Top 5 Tips for Realtors from the Hospitality Industry with Aaron Greeley

And then, as the years went by, it just became more and more challenging, more and more difficult managing the next couple of generations that came up, like after us, with a completely different work ethic, where it was kind of an entitlement, where we started to see employees feeling like they were doing us a favor by showing up to work, rather than us, you know, providing a living for them. Right, right. You know, staffing, all of those things just became a complete headache. And there was a point that I remember being at my breaking point, looking at Melanie and saying, I can't manage 20 somethings the rest of my life. I just can't do it anymore. I have to find something else. And I have to find something that I'm going to be happy with, find my passion that's outside of this industry, and just figure out what the next chapter is going to be. And real estate was one of those things that was always very intriguing to me. And, you know, I got excited about it, studied up on a little bit, and then decided to just jump in completely, you know, with with both feet and just go for it. So a few years later, here I am.

Yeah, and doing pretty darn well. We're doing very well. Yeah, doing very well. So you and I, in a number of different formats have had conversations that revolved around why people who have waited tables, and I am a believer, first of all, a believer that everybody should wait tables at some point in their lives. Sure. Everybody should have to serve someone else a meal and see how that to have to deal with that element of humanity. Right. Yes. But with it comes for people who've done it for for quite a while, been in that and really get it. There's a there's a service level, I guess. And I know that that's making it super elementary that translates really well into what we do as Realtors.

Yeah, it's yes. And I see a lot of agents say that they love to provide service. And they you know, that's their thing is providing service for their clients. And then I ask what that looks like, what they mean by that. And, you know, I don't always get a great answer to that. Or I don't know that I ever have, you know, outside of some of the people that I know that came from the hospitality business. You know, we if we're gonna jump right into our Top 5, you know, great service means something different to everyone. And, you know, going back to my fine dining days, or luxury hotel days, we always had steps of service, where we said, we're going to do this, this, this and this. And it was very regimented that this is these are the steps that we're going to follow when we're taking care of a guest. But then what you learn very quickly is that you have to be adaptable, because those steps of service change, right? You may have somebody come into your restaurant, sit down for a meal.

The steps of service, the things that we've planned out, you know, might take two hours for someone to come in, really enjoy the meal for us to do things our way to time it the way that we would like to, and to really let them have an experience and enjoy their time at the restaurant. Then you quickly realize that that might not be what's important for that particular guest. They may be somebody that's coming in, they're in a hurry, they only have 30 minutes, they need to get in, get out, and you have to be able to adapt. So service is something that's completely different for everyone. And that adaptability is, you know, probably number one on my list of what great service looks like. So taking that into the real estate business, we have to be able to figure out what our clients are really looking for.

You know, when I used to teach, you know, in the hospitality business years ago, I was training a lot of concierge staff. And we used to teach them a practice that we used to call it funneling. You know, it was, we're going to start with a big question. And then we're going to keep asking questions and work our way down until we figure out exactly what they need, exactly what they want, so that we can best serve them. And I think that that's crucial in our business as well. Especially in our business, right? Absolutely. Yeah, we talk about it. It's funny, I was having this conversation actually with one of our agents this morning. The tendency for a lot of agents, and a part of it is honestly, because if you look at real estate training in a whole, it's not sales training. It's more transactional training, it's more running a real estate business training. Sure. And so when you look at, I need to ask all of these qualifying questions. How many bedrooms do you want? How many bathrooms? How many stories? How many this, that, right? But we very rarely go beyond that to get to the whys of those things and the motivating factors of those things. And I think that it's a couple of different things.

I think number one is, it really is a training breakdown in a lot of cases. But I think the other thing is, from a sales psychology standpoint, those are dangerous questions. If I ask you how many bedrooms you want, you can only answer a certain number of ways. Right. But if I ask you why, you can say stuff that I don't know how to reply to. Right? And so if you look at it, there's an old principle that Toyota actually came up with, where if they had a breakdown in a manufacturing process, they had to ask why five times before they could even, before they could respond to anything. So you had to say, why did this break? Why did that happen? Why did that happen? Why did that happen? Why did that happen? And I think that if we started to apply that more deeply into the way that we process clients into our business, you get those underlying motivators.

Sure. And I mean, when you're working with sellers, I think that it's really important. I think that when you, you may be a new agent or you're just getting started in this, you automatically assume that their motivator 100% is how much money can I get? What's the bottom line? How much money am I going to walk away with when I sell this home? And a lot of times that's not necessarily number one on the list. That might be number two. It may be that they need to sell as quickly as possible because they have to move due to some circumstance. They have to do something to facilitate their finances so that they can move on and do something else, whatever it might be. You can't just assume that their motivation is 100% just let me sell this thing for as much as I can and however long that takes. So all of that funneling, getting down and asking those whys and really connecting with that client, that's providing service. Absolutely.

The other thing that comes with providing great service, two things really, setting proper expectations with a guest in a hotel, with a guest in a restaurant, with a real estate client. I think that they need to know what they're getting themselves into and what they can look forward to and just setting the expectations, setting the tone with them. And then probably the most important thing, when I say that I want to provide amazing service to my clients, there's an attention to detail that has to be there. And then there's also the fact that you have to be able to anticipate needs. And that's one of those things in the hospitality business that we were constantly trying to do. So going back to 20 years ago, when I was training concierge staff, it wasn't simply, let me make dinner reservations for you. It's, well, after dinner, what are you doing?

Can I help you get tickets to something and do something else? It's always anticipating a need before they ask for it. That's when you really blow someone away with service. Yes. And I think in a lot of cases in our world, it's anticipating a question before it's asked. Of course. Every single day. And there is, every transaction is different, but over time, you do learn that you're going to get the same questions asked. Yeah, exactly. And so if you can have a resource to answer those questions ahead of time, you're already that much further ahead of anyone else that they're going to be talking to. Exactly. There's exactly, there's, I don't know a better way of putting this. I've said the same thing for years and I don't know if it's even right. Cause I, you know, it's just one of those things that I say it's ownership of information. If I interview three real estate agents and all of them tell me the same thing, the one who told it to me first owns that information. And I'm just saying, oh yeah, well, that's what Aaron said. Right. Right. It's confirmation at that point.

Yeah, exactly. And so if I am the one who owns that information by anticipating it coming up and being able to provide it to you first, I win. Right. There are little things that you can do as well. If you want to be this full service agent, that's doing things like an example last week, I knew that I had a client that was going to want to paint their house immediately. As soon as they close, you know, they're buying this house. I know that painting is one of the things that they've mentioned several weeks ago. So I took it upon myself to introduce them to a few painters, to schedule appointments, to have painters come out and give a couple of bids, doing things that, you know, I was telling a friend of mine who's not in our business. We were at a baseball game the other night and I told him exactly this. I was like, oh, you know, I went and showed a, let a painter in to give a bid on the house. And he said, you know, when I sold my house, I never even thought to ask my agent to do those types of things. I didn't even think that it was something that he would do. And I said, well, you know what? My clients didn't ask me to do that either, but I was thinking ahead. I knew it was something that they were going to want. They were going to need. So I took that step and I went ahead and did that for them. And that's when you completely blow someone away with service, right? Those are the little things that you can do.

You know, I, my business now, fortunately it's almost a hundred percent referral, right? I mean, it's, I put in the, I put in the years of, of grinding out and going and getting it. And now I'm very fortunate to be in a place where the business is starting to come to me through referrals. The reason that I get those referrals and the reason that my business is doing what it is are those little steps, that little extra service where they're like, someone mentions real estate, they're your biggest cheerleader. And they jump out and they go, no, no, you just have to call Aaron because he's going to take such great care of you that, you know, they trust me. Right. You know, right. So it's, it's the little things that you can do.

All right. So I don't want to, I don't want to leave this point and, and diminish those as little things. Cause I don't think they are, I think that they come natural to you because you have 25 years experience of doing little things. Right. And in the big scheme of things, opening a door for a painter to come in and do a bid is a little thing. Right. But it's a practice. Hey, let me stop what I'm doing and think, what can I do for my client right now? That's just going to be that little bit extra. Yeah. It's a skill. It's a skill that I did for 25 years and that I also trained people to do for 25 years. Or 20, 20 plus of those 25. I was training people to do those things. So train me. If I'm a real estate agent and I'm brand new, or if I'm a real estate agent and I'm not brand new, but I'm not doing what you're talking about.

How do I take a, take a second in my daily business and say, man, what can I be doing cool for my agents or for my clients right now? Sure. Well, I mean, that's the key is taking that second. That's a second that most people don't take. Right. So that's taking that second, stepping back, looking at a transaction as a whole. And everything in service comes down to treating people the way that you want to be treated. It's doing the things that you would want if you were in their situation, right? So taking the time to sit and think about that and saying, if I was this buyer, what do I need? I don't necessarily know where to go, where to get it, how to do it, but what can I do? What would someone be able to do for me that would just completely blow me away?

It's taking the time and really thinking about it. It's having that, that empathy for the client. You know, I'm not perfect and I'm not perfect. And sometimes I start to get a little bit frustrated. We all do, you know, we did in the hospitality business for sure. I do here. And, you know, sometimes you're like, why are they not getting it? Why are they, they struggling with this or that? And then my wife is great at reeling me in. And she's like, well, you do this every single day. You already know this. They do this two, three times in their lifetime. Right. So you need to remember that reel yourself back in, not be so frustrated and remember that you're there to serve them. And those are the little reminders that every now and then I'm like, you're a hundred percent correct. You do have to take a breath sometimes and just, and just take a step back and go, you know what? You are the expert in this. They're not. And your job is to be that consultant that guides them through this whole process. So.

So if I'm an agent, am I once a week putting a 30 minute block in my calendar that says, take a step back and think about how you can provide better service? Is it once a day? Once a day. Is it once a day? Once a day. I do that in the mornings. You know, I I've developed kind of this morning routine where, um, you know, I, I get up a little bit early, but I have a rule that there's no work before nine o'clock. Um, you've, you've said this in a kind of the converse of this in times. And I've heard you say this where you're like, if we owned a store, um, and we were going to open that store and we had posted hours that we were opening that store at 10 AM every day, you better be there and open at 10 AM. That's right.

And I think that the converse of that, to me, something that I really had to work on and to develop some kind of boundaries between work is that I said, if I own that store that opened at 10 and people were calling me at seven 30, um, I'm not answering. I'll call you back at 10. I'll call you back at 10. So what I've done is kind of created a routine where I do get up earlier. Um, that's when I play tennis. That's when I do something for myself, whatever it is, even if it's driving my daughter to school, I'm doing those types of things. And my one rule that I have with my mentees and my business is that unless there's just some crazy absolute emergency, I don't work before nine o'clock. So that's what helps me get my, my mind right for the day. And then what I do at nine o'clock, one of the first things that I do is I have a list and I'm a little bit old school. I know that we have all these resources and all this online stuff, but I keep notes and notepads and I have these notebooks, you know, everywhere.

And, and I have a note of like right now, I think I've seven transactions and I've got all seven just listed out. And then I've got notes of where we are and the things that are going to happen that day for that transaction. And then that's when I take that time. And this is before I've actually made a phone call, started working with anybody. That's when I take that time to reflect a little bit, look at those things, think about what those people, what those people need and then get rolling on that. So that's kind of how I start the day. And that's, um, that's something that I would say, yeah, it's daily that you're going to look at what you need to do to take care of that particular client that particular day. Dude, have you, have you looked at the remarkable? No. Yeah. Look at the remarkable side note.

Yeah. It's like a, it's a digital notepad. And I know that's so silly because you can write on iPads and stuff, but this actually feels like you are writing on paper when you write on a screen. Okay. And it will take your handwriting PDF. I used to be exactly the same. I would always joke that I was born in between Gen X and Gen Y. And so my joke was that I would carry a notepad and an iPad, you know? Yeah. And I love to write things down. I just, I love having a very visual. I've got, you know, my big board over here. I've got three monitors, um, and remark, check out the remarkable life, life changing brother, life changing, life changing. All right. So, you know, service service was actually number three or four on my list of top five. And we dove right into it because I think it's, it's natural. Right. You know, when we talk about the hospitality industry or the service industry that we would dive right into it. Um, but that actually didn't even make the top of my Top 5 list. Well, let's talk about it. Make the top of your Top 5 list. We'll go out of order, but that's okay. That's fine. That's fine. I started with work. Um, in this business, you know, we say it all the time. You just have to get up and go to work every day. Yeah. And coming from our industry, um, you know, an average week, an average week could easily take me to 60 plus hours in the hospitality business. There are times of the year when things are, you know, at their peak, their, our party season or event season, whatever it might be. There are times of the year when that could very easily turn into an 80 hour week. And it did frequently. Um, there's something that I think was another reason that, that I got out of that industry because I was tired of working those types of hours. I was tired of every day being 12 plus hours. Um, in those management roles, even when your day is done and you do finally make it home, your phone is still ringing off the hook because whatever managers you have there are still calling you with questions when you just want to go, can you just please handle it yourself? But you know, that ultimately you'd rather answer the question and get it done. Right. Right. So, you know, I found it really funny when I came over to this industry and I started hearing people complain about the hours and the workload and the amount that they worked because this felt like a part-time job for me. Yeah. Um, it really did. And I think that we didn't really distinguish. We, we never distinguished between working during the week and working on the weekends, right? You just do, um, working during the day and then working at night. You just work. Uh, so I think when someone comes into this business from this Monday through Friday, eight to five, nine to five kind of job, then this probably is a huge shift for them where they're like, Whoa, this client wants to go see something. And it's seven o'clock at night. Or you want me to do an open house on a Saturday or a Sunday or like, ah, what is this?

And the one thing that I will say about the people that came from the hospitality business is people aren't going to outwork us. Uh, they're just not, you know, finding someone that's going to outwork me. Good luck. It doesn't mean that I didn't complain about it when I was in the restaurant business or the hotel business. It doesn't mean that it didn't suck. It just means that we just did it because that was the job. Yeah. Um, hotel business for an example, you know, I, I live in Cinco Ranch and Katie, I was managing a hotel on main street downtown. Um, I believe that was a hall straight down West park. You know, if you do it early enough, it's not too bad, but I would get up, leave my house. It's five 36 to beat the traffic. I get down there park, get into the hotel, get things ready. And all of a sudden we have a meeting at seven, uh, where we kind of transitioned overnight into the morning. And then it goes to dealing with checkouts. And then it goes to meeting after meeting, after meeting all the way through the day, transitioning into that afternoon, evening staff, more meetings, check-ins, and then, you know, you can leave at any time, but really the point that I was comfortable, really, truly comfortable that the day was all set and that I could leave, you know, sometimes that's seven o'clock in the evening. Sometimes it's eight. Um, and that means getting home at, you know, eight 30 and then turning around and doing it again the next day. And that's just the job. That's just work. And that's just what we did. And those were days that were normal. Um, there were times that there are events that you're there until three in the morning. There's times that you're there doing this, you're doing that. And it's just work. So coming into this, I really did feel like it was part-time because it's not the grueling hours away from your family. I mean, I'm, I'm working from home, right? No, it's, it's just, it's not the same.

So work, the work ethic and just what we did for a living is something that makes this transition very, very easy for us. I think. So I think we almost, we almost go back to that whole store metaphor again, that if you say your hours of operation are 9am to 6pm, then damn it from 9am to 6pm, you're working, you're working, you're not watching TV, you're not, you know, doing some work and then switching over the laundry and then getting stuff ready for dinner and then coming back and doing a little bit of work or whatever. Those are your work hours. I think that you have to be, you know, this always comes up with, you know, every conversation, you have to be disciplined with your time. There's no question about that. I think one of the reasons that I don't mind going and showing homes and doing some of these things in the evening is because I know what the rhythm is like now. You know, I know what my day is like. I know that I am, you know, getting up, starting that work day, the way that we just talked about it. I know that there's probably going to be some type of a gap after one o'clock where it slows down a little bit. And that's where I take advantage of that and make that personal time that I'm probably not going to work.

And then I know that my clients are most likely going to start to get out of work at five o'clock. That's when they're going to be busy, have questions, be available to look at homes, do all of those things. So I know that my work day starts again at, you know, four and it may go however late it goes, but I don't care. And it doesn't bother me. And I think that that comes from the discipline of what a work day looked like in the hospitality business. Awesome. All right. So number one, after number three or four, it was, is just do the damn work, right? Do the work, get up and go to work every day. Do the work. So what was the number two on your list? Being able to make connections quickly with people. You know, you remember that Malcolm Gladwell book called Blink?

Yeah. Where you basically make your, your subconsciously, you make a decision about something like instantly. And then that's the one that's going to last forever. What you have to be able to trust your gut, but being in the people business, whether it's real estate people, business or hospitality people, business you have to be able to make a connection with someone immediately. You have to be able to recognize their communication style. You have to be able to recognize just what it's going to take to connect and be able to serve them, be able to work with them. And that has to be done immediately.

So when you're in, you know, a restaurant setting, for example, and someone comes up, you know, within two seconds, you have to be able to adapt to the communication style and pick up on, you know, why they're coming towards you aggressively. Sometimes, you know, I mean, I, Jen, uh, you know, Jen Valdez, who is in our, uh, our office now, she just graduated from the mentor program. I used to work with her, um, in the house, in the hotel business years ago. Okay. And she and I were laughing because I was like, you know, some people have never had someone stand there and scream at them because a battery in a remote control is out or because they don't like pickles and they got pickles. Um, and it shows, you know, like if you've never been yelled at about pickles, I can tell, you know, I can tell. And that goes back to your point of why I think I agree with you, why everyone should have to do it for a certain amount of time, just because of the lesson in humility that comes with it and knowing how to react to that, knowing how to stay calm, knowing how to not take things personally like that and being able to shrug them off and go on to the next thing, you know? So you can tell who's, who's been there and who hasn't.

We've been yelled at for pickles. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Did you, uh, do you watch, do you watch Ted Lasso? Have you ever watched Ted Lasso? I have not. I've heard great things. You need to, it's my favorite thing that's on right now. Season two is just about to wrap up and it's one of the best shows on TV. It's phenomenal, but he's a, he's a football coach that ends up going to England to coach soccer. Right. And one of the things that he tells his players all the time is he'll just say goldfish, you know, they need to be goldfish because goldfish doesn't have a memory. Something can happen to them one second and it's immediately gone the next second. And that's, you know, whether they're making a play in, in, um, in soccer or in life and especially in hospitality, because you had to have that goldfish mentality. Somebody comes up and they're screaming about pickles and then you turn around and there's someone else with, you know, thanking you because it's the best meal I've ever had. You have to be able to turn that off immediately. So that's, that's a huge lesson from that business.

So once again, if I'm a, if I'm an agent, how do I develop a skill like that? Is that just, I need to go talk to strangers? Is that a, I need to take a little extra time. And when I meet with somebody, spend a little extra on the rapport building, what do we think that looks like? If I want to try and do, well, you, you, you probably should go spend a lot of time with strangers. Um, that'll definitely hone that skill, but a great example of that in our business is like, if you are meeting someone for the first time for, uh, a listing appointment or a buyer consultation, it's the first time that you're meeting with them. You're sitting down and you're talking to them. Um, there are agents that their mind immediately goes to, I need them to sign these representation agreements. I need them to sign these documents. I need to make this as quick as possible. I need to get in, get these documents signed and get out. And I say that that appointment needs to be as long as it needs to be based upon the needs of that particular client.

Yeah. We don't get to determine that. We don't determine that sometimes that conversation may be 30 minutes, as long as you've done what we talked about earlier, where I was talking about funneling and getting all those right answers and really figuring out why they're doing this thing, getting behind the motivation and really understanding why and understanding what they need from you. And then understanding what you can do to, to provide that service for them. Um, sometimes that could take a couple hours if they have that many questions in that time, whether it's the quick conversation that takes 20 minutes, or if it's the one that takes three hours because they have question after question, after question, that's time that you should be trying to figure out what makes them tick. So, um, um, recognizing their personality and being able to adapt your style to that personality, um, instead of making it transactional, you know, that there's, there's something about this business that there are people that come into it with a certain background, if it's accounting or engineering or something like that, where it's very transactional to them and they feel like they best serve the client through knowing the transactional side, you know, inside now. Well, I know the transactional side inside now too, but I put very little emphasis on that. And I put all of my emphasis on the relationship and the relationship building and the connection with that person. So I think that whatever happens, however long that takes, whatever they have to do to hone that skill, whether it's meeting a ton of people or just being completely present in the conversations that they're in, um, being able to recognize and make connections with people is crucial. And that's something that we definitely bring from the hospitality business over to this industry. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

All right. Next on the list. Was that service? Uh, yeah, that would have been service, but that's okay. We can go to, uh, being able to hang on, hang on before we go, I want to pull back to service. We're going back to service. Okay. Back to service for just a second. Sure. I have advocated for years and years with Realtors. And I think that it's becoming more and more important today that every real estate agent should have a base level of service that is supported by systems. Right. So the analogy that I have used in the past, and I probably shouldn't use it with you because it was McDonald's, which is, you know, if I get a Big Mac in Tokyo, if I get a Big Mac in Oklahoma city, it's the same damn Big Mac. Yeah. If I go, if I walk into the four seasons, the four seasons experience is going to be the same in every four seasons for me, right. Um, or the rich Carlton or whatever it is. Now, if I'm selling a home to somebody that I love, that's like one of my best friends or whatever like that, then my, the level of service they receive may be above that baseline, but no matter what, everybody gets the same baseline.

Right. Sure. And I think that that becomes more and more important today because we are so much more, it's about the experience. It's about the feeling that I worked with as opposed to the transactional piece, like you were just talking. Right. How did I feel? Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, when we talk about branding, um, and what your brand looks like as a Realtor, I think that the one thing that we talk about your brand is when they see your brand, when they think about you, how do they feel when they think about that? Right. Like that's, that's exactly it. And that experience is it. Um, you know, my whole career wasn't the, the fine dining and, and, uh, luxury hotels. I put a huge, huge amount of my career in super casual dining. And, you know, we, we had this small concept that had two restaurants. When I started grew it up to, you know, I think we, we had opened six or eight restaurants altogether. So that consistency while we grew, um, you know, why do you get the same Mac, big Mac in Tokyo that you do when you're in, in Houston? Um, it takes a lot of effort to get that same big Mac. You know, it took us a lot of effort to get that exact same product across six restaurants as opposed to one or two. Um, but you're right. You do have to have a baseline of service, um, that everyone, you know, everyone should receive. I got into an argument, a little bit of an argument with a regional, regional vice president of sales with Taylor Morrison. Do you remember when I had that huge blowout with Taylor Morrison a couple of years ago? So she said something to me while we were meeting with my clients and, you know, it was a, it was a million dollar home. And she said, well, I understand that when someone buys a million dollar home, they should expect a certain level of service. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Let me stop you. Let me stop you right there. And she was like, you know, a little thrown back. And I said, in my business, sometimes I'm helping someone find an apartment. Sometimes I'm helping someone buy a hundred thousand dollar townhome. And sometimes I'm helping someone buy this million dollar home. But regardless of who the client is, I recognize that this purchase is the biggest purchase of their life. I understand that it's the scale remains the same. Yeah. Right. Whether this is a $90,000 townhome or a $900,000 home, the impact on that client is identical. It's still home.

It's still home. And that being said, my service remains the same to that $90,000 townhome buyer as it does the million dollar home buyer. The service doesn't change. The level of service doesn't change. The steps of service don't change. I'm still going to do all of those things. I want to best serve that person. So I'm still going to be looking out and anticipating needs and seeing the extra things that I can do for that $90,000 buyer as I am for that million dollar buyer. Yep. So I don't believe that that baseline of service should ever change. And you're right. It has to be set. There has to be a standard and you have to at least start with that baseline.

Yep. Awesome. All right. Now let's go into number four. Okay. Prioritizing and multitasking is something that is just crucial in that industry because things are moving super fast all the time. You know, you do have downtime when there's nothing going on. And then in the restaurant business, you get into those hours of service where you're just overwhelmed and you're doing everything that you can to stay afloat. Yes. I remember the first time that I got into the weeds. Oh yeah. Like distinctly remember, because I remember people telling me about the weeds. I'd never heard about that until I first strapped on the apron and was ready to serve at Tejas Cafe in Huntsville, Texas. Yeah. And then I remember distinctly not knowing what the hell I was supposed to do next. Like I couldn't physically figure out what I needed to do next. I just knew that there were a lot of things that needed to happen.

You're paralyzed. And we do this when we train Realtors and we tell them that, you know, they have to get up and go to work every day and they should have a plan and they should know what their day is going to look like. And one of the things that we used to say in the restaurant business or the hotel business that we say in the real estate business is that your day, you can either run your day or your day can run you. And in the restaurant business, you could run your shift or your shift would run you. And you have to have preparation. You have to know what your day is going to look like before you go into it. So you have to have some kind of game plan. And then that game plan just goes out the window at some point when all hell breaks loose and you have to be able to kind of stop motion and sit back and look at it and then pull it all back together. And that's through prioritizing and seeing, you know, what needs to happen. You're kind of a coach when, you know, I was in, I was in operations for the whole 25 years. Operations is my thing. Day-to-day operations. You know, you could, you could go the accounting route. You could go the marketing route. You could go the sales route. I was an operator. And that's where, you know, you're on the front lines every single day and you have to be able to prioritize. You have to be able to multitask. There's just too much going on. And I think that the multitasking in real estate is when you're juggling multiple clients, you have multiple transactions going on at the same time.

And at the same time, you can't forget that you're also always going on and finding new business. And you have to be able to handle all of those things at once. So that's why it's so important to me when I start my day is to sit down and take a look at that list and then prioritize, you know, and go, these guys are three weeks away from closing and they have a question about an appraisal. Well, I'll get to them today, but that's going to come after the one that's closing in four days and the appraiser still hasn't been out to the house. So, you know, those things being able to multitask and being able to prioritize, um, there's something else that I've never heard anybody mentioned before, and it's always kind of stuck with me. Um, I don't tell my clients how busy I am. Um, I don't like, I don't like that, that word busy, like somebody saying that they're busy. Um, cause you know, I've heard it said before that when, when somebody says they're busy, it just means that something else is more important to them than, than you are at that moment. So I don't really like that whole busy as a term. And I don't let on to my clients that I am busy because I feel like I should, you know, make them feel like they're the only person that I'm helping.

Yeah. Make, make them feel like it makes it everything about you. And they almost feel like they have to work around you when they should, it should be about them. Yeah. It should all be about them all the time. And then sometimes they'll ask me, they'll go, well, how many, how many people are you working with right now? You know, how many clients are you helping right now? How many deals do you have going on right now? Cause you know, I feel like I'm taking a bunch of your time and I'm like my time, you know, I'm, I'm here to help. That's, that's it. And I'm like, well, you know, but I'm, I'm working on seven right now. And they're like, what? Seven, where do you find time to help seven? Well, you just, you know, how to prioritize things, you know, how to multitask, but I think that you always, and this goes back to service as well. Everything goes back to service, but you have to make them feel special and you have to, you know, make them feel like they're your only client. Yeah. You know, you have to, so that's, um, that's a, a huge skillset that we pick up in that industry that I think that some people, you know, might let go. And I've, I've had other agents say, well, I'm a very, there's, there's one I'm dealing with right now. Um, she's the buyer's agent on one of my listings. And she's like, well, I'm a very busy agent and I just, I don't have time. And I, you know, I didn't remember this. I forgot that. Well, that's your job, that attention to detail. That's your job.

Right. And I love to go back. When I say that, I love to go look at their production and see if they're actually busy. Yeah. Yeah. This one is legitimately busier than me. That's cool. Go get some help. Yeah. Don't try to do it yourself. Right. Hire someone to do some of the things that you're not great at. Leverage your own time. Yeah, absolutely. So, all right. So prioritizing multitasking and multitasking, and that leads us to last, but certainly not least number five. It's communication. Um, it's communication. And I think that I would pull that communication more from the management side of the hospitality business than, you know, some of the day-to-day stuff, but especially in management, I think the hardest thing to, to teach new managers is how to have really tough conversations with people because they avoid them. And I've seen them avoid them. And when you, when you avoid a tough conversation, it just makes it worse actually.

Yeah. And in our industry, you have to be able to break bad news to clients when they don't get the, the offer accepted or let them know that this transaction that they've had under contract is going to bust because of, you know, at no fault of their own, because someone decided to, you know, walk away during an option period or whatever it might be. Or communicating with other agents, you know, but being able to effectively communicate. It's one of those things that I know it drives you nuts too, but we encounter it so frequently with agents that we're, we're working with on transactions where they just don't, don't reply to an email. Don't respond to a text. Don't call you back. I mean, if there's one key piece of advice to real estate that we could give to new Realtors, call them back.

Answer your damn phone or at least return a call, at least return a call or how much effort does it take to say, I'm in the middle of something right now with a client. I will call you back in a few minutes. Right. Or whatever it might be. Acknowledge that other person, simply acknowledge that person. And that just sounds like such common sense. It sounds like, why would you even say that? Why do we even need to have that conversation? We'll get into some transactions with some other agents and you'll figure it out really quickly that the better agents are the ones that over-communicate. Right. Absolutely. I think part of what, going back a little bit to having the tough conversation too, you know, I want to go back to the very beginning when we were talking, we talked about setting expectations, right? Nobody likes a bad surprise. And oftentimes when you have to have a tough conversation with somebody, it can be a bad surprise. But if we were really good upfront about setting expectations and walking through the process, and then we reinforce those expectations along the way, me having a conversation because your home didn't meet appraisal ought not be the first time we've had that conversation. Correct. It ought to be at least third, in my opinion.

Correct. Right. If I have to have a conversation about somebody bailed during option period, I should have at least had that conversation with you. Like, this is what happens during the option period. Yeah. So they at least know what an option period is. Yeah. It happened. It sucks. We're going to go back on the market. We're going to get it back under contract, you know, but we've, it's not, it's not going to be a, Oh, I didn't know that that could happen. Exactly. Exactly. It's communication is key. I think that's communication is key. And just about everything you do in life and just being able to effectively get your point across to other people, you know, use, use your words. I mean, come on, say it all the time. Just please, please, please use your words. Don't emoji me. Don't, you know, any of that. Just let's have a conversation. I would almost rather talk in person than I would be through text or email, but more often because of the loss of context. Sure. Right. You know, one of my favorite books is seven levels of communication. And it really talks about that idea of having those conversations in person versus in a place where context can get lost. Yep. Do you know that you and I share a huge pet peeve? Taylor Swift? No, nothing. Well, ish. Yeah. But it's when people send a text and say, do you have a second to talk?

Just call me. Here's my thing. Why don't we skip that text? Why don't you just call me? Yeah. And if I had a second to talk, I would answer. And if I didn't, I saw that you called and I will call you back as soon as I can. Amen, brother. Amen. And here's the thing. People think that they're doing you a favor when they do that. They really think, well, I don't want to interrupt you, but you just did. You just did. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Huge pet peeve of mine. So those are my five. I love it. I love it. Those are my five. I emailed you a few days ago and I was like, Hey, you know how we have these conversations about hospitality. Can we quantify that and like really like be able to distill it down into some takeaways? And I think you did a fantastic job, man. Really? Thank you. Thank you. So I've got one last, one last little tip from hospitality. Go for it. We used to tell people, we used to tell people, imagine that your grandmother is coming over for dinner, right? Yep. That's how the way that you would treat her, that's the way you need to treat everyone that walks in this hotel. That's the way you need to treat everyone that walks in this restaurant. You're going to not make things about yourself. You're going to make it about her. You're going to take care of her. You're going to do everything that you can to make sure that she's happy and that she gets exactly what she needs and exactly what she wants. And you're going to go above and beyond. That's how we wanted people to treat guests in a hotel. That's how we wanted people to treat guests in a restaurant. I think that's the exact same way that we need to treat clients in real estate transactions. Yep.

We say do for not to. That's it. Do for not to. Absolutely. Awesome. Aaron, thank you. If people wanted to get hold of you, how do they get hold of you? So thegreeleygroup.com. Come check us out online. All of our contact info is there. G-R-E-E-L-E-Y, thegreeleygroup.com. Awesome. Brother, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. You're a busy guy. This was great. This was really great. It was exactly what I was hoping that it would be. Awesome. Awesome. I'm glad I could do it. Thanks for having me. It was fun. Yep. And thank you for watching the Top 5 show. Hope that you are able to take some of these great tips and put them into your business to help provide a better service to your clients and we will see you next week. Take care.

Take care.