Transforming Real Estate: Brokerteq’s Karen DeFelice on Technology and Strategic Partnerships

Erika (01:31)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by someone with who I’ve been eager to chat with, Karen DeFelice, co-founder of BrokerTeq. Karen, it’s so great to have you here.

Karen DeFelice (01:47)
⁓ Thanks for having me.

Erika (01:50)
I think our listeners are going to love how you’re revolutionizing the real estate tech space with BrokerTeq. So let’s dive in. So for those of us who aren’t that familiar, can you give us a quick rundown? What’s the main focus of BrokerTeq these days?

Karen DeFelice (02:08)
So the main focus of BrokerTeq is bringing the best technology to the individual agent. So ⁓ somebody had told me, you know, once before that we’re kind of like Costco for real estate tech. We don’t create the CRM or the transaction management, but we buy it and we buy the seats in such bulk that we get a discount. So we take those discounts and pass them over to our clients. So what we want to do is make sure that the

individual agent, if they’re looking to leave the big box corporations, they’re going to be able to succeed and recruit agents under them by giving them the best technology.

Erika (02:50)
That’s awesome. you know, technology can change fast and you’re streamlining everything. What’s been kind of the secret to keep that running smoothly?

Karen DeFelice (03:01)
⁓ You know, like I said, we’re we’re pretty much the middleman we and what we’ve done is we’ve partnered with the best in the business So as far as streamlining go lofty for their CRM lofty is Continuously we chose them because there’s nobody out there that has an eye for ⁓ AI and technology You know KV Corps was one of the best in the business at one time But if you don’t if you don’t keep updating you keep going you’re gonna

Get left behind and lofty ⁓ was definitely far behind kv core and as soon as ai hit hit ⁓ Lofty embraced it. So they are definitely the absolute top of the game right now when it comes to website lead generation ⁓ crm Same with sky slope as far as their transaction management. They’re the they’re the people that ⁓ exp depends on so there’s nobody else out there so we’re keeping everything

fresh by constantly. I go to a lot of tech shows as well so I’m keeping my eye out for anything else AI or technology driven that we can bring into the broker tech atmosphere that we can then offer to any of our clients.

Erika (04:21)
That’s great. by offering what you do, you allow agents to focus on their clients and what really matters most. Now, I have to ask, with your experience in the industry, because we have a lot of people who are new to the real estate world, have you ever had a deal that went sideways or you had the pivot fast? Do you have any of those moments in your journey?

Karen DeFelice (04:30)
correct.

⁓ There’s only one, especially if you’re talking about technology, really comes to mind. And I was a new agent, so this one, obviously, as ⁓ Saber Romeo, my old ⁓ Bic, used to say, darlin’, education is expensive. And so this one always comes out at my head. ⁓ Because I didn’t have these checklists, or I just didn’t, when you’re on your own, you’ve just got so many hats to wear. ⁓

After

closing, had, before closing, had negotiated having a ⁓ home warranty. This one didn’t want that, so we said, let’s put the home warranty in there. Everybody was happy because of price and everything. ⁓ So about six months went by and my buyers called me and they were so happy that I talked to them into getting this home warranty because their hot water heater went. And I looked, I forgot to get the home warranty.

So I had to backtrack and I had to not only buy these people a hot water heater, but I had to buy them a year warranty as well. ⁓ And that was due to the systems that I did not have in place. I was just managing three or four deals at the same time and I can do it. I’ve got an Excel spreadsheet. I’ve got my written down checklist. I can do it. can, no, you can’t.

you need help. Real estate agents need, whether it’s an admin or CRM or transaction, you need help.

Erika (07:10)
So if I’m understanding right,

Karen DeFelice (07:14)
Yeah.

Erika (07:16)
I’m sorry, I had a little technical issue there. I didn’t realize you were talking. So, it sounds like that was kind of like the birth of like broker tech, at least on your part. Am I understanding that right?

Karen DeFelice (07:30)
Yeah, so that was one of the times when I went on my own and it was, I tried, you know, teaming up with another agent, you know, let’s do this. And like I said before, there was five of us and we all have pretty strong personalities. Nobody wanted to work for the other one. So we all decided to basically turn this into a co-op where there was no top level. We were all on our own. ⁓

And that’s pretty much how BrokerTeq happened. I was like, need that system. That is the better transaction management. That’s what eXp uses. That’s what the… And Keller Williams has their own, but they basically modeled it off of that. So yeah, we wanted those systems, but they were very expensive.

Erika (08:18)
Got it, got it. And as you were sharing with me earlier, you have been able to offer things at a really great rate.

Karen DeFelice (08:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so as an individual agent, like if you were gonna, when we first started, you know, I wanted Lofty and Sky Slope and going to them, ⁓ one of the cheapest, Lofty has different tiers, but one of the cheapest ones is like 6.99 a month. And then Sky Slope’s 3.50 and Land Voices this. So all in all, as an individual agent, it’s about $1,200 a month for these systems. And that’s just as an individual agent trying to, you know, keep things together.

It’s it’s unattainable on the other hand it know, but you can have the cheaper systems There is free transaction management that your MLS will give you you can get the $99 a month website But as the saying goes you get we pay for

And if you want to attract agents to work for you, if you want to recruit, a top selling agent isn’t going to be like, sure, I’ll get the free, I’ll work for you and give you half of my commission with those systems. So if you really want to succeed and grow, in order to attract people, you’ve got to have these systems. You need to have leads to give to them. You need to be organized. They want to see that you’re an actual corporation. So these systems not only help you stay

compliant as an individual agent, but if you do want to grow your company, they’re the systems that the top agents who are already selling are going to want to come to your brokerage for.

Erika (10:33)
Got it. ⁓ And what you were talking about there with building relationships and that, you shared with me earlier that there are five of you that started the company. And on this podcast, we really value relationships because we know relationships are the backbone of the real estate industry. So what advice would you give to people, whether it’s an agency that’s looking to partner with someone?

Karen DeFelice (10:53)
Right.

Erika (11:02)
or they’re looking to start a business, how would you look for a good partner?

Karen DeFelice (11:07)
⁓ that’s a great question because you know, it’s one of those things you don’t know that you chose poorly until you figure it out the hard way. ⁓ and luckily, you know, I had people that

We’ve been friends or we’ve known each other for years well before anybody got into real estate. I’ve traveled around in Colorado for a while. I’m from Rhode Island, Florida. So I’ve had relationships there. The other thing is with real estate, I guess most businesses are like this, but real estate really is very much cutthroat. You can be best friends with somebody, but you might come into a situation where you’re going to be in competition with them.

⁓ So the other nice thing is all of us are from different states so that really never happened We all really help each other out a lot ⁓ In things like that, so I guess you do how do you how do you make sure that you don’t end up with the wrong person?

That’s a difficult question because it’s, again, education’s expensive. I guess when you figure it out, you’ve got ⁓ to either jump out or slice ties pretty quick.

Erika (12:23)
Yeah, yeah, it’s, you know, it can make her break things for sure.

Karen DeFelice (12:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, we do have a good group. if anybody starts getting, you know, going rogue or something like that, I guess everybody has a powwow with them. We haven’t had to deal with that, so luckily. And the other thing is with BrokerTeq, we’re not really up in each other’s space that much. I really, my end is really focusing on what I do is the demos. I’m very customer facing, so I’m the one that does the demos.

if anybody has any issues, I’ll be the one that does that. We have another person who’s like, don’t, I’ve got too much going on. So she kind of does the backend when it comes to finances and making sure that everything’s getting paid. So we all kind of have our own roles. So ⁓ it’s worked out pretty well.

Erika (13:16)
Yeah, yeah, when everyone embraces their strengths and weaknesses, I think that works out for the best.

Karen DeFelice (13:22)
Yes, yes,

that’s that is basically yeah exactly that’s what we’ve done like we you know at the very beginning what is it that you want to do and this one does the website that one does the pay some people we’ve got somebody that doesn’t do anything she just contributes with finances and you know things like that so we all work it works

Erika (13:44)
So with the foundation that you’ve built with BrokerTeq, your next move could either amplify your impact in the industry or could go sideways with just the way things are running a business. What do you see as next on the horizon? What’s the next big goal?

Karen DeFelice (14:04)
Well, the next big goal that we are talking about, because we have hit a plateau where the business is pretty much running itself. Good knock on wood, kind of. I don’t want to sound too yay, but obviously we’re always looking to grow and everything. So what we need to do is hire a full-time marketing department. I mean, when I say department, I mean one person. But somebody who, like I said, we’re all single moms.

are

all full-time real estate agents so we do all have a lot of hats and what we are seeing is you know we pay attention to our SEO we pay attention to our Google ability and and what’s going on because we have Facebook ads and everything but I think we need somebody who actually does marketing to get us to the next level to you know get our name out there because at this point what we’re struggling with is just getting our name out there once once somebody says you know see

us and they want to learn more because it’s kind of a unique business. ⁓ It’s pretty much an easy sell but most people just don’t even know we exist at this point so we need a marketing department.

Erika (15:59)
Got it, got it. now…

Karen DeFelice (16:01)
which hopefully

means that I’m the sales department. Hopefully that means I’ll need help in the sales department because right now if one person can handle all the demos and everything, we’re not growing as fast as we like.

Erika (16:14)
Got it, got it. Now before we wrap up, if someone wants to reach out or connect with you, or maybe they want to collaborate with BrokerTeq, what’s the best way for them to reach out?

Karen DeFelice (16:33)
On the BrokerTeq website, spell it, it’s B-R-O-K-E-R-T-E-Q, ⁓ the BrokerTeq website, they can either go in and schedule a demo, and then they’d see probably me, or at the very bottom it says, you know, if you want more information in there, you can put your name, your phone number, your email address, and then write a note. They could also email us at admin at brokerteq.com.

Erika (17:01)
Alright, awesome. Well Karen, thank you so much for taking the time to share what’s going on at Broker Teq. It’s really exciting what you guys are innovating. It sounds like once agents find your software, they’re going to be all over it.

Karen DeFelice (17:19)
Yes, absolutely we have not, I mean people come in and it’s like why would you leave? You’re just getting the best systems for the cheapest price out there.

Erika (17:30)
That’s awesome. To everyone tuned in, if you found value in this episode, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Karen who are out there building a game-changing business. Thank you so much Karen for being on today. It was awesome. And we’ll see you on the next episode. Bye!

Karen DeFelice (17:51)
I appreciate

it. Thank you.