be in real estate, ⁓ but I would also love to hear this too, like this, went from 30 to 60. That sounds like a great story as well.

Alicia Holmquist (03:01)

So it was pretty exciting. I moved to Myrtle Beach in the middle of COVID. No sphere of influence here at all. Just wanted to get away from the snow. I’m originally from Maine, so I knew nothing of the area. Always wanted to be a realtor, but never had the opportunity to just stop what I was doing and go to school. once the opportunity basically presented itself, I went into real estate school, local school right here in Myrtle Beach, awesome school.

And while I was doing that I became an uber driver so that I can learn my way around the area ⁓ Yeah, that was super and now there’s times where like I’ll pull into a neighborhood I’m like I’ve been here before and I jumped off that drunk lady It’s Myrtle Beach everybody’s on vacation. So ⁓ I was really fortunate because when I got into real estate what I was learning in school is that Pretty much anybody will hire you and I got really lucky because before I started real estate school

I had called a bunch of offices and they were like once you’re licensed, yeah, well, we’ll bring you on and there was one office welcome home reality that said We’ll start training you now and I was like cool. I have a home. I know where I’m going I feel like that’s a great thing to feel confident about so the entire time I was in school everybody was like, I think I’m gonna interview with this team or this team or this brokerage and I was like I’m gonna work for welcome home and The minute I started with them

It was boots on the ground running as fast as I could I learned really early on that this is My business and I heard that early on I had an awesome teacher and it was constantly reminded This is your business. This is your business. This is your business and I wanted to grow my business I didn’t have a hairdresser here I didn’t have a nail tech here. Like I had no one to constantly be like I’m a realtor want to use me so I started looking into

referral sources really quick and our brokerage was really small at the time so we only had a handful of listings and on the weekends I would do every open house I could. ⁓ When I was doing open houses I would try to go to the left and to the right ⁓ across the street and just say like hey I’m having an open house if you guys want to come up check your neighbor’s house out and try to engage possible other listings that way and from there I just kept digging in.

in trying to find new ways to get a client because in my head, whether I had to pay somebody a referral or whether I had to pay for that lead up front, which I wasn’t a huge fan of when I first started because every agent when they first start super broke, and I just really, I dug into that concept because in my head, 0 % of zero, zero. So if there’s a potential to make $1,000 or no dollars, I’m gonna go with $1,000.

at the end of the day and I wanted to build a database that I could then turn around in a couple of years and go back to and say hey you bought or sold with me how’s everything going are you happy is that the right house and constantly be able to help them and within my first year I had returned business and that was shocking to me I had a fair amount of it and then I stayed consistent my first year I was rookie of the year and then I was top

Producer that year and I nobody’s taking me off my throne at work yet. I make jokes I train everybody I give them like my playbook and I’m like your job is to knock me right off my throne and ⁓ And good luck, but no I really we’ve had we did have somebody last year who had out Transacted me but not out volumed me and I think track transactions is actually a bigger deal than volume because if I was

Cody Crabb (07:15)

Mm-hmm.

Good luck!

Alicia Holmquist (07:41)

Working like the if I was only working the high-end market of myrtle beach and like North Myrtle Beach And like the beach area of North Carolina. I’d only have to do 12 or 15 deals a year to hit the numbers I hit last year, so I think transactions are Especially early on a bigger deal because now you have a bigger pool to go back to and say hey Remember me you really liked me. I did a good job And I I do constantly follow up with my people

Cody Crabb (08:06)

Yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (08:11)

I don’t just, you know, send the Christmas card once a year. I actually like to send Thanksgiving cards, New Year’s cards, and Fourth of July cards. Yeah.

Cody Crabb (08:19)

That is so smart. Like instantly, I

instantly see why that’s such a good idea. That’s so brilliant.

Alicia Holmquist (08:25)

something

that stands out different than the millions of cards you’re getting at Christmas time. ⁓ And then really, to be honest, because Christmas is so hectic, there’s no way I’m going to get out like 120 handwritten cards by like Christmas day when I even if I try to start on December 1st ⁓ because life. So having like sending out New Year’s cards, I always say I have until like February 15th at the latest. But it’s coming.

Cody Crabb (08:29)

Yeah.

That’s, yeah, yet another brilliant aspect

of that is it’s like it’s still, the year’s still new. Yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (08:57)

It’s still new.

I really try to make sure it’s out before Valentine’s Day because then I think it’s like just crushing on like a different holiday which doesn’t make sense but I still do open houses every weekend. I am still

Using different referral sources. I still my sphere is pretty big now from the clients that I have had And then yes last year because of my constant follow-up because of what I like to do between the return clients and referrals from clients Plus referral sources. I was able to double my transactions last year, which just blew my mind and our market is a Different market from some places. I know everywhere is different

but I’m originally from New England, which has a much higher price point and one of my best friends is a rail editor back in New Hampshire and Maine. And he did the exact same volume I did last year with half the transactions. that’s why I kind of look at transaction number as kind of a bigger deal. And I am a solo agent. I did have to bring on a transaction coordinator last year just to make sure I kept everything on the rails, cause I like to squirrel and being

realtor you can’t squirrel because if you do you’re definitely gonna drop the ball on something so I had to have somebody keeping me somewhat accountable

Cody Crabb (10:15)

Or

you can as long as there’s someone there to point you back and whatnot. Yeah, good point

Alicia Holmquist (10:20)

Exactly, and then

I got really lucky because last year Being a peer coach with inside real estate. That’s who creates boomtown and bold trail. It works KB core. I was really excited because they put me on stage last year and

I got to talk a little bit and then this year I will be on stage twice with them one as a peer coach and one as I and I’m super excited I get to be on stage with Andrew Undom and he’s he’s

It’s like Tom Ferry Andrew Undom in my world and he was at the first conference I ever went to and he actually said don’t cry convert and that like resonated in me and that’s where zero percent of zero came from so it’s like you You got to convert leads. You got to be doing your job.

You got to make the phone calls You got to do all the things and now with AI changing everything You got to be in front of it. You got to be trying it You got to at least like dabble in it like I will tell people all the time like my tik-toks are not great tik-toks But I’m trying man

trying I put him out there yeah and then I try to work with my photographer he does some media stuff so he’ll help me out there but it’s all you need is that spark and that like little bit of direction from one person who’s

Cody Crabb (11:54)

doing something, yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (12:07)

who’s doing it and doing it well, me being under five years or just going into five years, it’s really fun for me to be able to sit down with new agents and basically be like, here’s what I did. I don’t know if it’s going to work for you, but I’m pretty sure if you try it, we might make money. And it has worked since so, or worked up to this point.

Cody Crabb (12:24)

So out of all the strategies and things that you’ve tried, what has kind of driven most of your business up to this point?

Alicia Holmquist (12:32)

At first it was referrals. It was finding referral companies that worked. it was, no, was paying companies. It was the Zillow’s, the realtor.com’s looking at all their products. I found a lot of sources that didn’t work. I believe in building a database. I believe in conversion. So if you’re gonna pay for leads or you’re going to pay a referral company like Zillow or like realtor.com.

Cody Crabb (12:36)

Just word of mouth.

Alicia Holmquist (12:58)

Some of them take really big chunks when you close the deal. So if you’re going to sign up with them and you’re gonna, you wanna make some money, you better be calling those leads. You better be following up because most of those big companies tell you straight out what their conversion rate is, what their normal conversion rate is. And some realtors have a higher conversion rate with them, but the national average is like a 2 % conversion rate. And if you think about it, if I bought 100 leads today and I was actually following up with absolutely

all of them, that means two are going to convert. And I don’t think everybody realizes like those numbers, like what you have to be doing for lead generation and follow up and it takes a lot. And you gotta have boots on the ground, you gotta be digging in and making sure, because there’s days I definitely check out and then I will like follow up with somebody and they’ll be like, oh I’m so sorry I actually reached out to somebody yesterday so that I could go see it and I’m like…

Cody Crabb (13:47)

You

It

happens fast, yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (13:56)

Yeah,

a big part of it is because these are in our hands now. I even had a client this year already that at the end of last year they wanted me to list their house and I was in the interview and they kept talking about how much they loved their realtor. And I sat back in the interview and I said, I have to ask why am I here if you love your realtor? And they said, well, because you’re more negotiable than our realtor. And like my jaw dropped and I was like, I appreciate

Cody Crabb (14:22)

Hmm.

Alicia Holmquist (14:26)

I was like, did you even like give your realtor the option there? Like we didn’t want to insult him and that was like

It was mind blowing to me and I sensed trained on it within the brokerage because phones, mean people are loyal to people if you’re in front of them all the time but sometimes it’s not about being loyal, it’s about the fact that they were able to hit a button and they got somebody on the phone right then and there. And especially if you, I always say it’s like the curse if you become really good friends with your clients, right? They know your schedule and they know how busy you are and they know when you’re trying to do family time.

and they know when you have people coming in so like they’ve become your friends and then they’re like I don’t want to call her just to go look at this one house like no call me let’s go like I’d always bugged me I mean my husband’s one of my biggest cheerleaders but he knows that like we could be going out for a ride on the Harley and all of a sudden I’m like I need you to swing by this house real quick and he’s like my god you gotta be kidding me I’m like yeah but don’t be too loud because they don’t allow motorcycles in that neighborhood so it’s yeah

Cody Crabb (15:30)

Just kind of walk it in there. Yeah, no, I I

feel you because I think I think that’s a as someone that is adjacent to real estate in many respects like I I see the people that are the most successful are the ones that have got a system and it’s like the ones that are not like at stress mode level like they’ve kind of gotten it down to a point where they can manage it and figure it out and Then as much as they can that as much as volume as they can handle within that sphere

That tends to be where I see people really get some good results and stuff because they’ve got a plan for all the little, if I get a call then this, if I get a text then this, stuff like that.

Alicia Holmquist (16:10)

And I always say like even when it comes to like my open houses, I’ve been very fortunate because I’ve last year I had more listings than I had had in previous years, which is really cool. do it like you one part you like you interviewed and said I want to sell this property. So.

what are you doing on the weekends to sell it? I’m not saying you gotta be there every weekend. I completely understand there is a balance. But I constantly do open houses because I will take the one or two or five deals a year from somebody just walking in and saying,

I don’t have a releter yet and we just wanted to see the house. Like guess what? You got one now. ⁓ And usually being really sarcastic because I am usually will win them over. Sometimes I think they leave quicker because maybe I was a little too sarcastic. it’s it usually gives you an opportunity that you don’t have just on the phone. You get to be in front of somebody. You get to show your personality. You get to earn their trust. And then now that one deal you don’t have to pay a referral on or you don’t have to pay some weird percentage to some big corporate

company. I think that’s a big deal and I think it’s why one of the reasons I’ve been able to scale because I still do all the things I did at the beginning.

Cody Crabb (18:02)

Now, a lot of people will say, like industry advice would say, don’t even bother with the referrals. Like it’s a waste of money, it’s a waste of time. I’m curious what led you to trying that out and it being a successful thing for you. Is it just like you gotta stick with it, you gotta do all the, like the conversion rate’s not gonna be the greatest, you gotta just really stick with it? ⁓ What is it that you did differently that made that work for you?

Alicia Holmquist (18:28)

Part of it was that when I first started there was three other realtors that started at welcome home the same time I did and I Thought it would be really cool. I put it out in email and I was like, we’re all brand new Maybe we could like sit down and powwow and like plan some stuff together and everybody was all for it and we got together one day and everybody sat at the table and they were like this lead source is awful don’t ever use this and the leads are their leads are junk and nobody is pre-qualified and it was just like negative negative negative

negative negative negative and so I was like okay bet like I’ll become the realtor that can that’s exactly what happened is I was like I will be the one who can start closing these deals and at the time that was up city and I Did get my first client was not city client and we got under contract within my first contract Right out of real estate or right out of school was within 30 days And then we were closed in 60 so I had

my first paycheck within 60 days, which I was like, it could have been $100 and I would have done a backflip. Like it was just awesome. the training, there was actually like training that nobody had told me about. So I took the training with that lead source, which they all have their own training. I have found out since and best practices and found out like where their leads are coming from. And so I understood a little bit better ⁓ that they are

Cody Crabb (19:35)

Yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (19:57)

right on realtor.com they are basically hitting a I want to talk to somebody now button and that person’s calling right now and that that little part once I learned that I was like that’s so weird because so many realtors don’t want to make the phone call when any lead comes in because we’re scared yet there’s a whole company out there calling right now and they’re never going to meet these people and so it like clicked in my head like I have nothing to lose to than calling these people over and over again because if they don’t use me as their

I’m probably never gonna meet them so I have nothing to be embarrassed about like worst-case scenario what they find me on Facebook like cool Follow me like I’ll take the extra follow ⁓ But it the original lead source was up city in the original Mindset was bet. I just wanted to prove that like You just had to be consistent with it and I had been in sales prior to for a very long time So consistency with all sales is one of the

key things and so it was really just be consistent and follow up and don’t let somebody get there before you at the end of the day. So it became one of my major lead sources in the first year. My first year I had like an 80-20 split on referral sources and other whether it was like return clients whether it was open houses like a company driven lead

I had like an 80-20 split and then the next year it went down to like a 60-40 split on referral sources and MySphere and other ways of getting leads and then when I hit year three and it was kind of at like the 50-50 I was like, okay, I’m doing something here. This is working and then last year it

I just got really, really, really lucky and consistent and followed up and between people who came back and, you know, continuing. I’ve seen, excuse me, I’ve seen realtors who have stopped a lead source because something else is working and I don’t understand that. I think you got to stay doing what you’re doing to keep scaling. So that’s part of what I did.

Cody Crabb (22:13)

That makes a lot of sense,

So one question I have for you. So you mentioned that you were at like 60 deals by yourself. What happens if you start to push that number to like 80, 100? What do you think would break first in your system and what kind of solutions do you have for those things?

Alicia Holmquist (22:35)

hoping it happens? I’m hoping it happens. I’m not sure yet because I thought 60 wasn’t the same and there was because there was one month that like I think it was eight were closing in the same month and I was like there’s no way I can get this done but I thought it was a really big deal and then one of the local realtors that I like to follow did 75 and another one did 90.

Cody Crabb (23:01)

Yeah, and you think you’re already at the apex of what’s even possible, and then someone’s just like, yeah, I did more than that. No, you’re good. That’s what editors are for.

Alicia Holmquist (23:07)

Sorry.

you

Cody Crabb (23:13)

Yeah, so think having something to look forward at is, I think that’s important. Where do you think the, just out of curiosity, do you think your time would run out? Do you think your systems would break down? Do you think you would need more people? I’m just curious where you see that.

Alicia Holmquist (23:31)

I’ll let you know. I’ll be back on the show and I’ll tell you what what I had to What I had to do to break down and rebuild

Cody Crabb (23:36)

Love that.

Well, okay, let me just ask this then. So what is the next version of your business look like? Do you want to evolve it? Do you want to change what you’re doing? you super happy getting this amount of deals like this and staying like that?

Alicia Holmquist (23:55)

I don’t know yet. I just want to keep going. I think it’ll be a lot of fun. And I want to like triple my production this year. So I think that would be really cool. But if I maintain 60, that would that’d be the dream. So that’s where we’re at right now. But like I said, next time I’m on, we’ll talk me and we’ll see what happened because hopefully maybe there’s a team involved in the future. So.

Cody Crabb (24:09)

awesome.

Yeah,

see that’s what I was curious about. So, well, I kinda like that you’re open to it. Like, hey, let’s just see what happens. ⁓ Sometimes having a plan is a bit of a fool’s errand, because you can’t really predict what’s gonna happen. So, I get it. I totally understand that line of thinking.

so let’s say someone wants to work with you or they want to connect with you

Where do they need to live? Where do they need to be looking? And how can they find you online?

Alicia Holmquist (24:40)

So I serve as a really big window of North Carolina and South Carolina, pretty much from Wilmington, North Carolina all the way to Georgetown, South Carolina. And I go about two hours inland if you wanna work with me. The Columbia area, I can’t help you with. And that’s where everybody keeps calling and telling me they wanna look. I can’t go to Columbia, guys. But if you wanna find me, you can find me on Facebook, Alicia Homequist. You can also look at that awesome ducking realtor. I’m on Google, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Facebook.

Instagram, all the things. Tiktok

Cody Crabb (25:10)

And you’re trying. You said they may not be the best, but you’re trying.

Alicia Holmquist (25:12)

I’m trying,

I’m trying, the TikToks are not the greatest, but I’m trying.

Cody Crabb (25:18)

You’re trying, one last thing I wanted to ask you here. So specifically, our audience is real estate investors. what would you, from your perspective in what you do, what would you want to say to real estate investors that are wanting to work in your market?

Alicia Holmquist (25:34)

⁓ It’s a really cool market. It’s a little bit unique. It’s a little bit different. We have definitely some rules and regs. My favorite kind of investors are the first time investors because that’s the fun ones to really dive in and look at numbers. When you’re a seasoned investor, you tend to teach me a thing or two about numbers. ⁓ But Myrtle Beach is always going to be a golf destination. It’s always going to be a tourist destination. between April and October, you’re always going to have a rental and then, come

Stay in your rental and hang out at the beach during the cold months if you’re somewhere cold But are there is a ton of investors here and there’s the amount of new construction that’s happening here We have a lot of investors putting money into single-family homes for long-term rentals and a few of the investors I work with they hold on to them for a couple years and then they they turn around and sell them or they try to do even like rent-to-own situations So it’s it’s a really unique market the Airbnb market

Cody Crabb (26:08)

There you go.

Alicia Holmquist (26:33)

is always going to be building here. The short-term market, we have a lot of condo tells. It’s a very unique product. ⁓ It’s basically renting somebody’s condo inside what looks like a hotel, but it’s not, it’s not really either of those things. ⁓ it’s, investors are a lot of fun here. It’s, it’s very unique from what I’m told because we also have rules against certain airbnbs and you have to have management companies and that’s,

Cody Crabb (26:35)

Yeah.

Alicia Holmquist (27:03)

I always like to have a few in my back pocket of like, this is a pretty good management company or I wouldn’t use them. So I love working with the investors that are in this area. And then once you get out into the country, because the beach is very different than you go on our inland and gets real country real quick. But that’s where a lot of like my the investors who want to flip a property are. They’ll see something that’s, you

50 or 60 thousand as crazy as it sounds it is here and they will put some money into it and they will make it a really cute home for usually like a first time buyer or they find something really really unique on some land and then they they really turn their money around which is cool too so

Cody Crabb (27:47)

I’m hearing that those numbers and I’m a little bit like, I cannot even imagine that. So if you’re, if you’re looking to invest in a, that’s a lot of people are looking for markets like that. So it’s, it’s good that you call that out. maybe some, somewhere to look if you’re looking to do something like that and you’re, you’re somewhat nearby. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been really great. Of course. And, to our audience, if you enjoyed this episode and learn something, which I know you did.

Alicia Holmquist (28:07)

Thank you for having me.

Cody Crabb (28:14)

Go ahead and follow us on Facebook. I’m just saying Facebook because you said Facebook, but follow us on subscribe on YouTube. That’s where our channel is. Get more episodes just like this one and we’ll see you next time on the next episode of real estate pros. Take care everybody.