Relationship-Driven Real Estate: How Daniel Beer Leads Teams to Success

Host1 00:00

I don't have an objection handler to turn someone into a seller who's not a seller.

Host 00:03

How do you go about doing that? What's your process for getting into a relationship with the right people?

Host1 00:07

There's been so many people that have made the mistake of creating a team grant.

Host 00:09

You're in a position where you're one of the top people in your industry.

Host1 00:12

Being a great lender, being a great title person is not enough. It has to match the size of your business and also where you're going.

Host 00:19

Can you add value and make my life easy?

Host1 00:21

It's an interesting thing because everyone's trying to get a yes. His philosophy is try to get a no. Don't just believe that the value on its own is enough.

Host 00:29

What up, everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner Profit Podcast. Excited for my conversation today. Somebody I have a high amount of respect for in the real estate industry, Mr. Dan Beer. What up, Dan? Thanks for being with me for a little bit.

Host1 00:41

It's always good to be with you, man.

Host 00:42

Yeah, I appreciate that. For people that are listening to this and maybe don't know much about you, give just like the brief backstory.

Host1 00:48

Oh, I was just a guy that didn't like his job, like most people that end up in real estate, right? So I was running from what I had when I was about 23 years old out of college and ended up in real estate, chasing freedom and all that stuff, right? And of course, the big lessons you end up learning are that, yeah, you might not have a boss, but you better figure out a way to be your own best, you know, your own boss, how to hold yourself accountable, how to go through all that. It took me, ah man, it took me years to actually learn those lessons. So I definitely made some money, but screwed it all off and like didn't actually build anything meaningful for the first several years, didn't have myself in the right rooms, didn't understand the power of really what I could even turn this into. But uh the short of it is after lots of that and lots of bumps, ended up building what became one of the biggest teams from a production standpoint in the whole country. Had a year where we were exp realties number one producing team across all of everywhere. And at the time there was 60 something thousand agents at the company or so. And you fast forward to today, and we've actually partnered with one of the teams that ended up passing us eventually, Kyle Whistle's team. And so Kyle Whistle and I have now created Whistle Beer Group and last year sold over 1,100 houses. And at the end of the day, though, just to make it short, we sell houses. We sell houses, and yes, we absolutely service the seller and the buyer. Our business philosophy, of course, is that our true customer is the agent. How can we help the agent make it easier for them, take things off their plate that they don't want, and give them a true platform to just go faster, go further, but with community, with collaboration, with the freedom to build their business without any of the guesswork and the trial and error that most people have to go through? And we love supporting agents in doing that. It's a lot of fun. We take care of them, they take care of the customer, and it all, you know, it all comes back around.

Host 02:37

I love it. Love it, love it. Uh, this is gonna sound like a silly question, but how important have the relationships that you've developed throughout your career been to your overall business?

Host1 02:47

Oh man, tremendous. Like if you're asking in terms of like, I mean, of course, buyer and seller relationships and who they refer us to, but vendor relationships. I mean, you know, Laura Bronca, for example, that I built the uh former Beer Home team with, like, she was referred by my title uh partner. The mortgage people we've we've worked with and have given a lot of business to have been a tremendous part of allowing us to actually have less staff because of what they are able to manage on our behalf just to make things easier for us. It's uh that they're really part of the entire lead follow-up process. And they are a huge part of, well, put it this way ask the operations team, how smooth is a transaction when the right lender or a random lender is on the file, when it's the right, you know, when it's the escrow that we're most familiar with versus when it's a brand new one, how does that escrow go? How much more, how many more little fires just pop up on one versus the other? So everything from smoothness to introductions to even strategy, you know, nuggets have absolutely come from our part from just the people that we've been able to meet along the way in the in this industry.

Host 03:52

Yeah. How was it developing a partnership? Because you and Kyle are in the similar market. Are you in the same market or do you kind of work adjacently?

Host1 03:59

Or we're absolutely in the same market, the greater San Diego market. Now, within San Diego County, he had a little, you know, more footprint in one section and I in a different section, but we both service the entire county. So even where we were most heavy, it wasn't any more than 30% of our business, and the other 70% was everywhere else. So there was plenty of overlap from that perspective.

Host 04:20

You know, going from competing with each other, I would imagine competing with each other, to partnering with each other. What led to that?

Host1 04:26

I mean, a few things. First off, in a market like San Diego, and I don't know if this is true everywhere, but even when we've shared the you know number one and two spots in the county from a production standpoint, even then we might have competed on a listing three times a year. So it's a big count, it's a big, it's a big industry, and uh and there's just a lot of transactions happening, right? I mean, at the end of the day, when there's 70,000 or so sides, right, buy because if you take 30 well, transaction volume has dropped recently. But even if you go to 25,000 transactions, it's 50,000 sides. There's a buyer side, a seller side. And in within those 25,000 transactions, when you're responsible for say 600 of them, there's still way more that you're not competing on. So the competition factor was never something that got in our way. We had a friendship that started with just like, hey, I respect you, you respect me. Let's get together twice a year. And you know, it wasn't like a formal agreement, but it's just sort of what happened. We'd get together twice a year and just talk and share and what's working, what's working, and that was good. But we ended up actually being partners at what we call Fast Forward Movement, which is a now a 13,000 agent network of some of the top producers in the whole industry at EXP, we created that partnership eight years in the running. So we knew how each other worked, and so we decided that instead of each of us basically doing the same thing day in, day out on our individual teams, what if we were to join forces, allow us to increase our bandwidth to better service the agents, not he and I not be duplicating what we're doing. Now, this all sounds way easier said than done. I mean, keep something in mind because now, ever since our merger, there's other people that were hearing, oh, we're merging like you, and we're merging like you. Just just realize that, like Kyle had Kyle and I had almost identical track records. We'd been in the business almost identical time. He didn't have one or three years where he sprinted hard and worked hard and did the right things. He had two decades worth of it. So did I. His level of influence was very similar to mine. Our our work ethic, et cetera. You get the point. It was very it was unique in that way. Plus, we'd been partners at the uh fast forward movement for eight years. So in that way, it really worked, and it still has challenges, right? You're taking two different companies, putting them together. They're even even when they're as closely connected as ours, there's still differences in in how people operate. And so I would just tell people not to just, you know, make the same, put it this way. There's been so many people that have made the mistake of creating a team grant, which is actually one of the reasons that Kyle and I came together is to alleviate the pain. That like, think about how many agents have gone to conferences, heard somebody like me talk about having a team from stage, and they go, Oh, well, I should have a team. Suddenly they're miserable managing people, doing nothing that they used to do, making less money. So before you just hear oh merger, and like it becomes the new thing, just understand that Kyle and I had a unique alignment, a unique similarity, and a unique fit. Make sure you audit for all of that.

Host 07:30

100%. I think the statistic is that it's in approximately um 15% of teams in real estate make it. People jump into that way too quickly without really going deep on all the considerations. And so it's a good warning there.

Host1 07:41

Dude, it's wild. You'll you'll see the people doing like 30 deals a year, 20 deals a year, and they're like, I'm hiring seven agents. I'm like, what the hell? What are these seven agents gonna do? Like, you don't have enough business.

Host 07:53

Yeah. I uh I had somebody on the other day, they're in the DMV area. They sold 127 homes personally last year, but still also have a 30-something person team and sell you know hundreds of homes, but they're so they're still crazy in production. But yeah, I think a lot of people look at it and say, okay, that looks easy, and I'm gonna go do it. And that's that's really interesting to watch. When you look at, and I don't know if you are or aren't anymore, I would imagine so, but when you look at developing new relationships to continually grow and continually develop the businesses that you and Kyle are building, you know, how do you go about doing that? What's your what's your process for for getting into a relationship with the right people?

Host1 08:29

Well, we're deeply in that as we speak. And number one is do they have the capacity? So there's some really good operators. I'll give you an example. I once, this was a learning process. I won't mention his name, there's no sense in it. And by the way, he's a phenomenal lender, just so good. And that was the problem. He was so good as a lender that I ended up saying, hey, so and so, like, let's start working more closely together. Let's bring you in, let's have you meet it, right? So I basically turned him into like the go-to guy. Well, he was phenomenal, except for he didn't have the infrastructure built out for our capacity, for our for the lead flow we could send, for what we needed, for how we so it being a great lender, being a great title person, being a great plumber, being a great you name it, is not enough. It has to match the size of your business and also where you're going. Like, make sure you you think through, okay, they fit me now, are they gonna fit me later? And so that's definitely one of the considerations. In our case, we also want to find really great service providers that can service all of the agents that we're connected to across the country as well, if it's the right fit. And so, like, again, it comes back to a capacity and scale question, but these are the things that we mostly work through. And then there's like the things that we shouldn't even have to talk about, which are just expected. Like, do they do great work?

Host 09:51

Yeah, you're in a position where you're one of the top people in your industry, both on the production side of the business, but then also on the recruiting side of the business. I'm sure there are a lot of things you're involved that I have no idea about. You're so you're constantly somebody that people are trying to get in a relationship with to grow their particular business. And uh I think I'm curious from a leader's perspective, what are the things that get your attention? Like, what are the things that, like, oh, okay, I like that, or what are the types of people that you tend to like associate yourself to when people are trying to develop a relationship with you to grow their business?

Host1 10:26

Yeah, it's it's a really good question. And I know there's like good coaching, right, that a lender or whoever could be given as far as like how to reach out to someone like me. But the truth is, Grant, there's times when my like lid is open and there's times when it's just not. Like, there's really not a strategy of what you could mail me or email me or call me with or invite me to, or what lunch you can take me to, or what like cool article or strat. Like, there's sometimes there is nothing. Okay. And it's not any different than a buyer or a seller. Like I tell the team, sometimes, sometimes the team or agents in our network, they'll say, like, hey, how do you objection handle someone that doesn't want to sell a house? And like, what the hell are you talking about? You you just don't do like you don't talk to the person that doesn't want to sell a house. I mean, you're nice to them, you put them on the long-term follow-up list, right? Like, let your automation, let your can your drips, let your like maybe call them once a year. But I don't have an objection handler to turn someone into a seller who's not a seller. Like, go create more leads. So sometimes the answer, Grant, is please leave me alone. Like, I am not open. I am just not open. You could send me gold nuggets and the it doesn't matter. Like, I'm not open. By the way, not I just realized what I said. Not that anyone's ever done that, because that would be highly not okay. Yeah, but I'm just making a point. There's other times such as now, and I'm I hope I don't regret saying that and invite like a flood, but there's other times such as now where I'm open, we're realigning things, we're readjusting things, we're looking at how we can service like an aspect of our business that we weren't thinking about. So, A is are they open? B, once if if they're open, then you need to figure out what is truly important to them. Like, really what's important to them. And I can tell you that I've had meetings very lately where the plan is too complicated, it's not simple enough. I come out of the meeting going, I don't know what the hell they do. I I just don't even understand. Like they were too, they outsmarted themselves, in other words. Like, what do we really want? We want to do business easy, we want it to be make sense for everybody, we want it to be compliant, and we want to know that you're gonna like not create a pain in the ass for me. There's not a lot else, okay. So, of course, there's nuances with like what is that service, right? Like, uh, you know, do you have the right products if you're a lender or do you service the geography, right, if you're an escrow company? But I would say be very concise, very clear, and it is not about having like some wildly creative presentation. Like it's it's about making it really what I mean. As I hear myself speak, Grant, I think what everything I'm saying equates to is can you just make my life easy and that's it?

Host 13:10

Can you add value and make my life easy? Is is kind of what I was hearing the same team.

Host1 13:14

Yeah. I don't know if that's very helpful to your uh listeners if you have people that are trying to contact team leaders like me, even the point of stop spinning your wheels on like who's not open. You know what I mean? Now, how do you how would I how would you determine that? I'm not sure, but I bet I could put my marketing hat on. And like if you had an email list of lend of realtors and you sent value-packed email, and particularly with head with subject lines, right? Like, here's the thing if you send an email that says rates have dropped to historic lows, like, or let me do something more ridiculous, get a four percent mortgage today with no points, like maybe I'll open that email, but it doesn't indicate that I have that I'm open, it just means I'm like, what the heck is this?

Host 13:53

Interested, intrigued, yeah.

Host1 13:54

Right? If if the subject line more directly points to like something about helping me build my business, and out of the thousand people you sent that to, you know, 150 of them opened it. Maybe you want to go and spend extra attention on them. Maybe their lid is open.

Host 14:15

A central theme in a lot of the conversation that I've had is when you talk about building and establishing relationships, it is the majority of the people have said, Well, I just I just try to help, I just try to give, I just try to add value, I just try to contribute, and I don't expect anything in return. Is that a philosophy that you you kind of align with, or do you have a little bit of a different take?

Host1 14:35

Oh almost, but they need to understand when to ask. Uh Dan Kennedy, one of his dire one of his laws of marketing, and I love Dan Kennedy, I'd suggest everyone study him, is use direct and use strong language. Um that's one of his laws. And another law is give clear and precise instructions. Like treat them like they're in second grade. Do this now, like take this specific action. So absolutely, the I just provide value thing is fantastic, but you are you need to know when to say, hey, have I been helpful to you over the course of the last X amount of years? I hope so. I'm going to continue to be. I'm going to invite you to a lunch to see if you're open. Are you open? Right. Back to what I just said. And FYI, like, whether you are or you're not, I'm going to continue to add value. But I don't want to, I don't wanna. I have here's the issue. If I was trying to recruit you, Grant. Here's the issue. I have so much respect for you that I worry sometimes that I've given you too much space and have done too little asking directly if I can like if we can work more closely together. Because I've so much respect for you, but I don't want you to mistake that respect that I have for you for lack of interest. I want to be partners with you at a deeper level than we are today. Are you open? Are you and you know, are you open-minded to that? You know, are you open-minded to that is a Chuplack question. Um, we could go to uh what what's the never split the difference guy? Anyway, never split the difference, great negotiating book. You know, you can make your ass and say, like, would it be the craziest thing in the world? Would it be like just absolutely out of line? Would it be completely offensive if I were to if I were to ask you to sit with me for lunch?

Host 16:14

Yeah, Chris Boss.

Host1 16:14

So he he phrases quite Chris Boss. So he create phrases questions in a way in which you're like, well, no, it wouldn't be completely offensive. No. All right, great. Well, let's go to lunch.

Host 16:23

Yeah.

Host1 16:24

You know, I mean, like, how is someone gonna answer yes, it would be completely offensive? Right? Like, right. So I I I like that. It's an interesting thing because everyone's trying to get a yes. His philosophy is try to get a no. Would it be completely offensive for uh for me to invite you to lunch?

Host 16:40

Mm-hmm. I've used I've used some of his stuff too. Like I literally had an issue with the bank, uh, my bank, like a couple of days ago, and I called, just like everything okay? And I was like, No, I think this could be the worst call you have all day. And that was a Chris Voss tactic, and she was like, Oh no, okay, what's going on? Then I explained it, she's like, Well, that's not a problem at all. And I was like, Perfect.

Host1 16:59

Like, that's you know who used to do that was my wife. And I don't even know if she did it consciously. She'd be like, hey, like, I mean, by the way, she asked me stuff that I was like all the time like not that cool with. But then when she but then every now and then she'd be like, I I I need to ask you something, and I don't know, like I hope this isn't gonna hurt like be hurtful or too big of a deal, but like uh I you know, brace yourself, Dan. Like, I need to just ask you. And then she'd ask me something that I was like, Whoa, like that's nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Like, yeah, that's fine, do that. Like, sure. I don't know if that was a conscious setup or not, but she was very good at using that.

Host 17:39

Yeah. I know we're running out of time. I would like to ask this question, you know. Dan, if I was to come to you and say, How do I turn my relationships into revenue? What would you coach me on?

Host1 17:48

Well, you you have to have a campaign. Like that that's the one thing. I don't think it's any different to go after real estate agents, to go after buyers or sellers, to try to reach the C-suite executive if you're in the B2B business. You have to find ways to add value. You know, you you you you you have uh you're in the B2B business, you're in the B2B space, and we're sitting here and we're talking and we're developing a relationship, and you've created a podcast, and you know that I like exposure. And the reason I like exposure is that I rec uh that I help uh build my network that we bring agents to across the country, and in it gives us it just the proximity of time we spend together is going to build our relationship. Plus, I'm getting nuggets from you here and there all the time. You did exactly what I told you earlier, which is you're not always saying, can we, can we, can we, but you'll find the right times to let me know that you are interested in working together or to bring me here. So it's built a campaign and it's a multi-prong campaign. It's don't just believe that the value on its own is enough. I learned that lesson doing home selling workshops. I would do these home selling workshops where I would give a phenomenal presentation, and yes, it was. Like I'll just say it truly was. And you know, it was basically my listing presentation where I was used to signing people on the spot. So I'd give this home selling workshop and I knew I crushed it, and I'd get to the end and I'd be like, okay, like thank you so much for coming. And I would sort of like open my arms, ready to receive them all, to like come rushing into my arms for you know to sign the listing, and all they would do is walk out the door. Like with a smile, but they walked out the door. So I went back to Dan Kennedy, give precise instructions. Oh, okay. So then I switched the workshop up to at the end, I would have each I would have them stand. I'd literally say, stand up, turn around, look at Mary back there. She'd wave at them. We had that all ready to go. What are we what you're going to do now is walk over to Mary. She is going to schedule our home audit, staging walkthrough, and equity evaluation so that because the workshop is really all the time we spend here is really only half the workshop, the other half takes place at your home with in a no-strings way. It's just your you dedicated the time. Let's make sure you have value that's yours to take. By the way, you can do business with who you want, when you want, but go ahead and stand up, walk over to Mary. I know a lot of you have questions. Soon as you've done that, I'll be hanging out and we can answer the questions then. Well, all of a sudden I'm booking appointment after appointment after appointment. So it's um it it's there's a lot of great lessons that can that Dan Kennedy would give any marketer. But that was a big lesson for me, man. I hope it helps the audience.

Host 20:29

Mm-hmm. No, it's it's really good. It's something that um, you know, I've heard countless people say is like people really want to be led. They need to be told what to do in marketing and and especially in direct response marketing, which is kind of how I got my start. It's all about getting people to take a specific action. You know, if you're gonna run an ad, the ad's got to get people to click the link. And if you're gonna get people to a landing page, the landing page's got to get them to register for the webinar. If I'm getting them to the on the webinar, the the webinar's gotta sell them on the next thing. And um, I think it's really, really good advice. I think so many people probably have their version of a campaign, like their the way that they make money, but maybe maybe a lot of people aren't so good at developing relationships and walking people through a process to make a lot of money. And um, yeah, so this was awesome. Man, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're very busy. Very, very much appreciate you doing this. I always like to ask this last question as we wrap up is you know, how can the listeners of the podcast, how can they partner with you? How can they support you? What's uh what's important to you right now?

Host1 21:23

What's important to us is any real estate agent that is that feels like they're constantly in the trial and error space, making more mistakes than they should have to, especially with how many people have already experienced what they're going through and they need to elevate the space around them. Come and hang out with us. Just join us at one of our masterminds. Like I'm not gonna tell you it's wonderful, just come experience it, see if it's good for you. Send me a DM if you want an invitation to our weekly mastermind. We have $100 million producer after $100 million producer. And by the way, I'm talking all the way into the $800 million range there, along with four to $500 other agents every single week who attend, who ask questions, who then get free coaching from these people. So we've essentially created a coaching organization that people don't have to swipe their credit card for. It's very, very cool. Send me a DM, I'll send you an invite to Mastermind. You just join us on one as my guest. And otherwise, obviously, if you're, you know, have any I've we're in the San Diego market, if we could help you here, fantastic. But granted, I'm not here for that. I'm really here to just make sure to serve your community. I hope it's of any value, dude. And thank you. Thank you so much. So whether it be now or offline, let me know also who I could introduce you to.

Host 22:31

Awesome. I appreciate it, brother. Appreciate it a lot. And um, we'll make sure that we link up all the ways people can connect with you in our show notes. And if you're listening to this, I highly encourage you to do so. Dan is uh a legend in the space, has been at it a long time, has an enormous amount of value to add to you individually. And um, yeah, I appreciate it a lot, man. Appreciate it a lot. Means a lot that you spend some time with me today. Awesome, and thank you all for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit Podcasts. I know this was another epic conversation. Hope you got what you're looking for. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.