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Show Summary
In this conversation, Jeremy Tompkins discusses the importance of persistence in the real estate industry, emphasizing that one must navigate through numerous rejections to find success. He highlights the significance of creating educational content and engaging with potential clients through social media, which requires time and dedication rather than significant financial investment. Tompkins shares his personal strategy of maintaining a structured content calendar to foster interaction and build traction in his audience.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Jeremy Tompkins (00:00)
at the end of the day, the more no’s you go through, the sooner you can get to a yes. There are people out there that need your help.So I spent a lot of time early on in my career scripting role playing with people on my team about different scenarios.
Kristen (01:45)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Jeremy Tompkins who is a licensed realtor out of Anchorage, Alaska and he’s also an investor. So we’re going to get into a lot of stuff around the market and you know starting your investing portfolio. Thanks for being here Jeremy. So let’s talk about how you got into this industry to begin with.Jeremy Tompkins (02:00)
Thanks for having me.Yeah, that’s a great question. So I started actually my professional career out in the construction world, which was a lot of fun for me in the form of hard work. I like to look back at the end of the day and see all the progress. If I was say putting a roof on or doing addition, ⁓ at the end of the day as well, though, it was taking a toll physically on my body. ⁓ so when I was working, I would typically be listening to podcasts or audio books about investing in real estate and specifically getting out of the rat race.
And so that led me on the path of actually getting my real estate license in 2012 and started selling real estate full time.
Kristen (02:44)
Nice, so that was like a pretty natural transition and how was that transition over to real estate? I feel like in the beginning it’s pretty tough.Jeremy Tompkins (02:53)
Yes, so I joined a team which was very helpful for me because they had the systems in place to help me accelerate at a high level quickly. I would say the most challenging thing for me coming from the construction world where hard work was literally tangible. You could look behind you and see what work you had done. In the real estate world, it’s a relationship business. So usually the hardest thing was picking up the phone to make that phone call, whether it was a cold call.or calling a client that wasn’t happy about something. So that was probably the hardest thing for me. Putting in the reps wasn’t too difficult because I was just used to that side of the work. ⁓ But from going from my skill set being swinging a hammer to picking up the phone and being able to help people make a smart decision moving forward on a large financial thing, that was probably the most challenging thing for me.
Kristen (03:45)
Definitely. And what are your tips for starting out in sales? I think a lot of people struggle with that aspect of the business.Jeremy Tompkins (03:52)
Yeah, I would say the biggest thing is get used to being told no. ⁓ And a lot of people, especially for myself in the beginning, that was like my biggest fear. Somebody telling me, no, I don’t want to work with you or no, I don’t want to buy or sell a house. And being able to take the like the personal side of that out of it for me, becauseat the end of the day, the more no’s you go through, the sooner you can get to a yes. There are people out there that need your help.
So I spent a lot of time early on in my career scripting role playing with people on my team about different scenarios.
And most people you talk to, especially on a cold call, their natural default answer is going to be a no. And if you can take the time to ask the right questions and help find the yes and what’s important to someone else, you can help them achieve their goals, which in turns help you achieve your goals.
Kristen (04:43)
So tell us more about the Alaska market. I feel like it’s a really unique market and I really don’t know much about it.Jeremy Tompkins (04:51)
Yeah. So contrary to popular belief, we do not get to school on a sled dog team and we don’t live in igloos. So we have normal homes, stick built homes, two by four, two by six construction,normal neighborhoods. Alaska is a huge state, though there’s a very small portion of it that are actually on road systems. So there are villages that native Alaskans live in that the only way to get there is by an airplane.
So I specifically work in a majority of the main cities, which is like Anchorage, Eagle River, Wasilla Palmer. Those are all accessible by road system. And it’s a very, I would say it’s a very young market. Realistically, the oldest homes we have here are maybe built in the 1950s. We had a very large oil bust and boom in the 80s. So a lot of our homes were built in the 70s and 80s. And I’d say a majority of our market, we have a lot of in and out military.
There’s a lot of need for health care workers here and transit workers in the form of oil fields and whatnot there. So our market is very fluid. We have a lot of people in and out of the state every three to five years. And as far as new construction goes, it’s definitely booming in certain areas. And the average price point here in Alaska ranges in about the 450 to 500,000 price point.
Kristen (07:06)
Nice, and when you’re working with clients, are you working with lot of investors? Is it mostly people looking for homes for themselves? What does that look like?Jeremy Tompkins (07:14)
I’d say it’s kind of split 50-50. So a majority of the clients that I really enjoy working with are those that are looking to buy their first or second income property. A lot of those buyers are ⁓ usually owner occupied. So they’re looking for anywhere from a duplex up to a fourplex to live in one unit and rent the others out. And that just kind of helps them build that foundation for understanding that business. ⁓And I tell a lot of my clients, you can treat it as a hobby or you can treat it as a business and you’re gonna get different outcomes based on how you actually apply what you’ve learned to owning income property. ⁓ And obviously from the real estate side of it, if you help your client make a really good financial choice, there’s a really good chance that they’ll be buying and selling more properties with you.
Kristen (08:01)
Definitely, and is that how you kind of got the inspiration to invest yourself or when did that happen?Jeremy Tompkins (08:06)
Yeah, that was early on, even before I got my real estate license. I bought personally bought a fourplex and lived in one unit and rented the other three out. And that really got me started on my real estate journey because I could see what was actually possible. At the end of the day, I just use, you know, a simple FHA three and a half percent down loan. And so my out of pocket cost to buy that first property, I think was less than ten thousand dollars. And.I think living there, I cash flowed almost $1,000 a month. Now that was back in 2009. So a lot of things have changed in the real estate market, but it really did show me the possibilities of what you could do when making a smart financial decision on your first property.
Kristen (08:47)
Yeah, absolutely. And kind of how did you make that first step and what do you recommend to people who are maybe buying that first or second property?Jeremy Tompkins (08:54)
Yeah,definitely. So a lot of it for me ⁓ was information and education in the beginning. ⁓ I spent a lot of time reading and listening to books, going to investment seminars. I spent a lot of time in bigger pockets, just going through those different forums. And I even asked, you know, certain family members what they would recommend. And at the end of the day, ⁓ it made the most sense to me with that low down payment, because originally I was looking at buying a condo.
I was like, okay, I’ll buy a condo, live in it for a year, rent it out, and then move on to the next property. When I actually sat down and looked through the numbers, it cost me a little bit more money out of pocket to get a fourplex as opposed to a condo. And it gave me little bit more sense of security because at the end of the day, if something happened where I couldn’t financially provide to buy for, you know, pay for the condo, I was out that whole mortgage payment. Like I was the only one that could cover it. But with a fourplex,
If I lost my job or I had one vacant unit, I still had two other units that were covering a majority of all the costs. So just financially made so much more sense to me to get into something that had four doors and additional income.
Kristen (10:36)
Absolutely, and you’ve kind of like played around with what works for you. Is that a big part of it as well?Jeremy Tompkins (10:42)
Yeah, definitely. just again, sitting down and looking at the numbers, I think that’s one of the things I love most about real estate is there’s not just one simple way to buy a property. There’s multiple ways to buy a home or an income property. And the numbers don’t lie. At the end of the day, like if you’re actually have accurate information, you’re not just pulling random numbers. If you have the hard, hard numbers to work with, you can get a really clear picture of what is a wise investment and what isn’t.Kristen (11:09)
Absolutely, I I think that’s a really good point. I think that’s a really good breakdown. Yeah, and the Alaska market seems really interesting and it seems like there’s a lot of opportunity there for growth.Jeremy Tompkins (11:22)
There is, yep, definitely. And we would say, I would say we’ve had a pretty flat market in the form of our population growth. ⁓ I know right now there’s a lot of opportunity with ⁓ different economical things going on up here. So hopefully that will bring growth. But we have, like I said, with a lot of transient population with military and medical, we have a lot of people coming into the state and a lot of people going out of the state, which keeps things fluid for us.But at the same time, there is a lot of opportunity here.
Kristen (11:54)
Yeah, very cool. And to kind of switch gears a little bit, I would love to talk about, because I know that you’re really great at social media and branding and marketing and getting yourself out there. I would love to talk about kind of the importance of that. Like how do you establish a personal brand?Jeremy Tompkins (12:11)
Yeah, that’s something I’ve been learning a lot about recently. I’ve been watching all kinds of educational videos about it for a long time. And at the end of the day, if you don’t do anything with that information, you’re basically just putting away free space in your mind to go to something else. So it does take action. One of the biggest things that I’ve done for myself, because at the end of the day, like I was saying earlier in the podcast, like,You have to get through so many no’s to get to a yes. At the end of the day, I don’t believe I’m the perfect fit for every person I talk to, whether it’s investing, buying or selling a home. But at the end of the day, if I am a good fit for somebody and they don’t know who I am or if I exist, I can’t help them. So I have to be able to create the content and provide the education and put that out in a mass scale. And a lot of it’s free. Social media, there’s a very low cost of entry. It’s usually just time and actually execution.
And so what I’ve done personally for myself is I’ve just set up a five day calendar where every day I have a specific topic I’m talking about, educating on, or asking questions about. I love to get interaction from people that are watching the videos. Cause I think a lot of people that watch social media, they want to interact with who the creator is. So I spent a lot of time just getting into that daily rhythm. It’s usually the first thing I do when I get to the office around eight, eight 30 is I just shoot a three or four videos.
post them on all the different social medias. And then throughout the day, I check comments and respond to them. And I’m starting to gain traction. ⁓ it’s, again, it’s not anything I’ve had to put a lot of money behind. It’s more just time and a little bit of education.
Kristen (13:48)
Amazing and how do you kind of break down what your topics should be? Because I think people struggle with that where they’re like, ⁓ there’s only a few thingsJeremy Tompkins (13:56)
Yeah.Yeah, definitely. So there’s two different ways that I look at it. One, ⁓ we all have an incredible tool called chat GPT, where you can literally just put about anything you want into it and say, give me some answers. So that’s how I kind of started out with the fix and flip side of my business. Looking for incoming warm leads is like huge. Like if you can get to a place in your business where you literally have home sellers that are motivated and need to sell you a
a home at a discount, like that’s the bread and butter. If you can get that all day. So I started having a conversation with ChatGBT about that and actually building out like a 30 day marketing plan to people in pre-foreclosure. And that gave me basically prompts for every single different social media. And it just said, hey, here’s what you say today. It’s a 30 second video talking about when you get a pre-foreclosure letter, what are your options? And it just basically spelled it out for me. So I record that 30 second video.
post it everywhere, and then just have conversations with people that comment on it.
So that’s a super easy way just to get started. It’s just ask for some advice from chat GPT. The other side of that is even though I’ve been in real estate for a while, done a lot of real estate transactions, I’m learning new things all the time. So whenever I have a little notebook that I’ll carry around with me, if I’m doing a real estate transaction,
a flip, a wholesale, and I run into a problem and I learn something new, I jot down a quick note and I share my story about that. That’s like real life. This is what’s going on in the market. This is what we ran into. This is how we solved it. And just kind of sharing some of that lesson that I learned. Because I know there’s other people out there that are probably dealing with the same thing. So that’s one of the other things. Just kind of documenting some of my normal business day in the form of social media content.
Kristen (16:29)
Amazing and are you on camera yourself?Jeremy Tompkins (16:32)
yeah, all the time. I love being on camera. It’s fun. It’s natural for me. I do my best to not overcomplicate it with a lot of editing and flashy things. I don’t have the patience for that, ⁓ but I’m more than happy to just jump on. And what I do a majority of the time too is when I’m out showing property to just normal buyer clients, I’ll just shoot a quick two minute video of a walkthrough of a house, just because you’re like, like you’re saying, like Alaska is kind of unique.Kristen (17:01)
Right?Jeremy Tompkins (17:02)
Andso sometimes I’ll be showing a house that just has like a crazy view of the mountains and I’ll just be like, Hey, check this out. Or I know I do did one a TikTok video where I showed a house in Alaska that had an indoor pool. You just don’t see that very often in Alaska. So there’s a lot of traction and comments on that specific video because people are like, wow, a house in Alaska with a pool inside.
Kristen (17:13)
Yeah.Mm-hmm. that’s really cool. And I mean, it seems like it came kind of naturally for you, but what would be your best tips for people that are scared to be on camera or embarrassed?
Jeremy Tompkins (17:31)
Yeah, it’s one of those things where again, at the end of the day, it’s probably not going to be everyone’s strength, whether they just have some limiting beliefs around, how do I look? How do I sound? Those type of things. For me, it was just natural just to kind of get over that. ⁓ There could be other people that it’s they’re better writers than they are. They could actually do long, longer posts with written word describing certain things. That’s not something that I’m great with. But for me, it’s just.again, the ease of being able to shoot a video so people could kind of capture who I am as a person and have that relatability. And then if I can at all costs avoid any type of editing, because I just don’t enjoy that. ⁓ Maybe later in my career, I’ll be able to send that stuff out to somebody to post edit for me. But at this time, it’s just like I just hit record and go with it. And if I screw up mid video, usually I’ll just keep rolling because again, that kind of just adds the
the relational, I’m a human being side of things.
Kristen (18:30)
Yeah, and I think you brought up an interesting point where forcing yourself to do the things you don’t like doing, you’ll probably burn out and you probably won’t want to do it. So I mean, at least in the beginning, focusing on the stuff you actually enjoy doing. Well, this has been so wonderful. I mean, you’ve given a lot of great insights to kind of wrap it all up. What would be a piece of advice that you wish you learned earlier in your real estate career that you can share with us today?Jeremy Tompkins (18:43)
Yeah, totally.I definitely think it would be the side of branding and marketing. ⁓ I think it’s never too early to start doing that. And I don’t necessarily think there’s a one size fits all for anybody on that. I think the biggest thing, it would have been really fun for me to be able to go back and look at me documenting my journey from an early age, an early time in my career, because I’ve come so far naturally as just a human being and growing personally. ⁓
that documenting that journey would have been really cool to go back and look at that kind of stuff. So even if you don’t necessarily have to post it all, like there’s probably gonna be some stuff you don’t wanna post, but even just documenting ⁓ those different memories, those different struggles that you went through, to be able to go back and look at that and kind of have a historical account, I think that would have been really cool for me. So I think for me the advice I would have given is, ⁓
I think a lot of it was that fear about, what are people going to think of me if I don’t even have it figured out? I’ve only closed a couple of real estate deals. But at the end of the day, personally, to have been able to go back and look at it, I thought I think would be really cool.
Kristen (20:03)
Definitely and one of my favorite pieces of advice is if you’re worried about friends or family or exes seeing your content just block them because nobody’s worth Stop your career for someone who might judge you. Well this has been awesome. Tell people where to find you and how to work with you.Jeremy Tompkins (20:13)
Yeah, there you go. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, totally.Yep, so I’m pretty much Jeremy Tompkins on most of the social media. If you type that in, some form of that will come up. That’s on social media. My basic real estate website is jeremy.alaskahomesearch.com. And that’s pretty much the easiest way to find me.
Kristen (20:43)
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here, Jeremy. Thanks everybody for listening. Hope you got a lot of great takeaways, got some inspiration for your own business. Definitely reach out to Jeremy and we will see you back next time. Bye.Jeremy Tompkins (20:46)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
