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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Sam Haack, a forward-thinking real estate professional based in Jackson, Wyoming. Sam shares his journey from leasing to fraternity brothers to becoming a successful broker in a competitive market. He discusses the importance of timing, resilience, and the role of social media in modern real estate. The conversation emphasizes the significance of empathy and relationship-building in business, particularly in the context of the challenges faced by young professionals in the industry.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Sam Haack (00:00)
There’s kind of an old boys club mentality andI shouldn’t say just boys. I there’s a lot of women that have been in the industry who are entrenched in even more so than the men. And there’s more women working in our industry here than men. But just in general, there’s an exclusionary idea to it. And you get this in a lot of industries like banking or whatever. It’s like, got to earn your keep and serve your time before you can get a big deal. And I don’t like that. I’m like the new Gen Z. I’m the first year of Gen Z. And I’m like, I’m not going to wait my turn.
Quentin (02:04)
to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. Excited to be here today. I have someone here who’s really on the cutting edge of real estate. he’s going tell you a little bit how, these, listen, they’re their listings. They’re finding a really efficient way to do business with new tools. And man, he’s just in a great position. I don’t know if he goes, I want to…spoil his surprise or maybe he’ll tell you a little bit about maybe what’s new with him and where he’s at now. But I’m gonna let him handle all of that. But I’m so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Sam Haack. Mr. Sam, how you doing today, sir?
Sam Haack (02:48)
I’m Great Q, thank you for inviting me on.Quentin (02:50)
Absolutely, man. Thank you so much for being here. And listen, sir, I kind of want to dive in, man. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. We love origin stories, man. So if you want to take us kind of like a little bit to the journey, do the journey of how you got to where you are now, we love that. And man, tell them where you are geographically, man, in the world. So Sam, sir, you have the floor,Sam Haack (03:15)
Thanks so much.It’s a beautiful day here in Jackson, Wyoming. I first started out in real estate leasing to my fraternity brothers in our fraternity house in Madison, Wisconsin, ⁓ collecting leases and doing home maintenance. And then I got into section eight leases after that. So it was like, if I can enjoy those things, I think I can enjoy real estate anywhere. ⁓ I moved out to Jackson Hole to do something different.
Quentin (03:35)
Yeah.Sam Haack (03:40)
Luckily, it was right before COVID, it was a great place to be during that whole thing. Prices doubled, rents doubled, our area became really popular. And although not many people know about it, it’s becoming more and more popular and kind of a niche luxury destination with skiing, national parks, a lot of great fundamentals for the real estate market. And I just love living here and working here. It’s a very easy thing to do to sell when you believe in it yourself.Quentin (04:06)
Yeah, yeah. No, I love it, man. And I love the growth that is, and I love the area that you describe. I’m not too familiar, but as you describe it, you know, I see in pictures when people talk, so I’m just imagining it’s the beautiful scenery and different things, the landscape. And I love it, man, how you talked about you started listening to your, you fraternity brothers. And you’re right, man. If you can deal with section eight, you know.How do I say eloquently? It’s a different landscape, right? It’s a different landscape, different demand, different… So like you said, eloquently, I can deal with this, man. I can deal with pretty much almost anything in real estate. And so I love it, man. I love your transaction, your transition more. That’s a better word to say. And Sam, I ever said that I say destiny has no wasted moments, meaning no matter what we go through in life, things prepare us for where we are now.
Kinda like how you talking about, like, if I can do that, I can do anything, right? And so man, on this journey to where you are now, what has destiny, what has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience? Has it taught you humility? Has it taught you discipline? Like what has these moments taught you about yourself, Sam?
Sam Haack (05:22)
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you on that, that it does feel like destiny sometimes and God is good. He puts us in the right places at the right time. And I really believe that a lot of my success has been a product of timing, whether it was graduating from college right before COVID. So I had a full college experience and was in the classroom to getting to Jackson before COVID and the big boom where everyone else in the cities were locked down. We are for the most part still open. So yeah, I would say it’sI don’t take a lot of credit for my success on my own, but working through the hard things ⁓ has prepared me to have more success on top of it. yeah, it’s just, I think they say
preparation and timing equals success. So all you can do is prepare and then God will do the timing for you.
Quentin (07:00)
Woo,yeah man, well you dimension God, you dimension timing, you’ve been talking about tough times and I’m with you. I say a scripture quite often that trials come to make you strong. Like this is why the trial come, because it teaches you strength that you just didn’t even know. Strength that you weren’t even thinking about tapping into. Like it’s just like, I’m comfortable, I’m good, I don’t need strength. But then that trial come and it teaches you something about you.
and makes you actually more stable, gives you more stability. And so, man, I would love to know, throughout your journey, have you had to deal with adversity? And if so, how has that adversity looked for you and how did you navigate it?
Sam Haack (07:43)
Yeah, I mean, it’s been, I would just say, especially in this market, it’s hard to get up to speed and be a successful broker, investor, anything, because it’s just so competitive. you’re talking about investing too, the returns are low. It’s primarily an appreciation market, which is speculative, like that’s risky. It’s not a lot of cashflow out here. You have to put a lot down to see any cashflow. And so as a broker, similarly,kind of an old boys club mentality and
I shouldn’t say just boys. I there’s a lot of women that have been in the industry who are entrenched in even more so than the men. And there’s more women working in our industry here than men. But just in general, there’s an exclusionary idea to it. And you get this in a lot of industries like banking or whatever. It’s like, got to earn your keep and serve your time before you can get a big deal. And I don’t like that. I’m like the new Gen Z. I’m the first year of Gen Z. And I’m like, I’m not going to wait my
Quentin (08:40)
Yeah, right.Sam Haack (08:40)
So basically, wewant it all and we want it now and that can sound entitled, but if you’re willing to work for it and figure it out, then you’re just smarter than those people. I haven’t been smarter than them in everything, but the one thing I was able to figure out is what’s the one thing that they can’t do that I could do? And this was five years ago. And I just sort of looked at all angles and I determined that it was social media and digital marketing.
Quentin (08:48)
Yeah. Got it.Sam Haack (09:08)
because everyone would write a check to the newspaper, the online stock or ads or whatever, just check the box and then make their seller happy. But how many buyers were they actually finding and how much visibility were they getting? And the answer was not much, or they couldn’t track it. Like how do you track how many people read the newspaper one day? I don’t know. We know how many copies are sold, but that’s it. So I went and just started social media channels. I think the first one I signed up was for Instagram, shortly TikTok after that. And I just started putting out reels. I was talking to the camera. was,Talking about lifestyle in Jackson Hole, talking about the market. I didn’t even have anything to sell. mean, I was representing low-priced buyers and communities way outside of Jackson. ⁓ And slowly but surely, people said, you know, you just seem like a go-getter and a good guy and very knowledgeable. And even though you don’t have that track record of luxury sales, we’re willing to work with you, primarily on the buy side and then quickly those buyers turn into sellers.
Quentin (09:47)
Yes.Yeah,
yeah. I love it, man. Now, I don’t know your age, because you say you’re new school, but then you also got this old school kind of mentality at the same time. have you seen Dirty Dancing? Have you seen that? you with me? Oh, my God. right. Got you. So when you said, listen, I’m not going to wait my turn. All I can think of is nobody put Baby in the corner. I just see you knocking down the door. Nobody’s with Baby.
Sam Haack (10:15)
Yeah, of course. I’m 28, but I have good influences that are older than me.Yeah!
Quentin (10:32)
⁓ Exactly. I love it, man. So sometimes I say there’s pathfinders and there’s trailblazers, right? Sometimes you jump on a path that other people have blazed, but sometimes you just got to be a trailblazer. Sometimes, you know, there’s not a neat path. There’s all kinds of woods and weeds and you got to get the work to make your own path. And that’s what it sounds like to me. Like you’re trying to trailblaze.Sam Haack (10:34)
That’s what it felt like, yep.Quentin (11:00)
Listen, if you are not gonna give me a path,I’m gonna make a path of my own. And then what I love is that other people get to come behind you because you’re doing the hard work and they get to jump on the path that you laid. And so I think that’s the way that it should work, know, hats off to people who have done the work. And I can understand sometimes they try to guard it, but at the same time, I’m trying to blaze a path for myself and for those that’s behind me, for those in my generation and those coming up, yes, younger than me.
⁓ guess all the things that are the things that I thought about, man, as you talk. So I appreciate your perspective of, listen, I can’t wait my turn. I got to make my turn. And I love that. ⁓ so let me ask you this, man. What is your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next, man?
Sam Haack (12:05)
Mm-hmm.Yeah, it’s really intertwined with the real estate business that I work in, which is like, how do you just afford to live in Jackson Hole? Because our median home price is over $5 million now, which is crazy. ⁓ So you think about what does an entry-level home look like? And it’s a shoebox condo that’s 600 square feet, and it’s still 700 grand, right? So it’s things like that. But my next goal is actually for myself, and it’s to buy an entry-level ⁓ home in Jackson.
Quentin (12:34)
Cool. Yeah.Sam Haack (12:53)
and start building equity and walk the walk even more because back in, it was five years ago, now I bought a place in Victor, Idaho, which is 30 minutes outside of Jackson. And that’s where a lot of people choose to live to make it more affordable and start a family and ⁓ kind of live just a more normal life instead of grinding so hard or getting support from other places or loading up on debt. But anyway, I was able to walk the walk back then and now I’m thinking, all right, now I need to be right in the heart of the action in the town of Jackson.be close to the office, increase my productivity levels, ⁓ and kind of relate to and go through the process that a lot of young people are trying to do as well. And that will give me, I think, empathy and also more understanding for people in trying to get into the market and make it. And that’s why I enjoy working with the most. It’s not necessarily the luxury buyers and sellers that you can make money from them, but it’s not sometimes as gratifying as working with your peers.
Quentin (13:49)
Yeah,absolutely. Man, a word I don’t hear enough on this podcast, trying to think, I don’t know if I ever heard it, but that word empathy, man. I mean, like you want, yeah, you know, and that’s exactly it. And it kind of transitioned me to what I want to talk about because really relating to people on an authentic level is so powerful. I mean, I tell people all the time when people ask me about podcasting.
I like, how do you grow it? I say, listen, you don’t want to grow a crowd, you want to grow a core. Because a crowd of people come for all kinds of things. They come for the train wreck. They come to say, hey man, your hair was bad. But core people, they stick with you and they grow with you. And so when I listen to you talk about just kind of building these, what I’m going call relationships, it’s about building a core. And you want to be right in the middle of what’s going on. So you can empathize with people. So you can be a part of.
looking at that lens to see like, I understand how hard it is because I did it myself. And so this leads me to Sam, relationships, man. I want to hear your perspective on relationship building in business. Is it important? Has it served you well? What is your philosophy? Like talk to me a little bit about relationship building within business.
Sam Haack (15:04)
Yeah, it’s been awesome. I say to a lot of people, a lot of my relationships, just the frequency of them come from business because I do work so much and I do enjoy it. And, you know, it’s probably not healthy if you hate your work and all your friends are at work, but ⁓ if you love what you’re doing and people identify that and then like work with you because of your passion, then it’s probably more healthy. So ⁓ that’s been really cool. I mean, a lot of my friends are through recreation and justthe lifestyle in Jackson, whether it’s meeting people at the ski hill, dancing, going out to the bars downtown, things like that. ⁓ I think the real estate thing is so intertwined in everyone’s life that it’s naturally come from that. And a lot of it has come from social media, too. I’ve kind of accepted the fact that like, you know, it’s like some people have been embarrassed in years past. Like I met my significant other on a dating app or I met my I met my girlfriend or boyfriend on Instagram.
That used to make me uncomfortable too, but now I’m just thinking that it’s just part of life. And so I’ve really embraced it. And it’s an amazing way to connect with people with similar interests in a much more efficient manner instead of just trying to find them organically. But you gotta do some of that too.
Quentin (17:04)
So yes, Sam, man, I actually love it. Thank you for your take on building relationships. Organic is my word, man. I tell people all the time, we can like each other. And like, I really feel like we’re going to have a good connection, but I always grounded with, it has to be organic because you, we have life, we have family, we have so many different things going on. And like the transaction has to be organic. It’s no need to us trying to force it. And so I love that you use that word, man. ⁓ So I want to ask you, Sam,Is there anything, any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Or is there any other words of maybe like education, motivation, inspiration that you want to lead? So I kind of just want to open up the floor again. Is there anything you want to talk about that I did not bring up? It could of course be about your business. Um, or is there any other motivation that you want to lead to the people?
Sam Haack (17:57)
Yeah, I think one thing that’s really cool, that’s just worth talking about is something that we kind of live by out here in Wyoming called the code of the West. And the code of the West is like, effectively having respect and ⁓ it’s like an operating agreement for living in the Old West.That is something that kind of keeps people to like a higher moral standard. It’s about 10 points of things. ⁓ You know, the first three are live each day with courage, take pride in your work, always finish what you start. So those are just some examples of like, hey, if we follow these 10 commandments, if you will, it’s going to make all of us a little bit more accountable, a little bit better and ⁓ overall just create a better community.
Quentin (18:41)
Yeah.Sam Haack (18:49)
have respect for each other and not need to sue each other or be nasty. ⁓ And that’s an important part of what keeps culture out here so rich and so strong.Quentin (19:02)
I’m writing man as you talk man because you you’ve hit on so many keywords Some that I use in this podcast some that I just use in life empathy is something I use in life all the time Like I said, we didn’t talk about it much on the part, but you brought it up. I always need I tell my wife She always leaves with empathy Frequency is a word that I bring up a lot I’m just being on the same scene with people and you bought that word up those two things you bought up and then you just say community and cultureSam Haack (19:25)
me.Quentin (19:32)
And you read off those commandments and if people, they know they’re watching, I probably say community every podcast. And I said, always say community is common unity. It’s people that create common unity amongst each other. And so when you talk about that culture, it’s no doubt that I can just see this place that’s just thriving in Wyoming because y’all are people who are of common unity that’s bound together.and that’s pushing life forward together. I absolutely love it, man. I think it’s exceptional. And I wish each place had that type of culture, right? I wish, man. And I mean, you’ve you’ve sold some, when you talk about your background and some of the real estate that she was in, we know that’s not always the culture. And we can say for whatever reason, we can break that down to the micro, macro, but man, if everybody had that.
Sam Haack (20:11)
Yeah.Quentin (20:30)
culture, community mindset within a place of the year live, man, the world would be a better place if you asked me, but that’s just my opinion.Sam Haack (20:40)
Yeah, and it’sand it’s and it becomes self-reg, a strong community becomes self-regulating. Like you don’t need to call the police if you can just talk to your neighbor and figure it out. And one example is like some guy flew in from New York City. ⁓ I love New York City, but he came in. He was an investor. I met him for coffee and he walked through the drive-through line and the guy, you know, guy didn’t like kill him, but he like sped up a little bit and was headed towards him. And he screamed at this guy in the in the drive-through line.
Quentin (20:49)
No.Sam Haack (21:09)
flipped in the double birds and I just saw him in the coffee shop and I was like, hey, I just want to let you know that, I mean, that was kind of a close call, but also like, it’s not what we do around here. And so if I see that again from you, I’m just not going to work with you. And if enough people are accountable like that, you just, you don’t let the bad people in your community and the bad people that are already here self-regulate and leave themselves.Quentin (21:35)
Bro, yeah, mic drop. Because every time you talk, it’s just like, ⁓ man, yeah, mic drop. Listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, Sam?Sam Haack (21:44)
Thanks. Yeah, it’s cool.@SamHRealEstate on all socials. That’s where I’m primarily active and you can find great resources about me and the community and the market. And then I work on a team ⁓ with the Harland Brothers and it’s harlandbrothersrealestate.com when we’re an affiliate, a team under Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshire Jackson Hole. So if you’re ever in Jackson, stop by our office right on Cass Street off of the town square right downtown, otherwise connect with me.
⁓ online or social media. I’d love to chat with anyone who reaches out.
Quentin (22:31)
Absolutely. And if you’re ever in Jackson, mind your manners, because they’re to pull up on you and tell you so. Listen.Sam Haack (22:36)
And Q, we’d love to have you out here, bro. ⁓ I know we’renew to each other, but we’re really hospitable, so come for a visit.
Quentin (22:44)
So listen, I’m putting the marker now when people say that I’m making the list. My wife loves hitting this stuff because, bro, so I’m a classic introvert. And so my wife just got back from Africa. She do, she Grenada. Like my wife loves to travel and she has to pull me everywhere. So when I saw her people invited us, she like, let’s get so, so I’ll put you down on the list, man. I appreciate that, man. Sam, let me say three things to you, brother.Sam Haack (23:05)
She bucks it.Sounds great.
Quentin (23:13)
First man, thank you for your time. Cause you could have been, you could have been doing anything else in the world, but you gave us your time. So I don’t, I don’t, that’s not like to me. So thank you for your time. Secondly, man, thank you for your story. Thank you for the authenticity. Thank you for your empathy. Thank you for your integrity. I like to say thank you for leading, like giving us the gift of your vulnerability. Cause you, share things with us that you did not have to share. So I appreciate that man. And lastly, brother.Thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset, that Jackson, Wyoming mindset to this podcast, brother. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you for coming through,
Sam Haack (23:51)
Thanks so much for having me, Q. This was really fun and you’re a great conversationalist.Quentin (23:56)
I appreciate that man so much. So listen, y’all heard my man Sam. Listen, he even gave me the invite. This is good people. So I need you to get no show notes and connect with him. He gave us the information, it’s down in the show notes. Connect with him, work with him. I think you’re gonna be doing an awesome service to yourself doing that. But also definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you, we’re gonna continue to bring up amazing people just like my man Mr. Sam Haack.So Sam, thank you again.
everyone else, please have a fantastic day.
