Transform Your Real Estate Business with AI-Driven Sales Techniques

John Harcar (00:01.023)
All right, guys. Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar. And I’m here today with Oliver Graf. And we’re going to talk about just his real estate journey. You know, some of the things he did to build the business and the companies that he has. Remember, guys, here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business by providing tools to grow the businesses they want to grow and in turn kind of live those lives that they’ve always dreamed of.

So Oliver, welcome to our show.

@OliverGraf360 (00:32.622)
Thank you. Excited to be here and definitely excited about 2 and 5Xing our business.

John Harcar (00:39.303)
Yes, everybody wants a two and five extra business and we’d love to help people do that. And I’m looking forward to talking about you and all the stuff that you have. know we talked a little bit before we got on the air, but before we talk about where you’re at today, why don’t you give our audience kind of a little idea of who you are, right? Your background, where you came from and what got you to today.

@OliverGraf360 (01:02.222)
Sure. Yeah, so we’ve had quite the journey in real estate. You know, we’ve been on the Inc. 500 eight times for fastest growing company. And to rewind all the way back, you know, we started me and my partner, Sam, we started selling cell phones in the mall together in college. And so we were those guys that basically would stop people in the mall.

John Harcar (01:23.315)
Awesome.

@OliverGraf360 (01:29.802)
and try to sell them a phone or get them to switch their phone service. So it was a very like direct sales heavy business. You know, which, was great looking back to just learn the game of sales in sort of a, I don’t know if I would call it hardcore environment, but hardcore environment, you know, direct.

John Harcar (01:51.553)
Yeah

@OliverGraf360 (01:52.75)
you know, direct face to face, belly to belly. And then from there, we kind of, you know, went through the college experience. And then when we graduated, really wanted to continue in sales. And so our thought was, you know, if we’re going to sell something, we might as well sell something expensive. So what are the most expensive things that we could think of? And it was yachts, airplanes and houses. And we didn’t know anything about yachts.

or airplanes so we figured houses would be the great way to go and then you know yeah I mean I knew I knew what a house was I knew like so no by no means were we experts at all we were very green but we figured compared to jets and yachts how things probably an easier entry point yeah yeah exactly

John Harcar (02:28.819)
Did you know anything about houses?

John Harcar (02:34.493)
Well, yeah, of course.

John Harcar (02:39.102)
Okay.

John Harcar (02:45.811)
more accessible, easier to maybe learn off, yeah.

@OliverGraf360 (02:51.822)
So this was probably right before the great recession, know, 2006, 2007. So we started just doing regular real estate and then with the, you know, the market collapse got really heavy into short sales, did a whole bunch of short sales for a few years. And then that started drying up about 2010. And then from there, you know, we decided we wanted to go the brokerage route, but rather

than doing it the traditional way. We wanted to take kind of a different approach, which was our model with Big Block Realty, which was basically…

We took the best elements from like the brick and mortars and the virtual brokerages and got rid of the things that we didn’t like. And we turned it into a membership based 100 % commission model. So we basically, the agents would pay a monthly fee to be a part of the brokerage and then they would get 100 % commission. And so that, you know, we started in a one room office and then.

grew from there and know fast forward you know six seven years later we had over a thousand agents.

John Harcar (04:08.607)
Incredible. Who came up with this idea for this type of model? Who was, you know, who thought about doing that?

@OliverGraf360 (04:15.598)
So me and my partner Sam back then were really heavy into masterminds and really heavy into you know reading all the real estate books and kind of you know learning the game we were really committed to that and I think we read a book by Robert Allen called multiple streams of income and he talks about all these different ways that you can make recurring revenue and so we kind of looked at that like that was kind of the

John Harcar (04:30.075)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

@OliverGraf360 (04:45.552)
seed was planted and then we went to a mastermind and kind of pitched the idea of like, what do you think about like a real estate brokerage, but make it more of a membership model? And we kind of pitched the idea real soft at the time. It was kind of a half baked idea, but, uh, but it was really well received in the room. So, um, you know, we decided to, move forward with it and then just literally started building it one, one day at a time. And then we leveraged our

sales background by literally just picking up the phone and calling realtors and just saying, Hey, you know, we’re a new brokerage. This is our model. If you’re interested in learning more, let us know. And, you know, one by one, we just started getting people that were interested and kind of built it from there. And then we also really built the business off of events like training. We were a part of a lot of marketing masterminds at the time, just really learning like the cutting

edge internet marketing, the cutting edge social media marketing. And this is in like, you know, 2011, 2012. So very early days of social media. know, thinking about it now, it’s hard to, hard to fathom, like, you know, Facebook was like brand new, like TikTok wasn’t around, Instagram wasn’t around. So we were just kind of really at the forefront of that. And so we took what we were learning in these masterminds and we presented these as trainings in our

John Harcar (05:49.843)
Right?

John Harcar (06:06.687)
Right?

@OliverGraf360 (06:15.248)
And they were really well received and each time we would put you know fast action forms on Every seat in the audience and we would just do a real soft close at the end like hey if you like this We do trainings like this all the time and we also you know We have a hundred percent commission brokerage and so if that’s interesting to you fill out the fast action form and we’ll get a hold of you and Then each event we would generate a couple leads we would follow up with them and we’d usually get a few agency

John Harcar (06:26.591)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (06:42.793)
Sure.

@OliverGraf360 (06:45.289)
to join each time.

John Harcar (06:46.655)
Awesome. That’s that’s killer. I want to go back to the mastermind piece a little bit for you know, and talk about that. Why was it important for you guys to be in a room with the folks that are you know, where you want to be that you can have as a kind of quote unquote board of advisors to help you in that? Does this work type of thing, right?

@OliverGraf360 (07:06.464)
Yeah, no, for sure.

We’re both really big on coaching and masterminds. Like we went to a Mike Ferry event before we even had our real estate licenses. it was basically a friend of ours who had gotten his real estate license first. you know, he knew we had a sales background. He’s like, my God, you guys are going to love this. So we went, we went to the Mike Ferry event and that, you know, obviously was like very eyeopening. just how he was training on how to get listings with no marketing span.

John Harcar (07:14.879)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

@OliverGraf360 (07:38.197)
just by calling expireds and for sale by owners things like that

So that started us on events. then from there, you know, like I said, we were always big on, learning, reading books, going to events. And then once you, know, once you go to a lot of events, what you start to notice is, you know, there’s differences in people’s experience levels and you know, the more experienced people are generally in the higher level groups. So as we kind of, you know, built our business and moved up, then we would go into the, you know, more expensive.

John Harcar (08:06.943)
Mm-hmm.

@OliverGraf360 (08:13.936)
and the more expensive coaching programs. And so we’ve always kind of been big on that because, you know, as the old saying goes, you’re going to pay either way. You’re either going to pay in time or you’re going to pay for the shortcut. And so we were big on just paying for the shortcut and being around high level entrepreneurs that are, you know, making big things happen and just taking those little ideas from each session and implementing them into our business. And, you know, that’s what helped us grow really fast.

John Harcar (08:44.071)
Yep. A hundred percent, you know, and, and, and I see it every day with the folks in our mastermind, right? It’s just getting around that next idea, that next contact, that next opportunity. So talk to me a little bit about some of these things you went through on these changes, right? Like, I mean, you had the, the, the, the 2006, 2008 crash. So you pivoted to short sales had to be a mindset shift. Then you got to the point where now you’re pivoting to.

Brokerage but not just a traditional brokerage a membership type of broker I mean so tell me about your mindset and tools that you use to make all these pivots and and I guess stay sane

@OliverGraf360 (09:20.782)
Yeah. So transitioning to short sales was kind of a no brainer because we were in finance first, like we were in mortgages first. Then we saw these crazy loans that people were taking and we would ask the people like, hey, you know, we’re to give you an example, we were doing 125 % loan to value second mortgages.

John Harcar (09:30.943)
Okay.

John Harcar (09:45.447)
my goodness.

@OliverGraf360 (09:45.454)
125 % loan to value, right? So they were giving out loans for more than the property was worth. And we were just looking around like, you know, this is great and everything, but what if the market goes down? And the answer from everyone was like, oh, don’t worry, the market never goes down. And we were just like…

John Harcar (09:51.305)
Yeah.

John Harcar (10:02.185)
Ha ha ha ha.

@OliverGraf360 (10:03.98)
That’s an interesting perspective, but that didn’t make sense to us. And then, you know, we saw even more of these like exotic loans and people qualifying for loans for a million dollar house on like a $50,000 a year salary. And it just didn’t add up. And so we just kept thinking, well, what if, you know, what is going to come next if…

John Harcar (10:06.655)
Yeah.

@OliverGraf360 (10:27.436)
the market does turn. And so we were kind of already thinking about it. And then that’s when we discovered short sales, like, okay, hey, if a property is worth less than what’s owed on it, and these people need to sell, the only option is a short sale or a foreclosure or a loan modification. And so at that time, we thought, you know, short sales would probably be a good bet, and kind of moved into that direction. And I’m sure you remember those days as well. But that was a lot of brain damage, like it would

John Harcar (10:31.423)
Mm-hmm.

@OliverGraf360 (10:57.4)
take a year to close a deal and you would have to you know you would send documents and then follow up and we never got it and we never got it or then this rep quits and now you’re with a new rep and you have to start all over again.

John Harcar (11:06.484)
Yeah.

John Harcar (11:10.367)
Start all over again.

@OliverGraf360 (11:11.936)
Yeah, so those days were rough. And then, you know, like I said, that started to dry up just naturally as the market kind of came back over a course of a couple years. And then at that point in time, we didn’t want to just be agents, we wanted to kind of build a team and a brokerage. And, you know, that’s when we put all the pieces together to do the brokerage model.

John Harcar (11:21.46)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (11:35.379)
love it. Okay, so when you start this brokerage model, what are some of the challenges that you’re facing that you’re coming across? I know, you you had to reach out to all these agents and put on these events. What other challenges did you come across that needed over

@OliverGraf360 (11:44.812)
Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah. Looking back, I mean, we had no experience as a bro running a brokerage. We were a brand new model that we didn’t know was going to work or not. so naturally those are two big barriers when you’re calling agents and trying to get them to join. It was like, well, you know, a hundred percent commission. How do you guys make money and how do you do this and how do you do that? And so was a lot of, you know, conversations, a lot of building rapport, a lot of getting people

to trust us and really buying into the idea and then always over delivering. Like we were always big on over delivering and giving more value than what we’re asking for because our philosophy was, you know, by doing that, then the marketing almost takes care of itself. Right. Like, and that’s we started to experience is, is the word of mouth started to pick up, you know, over the course of a year or two, because, you know, we were going above and beyond. We really,

John Harcar (12:15.849)
Yeah.

John Harcar (12:33.407)
Yeah, a percent.

@OliverGraf360 (12:44.666)
like hyper focused on our agents and making sure that they had the best experience and then giving them a high commission split and all of those things and adding maximum value. And because of that, we would get a lot of referrals and that’s how we were able to grow the business.

John Harcar (12:50.441)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (13:02.535)
It’s funny that you say that, you know, give more than give more value than you can you’re getting. mean, I’m reading the go-giver again, that book. I don’t know you’ve read it. And isn’t that the second, second law, give more than you received. Yeah. It’s just crazy. Well, that’s, that’s, that, that’s awesome. But were there any other things that as you had, you know, you started getting people and were there any, any, any struggles in this or obstacles in the structure that you have that you guys had to overcome?

@OliverGraf360 (13:29.335)
I would say just balling on a budget.

you know, learning how to do more with less and, which was a blessing in the curse at the time, right? Like we didn’t raise any money. We didn’t do, we self-funded everything and we didn’t have a lot of money. You know, at this point I was probably late twenties, early thirties and my partner’s a little bit younger, two years younger than I am. And so we kind of bootstrapped it. And so we had to learn how to really like leverage these things that would allow

John Harcar (13:33.402)
Hahaha

@OliverGraf360 (14:03.31)
us to do more with less, which circling back to like the internet marketing and stuff. Like we weren’t able to run ads and magazines and billboards and all that. So we had to get really tactical with like internet marketing and pay per click marketing and leveraging social media to like grab attention and things like that.

John Harcar (14:05.065)
Yeah.

John Harcar (14:22.591)
Mm-hmm.

And you have multiple businesses. think you said you got a software. You got a property management company. You do your own podcasts. I mean, where are you finding all this time and how are you managing all these different companies or businesses at the same time?

@OliverGraf360 (14:43.566)
So I think ultimately it comes down to a couple things. know, one is great people, great partners. And then the other is great systems and being able to kind of leverage the great people and the great systems to be able to get results. And so like in the software company, we have a partner. He’s the managing partner. He does most of the day to day. And then we help where needed and kind

provide more of just like higher level advice, maybe you know helping open up relationships, different things like that and same thing with the property management company. We have two really great managing partners. They handle most of like the day-to-day stuff and then we’re able to help with you know promoting it through the brokerage and opening up our relationships and just helping with like the marketing and the growth aspect.

John Harcar (15:33.715)
Right?

John Harcar (15:41.791)
And a lot of those, I’m sure are feeders, right? You’re feeding each year, you know, all feeding up to your brokerage, right? Maybe be the top of the funnel or to bottom of the foot. But that’s awesome that you put all those together and then they’ll help grow your business. What do you think in all the different things that you’ve done or are and are doing are truly your keys to success? Like what are like the things that you know that, this is what got me here. This is what I, if I keep doing this, I’m just going to keep growing.

@OliverGraf360 (16:10.112)
Yeah, so probably a couple things. One on the marketing side is just really understanding how to do more with less. Also really going all in on your customers. I think that’s huge because at the end of the day, if you can build a happy customer that will become an evangelist and spread word of mouth advertising. I mean, we all know word of mouth advertising is the most effective and the best.

but most people don’t spend any time building it. Right. So I would say like to for people listening, actionable advice would be like create some sort of a referral program where you can like reward your great customers and really figure out ways that you can go above and beyond delivering value. Like if you’re an agent, you know, what is your closing process look like? How are you? What are things that you can do to maximize the experience? Because that way you’re

going to get more testimonials, you’re going to get more five-star reviews, you’re going to get more word-of-mouth advertising, and all of those things kind of help to drive your business that’s like gasoline for your business as opposed to just spending a ton of money on marketing.

And then the other piece would probably be just getting good at delegating like realizing that you don’t have to do everything nor should you do everything and that you should work with people whether that’s partners or employees or virtual assistants or Transaction coordinators or whatever it is There’s lots of things that you can do to kind of outsource the things that bog you down and Delegate those to someone else so that you can focus on

on whatever gets your mojo flowing, whether that’s marketing or operations or whatever it is.

John Harcar (18:03.027)
Yep. It’s the old who, not how, right? You know, get the right people in the right seats to handle the right things that we lack, that we have weaknesses in. What do you see a lot of people that are getting into, whether it’s the, you know, the real estate business, property management, any, what do you see people, what mistakes you see people making? Like what are things that people need to stop doing?

@OliverGraf360 (18:25.23)
I don’t know if it’s a stop doing situation, but it’s more of a just being more consistent. I think that, you know, if you’re building your business on marketing, making sure your marketing is consistent. If you’re building your business on prospecting, make sure your prospecting is consistent. Cause we all do those things, you know, when we feel like it, but being able to do it on the days that you don’t feel like it and that you don’t want to do it.

And just having that consistency, think is what separates from at least what I’ve noticed the top producers from everybody else. They’re just, they’re consistent. They do what they got to do every day, no matter what. And they just keep pushing.

John Harcar (19:10.815)
Okay. Any other advice or things that you would recommend that people maybe research or use or study or anything like that? Learn AI. Okay. And I like to try to fish some things out because of some new trends and stuff coming into the business like AI, which is funny, our mastermind in May, we’re having an AI for real estate investing speaker. But how do you think AI is gonna change the game?

@OliverGraf360 (19:18.924)
Yeah, learn AI. Yeah.

@OliverGraf360 (19:39.83)
I yeah, I think it’s gonna change.

John Harcar (19:41.458)
More than it already is.

@OliverGraf360 (19:42.946)
I think it’s going to change every part of the game. Like I’m already using it daily. There’s like, have an email management AI that helps me stay on top of my emails. Obviously like chat GPT is a daily use thing. There’s tools like opus.pro that will take, for example, this long form video and it will chop it up into social media bite sized pieces. It does all the editing for you. So it takes

John Harcar (20:05.641)
Mm-hmm.

@OliverGraf360 (20:12.96)
you know something that would normally take either you a lot of time to edit yourself or money to pay someone to edit it for you this is just an AI tool that like you basically just feed in the video it’ll spit out 20 videos it comes with titles it comes with descriptions so just leveraging things like that and then I also built a custom GPT that is like a realtor coach and so if anybody wants access

John Harcar (20:31.069)
Yep.

@OliverGraf360 (20:42.98)
to that right here is my Instagram handle. It’s just olivergraff360 at Gmail. If you message me, I will get you the Realtor Coach GPT and that is basically just, you know, it’s like your sidekick. Like you can ask you questions, you can have it build out your schedule, you can have it, you know.

John Harcar (21:01.247)
That’s rad.

Is it an app?

@OliverGraf360 (21:05.773)
It’s a GPT, so it’s basically like an AI inside of chat GPT. It’s just a customized version.

John Harcar (21:08.653)
okay, okay, okay, right. Inside, okay. Got it, got it, got it, man, cool. Well, that brings you to the next part. Like, you know, how do people get ahold of you? I mean, you put on your Instagram, we’ll put a lot of the other stuff in the show notes, but do you prefer them to call you, email you, Instagram you?

@OliverGraf360 (21:27.022)
Yeah, anyway, I’m at Oliver Graff 360 on pretty much every platform. And then I also have a podcast called Founders Club, where I’ve interviewed people like Ryan Serhan, Grant Cardone, Robert Kiyosaki, a lot of the real estate legends. So check that out and that you can find on YouTube and any of the podcast platforms.

John Harcar (21:52.255)
sweet and that’s where you’ll find this one’s at the same place guys. Oliver, I appreciate you coming on here man. I appreciate you sharing all that you did. Is there any last things that you want to tell our client or our audience? Anything about you or your business or anything you’re working on?

@OliverGraf360 (22:08.204)
I don’t think so. mean, if you guys need help with anything, I’m all about helping. I love sharing ideas. Like I said, know, been a part of coaching and masterminds for many years and I always like to pay it back. So if anybody has questions or wants to chat, just hit me up and I’d be happy to help.

John Harcar (22:26.641)
Awesome. And once again, we’ll have all your contact in the show notes. Oliver, thank you again. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Really good episode. Hope you took some good notes, and we will see you on the next one. Cheers.

@OliverGraf360 (22:39.096)
Appreciate it.