How Justin Bosak Built a Real Estate Business Through Faith, Referrals, and Community

Justin Bosak (00:00)
If you are doing the right things and you’re doing the things that necessarily aren’t about money and they are about relationships and they’re about people, he’s going to lead you to the right people. So when I have a time where I’m like, hmm, it seems kind of light this week.

I think God hears that and then all of a sudden I get a DM on Instagram from a random people and random person and it’s a do a million dollar deal or something out of social media.

Quentin (02:01)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds, and I am super excited to be here today. I am very excited about my guest. He has been very, very gracious. We’ve been having some technical issues, but he’s been awesome. And so we are going to deliver a fantastic episode. He is going to talk to you about some things that’s really going to help you out. And I just can’t wait. And without long ago, him, he a chill dude. Chill dude.

Ain’t no pressure. He don’t pressure people. And I just love it. I love his approach. And so I’m so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Justin Bosak. Mr. Justin, how you doing today,

Justin Bosak (02:39)
I’m doing great, Q. Thanks for the intro.

Quentin (02:41)
Absolutely.

Oh, man. You’ll hear that radio DJ voice he just hit me with, Oh, man. This is good. This guy, this guy, I told you he chill. He chill. He smooth. I appreciate him already. Listen, Justin, I’m the type man. I like to dive right in. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days.

If you can give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to the space where you are. We love the origin stories. And then man, tell them where you are, man. Where you are geographically. People seem to want to know that and love to know that too. So what you up to, your origin story and where you are. Mr. Justin, sir, you have the floor, man.

Justin Bosak (03:19)
So we’ll answer the first, the last one first, ⁓ Jersey Shore, New Jersey. So right by the beach, we’re chilling by the beach. ⁓ So that rolls into, know, like, what do I do? So waterfront homes, that’s one of my niches as well as new construction homes. Wasn’t something that you start out with in, but, you know, 23 years later, you get to a certain point where, you you find these little niches and, you know, the riches are in the niches, people. I think that’s what you.

Quentin (03:21)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir.

Mmm.

Justin Bosak (03:48)
Ultimately see, know and you know doesn’t happen by accident unfortunately as many of the agents You know look at me and sometimes say you’re so lucky that you’re able to do it And I’m like, well, you know, it actually started like 14 years ago, right? ⁓ You know, there’s an origin story to new construction. There’s an origin story to waterfronts there’s a there’s a path and You know that path isn’t just immediately, you know to take on those things or take on those tasks You know, you need to be a really experienced agent

⁓ to succeed in that high level real estate. But people can get there. And sometimes it happens by mistake, right? But you have to identify if it does happen by mistake or by accident, you’ve got to try to replicate it and scale it. And can you do that? And that actually takes a little bit more work. You’re not going to get ⁓ hit by lightning twice.

Quentin (04:44)
I love it, man. I love it. And I was listening to you, talk, actively listening, writing things down and border front homes, new construction. I love how you said the riches is in the niches, right? Started 14 years ago and listen. Yeah, you know, some people can fall into it, but like you said, once you get into it to able to duplicate it and replicate it, you got to know what you’re doing, right?

Mr. Justin, I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what we go through, we borrow from different phases of our life, different phases of the journey. And they make us who we are today. It fortifies who we are. It fortifies our why. It fortifies our strategy, our tool sets. And so I would love to know, Mr. Justin, what have you learned along the journey? What has the journey revealed to you about you? Has it revealed discipline?

Justin Bosak (06:02)
Mm.

Quentin (06:27)
innovation, humility. Like what is his journey revealed about you, sir?

Justin Bosak (06:31)
Yeah, I love all those words because I really, you know, I feel like I embody, you know, those in my business. And I think it’s important to, you know, live those things out. And what does it mean? You know, you don’t know until really, you know, you’re, on that path and you’re experiencing the downs and the ups, right? You know, you’re going to make some mistakes. But, you know, for me, I grew up, you know, really like most people that, that are, that are grinding and don’t know when to stop, you know, with, with nothing.

⁓ You know divorce parents early on had to really you know work at McDonald’s, know at the age of 15 16 just to buy my own clothes So I could look somewhat fly, you know, we’re not talking about anything crazy here I was still shopping at Marshall’s but you know what mean? I was No more hand me downs, know, I mean no more I wasn’t this I wasn’t a skater But you know, my mom had you know friends with kids that were skater here. You want some vans? No, I don’t rock bands. I Need some Nikes

Quentin (07:10)
Yeah, yeah. Come on, man. That’s right. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

I hear you. Yeah.

Justin Bosak (07:30)
But, uh,

but yeah, you know, and I learned, you know, early on that even within McDonald’s, was a, it was a job and you’re able to make money, but you’re also able to scale and grow, you know, within that corporate structure. Um, which, know, you walking in, you don’t really see that, you know, you just think like, Oh, whatever, I’m just going to, you know, work at a cash register, you know, you know, make the fries or whatever, but you know, there’s, management opportunities. And I saw early on that there’s, there was younger managers, you know, and they were very,

good at their job. Like we actually ran like one of the top stores. ⁓ so because of that, I said, well, I’m here anyway. I might as well work hard. You know, ⁓ I also volunteered to work extra hours whenever I could. so I grew within the company and by the time I was 17 years old, ⁓ I went to the work release program, you know, got out of high school, you know, early, you know, did half, half, half the day in high school, half the day working. ⁓ then from there, ⁓

I ended up going to a company called Aldi’s. ⁓ That was a ⁓ higher paying job also within management, but I learned early on that they wanted a four year degree to elevate even higher than a store manager. And I didn’t have a four year degree, nor could I afford to put myself through school and work full time to do it. So ⁓ I went back to ⁓ real estate. Real estate was something that I had a report I had did back in high school.

Quentin (08:52)
you

Justin Bosak (08:57)
And ⁓ it worked out that, you you only needed to go to school for 80 hours. And I felt at that point in time, I was 21 years old. You know, I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to make it work. I’m going to find a way. So I was lucky enough to find a job where they actually were paying a salary and I was just answering the phones. And now I was able to start trading and work myself up within the company.

And I think that, so this is the time now, this is like 2004, 2005, this is before teams really existed. Most people in real estate were just, you know, solo. So the team concept is something that embodied our company because we had listing agents, had buyer’s agents, we had people setting up appointments, we had people answering their phones to schedule listing appointments.

So it was a great way for me to learn the different aspects of real estate. I started out making cold calls. Then I was a buyer’s agent. And then I stayed really a buyer’s agent because I didn’t want to be a listing agent at that point in time because I had zero control over their schedule. So unfortunately, the financial collapse happened in 2008 and 2007. Right before that, my company closed shop.

So I had to figure things out because now I’m a free agent and a solo agent and not by choice. And I didn’t have the ability to really get enough leads in order to sustain the 40, 50 deals I was doing at that point in time as a young agent, not knowing if that was good or bad. So I pretty much thought, well, who else in this company could I work with?

You know, we should all kind of group together. I’ll still be a buyer’s agent. We still have listing agents. We still have the guys that are making the call, setting up the business. What if we just kind of created a team concept and brought the best things out of the company that we were working for and bring it into the traditional real estate world, which didn’t have, you know, really these ⁓ different jobs within, you know, real estate. It’s kind of like everybody. If you’re a real estate agent, you did all of those things. You know, you weren’t an expert, you know, at, ⁓ at one of those.

So we found success pretty early. I mean the market wasn’t great, know, did a lot of short sales back then The deal flow dropped off. There was less buyers You know less sellers, you know Or you had to do a deal multiple times because the people that were selling you can make a bank approval But we stuck with it. We weren’t making much money at all back then but from there From there we we kept going

And, ⁓ you know, I’d say probably half of the real estate agents that were in the business, left the business, you know, so when the market came back, ⁓ we were able to jump right back in and, take advantage of it. Cause now we’re the experts in the business. We’re not the kids anymore. ⁓ you know, cause all of the other, agents that were doing big business, you know, a lot of them, you know, just, just couldn’t compete anymore. We had systems in place. were doing professional marketing, photography, drone.

video and this is like 2014, 2015 and like nobody was doing that kind of marketing and advertising. know, so we saw, you know, this is our way and we’re just going to do the things that necessarily sellers aren’t asking for this at this point. We just know we can do it. Let’s just do more because it’s going to help us with marketing and advertising and branding to get more business, whether it helps sell the house, doesn’t sell the house. It just gets us out in the public more and everybody’s like, wow, they’re doing something different.

Quentin (13:10)
I love you, man. You’re pretty awesome,

D. You’re pretty awesome, D. Listen, man, let me ask you this, sir. What’s the next real goal for you guys? What are you looking to solve at Scale Next?

Justin Bosak (13:16)
Yeah, brother, I got you.

Hmm

Um, so the next goal is bring mortgage in house, have a little bit more control over that, um, be able to, you know, hopefully compete and give, uh, our clients better deals, um, and give our agents actually a way to make, um, some more money. Um, so we have actually a title company that we have a joint venture with, uh, another company and, our agents or top agents or shareholders in that company. Uh, so they’re getting quarterly checks. Actually have a meeting after this at four. Um, and everybody’s going to be getting a, uh, you know, a quarterly check.

You know, which is good. Uh, we’re going to do the same thing with the mortgage company. Um, and we just felt like we can do it. Like why not? You know, if we’re going to be successful, we’ve got to partner with our agents just as anything that we do, our success is based on our agents. Um, you know, so that’s part of the thing I didn’t get into yet is, know, we grew from the team to an agency, you know, so, but yeah, yeah, I’m on the agency side. Now we built the team teams 25. I was talking a little bit about the team concept before.

But because we did such a good thing with the team, we had a lot of agents saying, you know what, you guys are doing some awesome things. I want to be a solo agent. How do we participate in what you guys are doing? And we’re like, you know what, no other agency is allowing us to do the things that we would want to do as a team within the brand because we’re doing just way too much. It just made the companies, you know, they’re just like, we don’t know what to do with you. So we had to start our own company in order to do all these things. And then slowly but surely, single agents were coming on. We had agents for the team.

then jumping off the team to be single agents. And as you go along, you’re like, what can we do better? What can we do better? We have a sign guy, we have a marketing team. It’s crazy. We transaction coordinators. We’ve got transaction coordinators now for 11 years, back when there was no virtual assistants back then. There was no VAs for the most part, ⁓ unless you lived in those countries. But we always saw, we want to make our agents experts at what they’re best at.

Quentin (15:07)
Thank

Justin Bosak (15:18)
And you know, got to actually figure out like, your agent actually good at, you know, open houses or they good with buyers or they good with sellers? How can we amplify it? How can we take some of those things that you’re not good at off your plate? You’re not good at internal listings. Like we have a marketing team that’ll do that. You know, we have a sign guy that literally we don’t put up any signs. Nobody in the company puts up signs. Nobody does any open house signs. Nobody prints out open house brochures. It’s all set up. Reason for that was you could slide right into open houses at 12.

coming at 1155, turn the lights on, you got everything you need. And then, you know, leave at, you know, three when you’re done and you’re out because before that you were showing houses and after that you’re showing houses and it’s not like an hour before an hour after you’re setting up the signs on the corner, do nice shoes, you know, running across the median, you know, playing Frogger, trying to get, trying not to get hit by cars, you know, like.

Quentin (16:01)
Yeah.

yeah. I love

it. Man, bro, I love it. I love just the culture that I hear that you’re building there, the culture and community that I feel like y’all are building. And so I’m going to love asking you this question, When you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind?

Justin Bosak (16:13)
So yeah, we innovate, man.

Well, first off is Jesus.

Quentin (16:27)
my brother.

Justin Bosak (16:31)
⁓ I’m really your brother, brother. We’re gonna have another conversation later. We’re gonna go on for hours. But ⁓ yeah, bro, and that’s been eye opening too, because even the brokerage now, I look up and I’m like, wow, I got a lot of brothers and sisters here now. know I mean? We got the whole church representation up in here in the company. Yeah, bro.

Quentin (16:33)
Hold on conversation bro. Wow. Yes, sir. Yeah.

Bro. So this is, this is so, I love this segue.

Cause I do, I want to get your, your, your feelings on relationship, but I always say community because I say healing happens in community. And that’s based off of James 5 16. It says, confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. Healing happens in community. So when you have an ecosystem of people around you that are of common unity, that’s what community is, common unity.

Justin Bosak (17:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Amen.

Quentin (17:20)
Bro, you can’t help but be healed. Financially, mentally, physically.

Bro, so please, man, tell me more. You started a relationship with Jesus, but tell me more, man, how relationship just funnels in everything you do with that culture that you’re building.

Justin Bosak (17:27)
Let’s go. No, bro.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Referrals obviously by relationship, right? That’s relationship. You got to earn those, and then you got to also follow up, but you have to have a heart in it, right? If people see that you’re just in it for the money and you’re just in it for the transaction, you might get business back because maybe you are the best agent, but maybe you don’t, right? There’s other relationships that happen in between you doing that deal and maybe the five years or 10 years where you might need to do another deal. ⁓

And I’ve seen many times where I’m volunteering for stuff. I’m part of a special needs ⁓ foundation where we built like a special needs park, dude. And like the people on my board, absolutely insane, generous people. I didn’t belong at the table is what I thought, but then I realized like I did eventually. ⁓ But then you grow those relationships and all of a sudden you’re doing transactions with people that you never would have been able to kind of get into their atmosphere.

⁓ And I didn’t do it for that reason. I did it because my son has special needs So that was my selfish reason was to make sure that he has a place to play ⁓ But yeah, I mean relationships are literally everything in this business and I find that you know a lot of people wanted to make excuses to like hey I got to go network and you know go to the bar or whatever and go to meet people right? All right. That’s an excuse if you want to drink right? I don’t drink, you know, I quit drinking So you’re not gonna find me in the bar now

That isn’t the only place where you need to do it, right? Why don’t you volunteer with the school district? Why don’t you be the coach, you know, for your kids baseball team or softball team? You know, it’s ⁓ it’s giving you accountability to be there for your children, for your family, but also you’re growing relationships with other parents, other coaches that get to meet you and see you. And just naturally, they’re going to ask you questions. What do you do? you’re in real estate. I have this question about this. And then all of a sudden you’re the guy. So it’s, know,

What are you surrounding yourself with? And I learned over time that when I was coaching for my kids, it really started there, that I thought that it would impact me financially and I just didn’t care. But then it didn’t impact me financially because I was still growing relationships through that. Right. So didn’t have the time where I wasn’t actively running and showing homes or listing homes because I had to be there at the field physically.

⁓ but you grow in relationships there and those relationships are strong, you know, because, know, it’s not a short-term thing. It’s not like seeing somebody at a seven 11 and try to talk up real quick or seeing somebody at the bar, right? You know, you’re seeing these people almost every week, you know, maybe multiple times a week. ⁓ and it’s not the reason to do it. ⁓ but it’s just to show you that if there’s things that you can do in your life to help other people.

⁓ you know, volunteering with church, ⁓ you know, volunteering for, for the homeless people, volunteering, you know, for a special needs, ⁓ like it doesn’t matter. there’s people around, right? So put the money out of your mind. Right. And I always learned like, God’s going to bless you and take care of you if you’re doing things for the right reason. ⁓ and just recently, just last year, I started a coffee fellowship with a bunch of brothers. just, it was one-on-one at first. And then I’m like, yo, you should meet my other buddy.

He’s Christian too. And then it was in three. And then now dude, there’s like 24 right for coffee. And it’s literally like from nine to 11. It’s like the thing that we outside of church is the thing that I would most forward to every single week because it’s fellowship, it’s community and there’s other realtors in there and it’s not necessarily about business or anything like that. But we’re counseling each other. praying for each other. You know, we’re helping one another and as we grow like

There’s brand new like baby Christians coming in that have a bunch of questions and we’re able to answer them. you know, there’s an agent that actually was working for another company and just so happened to say like, this culture isn’t for me. I don’t like this culture. Looked up the other remaxes in the, in the area, found, um, our remax found the owners, tracked me down, saw that we actually went to the same church because we go to a big, you know, pretty big church. Um, and then called me and then we had a two and a half hour conversation.

15 minutes was on real estate, two hours and 15 minutes was about church. And he’s a newer Christian. He’s just like, dude, and ever since, ⁓ he’s been trained by me, which I don’t really train people anymore. But I said, God put you in my path for a reason, We’re gonna work together and ⁓ I’m gonna show you some things and teach you some things. I don’t know everything, but hopefully.

You’ll just get more guidance than I did when I was your age. He’s 23 years old. But ⁓ that’s how God works.

If you are doing the right things and you’re doing the things that necessarily aren’t about money and they are about relationships and they’re about people, he’s going to lead you to the right people. So when I have a time where I’m like, hmm, it seems kind of light this week.

I think God hears that and then all of a sudden I get a DM on Instagram from a random people and random person and it’s a do a million dollar deal or something out of social media.

To me, like, yeah, I set the table. I did the things that post the videos and I kind of go through the motions with social media. I’m not huge on it, but I do believe it is a nice social footprint to have. So I have that out there and people can then redo their own research.

Um, and then you’ll do a deal, a couple of deals a year out of that. But I also think that, you know, God put that thought in that man’s head to call, to call me, right? Cause he could have called anybody off of, you know, Instagram or wherever he was looking to, uh, to find an agent, you know? Um, but also he probably saw that, you know, I was posting some stuff about family, you know, and about what I do. Like he could get a good sense of who I was. Um, it’s nothing to be afraid of to post about like who you are.

⁓ you know, whether it’s, know, you’re a believer, ⁓ you know, even politically, like I try to stay away from politics because, know, like I said, like I’ve, you know, you don’t vote for, you’re not voting for your pastor, you know, like, ⁓ my pastor’s who I’m accountable to, ⁓ you know, and my church is who I’m accountable to, ⁓ you know, not a political party, you know, so I’d say just be careful with that. Cause I think that’s, ⁓ that’s a little bit sticky, but, ⁓ but yeah, man.

Like you said, relationships are absolutely everything these days. And I find that, especially with the youth, I was actually just at the lunch with my pastor talking to him about this. Our youth, they are seeing failure and success at a much younger age than I’m 45, than what we saw, right? I grew up in an era, there was no YouTube, you know, when I was young. So I wasn’t able to learn off YouTube. I wasn’t able to get coached off of YouTube.

I couldn’t pull from those resources. You had to go to library. You had to know somebody So it was a lot harder to learn but also we didn’t see people fail as quickly That had success because again social media it tells the truth, right? For the most part you’re gonna find out the truth eventually on how somebody is and how they’ve been living their life Whether it’s you meet them in person and you’re like you don’t match up and the youth really today ⁓

I think they’re finding way more truth way quicker. And that’s going to be interesting to see that how that transpires over the next 10 to 12 years, because as they’re looking for truth, I think they’re also coming to church, right? Because they don’t have relationships, right? They don’t have strong relationships. Everything’s virtual. know, like they grew up doing COVID or whatever in high school and in college and stuff like that, dude. they’re like,

There’s got to be more to money and social media and all this stuff that we know is a lie.

So I made it easy if you go to www.justinbosak.com. actually has, it’s a POPLME, it’s a virtual business card, but it has all my links to all my social media, all my different podcasts that I’ve done, bios, ⁓ bunch of stuff on there.

Quentin (26:24)
Yeah.

.

Justin Bosak (26:43)
All right guys, thanks for tuning in to Real Estate Pros Podcast. It’s been a pleasure being a guest here with Q. Q is a man. ⁓ I know that he’s going be bringing some more guests. ⁓ You guys should listen up to this man. He is blessed. He has ⁓ the gift of gab. So I’m looking forward to actually delving further with the relationship with him. This is why we do the podcast, right? This is networking, this is community. ⁓

I love it. I don’t care about necessarily, I’ve stopped talking to my pastor before. I don’t care about business as much anymore and he’s kind of like, you should to some extent because it all kind of works hand in hand. But it’s been a pleasure being on the show today.