Real Estate Success Is NOT About Leads Anymore (It’s This)

Andrew Perrie (00:00)
We fought it off for decades. And now we’re getting faced with a technology that is so incredibly beyond what we can comprehend, just at its growth rate alone. And what it’s providing is it’s providing buyers and sellers. I’m of course I’m taking talking about AI and and Canada. You know, I know the Americans have had all access to data for a very long time in Canada, based on privacy ⁓ bylaws and things like that.

Our boards have protected a lot of the data for a long time, but not anymore. So as more and more data becomes readily available to our clients, it’s and hey, listen, I’m all for it. I want them to be informed. Yes, okay. Are there stories that ChatGPT or Claude makes mistakes? Of course. But you you’re you’re I’m sorry to, you know, you’re very ignorant if you think that it’s going to stay like that forever. Because the more and more it trains, the more and more the users know how to.

Prompt it specifically and extract the data that’s more appropriate for their situation, they will.

Quentin Edmond (02:33)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest. This gentleman is coming from us from Canada.

And I’m so excited about what he does. I’m so excited because this dude builds his reputation organically, right? Not relying on lead generation. This gentleman runs four brokerage. ⁓ the name of the business is The Fine Estates Team. And so I’m I’m excited because we get to look through his lens, through his experience and learn from him. So I want to introduce you all to Mr. Andrew Perrie Mr. Andrew, how you doing today, sir?

Andrew Perrie (03:14)
I’m doing fantastic, Cute. Thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. No man

Quentin Edmond (03:18)
Man,

thank you for being here, sir. You know, your time is valuable. You know, I I Andrew, I can’t do this podcast by myself. This episode, I need you. So I’m glad you’re here, man, because we get to do it together. Yeah, absolutely, man. So listen, sir, I I’m gonna type, I like to dive right in, man. So if you don’t mind, I would love for you to tell us ⁓ what’s your main focus these days. And then also give us a little bit of an origin story. Like how did this become your passion? How did you get into it? And so, man, talk to us a little bit, sir.

Andrew Perrie (03:47)
Yeah, man. Well, listen, ⁓ you know, as we were saying ⁓ before we hopped on, is ⁓ I I grew up ⁓ in the sales industry. You know, LA Fitness was where I hung my hat for a few years, how I kind of built not only just, you know, my sales skills, but also the sales structure, the structure of a sales business. And, you know, we actually took everything that I learned from the operational side to the sales side, how they work together.

And have it implemented and injected really to our to our sales business here today in real estate. And ultimately, why did I leave ⁓ you know LA Fitness to come to real estate? Was that simply like, look, man, I was working six days a week, and I’m not saying I work any less now, but my point is that you know, we’re working our butt off making you know 20 new contacts a day, minimum of 80 to 100 calls a day, minimum of 10 appointments a day. And although I respected and appreciated what we got paid.

You know, there was a ceiling, you know. I’m working my butt off to make twenty, twenty five bucks a sale plus, you know, a very minimal base salary. And, you know, eventually it just clicked, man. I’m like, listen, how can I do the same amount of effort, maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more, but get paid more per unit. And the natural progression for me was either do I go and sell cars, which I looked into by the way. Or or do I go and sell real estate? And you know what? I had a some

Really, really close friends at the time who had gotten to the business, maybe a couple of years before I did. And yeah, it was like, hey, man, if they can do it, I can do it too. And I was very honest and up front about that statement to them. And they said, Yeah, heck yeah, man. If I could do it, you definitely can. So that’s how it all started, brother. And you know, what we’re really excited about to answer your second question there was you know, everybody’s everybody in the real estate industry, it’s a very funny thing. It’s a very funny thing how majority of us get so defensive.

When any type of change, you know, hits our hits the industry, right? And I and I I’ve thought about it for a long time. I says, Well, why do we get so defensive about it? And honestly, I think it’s because, like, listen, in no way am I saying real estate is easy money. It’s not. Everybody listening knows that we work a year with the client without getting paid and we may never get paid. Yeah. We’ve put we put out three grand, five grand, even more.

You know, I’ve spent 20 grand, 30 grand to list properties and market them effectively over the years. And sometimes those properties just don’t sell, or the seller gets upset and works with another realtor and they sell it because they they were the ones that got them to agree to a price reduction. So, like based on all the work that we put in, in no way what I’m about to say reflects on how I feel we get paid ⁓ too much or too little. But ⁓ at the same time.

This is kind of the only industry where a deal can fall in your lap and boom, you’ve made 20 grand. Right. It’s and I feel like a lot of us maybe we have a little bit of an inferiority complex where we feel like, wow, if this actually gets taken away from us or we get paid less, what am I gonna do? Right. So listen, our our industry has fought that off for decades. People have always been after our commissions, right?

We fought it off for decades. And now we’re getting faced with a technology that is so incredibly beyond what we can comprehend, just at its growth rate alone. And what it’s providing is it’s providing buyers and sellers. I’m of course I’m taking talking about AI and and Canada. You know, I know the Americans have had all access to data for a very long time in Canada, based on privacy ⁓ bylaws and things like that.

Our boards have protected a lot of the data for a long time, but not anymore. So as more and more data becomes readily available to our clients, it’s and hey, listen, I’m all for it. I want them to be informed. Yes, okay. Are there stories that ChatGPT or Claude makes mistakes? Of course. But you you’re you’re I’m sorry to, you know, you’re very ignorant if you think that it’s going to stay like that forever. Because the more and more it trains, the more and more the users know how to.

Prompt it specifically and extract the data that’s more appropriate for their situation, they will.

And the more they do that, the less and less they’re gonna need us from the traditional way that they our clients have needed us before. Are realtors gonna be dead and gone? No, of course not. But our our remuneration and our services are definitely gonna change. So that’s what I’m excited about.

Quentin Edmond (09:04)
Man, sir, thank you, man. Thank you for giving us that input, taking us through the journey, letting us know what you do now. ⁓ now I’m gonna get into a little operations question, but before that, I’m gonna do a little philosophical question, right? Because I want to peek more into you, man. Because I always say at the center of each business is the business owner, right? And so mindset for me is a big thing. So I have a saying, Andrew, where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Destiny has no wasted moments, meaning, like as we go along the journey.

We’re reinforcing the people that we are now. We’re learning from the success. We’re learning from the failures. Right. So as you have journeyed on, what has the journey taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, resilience? Like what has this journey taught you and revealed to you about yourself, man?

Andrew Perrie (09:48)
Man, honestly, that’s a really, really good question because ever since I’ve joined, we’ve had a like I’ve been in real estate now 10 years. Ever since I joined, we’ve had a wide variety of ups and downs in the marketplace. You know, when I first came into the business, there was multiple offers, and that was never really a thing in Canada. Like it the the the Canadian market just works so much differently here. And ultimately when I first came into the market,

There’s multiple offers. I’m like, so what do you mean you set an offer date and people just come and submit their offers and you just choose one and it’s most likely firm? So it gave me a very misinterpreted view of how the real estate market went, goes. And then immediately after that, like three, four months after I get into the market, it’s all this craziness, the Canadian government implemented a stress test. So that means that you could get approved at a two or three percent mortgage rate.

But the stress test forces you to be approved at a 5% mortgage rate. So that essentially wiped out all activity almost overnight. And so I went from, you know, selling three deals in my first couple of months really, that was relatively easy, to a year or two of just dead stop in terms of activity. And I was forced to say, hey, listen, what do you want to do with yourself now? You know, you’re going to back out.

Are you gonna keep pushing? And I kept pushing, and then we had all COVID, and that was a craziness. I had started to build up my business by then, so that a lot of repeat referrals and the trust was already starting to get built. And luckily, we had an amazing two and a half years, three years, and then we just hit a brick wall. So now we’re in year three of just a very, very slow market. And last year, you know, it just taught me a lot. Like, man, I I was quietly, you know.

Searching for other work, seeing if I could pick up you know, graphic design positions for other realtors, like, you know, like man, I I did over 500 headshots. I didn’t charge anybody, but I thought, like, hey, maybe they’ll come to me for other graphic design needs. And you know what? What I quickly realized is that if you start taking your foot off the gas now, everything you do or do not do affects you 30, 60, 90 days from now.

And I learned that really quickly, man. So to answer your question more directly, I learned the ability that resilience and to keep going is the only way you’re ever going to survive a real estate market. And the reason why is because, like I said, if you start put taking your foot off the gas now, you’re basically gonna have to start as a brand new realtor when you decide to get going again.

Quentin Edmond (13:03)
Man, and extremely good insight, Andrew. Thank you, man. Thank you for answering that question so honestly. So listen, what’s what’s one operational thing you put in place the last two years that has made the biggest difference in how you run deals?

Andrew Perrie (13:18)
man, definitely two things actually, if I could. One is the client facing. So we’ve had more communication, one-to-one, group settings, events directly with our clients and past clients. So it’s not as simple as using a templated response from follow-up boss by just saying, Hey, here’s your home anniversary. No, nothing like that. We never really did that. We never did templatized responses, mass emails. It was always just like

a little bit more of a personal thing. And it wasn’t necessarily consistent either. But the reach outs that we did do, the, the, the value that we did implement when we wanted to create something that was special for our clients just meant that much more, even if it wasn’t consistent. So I just think the way we’ve done it is is just it’s just been very helpful. Right. I think people put too much they become overwhelmed. They’re like, my gosh

I gotta keep in touch. What do I do? Okay, I’m gonna go use Chat GPT for an automated ⁓ reach out. Like, no, like our actual clients, like they’re all 60 plus, 55 plus. They don’t want to deal with that garbage. They’re they’re their junk mail is filled to the brim already. They just wanna say, wow, Andrew just reached out and it was completely out of nowhere, and it was just to see how I was doing, right? So I think that implementation, because at the beginning we didn’t do that, we’re so busy and we didn’t have any post follow up, post deal follow-ups. And I think that was one of the biggest things.

And then the other the other biggest thing for you team leaders out there and brokerage runners that you know are are sending leads out to your team or to your agents, you know, we put in place this was her idea by the way, our director of operations. ⁓ she actually decided, hey, listen, I’m gonna become, you know, basically a CRM manager for our team because her ability to track down business that was lost.

follow up and keep on our agents about our team deals that we’ve been sending out has saved us and a ton of money. And you know, so I I I think that’s very, very important is that, you know, agents, listen, I trust them, but agents are busy. We, we, we run our brain and our days differently than the operational people. So sometimes you just need somebody that’s a little bit more well organized than your average realtor and have them injected inside of your CRM to help, you know, hold you accountable.

Quentin Edmond (15:39)
⁓ man, again, man. Thank you for those answers, reflective answers. I really, really love the input that you’re giving. Andrew, what’s next, man? What’s the next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next? What’s next for you, sir?

Andrew Perrie (15:53)
Well, you know what, we’ve always been a team that offer different tiers and of services. ⁓ you know, and I’m just really excited that listen, we don’t want to give up all the business because people are looking for different rates now, right? Yeah. We don’t we don’t want to just say, hey, listen, you found the property by yourself, you know what clauses and conditions to do, you live around the corner, you know that there’s a new development going behind the you know, what can we possibly do for you? We don’t want to lose that business, but we do want to

Offer either even if it’s an adjustment in what we’re offering ⁓ in our services, offering something more of a pay ⁓ per service, offering something more of a flat fee. We’re gonna do that because we don’t want to lose that business. Cause eventually what I’ve found, especially in my market, is those little deals often come back to you when they’re looking for something a little bit more specialized, like a vacation rental, a commercial property, maybe a luxury residence, right?

a farm agricultural. I’m in I live in wine country, Niagara on the lake. So that happens all the time. A lot of our our property owners here are investors of the same right, you know? So ⁓ just I’m really, really looking forward to being able to offer more services at different pricing so that we can help more people.

Quentin Edmond (17:48)
No, I love it, man. I love it. ⁓ now I want to peek a little bit into relationships. I want to hear your philosophy on relationships. And I would love to know what are some of the relationships that have really helped you be successful and get you to where you are.

Andrew Perrie (18:03)
Well, that’s a really good question, Maylen. It can comes at a ⁓ interesting time. ⁓ you know, this year, listen, in Canada, the market’s been brutal. Brutal, brutal, brutal. Like, you know, we’re used to having a handful of buyers on any given day. ⁓ you know, we got tons of listings. We got over 50 listings right now, but ⁓ the buyers are basically non existent. So I get it, it’s a hard market, but your reputation and your, you know, your your integrity means so much in this business. We just had our third realtor renege.

on a referral fee from ⁓ referrals that we’ve sent out. And it just doesn’t make any sense to me because my entire business, 90% of it, is agent to agent referrals. So th that’s the one thing that I value the most. And you know, one thing that I’ve always represented as a big part of my brand is that we’re gonna take care of each other no matter what. And and I think you know the fastest way to destroy your reputation

is to, you know, do what those other realtors have done over the past, you know, few months and renege on the referral fees.

Quentin Edmond (19:03)
Man, Mr. Andrew, man, you have given us some great, great wisdom. I kind of want to open the floor up a little bit more. Is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Is there any other words of inspiration, education, motivation? Like maybe you came in with something, you know, on your mind, on your heart that you feel like our viewers need to know. I kind of just want to create space that if it’s a message like that that you have, that you can land.

Andrew Perrie (19:29)
Yeah, man. Honestly, the the the biggest thing in sales, especially in real estate, is people try to overcomplicate everything. They get overwhelmed with technology. Should you use AI? Absolutely. Should you post videos on on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok? Absolutely. Should you get out there and be more vulnerable? You know, maybe share some of the losses and how you overcome them? Absolutely. But number one, the number one attribute of any great salespeople, person is

Is that you just have to create more relationships by actually talking to people? It’s the only way it’s going to get done. Can you have a million dollar GCI business a year by having zero technology? 1000%. And all you need to do is step outside that door and just take a look right, take a look left. You’ll see there’s tons of people walking around. Why buy a cold call list? Why spend thousands of dollars of you know online lead generation and management?

When all you need to do is just stop people, even on the street at the gas station, at the grocery store, and just have a simple conversation with them. And I feel the more and more you’re involved in the community, the more events you do in the community, the more charity, the more volunteering, the more those people that you stop on the street are actually going to begin to recognize you. So that’s my number one tip, man. And I just say, like, let’s go back to basics. Don’t forget that this is a people business and just, you know, shake people’s hand more. That’s all.

Quentin Edmond (20:52)
Yeah, yeah. Shake people’s hand more. I love that because that literally puts you in proximity with people, right? And so I love I love that, man. I love that. Listen, Mr. Andrew, sir. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, man, how can they get in contact with you?

Andrew Perrie (21:00)
I see that.

Yeah, honestly the best way is just Instagram @theandrewperrie ⁓ I follow back and you know, you can see what we’re working on on any given time.

Quentin Edmond (21:22)
Absolutely. And that Perrie is P-E-R-R-I-E, correct? Absolutely. Well, listen, my friend, let me say three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time because I think time is our most precious commodity. I value your time. So thank you for being here. Secondly, man, thank you for your story. Thank you for showing up as your authentic self.

Andrew Perrie (21:26)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Absolutely.

Quentin Edmond (21:42)
I believe stories have a way of planting seeds. We may not see the growth right away, but the seed is there, right? And it can grow at any given time. So thank you for your story, man. And then lastly, sir, I thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today, man.

Andrew Perrie (21:58)
Yeah, my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Quentin Edmond (22:00)
Absolutely.

Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Andrew. His information is in the show notes. Please get in contact with him. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here. Because I promise you, we’re going continue to bring up amazing people, just like Mr. Andrew. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.