In this episode of the Student of the Game podcast, host Brad Noll speaks with Melissa Little, realtor and broker at Noll Team Real Estate, to explore the critical importance of having a specialized listing agent when selling a home. Melissa shares her extensive background in real estate and the skillset that helps realtors produce significantly better outcomes for clients. Brad and Melissa dive into the fundamentals of pricing, condition, and location, and how these elements affect a home's sale. They also discuss the strategies behind effective marketing and the importance of open communication with clients to minimize stress during the selling process.

Noll Team Real Estate

SINCE 2003, Noll Team Real Estate HAS BEEN HELPING PEOPLE IN THE FORT WAYNE AREA FIND THE FREEDOM TO LIVE THE LIFESTYLE THEY WANT.

DESPITE CHANGING MARKETS AND BUSINESS TACTICS, WE HAVE REMAINED TRUE TO THIS BETTER AND IMPROVED BUSINESS MODEL BY FOCUSING ON BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND SERVING OTHERS IN EVERYTHING WE DO.

WHATEVER STAGE OF LIFE YOU ARE IN, OUR GOAL IS TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE WISDOM AND TOOLS NECESSARY WHEN BUYING OR SELLING A HOME. WE PUT YOU FIRST TO ENSURE AN ENJOYABLE AND PROFITABLE EXPERIENCE.

Welcome to Student of the Game podcast where we help you master the fundamentals, fall in love with practice, and win at the game of life.

I'm your host, Brad Knoll.

Welcome to the classroom.

Welcome back to another episode.

This is the huddle.

This is my take on our last episode.

Melissa Little, listing specialist for my business.

I wanted to make that very clear in the last episode.

She's not the listing specialist for Nolteam.

Real estate overall for everybody, but for me personally has helped me with close to 100 families listing and selling their home.

So her background is perfectly aligned for coming up with strategic planning, market analysis, and then a marketing strategy.

So I'm going to, I'm going to break down a little bit of that podcast, but I want to go deeper a little bit.

And I don't use that word without intention.

I've been reading a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport and if you have some time, look up his podcast.

They're long form episodes but he goes deep says the book title.

So Cal's an author, but he's actually a professor as well.

So I love what he talks about deep work because he says that most of us don't spend time thinking about the work that we do.

We're busy.

You know, you think about social media and scrolling.

Well, there's this word that he uses called context switching.

And context switching is when you switch from to do to do your task to task to distraction to distraction.

When you keep switching back and forth from all these tasks, there's residue in your brain and that residue actually carries over into that next thing.

So think about this, think about if I'm scrolling social media and I've got to write this marketing proposal for a new client.

And so I write the marketing proposal and then I get stuck a little bit and I go back to social media or I get it from my desk and I go have a conversation with one of my coworkers or if I'm working from home that day, I take the dog on a walk and then I'm, you know, listening to music.

And then that makes me think about a to do that I need.

That's context switching.

That's going back and forth with all of these things and that's not getting deep in the work that we do every day.

He says when we go deep in the work that we do every day, the outcomes are better and the outcomes for our clients and the work that we do is richer.

And so think about that.

When's the last time you actually just sat with a Thought, right?

I mean, think about that.

You sit with a thought.

A couple episodes ago, I talked about, you know, my daughter getting rear ended, and then she needed a new car.

And I decided to sit with that for a little bit.

You know, my first reaction was based on how I felt.

It wasn't necessarily what I.

I thought.

And so if you think about this pyramid and at the very bottom level, it's do like everybody just do like, just do, do, do like there's action.

Well, above that is planning, and above that is thinking.

You got to think.

You got to take time to think through.

I just got out of a meeting with my wife with no team interiors.

And the thing that Lindsey and I talk about is, okay, if we want to go to that next level, there's a lot of doing happening.

We got to get to the planning level and then the thinking level.

And that will help you grow your business, right?

So if you're out there and you want to grow your business or you have a goal that you're trying to set, a lot of that starts at the thinking level.

You know, you can't have anything if you don't think about it, right?

I'm not going to change my diet or my eating habits if I don't think about wanting better eating habits.

You know, I can't.

I can't have better financial outcomes if I don't think about the things I need to be thinking about.

So as it relates to Melissa, let me break that down a little bit, and I'll come back to Cal's deep work here in a second.

But, you know, she really talked about three things on our podcast.

And, you know, Melissa is my listing agent.

She helps.

She helps me with my clients.

We tag team together.

We work on strategy and on pricing.

And I love bouncing ideas off of her.

As it relates to how can we.

How can we set our clients up for success?

You know, our mission is we want to help people save time, reduce their stress, and help them keep as much money in their pocket as we can.

And there needs to be a plan and we need to think about that.

And so I'm going to parallel Cal Newport's book Deep Work with why Our Specialist Model is Elite.

Student of the Game is brought to you by no Team Real Estate.

Our mission is to eradicate mediocre real estate transactions on your largest financial purchase.

You shouldn't have to deal with average.

We do this by helping you save time, reduce your stress, and helping you keep as much money in your pocket as we can.

You can help Us out by introducing us to your friends or family who want to make confident real estate decisions, whether buying, selling, building, or investing.

At Nolteam Real Estate, we are connected to a group of realtors who sell one in every eight homes in North America.

If you know someone moving out of your area, there's a great chance we can connect them to somebody we know like and trust.

Remember, relationships win.

Now back to the.

For a long time, I was a realtor by myself.

I was helping people buy homes, people helping people sell their homes.

I was doing the marketing, I was doing the paperwork, I was doing everything and my sales pitch.

So if you're in that stage right now where you're.

Where you literally wear every single hat, this is your sales pitch.

I know because I did it myself.

Work with me because you get me.

You don't get passed off to an assistant or to staff or to a team member.

Work with me because you don't get passed off.

You actually get me.

That was the facade that I would sell when I was by myself.

And it worked, right?

I mean, if you, if you think about that logically, that sounds like it works.

That's normal.

After being on a team and after having a team, I just disagree with that.

I don't.

I don't believe the clients can get the best possible service if everything that has to happen in a transaction comes from me.

I just, I just, I disagree with that.

So now, 21 years later, we've grown my personal business into a specialist model where I believe in a listing agent, I believe in a buyer's agent, and I get to sit here and I get to do a lot of the deep work.

I get to do the thinking.

I get to study the market, I get to study the industry.

I get to.

To see what trends are happening, what direction our clients should go.

Should we list our home now?

Should we wait?

Should we do a remodel?

And we get to bounce ideas off of our entire team?

And it makes for great outcomes.

So here's my three takeaways from Melissa's specialist model interview we had last week.

Number one is specialization enhances outcomes.

I truly believe it.

You cannot convince me otherwise.

Specializing enhances outcomes.

My buyers get better attention.

Having a buyer's agent who wakes up every morning and says, I'm on the hunt for the new home for this family, my sellers get a better experience and have better outcomes.

When I have a listing agent waking up every day, getting feedback, having conversations with other agents in the marketplace, paying attention to those listings, Melissa emphasizes the Value of working with specialized professionals.

And there's really superior results.

One of the superior results is we found that we help our clients earn an extra 1.3%.

We added that up over the three years she's been here.

That's a half a million dollars.

That's almost a half a million dollars.

I think it was like 475 or 490.

Almost a half a million dollars more in their pocket over average.

Okay, 1.3% over the average sale price to list price ratio in my business equals almost a half a million dollars we put in our clients pockets.

That's real life stuff.

And for small business owners, I think this really kind of you can relate the importance of leveraging experts in specific areas, whether it's marketing or finance, whether it's transaction management, whatever your business is, when you have a goal of growing it.

You should also be looking at your organizational chart, your structure, who's involved.

I think one of the things people ask me all the time is well, how did you build it?

Well, the first financial way that we built it is I made sure that I didn't identify myself as the revenue that I was generating.

You have to understand the difference between revenue and income.

You know, if you look at everything you make as income, you're going to spend it all on something.

Maybe you're going to invest it.

But when you look at it as revenue, every dollar that goes out now becomes an investment.

I'm going to invest in my team, I'm going to invest in my staff, I'm investing technology, I'm investing.

Every dollar that goes out the door is an investment.

And when I specialize now, it puts us in our lanes.

You know, I have my lane, Melissa has her lane.

The rest of the team, you know, they have, they have their lanes.

And so it's important to understand what do you love doing?

What are you good at?

What are you, what are what's tasks that you can do that no one else on your team can do?

And that's really what it's what it's come down to.

So specializing has enhanced our outcomes for our clients.

And the fact and the data is there, it just says it.

We're getting our clients in the last three years almost half a million dollars extra more than what the industry averages.

The next thing that really stuck out is when we talked about strategic pricing and marketing, what that presentation looks like to a seller.

It's not just putting a sign in the yard.

It's not just putting on the MLS doing open house like it's not one size fits all like she's talked about.

We discussed.

The fundamentals are price, condition and location.

You got to have two out of three.

You always have to have two out of three.

You know, if, if the price is too high, your condition, your location better be elite.

If the condition, if the condition's bad, your price and condition better be elite.

You got to have two out of three.

And I think any business is like that too.

You know, whether you are setting the price on the product you sell, you know, there's features and benefits and you have to make sure that those align.

But having having a strategy on that I think is really important.

And so recently we've been meeting with people and we said we have a pricing strategy, we have a marketing strategy.

And depending on the type of home, depending on what they pick for their pricing strategy, that may influence their marketing strategy.

It's just not a, like I said, a one size fits all.

So there's actually intention behind that.

And then, you know, once you get the strategic pricing.

We talked about effective marketing and communication strategy.

How often are you going to hear from us, what are we going to do?

How many times are we reaching out, the heavy lifting, the hard work, that's all behind the scenes, right?

That's fallen in love with that practice.

And Melissa shares strategies for marketing homes and really I think stress the importance of clear communication.

You know, 85% of all homes that are sold are what's considered co brokered, meaning one person's representing the buyer and one person's representing the seller.

And when that happens, it's really important that we work together with our friendly competitors in this marketplace.

I think small business owners can benefit from understanding how important it is to, you know, collaborate.

You don't have to share everything, but you do have to collaborate.

I heard a great quote this last week and it's from Darren Hardy, so we'll give him the credit.

In the absence of a community, you become a commodity.

Let me say that again.

In the absence of a community, you become a commodity.

And if you let that sink in for just a little bit, your main job as a small business owner is to build community.

Your main job is to build community and you build community with your client base.

You also build community with your competitors.

You know, there depends on what business you're in.

And I understand some are different, but in most businesses you kind of have to get along with your competitors.

You kind of have to understand what they're doing and be a student of their game.

Be a student of what they offer so that you can continually, you know, compete for business and elevate the standard.

I think these principles can help small business owners really just refine their strategies, improve overall business success.

Maybe have a couple ideas here and there.

If I'm sharing an idea and you like it, go ahead and do me a favor.

Share this episode with a friend.

Tag me on social media.

You know, just be a great human.

If I see something that I feel like benefited me, I'm gonna share it on this podcast.

So you guys are getting the information that I find valuable and I'm bringing it to you.

So do me a favor.

If you find this helpful, share it with somebody.

Help others win.

Right?

That's my mission here, is to help others win.

So those three points that Melissa shared I think are vital.

It's specialization enhances outcomes, understanding strategic pricing and then how to present that, and then building an effective marketing and communication campaign.

I think those are, those are important and those are, those are fundamentals, no matter what business you're in.

Go back to Cal Newport for a second.

So I share this with my team and this was, this is pretty interesting when I.

I've been doing this 21 years.

And about five years ago, five, six years ago, I decided I want a production team, meaning I wanted to stay in the relationships.

But I had an abundance of leads, I had an abundance of people raising their hand, wanting to work with.

And so I needed to build a production team, a team that helped me with transactions.

And so my transaction team was built and it's now five, six years later, and my income has gotten back to where it was before I brought them on.

And the message I shared with them was this.

Sometimes you set a goal.

My goal was I wanted to go to my kids practices and their games and be a great dad.

I was working 80 hours a week before I built the team.

I was working 80 hours a week.

I couldn't sustain that.

You can't sustain that.

Maybe you can for a week.

Right.

But you can't sustain that long term.

And so what I saw was I need to build a team around me.

And not everybody talks about the risk, not everybody talks about what you're willing to give up.

I personally, Lindsey, I personally sacrificed our income knowing we would have to go backwards in order to build that.

Well, five, six years later, we're kind of back to where our income was prior to building that team.

And now I have both and I have my time and I have the income back.

Well, why is that important?

Because without that Time.

If you're just busy, if you're just doing, if you're.

If you're.

If there's chaos in your life, there's no time to plan and there's no time to think.

And what Cal talks about in that deep work, there's really five main points is, you know, set deep work blocks for creativity.

Set deep work blocks.

So maybe that's an hour or two, no distractions.

Put your phone in your bag.

You know, if you're working at a coffee shop or at home, the least amount of distractions, the better.

Number two, define what success looks like for each block.

What are you trying to accomplish?

Right?

I mean, are you writing a new strategic proposal for somebody?

Are you designing and creating a logo for somebody?

Do it with no distractions.

You know, set deep work time blocks and then understand.

The second thing is understand what success looks like in those time blocks.

Limit shallow work to enhance the depth.

The shallow work is all of the things like the social media, the emails, the one or two off phone calls.

There's a lot of shallow work.

It doesn't take a lot of thought to do.

And that context, switching, going back and forth is not good for you.

Leverage your routine for creativity.

I think this is really important.

My routine is this.

Wake up, get my coffee, drink my water.

Make sure I drink the water first.

And then when I get started my day, I read my devotions.

I've got some other things that I'm reading.

I look at my affirmations.

I'm journaling, and this kind of gets my creativity started.

And then I start looking at my day and I start building out.

Okay, I've got some meetings.

I want to make sure I go deep with the work that I need to prepare.

So my first hour or two of the day is all preparation.

It's prep, it's preparing me for that day.

It's understanding I'm about to have a meeting.

Here's what we're going to say.

Here's probably their response.

Here's what my response should be.

How can I serve this person really well?

I think it's really important.

So you leverage routine for creativity.

So once I'm in that space, the journaling space, right?

I mean, that journaling creates gratitude in my life.

Once I get out of that journaling space, now that those juices are okay, now I'm writing, I'm getting creative, I'm flexing my gratitude muscle.

Now I go into planning my day and preparing.

My gratitude's already there.

I'm grateful I got this Meeting with this person today, I'm grateful I get to grab a coffee with somebody.

I'm grateful that I get to go host this event today, whatever that is for you.

And then number five, evaluate and reflect for continuous improvement.

Evaluate and reflect.

Coach Kaufman, who was on a podcast late last year, he said that the podcast was great for him because it's forced reflection.

What do you have in your life that is forced reflection?

Right.

For continuous improvement.

If you want to improve continuously, you have to reflect.

One thing I started to do on Friday mornings, I stole this.

This is great.

So Sharon Trivatsa, CEO of Real, does a great job with some short clips, but he had something called the Review Preview.

And On Fridays at 8:00am the things that I do I put in my calendar.

It's reviewing the last week and previewing the next two weeks.

Review the last week, look at my calendar and see if there's any follow up or to dos that have come from the meeting meetings that I've had, the ideas that I've had, things that didn't get done.

So I review the last one week and I preview the next two weeks and I write that all on one page in my journal and in my notebook and in my daily planner.

I will take those and I'll now start putting putting the to do's on other dates.

So if that helps you.

Number five is evaluate and reflect for continuous improvement.

My evaluation and reflection is I'm going to reflect on the last week.

I'm going to evaluate what's coming up in the next two weeks.

That's called my review preview and I've been doing that for a couple weeks now.

It's been really helpful.

So if you don't get anything out of this call, if you don't want to hear us talk about real estate, whatever role you're in in life, the review preview has been something that's been very instrumental here as of recent.

So we talked about a couple things today.

Short episode.

Just wanted to knock out a few things but the follow up from Melissa, there's really three main bullet points is specialization enhances outcomes.

If you're at a place right now where you wear too many hats and you need to build your team.

First of all, don't build a team if you don't have an abundance of leads.

Once you build enough relationships where the leads and the business and the work is coming in and you just can't keep up, you can't serve everybody at a high level.

You got to build your team.

I guarantee if you do it the right way and you serve others, it'll continue to grow.

And that hiring that first assistant or bringing on a team member that will pay dividends in the long run, I promise, as long as you focus on serving others.

So specialization enhances outcomes.

It absolutely does.

We have the, we have the numbers to prove that strategic pricing and great presentations.

Understanding that there is a strategy to pricing homes.

There's a strategy in your business, whatever that pricing model looks like.

We're working with Lindsey on that a lot, actually.

Nolteam Interiors is a new business and in our thing is like we want to give away our service.

Of course we do.

We want it to be as cheap as possible.

Of course we do.

We want it to be affordable.

Absolutely.

But when you start doing that and now you have a lot of people that think that you're cheap, you don't have time, and then you start doing sloppy work, you know, so don't get, don't get behind, you know, charge a fair rate, know what that is, but have a strategy around that.

And then the effective marketing and communication.

And I think marketing is something that can be defined in so many different ways, but I think communication is the next thing right after marketing.

So understanding what that looks like with your competitors sometimes too.

So those are those three points.

Specialize enhances outcomes, strategic pricing and presentation.

Effective marketing and communication.

That's really what we talked about with Melissa Little.

She's my listing agent.

She's been with me for three years.

And I thought it was great to just bring her and let's talk shop a little bit.

Let's talk about how, how we run our business, how our clients are benefiting, how our clients are winning.

And if you can learn from Melissa, which I know there's a nugget there because I know people who listen to this are students of the game.

I appreciate you listening.

My recommendations go check out.

If you need a lot of thinking, if you need some deep work done in your life, if you're struggling with something, sometimes it takes a little more thought, a little more time and intentionality around that.

So create those opportunities for forced reflection.

Go deep in the work that you're doing and I guarantee it's going to be a competitive advantage for you.

So thanks for listening.

I appreciate all of you.

I've been.

A couple people have tagged me recently, shared an episode, keeps me going.

I actually ran into somebody in public a little while ago and they made a comment about an episode they listened to.

And for me, I just, I do this for free.

I love it.

I want to share what what I've learned because I've learned from so many others.

So appreciate you listening.

This is Student of the Game make today great.

Thanks for listening to Student of the Game podcast.

Whatever game you are playing, I'm cheering for you.

See you in the next class.