Top 5 Ways to Make the Most of Your Continuing Education with Simona Daneshfar

And we all have them or little areas that we want to improve on to better our business. And looking at CE, that focuses on that. And the beauty of online learning is there's just so much variety out there. There's so many courses you can take. I've kind of put together five of sort of the most popular and I think most beneficial courses for brokers and Realtors combined. And I think it really comes down to your areas of interest and areas that you want to focus your business on or improve your business. My top pick would definitely be our marketing, advertising and social media compliance course. And, you know, the reason I love this course is, first of all, social media has just had such a big impact on the real estate industry, more so in the last few years with the pandemic at hand.

And there is just so many social media platforms and they differ. And how do you select the right ones for you and your needs? And this course really addresses all of that. But in addition to that, it really looks at the legal and ethical issues surrounding online marketing. I think that's something that a lot of people don't know a lot about. They don't do their research. They don't understand the copyright laws, the trademarks, the public domain, and gives a little bit of an insight into that so that you don't make any social media mishaps. Because branding and imaging online, things just go viral these days, you know, and you want to make sure the right thing's going viral. Yeah. One of my favorite guys to follow online is a guy named Scott Stratton, who writes books about things, a lot of times about things not to do, especially when it comes to social media.

And he loves to poke fun at Realtors because we make it sometimes very easy to poke fun at us. And when I signed up for his newsletter years ago, the question was, why did you sign up for this newsletter? And I legitimately wrote, I signed up for this newsletter because I really hope that one day I don't end up on your Facebook. And it's true because of how quickly something can move. Yeah, exactly. And this course is great for that. So I do recommend if that's something, if you're a little bit hesitant about jumping on social media, you know, head first and just want to do your due diligence, this is a great course for that. And, you know, it will definitely satisfy and tick every box for you if you're going down that avenue.

Another really big one, which I'm always a strong believer of being at the forefront of conversation in real estate. You know, buyers, sellers, tenants, landlords, whoever you're dealing with in real estate, they are so savvy. They know what's going on out there and you want to be the person leading the conversation when they bring to you something new. So we've got a great CE course, Current Issues, Cooperation, Negotiation, I, Buyers and Disasters, which really just collaborates all those really interesting topics together that are talking points and will continue to be talking points throughout the year. New MLS requirements related to clear cooperation is, you know, policies included in that.

Some really basic things. Big topic these days. Huge topic these days. Yeah, that's definitely something that you've got to know about a lot about. Some basic methods of iBuying. And I know sometimes people hear things like iBuying and they think, oh, no, I don't want to implement that in my business or I don't really want to know about that. But you do need to know about it because a buyer will come to you with that, you know, terminology and you need to be like, oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. You know, you can't be like, what's that? What's going on? I've got no idea what that is, you know. So it is really important, even if you're not looking to implement these things in your business, that you know about them, you know, and that you are informed. Because we think about iBuyers, when you look at what they're doing, I am of the belief that iBuyers have kind of always been around, right?

We just called it We Buy Ugly Houses or we called it, you know, the guy with the sign on the street corner that says, I'll pay cash for your house. The new iBuyers just happen to have billions and billions of dollars and fancier websites, but that element has always been around. But now with the amount of money that they're able to pour into marketing, every consumer knows, they may not know the term iBuyer, but they know the names of these companies and these instant cash offers. And if you're not at least aware of how that works, you're missing the boat. Yeah. If you're the type of person who says, I don't want to put that into my business, you should really rethink that too. But that's probably a whole different show. That is a whole different show. But the beauty of this CE course is it really gives you an introduction to that and it gives you some insight into that from, you know, how you can make it work for your clients.

And also just the basic methods, because I think it's important to understand the scaffold, even if you're not going to build the foundation in your business to understand it. So you're at the forefront of that conversation. And like I said, it says in the title disasters, you know, best practices for buying and selling in natural disasters. You know, we've recently had a bit of a, you know, natural disaster come upon us, sadly. And I think just disaster planning to protect licensees and businesses is just a really important thing to have some knowledge about. I think risk management as a whole is something we don't look at too often. So I think it's great having this CE course, which just encompasses, you know, a bit of everything, but a lot of what's going on out there in the market. So, yeah. Another one that I love, which it's focusing on something a little bit different, a little bit of personal development, which I think is really important.

And it's called Selling to Your Sphere of Influence. And this is really focused on just building your real estate business based on nurturing relationships within your circle of friends, family, past clients, you know, neighbors, acquaintances. I think a lot of people don't understand the importance of keeping that network strong and utilizing your network as advocates for you, but not in a way that is disrespectful, but respectfully and non-intrusively and just learning methods and how to do that. Sometimes we're too scared to ask for the business or too shy or, you know, the relationship there is not established and you are only as good as your database and only as strong as your network.

So, something along these lines is a great way to help you along if you're really struggling with that within your database. A lot of us can manage a professional database pretty well. More experienced agents just get it. They've got a strong database. But sometimes when we look at expanding our database, we forget that we've got these great circle of friends and family that can be our advocates. But how do we go around making them really great advocates for our business? So, absolutely recommend that. I need a couple of threads to pull on that. You know, number one is, in a lot of cases, if you think about it, the agent is their CRM, right? Because they're out and they're about and they're around these people. But if there's not a system in place, if you're not around, you move, whatever, does your business just completely disappear?

We've seen that many times where somebody's got a great business and then they move to a different neighborhood or a different part of town or whatever that is. And all of a sudden their business just evaporates because they didn't have the system in place, right? And then the second part of that, and I talk about this all the time with people, is the people you like the most aren't always the people that are the best for your business. And when I first started in the industry, one of my very best refers is not really somebody that I want to go hang out with and drink a beer or anything. But they were great referrers. And so I had to be very conscious of where that business was coming from and make sure that I kept that piece of my sphere intact because so much of my business was coming from it.

And without really, a lot of people just say, okay, well, my friends are my friends and they take it for granted that they're going to be there and they're going to refer and they're going to do anything. But unless you really put conscious effort behind asking. Ask the business. It's funny. So this weekend, my daughter was going around trying to peddle her babysitting services to some of the neighbors and she was super nervous about it. And so we were kind of doing some, I mean, it was like old school sales training, right? We were doing some role playing and things like that. And I was like, look, all they can do is say no. They're already not using you. You just have to ask. The answer is always no if you don't ask. Yeah. And there's a strategy in here, the Spear of Influence strategy, which talks a lot about that chance.

So I strongly implore people that really want to tap into that network and, you know, get those people on board and actively work that network to do this course. It's great. It helps you a lot, identify a lot of self benefits for you that are just there, but you just haven't tapped into them yet. So, yeah, I really love that course. I think it's a great one. I've taken it myself. I highly recommend it. So that's great. Another one, which is probably, you know, self-explanatory when you look at the title is Roadmap to Success, Business Planning for Real Estate Professional. You've got a plan as a business professional, whether you're a standalone agent or you own the business, whether you have 500 agents or 10 agents, it doesn't matter. You need to have a plan.

And the beauty of this continuing education is it really helps you define your real estate business, a vision statement, a mission statement. There's a really helpful business plan worksheet, which is editable and customizable for you that you get as part of this Roadmap to Success. And it just helps you calculate the steps that are required to achieve your goal. And I think they're coming towards the end of the year. A lot of us hopefully have planned already for next year. Some of us might be starting. Some of us might be coming to the end of our business planning. But I think it's just such an important part of business to make sure that you're setting smart goals and you have a business plan in pace ready to go for 2022.

Yeah, you know, we did a we did a really deep dive actually yesterday here in the brokerage on using the vision statement element to really drive business planning. And I think that there are I think people say, OK, well, I want to sell X number of homes this year or I want to make X number of dollars this year. And that's all great. But if you don't have if that's your destination, you know, I equate it to using like Google Maps or Waze or something like that. If that's where you're going, what are the driving directions to get there? What are the step by step directions to get to the destination? Right. And that is essentially your business plan. And you've got to think about the car that's pulling out in front of you.

You've got to, you know, that's going to just take you off course. You've got to think about different ways to get there. Is there more than one way to skin a cat in real estate? We know that there is. But if you're not sitting down and being very, very conscious about that, you know, and not doing it January 1st, doing it months in advance so you can play it, then you're really missing out. It's an accountability thing more than anything. I think that's what a lot of people forget. You've just got to reverse engineer the numbers. And a lot of people don't understand that. I want to sell a million plus, you know, in commission. That's what I want to earn. They don't realize, well, how are you going to get to that end mark? How many calls you're going to make? How many emails you've got to make? Then as a business, if you've got business revenue goals, well, where's that revenue going to come from? And I think, like you said, that those steps are really should be planned out in advance, not, you know, reactive, proactively and very well calculated.

And you need to, you know, leave a bit of room there for any deviations or any spanners in the works, just in case, you know, that you come across. I don't know when you're going to go through like a global pandemic or something, right? Yeah, I know. In case we just get stuck in some sort of thing where we're all locked at home. But, you know, that's a great one. It's a really solid course. And I think that template, if you don't have a business template currently, will be very helpful for anybody who needs it. And it's not just for business owners. It's for, you know, individual agents who have got some really big goals in mind. I strongly suggest that course. The last one, and this one is something that we sort of touched on before, and it sort of encompasses everything we've spoken about already, is technology tools, trends and risk management. So, tech is big everywhere now. And I think the pandemic has really made us dive headfirst into technology.

And I think as a business owner, if you're not using the tools or adopting the tools to enhance your business, you're going to be behind the eight ball from the word go, you know. Technology, there's so many things out there that are available to us that we don't know about yet and that we need to know about and we need to be aware of. This course is great in showing you how to secure buyer representation agreements. We're talking about, you know, single property sites, speaking photos, minimizing risk through technology. Just so many different platforms out there. Transaction management, document sharing. The great thing about this course in particular is it talks about the technology, but then it also talks about the risk management side of technology.

You need to know how to keep online data secure. It's very, very important. It's not something you can brush over. A lot of people are quick to implement and not quick to manage the back end and how you're managing the risk. You're holding a lot of very sensitive data and you need to make sure that you are managing it effectively and safely. So if you're someone that's not too sure about what sort of risk management softwares are out there or online secure data portals and things like that, this is a great course to give you some great insight into the management of that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, I've looked at that course also. And one of the things that I like about it is how it kind of thinks about it. I don't really know a better word to say this than it thinks about it sort of holistically.

Yes. Right. So I think one of the trappings of real estate agents a lot of times is that we are easily distracted by the shiny new thing. Right? And so we have this technology. We have this marketing thing. We have this and this and this. And this really looks at, from a whole, how does all of that work together? Yeah. And how do you manage it to where not only is it helping you build your business, but it's helping you protect your business? Yeah. Which is important. Again, we come back to that risk management. You've just got to, you know, plan for that and just know that every action has an opposite or equal reaction. So just be prepared for that. So we were chatting before about SAE. I remember over the phone you kind of said, Simona, this is a question I get so often from so many new agents, you know, that first renewal milestone.

How do I, what do I say? What do I say to these people about SAE? And you're right, it's a milestone for a lot of people. And I really think SAE is really just an opportunity to consolidate everything you've learned in pre-licensing, everything you've learned over the last two odd years, less than two years by the time you do your SAE. And just build that solid foundation for the past months in consolidating all that knowledge. So, and look, Chance, you can give some insight into this. I'm sure you know there are lots of different ways that SAE can be piecemealed together. There's a lot of variety out there. I love the way we do it at the CE shop because it just simplifies it for people. It's just a package that you can get. There's three subheadings that you get it under.

It's brokerage, investment, and appraisal. And it just encompasses everything you need to know from the foundation basis of real estate that you really should know or will address any gaps in knowledge that you've maybe forgotten from your pre-licensing or haven't had a chance to, you know, review in the last 18 months. And if you're outside of the state of Texas and you're wondering what the hell is it? Oh, yeah. SAE is our post-licensing education here in the state of Texas. And, you know, in Texas, once you get your license, you have two years to, in your first renewal, and you have to get an additional 90 hours. And so there's classes that people take that qualify specifically for SAE. But regardless, my big thing with SAE is when you take your pre-licensing classes, typically, unless you worked in some aspect of the real estate world, there's not a lot of context.

And if we're going to be just plainly honest with each other, most of it is what can they test you on? And so it's not stuff that's real applicable to your day-to-day role as an agent, right? And so SAE, to me, is probably even more valuable than pre-licensure because it has context, right? At this point, two years in, hopefully, you've closed a few transactions. You've certainly worked with buyers and sellers, maybe some tenants. You've held an open house. You've done some marketing. And maybe it worked. Maybe it didn't. And that's where the marketing part of the SAE can come into play. And so, to me, that's the beauty of that post-licensing education is you're being able to add context and really, I think, retain more that isn't just there to be tested on.

And the language is more familiar to you. You've got to remember a lot of people coming into real estate, the real estate lingo, the language, it seems foreign. And you're probably reading through a lot of the context and going, oh, I've never heard this word before. Now those words are really familiar to you. You know, when we talk about real estate appraisal and you've bought or sold a house at this point, you've transactioned, you understand the appraisal process, you understand the function of an appraisal. And going through that again and just making sure that you've consolidated that knowledge is really important. Like I said, these subheadings, brokerage, you know, understanding the organization of a broker business, you would have some insight. Like you're working, you know, in a broker business and records and controls, recruitment, risk management, ethical and legal compliance, which is very, very important in this day and age.

And then these conversations, investment, you know, what a great topic, talking about the principles, pros and cons of investing in the real estate market. You would have had this dialogue with clients already. You would have had these conversations, how to do feasibility studies, tax laws, the different types of real estate that's out there, residential, commercial, industrial. Like I said, I really like how the CE shop piece feels it out because I think it's really important to cover all these avenues as a Realtor who is just still making their mark in the industry and still, you know, doing a lot of the transactioning and everything alongside somebody else. So, I think it's, like I said, I really like the way we do it and the legal update one and two, people always ask me, what is the difference between legal update one and two?

The easiest way for me to explain it is legal update one is really about legislation. It's Trek rule updates. It's changes to the seller disclosure. It's really focusing on best practices due to selecting user seller disclosures, things like that, whereas legal update two is more focused on ethics and it really talks about working with unrepresented buyers, rebates and referrals. It gives some really great case studies on rebates and referral violations so that we can learn from our mistakes and, you know, copyright review and proper usage of copyrighted material, lender relations. Relationships, market service agreements. So, they are very different. They're not the same.

They do touch on very different parts of legislation and parts of the legal aspect of real estate. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You know, I know one of the things we wanted to do today is make sure that everybody knows that we're coming up on the end of 2021, which is the first cycle of the new NAR ethics requirement. So, if you haven't gotten that fulfilled, now is the time to do it. And then every three years thereafter, because this will live on beyond 2021, but make sure that we're taking care of that. Yeah. I go back to the argument that if we have to teach ethics, we have a bigger problem. Right? But I think that one of the things that's probably, to me, the most applicable when you look at ethics training and things like that is often the examples of where someone violated the code.

Yeah. You can look at it and you can say, yeah, I could easily see how that would happen. I mean, some of them are egregious, right? And you're like, holy crap, how does this person not in prison? But some of them are like, yeah, okay, I can see how that happened for sure. And then you say, now I know what not to do. And we learn from other people's mistakes. The case studies, I mean, the TREC case studies are excellent. They really, they put it into context as we go back to putting everything into context. Everything we learn gets put back into context at some point of our real estate career. And just reading through those gives a lot of insight into how close sometimes we may be to treading on that line of, okay, an ethical boundary that we need to be careful of. So, you know, it is important to include ethics as part of our learning and our continuing education.

But, yeah, I agree with you, Chance. A lot of the time it's a lot of this should be things that we should know and should be, you know, hopefully actively aware of and very self-aware of as agents, you know, out there in the real estate world. But leading on from that, and we've sort of had a chat about this before, but designations, I think that's an area that a lot of people are just not sure what are designations, which ones should I get, what's the best designation out there. And I really want to touch on that just following off that SAE because I'm sure as everybody is building their career in real estate, you know, there's so many things out there available to agents to elevate themselves as agents within the real estate world.

But navigating through designations can get a little bit confusing for some people. And the way I see designations, and this is how I've always explained it to anyone and everybody who talks about designations with me, is they're like specialized credentials for Realtors. You know, they really showcase a Realtor's knowledge and experience in a wide variety of niches and sectors. And to me, they really demonstrate and should demonstrate to the public or the industry, your commitment to professional development and customer service within that sector. Yeah. You know, for me, designations, people ask all the time. I think the number one thing to get off everybody's plate here is just because you have three letters after your name does not mean that people are going to be like, oh, well, I better call him or call her.

You know, I think because I teach a lot of these, I think I have nine or 10 of designations and certifications at this point. And never one time has anybody picked up the phone and said, oh, I need to buy a house and I see that you're an ABR. I want you to represent me because you're accredited. You know, that just doesn't happen. When I look at designations, it's if I'm sitting in your living room and we're having a conversation and I'm trying to win your business, I can point to the fact that I am one of X percent of the agents in the United States who have this specialized education to make sure that I'm able to help you reach your goals the very best. Yeah. That's the key to designations and certifications. And then the other part of that for me with designations is I think that there are some really good base level designations.

And I think that those, they may shift over time, but generally speaking, we should be listening to what our clients tell us. And if you read things like the NAR profile of buyers and sellers, they tell you they want somebody who's a great guide on either buying or selling home. They want that guide to walk them through there. So to me, if I want to be a great guide for a buyer, I want to be an ABR. If I want to be a great guide for a seller, I want to be an SRS. They want somebody who's going to help them negotiate and make a good deal. And so to me, that looks like maybe the PSA, the pricing strategy advisor certification for sellers. And then for either buyer or seller, either the RE&E or the C&E or one of the negotiation designations or certifications.

And then from there, if you want to deal with military people, go get your MRP. If you want to deal with seniors, go get your SRS. Whatever that is, pick your niches. But I think there's a decent base there that looks like SRS, ABR, and then some negotiation and pricing. I mean, you nailed it, Chance. Like, take a look at your target market. You know, I always ask people, do you need a well-rounded base? Are you going to be working with buyers or sellers? What real estate sector are you looking to really specialize in? It should form part of your goals. A lot of these designations are not just course-based. They have volume production behind them as well, which you're required to hit. So when we talk back on planning our goals for the year, if you're planning to get a designation this year, jump online at the National Association of Realtors website and have a look at what are the requirements for those designations and make them part of your goals.

It's a great way to plan your goals for the year. Another great thing is look at the cost of the association, the membership dues, everything that's involved. Do you want to be part of these designations for, you know, hopefully the life of your career or for a big chunk of it? And the great thing that I love about these associations is you're surrounded by people who are passionate about the same thing you're passionate about. And really, particularly for the volume-based, you know, designations that are out there, you're surrounded by some really high-achieving agents. And it's a wonderful environment to be in for you to grow as an agent as well. I couldn't agree with you more. When I first started in the industry, I didn't want to hang out with Realtors for any reason. My thought was, why the hell would I hang out with Realtors?

They're not going to buy a house from me. And then my very first business coach was like, well, what Realtors do you hang out with? And I'm like, nobody, man. Why would I do that? That's ridiculous. And he's like, no, no, no. You can't be a secret agent. You got to go out there and meet with people. And, you know, you get better. And it's true. Whether it's association inside or service inside of the associations or, you know, I am a CRS. And so we have a quarterly lunch here. And going and being around, you know, CRS has a pretty hefty dealership price to pay, whether it's education or production or all the things you have to get to get it. And I love being in the room with that group. Like, not only do we have great speakers, but just hanging out with those agents, I always learn something.

Yeah. It really elevates you. It's a great energy in the room. You're rubbing shoulders with the right people. And you walk out of there feeling inspired and motivated and, you know, ready to go. And, yeah, like I said, that's the complementing part of designations for an agent, you know, that set them as goals, get them. And definitely, like you said, rubbing shoulders with the right people and networking with the right people is always really, really important. Yeah. Iron sharpens iron. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But, yes, the NAS ethics module is definitely something that is going to be at the forefront, I hope, of most agents' minds. Up to the quarter six. I did want to let people know if you're looking for an online course, we've got three different NAS ethics courses that are approved, ready to go.

You can buy them as a bundle package as part of your CE. So, you can actually do your NAS ethics with your legal updates and everything all as one, which is great. A lot of people are a little bit confused about the TREC requirements and the NAS requirements. They are different. You can't just, it's not a two-for-one sort of, you can't just do the legal update to an ethics. Because it used to be, it used to be, right? Exactly. You can count it as the ethics credit, but not anymore. Yeah, yeah. So, I just wanted to clarify that for, you know, agents that are out there thinking, oh, I've done legal update too. I'm done. You're not. You've got to do your NAS as well. So, make sure you jump online and get that done. Rob Schroeder is our BDE representative for Houston. He's always happy to have a chat if you've got any questions or anything. If you're looking for when's our next sale, I always get that question.

Follow us on Facebook. Subscribe to our newsletter. We usually let everybody know well in advance that we're going to be having a sale and get online. And once you purchase that CE, it's good for 12 months. So, you know, get online and get it when the sales are on and then you'll get the benefit of the sale. And an opportunity to get it done sooner than later is my recommendation. Yep. And you can go to theceshop.com, right? Absolutely. Theceshop.com. And like I said, it's really easy. If you know how to online shop, you'll know how to buy a course straight to the CE shop without any problems whatsoever. It's very, very easy. And I always say this to your chance, and you know because, you know, you know our company well, but the accessibility and the variety of courses and just the ease of being able to do those courses on your own time is just parallel to none.

And it's just something, time is such a valuable commodity that we don't have a lot of at the moment. And I think a lot of people are taking advantage and really enjoying that self-paced learning that we really love at the CE shop as well. We get a lot of great feedback on our courses, high satisfaction rates. We're looking to keep it interesting. We're always changing the variety of courses available to people and, you know, looking at really targeting areas in real estate that we think are really important to target in our education. So I do urge you if you're not the sort of person who enjoys online learning so much or maybe you're back to your traditional methods of the classroom to jump online and do an online course. It's come such a long way and the platform is just super, super, super user-friendly. So don't be afraid.

Get on there. Awesome. Simona, thank you. Appreciate you coming around and talking about education. I'm hoping, you know, that, you know, for the people who watch and listen to this, that they are inspired to go take some classes that will really impact their business as opposed to just checking boxes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Knowledge is power. That's right. Be sure to appreciate you. Thank you. For those of you who took the time to listen to the Top 5 show, we're back every week on Wednesdays with great episodes, just like this one. We hope that you'll be able to take these Top 5 elements, put them into your business, and help grow a better business in the future. So have a great day and thanks everyone for stopping by. We'll see you next time.