Description:

Brian Hall, a realtor with EXP Realty in El Paso, Texas, has a unique background as a military chaplain in the army, which has shaped his current career in real estate, specializing in assisting soldiers with their transitions. His perspective on the topic of "from army chaplain to realtor, assisting soldier transitions" is deeply rooted in his belief in the importance of soldiers' freedom to practice their own spiritual beliefs within the boundaries set by the Army. He also discusses his own transition from being an army chaplain to a realtor, explaining that he felt he couldn't give the reserves what it needed at that point and wanted to honor his job. His skills as a chaplain, such as listening, have been beneficial in his real estate career. Join Bill Risser and Brian Hall on this episode of The Real Estate Sessions podcast to learn more about his unique journey and perspective.

Social links for Brian:

Facebook Page

Instagram

Timestamped Outline

(00:00:29) Real Estate Success Stories: From Army Chaplain to Realtor

(00:01:34) Brian Hall's Diverse Texas Market Perspective

(00:07:28) Providing Spiritual Support to Soldiers in War

(00:14:34) Inclusive Spiritual Support for Soldiers of Different Faiths

(00:17:31) Military Skills Enhance Real Estate Success

(00:21:46) Smooth Housing Transitions for Service Members

(00:35:26) The Power of Mentorship in Real Estate

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Well, that was part of what attracted me to

the chaplaincy was that getting to work with people

who believe different things and learning about them and

why you believe those things. And I felt very

strongly about our first amendment rights to practice our

own traditions. Army's got some boundaries that we have

to follow, but within those boundaries, I wanted to

make sure that those soldiers felt that they had

the space to practice their spirit virtual life as

they could.

You're listening to the real estate sessions podcast. And

I'm your host, Bill Risser, executive vice president, strategic

partnerships with RateMyAgent, a digital marketing platform designed to

help great agents harness the power of verified reviews.

For more information, head on over to ratemyagent.com. Listen

in as I interview industry leaders and get their

stories and journeys to the world of real estate.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 364 of the real

estate sessions podcast. Thank you so much for tuning

in. Thank you so much for telling a friend.

Today we're going to head to the west Texas

town of El Paso. You're going to hear that

mentioned a couple of times in the show, but

we're going to be talking to Brian Hall. Brian

hall is with EXP realty. His team name is

the service first team. He works a lot with

fort bliss people coming in and out the PCs

portion of their career where they're being transferred. And

I'm really excited to talk to Brian about his

career in the army. It's a little different. It's

going to be a path that I've never had

a conversation with someone who took this path before,

so it's going to be a lot of fun.

Let's get this thing started. Brian, welcome to the

podcast.

Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it and appreciate those kind

words.

Yeah, well, look, we're going to have a lot

of fun. Know I mentioned we met through rate,

my agent, which you're a user of ours, and

we're very excited to chat a little bit about

that later. But first of all, like all my

episodes, I want to find out about you. We're

going to get to the real estate stuff shortly,

but let's first of all, you're in El Paso,

and I know that because you do very well

in the my agent awards in El Paso. Are

you a native Texan? Did you grow up in

the largest state in the country?

I guess it a little bit depends on your

definition of native. My dad was actually in the

air force, and I was actually born in riverside,

California, but I don't ever remember growing up outside

of Texas. So my brother was born in great

falls, Montana, and then we moved to abilene, Texas,

my mom's hometown. I think I was two, but

graduated from high school in Abilene, Texas, went to

college at TCU. After that and then worked for

a few years after college in the Dallas Fort

Worth area. So I basically consider myself a Texan.

Yeah, I think you have the right that's pretty

good. There's others that it's kind of off. It's

a little bit off when they're saying they're a

Texan. Like, wait a little. You got there when

you were 22. And I know you're 40, but

that doesn't count.

We welcome other people from other states being in

the real estate industry, I see that they come

in, but we're definitely proud to be Texans.

Yeah. Give me the biggest misconception about Texas for

those outside of Texas.

Well, kind of the lighthearted response is that we

do not ride horses to work everywhere in Texas,

nor do wear cowboy hats all of the time.

So I do own a pair of boots and

I do wear those occasionally, but that's kind of

the lighthearted response. I do think, though, one of

the major misconceptions is people just don't understand how

big geographically know I'll see on, especially with my

work with the military. People come, they get stationed

in El Paso, Texas, and, you know, my cousin

lives in Austin. I'll just run over and see

them. That is a nine hour drive from El

Paso, relatively at the speed limit. My dad's family

is in Houston, Texas. We made the trek one

time from El Paso to Houston. We did that

in two days just because I had little kids.

It was roughly 13 hours of driving. And so

it's a big state with a lot of space

between the major cities.

Yeah. Texas is filled with sports teams, so I

need some answers from you. You can go whichever

way you want with this stuff. Either. Is it

cowboys or Texans? Is it Rangers or Astros? Is

it, oh, wait, how about Mavs or Rockets? Where

are we at, Brian?

Well, I'm a little bit of a house divided,

honestly. I grew up a Cowboys fan, and then

you could say I broke up with the Cowboys

when Jerry Jones bought the team because I did

not like the way he handled the firing of

Tom Landry and my middle school head. Be everyone

should be treated honestly and fairly all the time

and live on your pedigree somewhat. And then I

became an Oilers fan after that because my dad's

family was in Houston. So I got to watch

all the Cowboys enjoy their Super Bowls of the

90s. But now I've married into a Cowboys family.

My wife's family is from Dallas. She has raised

my boys, you might say, to be Cowboys fans.

So we're definitely Cowboys fans in this house now,

especially since the Oilers no longer exist in that

form.

Right.

But huge Rangers fan growing up since having kids,

just haven't had the time to follow them as

I used to. I was also a Rockets fan

for a long time, but again, just my wife's

is a huge they're all Dallas sports fans, so

sports fans as well. So we're mostly the Dallas

Fort Worth Metroplex sports fans, I should say.

That's fair. That's fair. You actually attended university in

that part of the country, fort Worth, I think,

right is where TCU is located, correct?

Yes.

What was your plan? What was your field of

study? What were you going to be doing after

school? I'm just assuming real estate wasn't even a

blip on the radar.

No, it was not.

Okay, and then I do want to know what

a horn frog is too. You have to answer

that question.

That's a multi part question.

Yes. I'll leave it to you.

I'll start with the last question first. A horned

frog, also known as a horned toad or a

horned lizard. It's a specific species of lizard that's

kind of native to the southwest desert climates. I

remember seeing them a lot when I was a

kid. I grew up in Abilene, Texas, so about

150 miles west of TCU. Down the interstate. Saw

a lot of horn frogs growing horn toads I

think as we called them then growing up. And

then yeah. So I went to graduate from high

school. I was kind of a math science guy

in high school. Said, Brian, you should be an

engineer. That lasted about three semesters and it was

know, not exciting enough for I couldn't like a

lot of kids that age, I didn't know what

I wanted to be when I grew up, so

I'd already planned to take a lot of math

classes as an engineer. So I just ended up

getting a math degree. However, I also minored in

computer science and this was right late 90s.com bubble

was happening and so computer jobs were quite prevalent.

I did work for an insurance company for about

six months after college. Again, didn't really enjoy that

and then went and ended up coming with one

of my classmates from TCU. Worked with her doing

it work at a publishing company there in Fort

Worth. And I was there for that was my

first career before the army.

I'd love to see how the army comes into

play because here we are. You're probably I'm going

to guess you're in your late twenty s. I

would.

Think most recruits yeah, around 30.

Around 30. Okay. So most recruits into the army

are I would guess a little bit younger than

that.

Absolutely. I was working for this company. I love

the people I work with. We were owned by

a much larger corporation and they were just making

some changes as larger corporations do to try to

make more efficiencies. And I could just see kind

of the writing on the wall anyway, so the

culture was changing and I was in again probably

spot my life. I was single, looking for something

a little more meaningful, you might say. This was

kind of putting in history. This is the global

war and terror. 911 had happened. This was the

early, probably mid to late aughts around seven. So

the war was hot and heavy in Iraq and

Afghanistan at that point. And I had some buddies

who, when 911 happened, really as just about everybody

in the whole country really sent some shockwaves and

then really did some soul searching about what's important.

And I had never really acted on that, but

kind of at reaching a point in my life.

I reconnected with a friend of mine from TCU

who was in ministry, and we just got to

be really close friends. And I kind of was

a little bit of envying of her job of

being in ministry, working with spiritual ideas, something more

meaningful than helping a corporation increase their bottom line,

right. Anyway, so that was kind of I did

some soul searching, for lack of a better term.

And she really challenged me to really like, as

someone, a person of faith, as I was I

was raised in church, really. Just I know you'd

say you're doing good things. It's not like I

was doing criminal activity, of course, or anything like

that, but it was what's meaningful and what should

you be doing? I spent a day like, in

the park just really praying and meditating about what

is right for me right now career wise. And

the answer I got was that not this, but

I didn't know what exactly was next. And then

it was a couple of days later, I heard

a talk by a retired chaplain from my church.

And he was talking not specifically about the chaplaincy,

but he did relate some stories of when he

had been deployed to Panama back in the early

eighty s and just in those harshest of moments

still finding spirituality and being able to share that

with his soldiers and help them find meaning in

the Christian definition of salvation as well. And so

that just really spoke to me at that, like

I said. So then I went back, single guy

went back, talked to mom. Mom was the spiritual

sort of head of my family. And she's like,

Brian, if this is something that you're considering, the

church has reopened the chaplain training program. And if

you are considering something like this, this is the

time in your life to do it. You don't

have any immediate family ties. It was pretty much

right. Then I made that decision to quit my

corporate job, sold my house. And then the church

did require, or actually the Department of Defense requires

a master's degree to be a chaplain. And so

I didn't have that master's degree. So that was

my first step was to go to school for

three years, get a full time up in Boston,

Massachusetts. My church is headquartered in Boston, so in

addition to the academic training, they provided some auxiliary

chaplain training at the church itself.

And then how long were you active?

I was active for about seven ish years, a

little over seven. So I left active duty in

the summer. My final outdate was like, the end

of September of 2018, I transitioned over the Reserves

because I did enjoy serving, I did like my

job, and I drilled for a couple of about

almost two years in the Reserves. And then real

estate, unfortunately, or fortunately got too busy.

Right.

And we know a lot of real estate happens

on the weekends, so it's really hard, as you're

building to say one weekend of a month, I'm

not available, kind of thing. And then there's definitely

a little bit of for me personally, it was

a split mindset of trying to be this spiritual

leader, what the unit needed, and then doing also

real estate as well. The bottom line is I

couldn't give the reserves what it needed at that

point. I didn't feel like I was honoring that

job. And so instead of getting all the way

out of the Reserves, I moved over into inactive

state or the IRR, as we call it. So

technically, I'm administratively still in, but I'm not doing

mean. There's the potential that I could be recalled

if the country needs me, and that's part of

why US gets invaded. They could call me up

and I could go off and be a chaplain

again for the army if they need me.

My guess is, in your role as a Realtor,

especially with all the stuff you do with Fort

Bliss and all that other stuff, you're still helping

out quite a bit with all of that training

you received.

Yeah, I had some clients that my wife and

I worked together as a team in our real

estate business. And so there's many times where husband

and wife client gets to know us as husband

and wife in addition to just Realtor. And so

this particular couple I felt like we'd gotten to

be friends with, and we've seen each other socially

since they bought their house here, but they were

building a house and having some really major frustrations

with the builder. And so we had a call

myself and the husband wife client. The wife is

an army psychiatrist. And anyway, so they were just

kind of just venting, for lack of a better

term, like all of the challenges they're having with

this know? And I sat there and listened, and

then the husband and as we wrapping up the

conversation, and the husband was like, brian, have you

ever considered a career in the mental health field?

You're such a good listener. And I was like,

Joey, do you remember? I'm an army chaplain. He's

like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So there

are times where I do get to use those

skills.

That's awesome. I have to be honest, I'm in

my 60s. I've never talked to a chaplain before.

I want to ask a couple of questions just

about that side of your life. Yeah, I mean,

it's fascinating. I just think of Mash when I

think of a chaplain because there was right. And

that's in really tough situation deployed. We're at war

in that movie or that series. But for you

talk a little bit about I'm sure you were

deployed overseas. You had units that you had to

help, and you help I imagine you help in

a lot of different ways. One of them, you

said, is listening. Right. But there have got to

be some other things that you're really structured to

help those soldiers with.

Yeah. So one of our kind of main sort

of shorthand guiding principles as a chaplain is to

perform or provide. So my job is for my

Christian soldiers, especially the Protestants. Like, I could perform

worship rites, et cetera, for them. I'm not Catholic,

I'm not a Catholic priest. So because of the

way that faith works, traditionally, I can't perform their

sacraments for them, their eucharist. And so what I

did when we were deployed, we went to Turkey

for about a year, right. When the Syrian Civil

War kicked off over there, I was with a

Patriot missile battalion, and we were sent over there

to provide, basically play defense. And so fortunately, we

were close enough to a regular US. Air Force

installation over in Insurlic, Turkey, and they had a

Catholic priest over there who was a chaplain. So,

again, my job was then, and I made arrangements

for him to come over about once a month

to do Catholic worship for my Catholic soldiers. And

then that particular unit, I also had a Buddhist

soldier. So meditation is very important to that tradition.

And so one of the perks about being a

chaplain is you typically always have your own office

space because of we need to have confidential space

to have counseling in. Right. So I had an

office, and I made that office available to him

so he could have that private time to meditate

when he needed to. So that was my way

of providing a space for him as well. And

then the other thing that I always really tried

to do, especially on deployment, was the American holiday

of Thanksgiving is important to because gratitude and expressions

of gratitude are fairly universal across the traditions. Right.

And so that particular deployment, I also had a

Muslim soldier, and so we had Christian, Muslim, and

Budhism represented in that. And I did a gratitude

Thanksgiving service, and I always tried to do that

when I was deployed to again, the expressions of

gratitude was always a way to uplift and kind

of move from the as we say in the

army, the suck that's going on. We're away from

our families eating food that we would rather not

be eating, and let's find something that we can

be grateful for. Wow.

I love your use of the word traditions. I

think that's fantastic. So just a different way of

looking at everyone has a different comes from a

different place, right? Yeah.

Well, that was part of what attracted me to

the chaplaincy, was that getting to work with people

who believe different things and learning about them and

why you believe those things. And I felt very

strongly about our First Amendment rights to practice our

own traditions. Army's got some boundaries that we have

to follow, but within those boundaries, I wanted to

make sure that those soldiers felt that they had

the space to practice their spiritual life as they

could.

Yeah, well, as I said a little bit earlier,

I think those skills you picked up in your

time in the army absolutely dovetails directly into the

world of real estate. I mean, you're constantly you're

helping people, you're teaching them, you're solving problems for

them, you're consoling them. There's lots of things, I

feel that work very well for you.

Yes. Especially the last couple of years of the

COVID market. We definitely had some counseling that we

consulting, especially for buyers who were losing out on

multiple offers all the time. Yeah, we definitely had

some challenges we had to work through. Right.

So active duty, you were stationed at Fort Bliss.

I'm just guessing that's what got you to know

when you went reserve, you could have lived anywhere.

Right. You didn't have to choose El Paso, but

yeah.

So why it's I think a lot of it

has to do with the impression El Paso made

on my family when we came into Were. This

is pre COVID, so we had a chance to

come down, and we're coming from Fort Sill, Oklahoma,

so we're close enough that we could come down.

Came down over spring break to report in July

to just kind of look around and figure, know

this West Texas town of El Paso, as Marty

Robbins likes to call. So when we got here,

my middle son, who is now eight, was four

months old, and so he was this blonde haired,

blue eyed kid baby. And just like we went

to the restaurants, the waitresses were just kind of

gaga over him and just really warm to us

as a family. And then there's a vineyard not

too far. It's actually just across the state line

in New Mexico. My wife and I were there

just listening to some music, just kind of chatted

up somebody next to us and told them, we're

with the army coming to El Paso. Next thing

I know, they bought us a bottle of wine,

said, welcome to El Paso. We're glad you're here.

And that sort of welcoming has just kind of

kept on. So that was one of the reasons

that we decided to stay. We also, when we

came in, we bought a house with the idea

what a lot of military do. They'll buy a

house and then they rent it out kind of

as an investment for later on during, but so

we already owned our house. And then the other

thing that really kind of I think, was a

factor was the school systems. So there's four major

school districts. There's several other Ancillary school districts around

in El Paso city limits the district where all

these four major districts, they provide dual language education

free of charge. And so my son, who's now

in 6th grade, has had Spanish half the day,

in Spanish every day wow. For his whole career.

That's awesome. I've got three boys, 6th grader, third

grader, first grader, and they've all been in the

dual language program. And it's awesome. My 6th grader

basically functions as our translator when we need it.

Went to one of our favorite restaurants. They'd swapped

out the wait staff, and I think they'd moved

all of their English speakers to their new location.

And so we were a little stuck. But my

6th grader, I think he was fifth grade at

that point, just without missing a beat, able to

order all our food, ask for the kids stuff

to come out early, which is our normal way

to get the kids happy. And it was without

missing a beat in Spanish. All of just my

wife and I just looked at each other like,

we're just really grateful for that free education, that

free aspect of the education that we're getting here.

So those were our big reasons.

I'll wrap up this portion of the episode with

I want to talk a little bit about the

PCs pay it forward program as something you're involved

in, I would imagine. As a realtor next to

an army base, you're the one, regardless of what

sort of certification you get from Nar or whatever,

when you've lived it, it's a lot different than

just taking a class, right?

Definitely. So, yeah. So PCs Pay It Forward is

an organization that was started by Lauren Taylor, military

spouse out in San Diego. And then this is

her. The medium that she chose was Facebook to

kind of reach service members. But it's got three

main goals, at least in the army, they have

what's called the sponsor program, as opposed to like,

hey, I'm coming to your unit. Okay. We assign

you someone of equivalent rank to kind of help

you with that transition to get from your current

duty station to your new one, which is us.

And you can imagine if you assign that to

a single 22 year old, how much really help

are you going to get? And no offense to

single 22 year olds, I was one at one

point. I think I've joked about this with the

Pay It Forward group, that if that program was

really doing its real job, we wouldn't be necessary.

But it's a challenge just because everyone's got their

own day job in the military besides trying to

help this person I've never met before, kind of

right? That's our goal is to provide this smooth

transition to get you into a home, whether it's

living on post, renting off post, or buying a

house in the local community. That's the goal is

to get you into a house and then kind

of ancillary to that is to then eliminate the

need for any kind of temporary housing as much

as possible. Gotcha during COVID when builders were getting

delayed all the time, it was kind of hard

to avoid that. And so we had a lot

of people saying airbnbs, but as much as we

can to start that process sooner rather than later.

I just closed with some clients a couple of

weeks ago. They had an airbnb for about a

week, and that's actually not typical for my buyers.

Usually we have them start soon enough so that

they can either show up and close or close

before they even get here, kind of thing, and

they're ready to just move right in. Same thing

with our renters. Try to get them plugged into

the local property managers and get them video tours

and hopefully signing a lease before they spend a

long time here in El Paso looking for that.

Right.

And then the third goal that we have is

to educate potential renters to avoid rental scams. And

there was an article a couple years ago how

many thousands of dollars have been scammed out of

service members for sending the deposits and then find

out that whoever they sent that money to has

nothing to do with that property and able to

rent it. So we really try to use Verified

Rental listings. Fortunately, El Paso. There's a lot of

listings in the multiple listing service for rentals. The

MLS, I know there are some military installations. Those

local MLS don't have many at all. At least

in El Paso we have that. So those are

listings. You have to be a member of the

association through a brokerage. So those are going to

be legitimate. Then, you know, people will send me

stuff on Zillow and it's like, for rent by

owner. And I'm like, proceed with caution. These are

some questions that you need to ask and make

sure. So I always try as best I can

to help those potential renters as well. Get them

those verified rental listings and then try to put

them in contact with the actual listing agents to

get those leases signed.

For those going to say that's good knowledge for

everyone in the country who's an agent.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I mean, we all have to be watching.

Brian, you get to real estate around 2018, roughly

2018, 2019. And you start with Century 21, but

just a couple of years ago, you make the

switch over to Exp.

I did, yeah.

And what was the rationale there for that move?

Sure. So my business coach had been with EXP

and just kind of very gently recruiting me over

that time period. But I was very happy at

Centric 21, my first broker. And I look back,

that is where I needed to start my real

estate career. That's because he gave me what I

needed to begin my career. I'm definitely a rule

follower and like, to understand the why behind things.

And he was very good about educating us, just

being good with understanding contracts, understanding laws and rules

and things like that, just to keep us out

of trouble. I still see him around the association

and still actually refer him for people who want

to rent their houses out, to go rent them

out through that office. But I felt that I

would get more as far as team building, I

have a small team as well as just the

higher level training that's available through EXP. Being a

national company, you just have the access to a

lot of high level realtors that are doing big

things, if that's what you want to. Just like

I said, she had been just kind of gently

presenting that and kind of then at one point

basically kind of gave me an offer I couldn't

refuse to help me. That was when I pulled

the trigger, finally. And it was a happy and

a sad day, honestly. My oldest son actually cried

when I told him I was leaving, essentially 21,

which shocked me and Elizabeth, my wife, that he

had that much attachment to that office. I mean,

Elizabeth and I also shed some tears as well,

because, like I said, we really liked being there,

but it was what we needed to. It was

like I said, it was a happy and a

sad transition, but one that I've definitely appreciated and

enjoyed.

I would imagine that because El Paso is much

bigger than I thought.

What's?

The population of El Paso. Rough?

I think you had somewhere like 700,000 plus or

minus big.

It's a big city.

It is a big city.

It's not the town that Marty Ross okay.

Anymore.

So your breakdown of your work, right. If I

was to look at your transactions in a given

year, what percentage of it is helping inbound and

outbound, PCs, military, taking care of things, versus your

local community, where we all know.

Real estate is local, it's definitely lopsided. I'd say

90, 95 plus percent of my stuff is military.

Okay. Which is good because being kind of a

transplant into the city, I didn't have much of

a sphere of influence. As we talk about in

the real estate industry, it's not like I'm not

going to help my civilian friends from El Paso.

That net does not pull back much. That net

is getting wider as we spend more time here,

as the kids.

Get older and you meet more people.

That'S all we're involved in, more organizations. We were

at a daycare here for seven years, and I

was on that board, and this is not why

I was on the board, but just as real

estate goes, I was able to do a couple

of transactions through those contacts that I met. So,

yeah, absolutely, it helped the civilian population, but my

bread and butter is military and VA buyers gotcha

and I.

Would imagine even in. That space. It's heavily referral,

relationship based. Is that true?

I do, yeah. So one of the neat things

about the PCs pay It Forward organization is our

title is Ambassador. And so there's an ambassador for

each just about every DoD installation. Some of that

there's some smaller ones, either Air Force or Coast

Guard, some that don't necessarily have a full time

ambassador. But yeah, definitely. You know, I have a

lot of traffic going between Fort Hood, which is

now Fort Cavavos. It's been renamed after many years,

which is hard for us in the army to

make that name change.

Sure.

But yeah, so as an example or Fort Bragg,

which is now Fort Liberty. There's a lot of

traffic between Fort Bliss and so we do have

that network that established for easy, hey, I know

somebody like I've physically shaken their hands and we've

sat in a room and brainstormed ideas together and

we see each other every week on a zoom

call kind of thing. So it is nice to

have that built in network to be able to

refer people back and forth.

And we got to talk a little bit about

Rate My Agent, because you do very well with

your review strategy. You rank very high in Rate

My Agent in EXP in Texas, you dominate, you

know, talk about how you're using that tool because

I think you're reaffirming it into your core group,

how valuable you can be, what sort of experience

you can provide. Right.

So, yeah, it's definitely standard practice that once a

transaction is closed, depending on the timing. So I

have know, I just had some buyers, they closed

early July. They were coming from Germany, but because

they were in Germany for so long, they hadn't

been to the US to see their family. So

they were going to get back to the US.

And then take like 30 days of leave to

go see their family and then come to El

Paso. So they didn't actually get to their house

until the first week of September. I find it

awkward to request review how did I do? Helping

you buy your new house when you haven't even

seen said house yet? That's a good call. Yeah,

I know. Rate My Agent has a feature to

automatically request that review when you close it out,

at least in EXP using our compliance system SkySlope.

I don't have that feature turned on for that

reason, so it's a bit more manual. I have

some international assistants that will help kind of when

the time is right, send that review request. But

everyone gets a review. Just about. There's been some

maybe one or just we landed, but it was

a very rough landing to use the airplane metaphor

there. So it didn't make sense to how do

I do kind of thing. But I even had

some rough transactions where I was shocked of how

nicely they spoke of me, honestly, because in my

head. It wasn't my fault. I had a buyer

one time that they discovered mold when they moved

in that was not disclosed and they were obviously

upset and they were however, able to delineate between

my performance and the seller's indiscretion there, which I

definitely appreciated. And then reading that review, knowing the

emotional turmoil, just made it even that much more

meaningful to me that they could have trashed me

there for not doing everything I could have to

find this problem beforehand. So I definitely appreciated that.

That's one of the reviews that kind of stick

out my head as one of my favorites.

That's awesome.

Everyone gets a review and we have the automated

follow up. We almost always try to email and

text them to remind them of that. And then

depending on if we're not getting a response, we

do a lot of communication with our clients through

Facebook Messenger just because that's where a lot of

the leads originate is through Facebook. And so we

may follow up. Hey, just a friendly reminder if

you know, kind of thing, try to get that

review where we can.

Nice. You're very techie, so that helps a lot,

I think, with a lot of the stuff you're

doing. And I'm always curious when I talk to

someone who's tech savvy. It doesn't have to be

an extravagantly long list, but what does your tech

stack look like? Yeah, your know, with EXP, maybe

you're using their tools. Some people do, some people

don't. I'm curious.

So for my CRM, I use follow up. Boss.

That's my primary one. However, I still kind of

use KVCore, which is provided through EXP for one

of the reasons it has a natural IDX integration

at KVCore, which Follow Up Bus does not. But

then on the back end I have Zapier linking

them to. So if someone comes in through KVCore,

they get dumped over to Follow Up Boss automatically.

Nice.

And so then I also do a little bit

of constant contact for my email marketing. I have

a TC that they use Aframe for their transaction

management system, which then I have access to that

when I need it. And so those are kind

of my big ones. I also have again, I

have an app, a real estate app provided by

Homestack. So it's like the service first. My team

is named the Service first team. And so we

have an actual like you can go to the

Google Play Store or the Apple App Store and

download the Service First Team app, which then basically

the goal is to keep them in that environment

and not go off looking at those other websites.

Then click the wrong thing, some other agent contacts

them to kind of help them out. Kind of.

It's a, it's a full IDX solution. It's got

everything in there. They can search for everything, save

stuff. You can see what they're doing. It's pretty

cool. Yeah. Homestead.

Yeah, it is. I love that.

Brian, I've taken more of your time than I

was supposed to, so I'm going to wrap this

up with the same final question that I've asked

to every guest. What one piece of advice would

you give a new agent? Just getting started.

Find a mentor and a coach that will open

their playbook to you sometimes. And that's what my

coach did, is open her playbook and it literally

changed my life. And so find those successful people

who will. It cost you. Yes. And then you

got to go do the work that they tell

you to do. And so that would be my

number one piece of advice.

Awesome. Brian, if somebody wants to reach out to

you, what's the best way for them to get

in touch with you?

I mean, I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. As

know, there's a lot of Brian Halls out there,

but I'm the one in, right? So yeah, that's

that's know, hit me up on Facebook messenger, know,

come by the business page service. First team. I

feel like I'm pretty easy to find on the

socials.

Well, I'll get those links from you and I'll

put them in the show notes so everybody listening

can just quickly click on those links down below.

Brian, this has been fantastic. Thank you for your

time today. Obviously, I'm going to be remiss if

I don't say this. Thank you so much for

your service. I think that specific department of the

armed forces is not highlighted very much, and I'm

glad we had a little opportunity to chat about

that today and let a few more people know

about how important that mean.

Honestly, even growing up in my church and I

grew up near DaaS Air Force Base, I didn't

know there was such things as military chaplains until

not too long before I decided to be one.

Wow.

So it's not something that you hear about a

lot.

Yeah. Well, thank you again for your time and

we will chat soon. I'm sure I'll see you

maybe in October of 2023, I'm just guessing.

Yeah, I'll sing by the booth again.

All right. Thanks, Brian. All right.

Take care, Bill.

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