Hi, welcome to our podcast. This is Re-Brew with Kari. I'm with Red Door Title.
And I'm Melvyn with Fairway Independent Mortgage.
Yeah, and we are bringing you Re-Brew. Re-Brew has been in the works for a very long time,
and we are finally getting it off the ground. This is our very first episode.
We are calling it Re-Brew because R-E, real estate, and brew because this will normally be held at a
local brewery. Tampa is known for its local craft breweries, and we love those vibes and atmospheres.
So we're going to be doing all of our following podcasts there. So he's going to let you know a
little bit more about that. Yeah, so super excited with the brewery. The whole idea is to kind of
feature local businesses and what better than a brewery. It's a great atmosphere to network.
It's a great atmosphere to, you know, try new things, meet new people, and a lot of times just
really good food. If you guys have ever been to some of the better breweries here in Tampa or the
surrounding areas, probably some of the best food you'll get at any restaurant anywhere.
So we just like the idea and the vibe of the brewery, the atmosphere, the lighting.
It's just a nice experience. So our ultimate goal is to help small businesses grow,
showcase them a little bit in our podcast, and help our real estate base kind of grow in their
season as well. So we're super excited for this. So excited. We've heard multiple times that 2024
is going to be the year of the podcast, and we've had this in the works for a couple of months now,
and we're like, hey, we're right on target for our growth. What we have it called, and this is our
logo in the background, and it's if you're watching this on YouTube, by the way, watch it on YouTube.
If you're listening to it on the podcast, we do have the video version available for you.
Absolutely. And it's just a casual conversation about real estate at your local breweries that
is basically our tagline and our slogan. Like you said, we're doing it to support small businesses,
but also it's just different. It's just not something that's been done before. And I feel like
if you have an idea like that, I'm speaking to people that are working with ideas, go for it.
Just go for it. Jump in head first. Like you don't, you may not have all the pieces in place,
and we don't. No, no, we're still piecing it together. You know, but it's nice because you
get to build relationships with people you wouldn't otherwise have built relationships with. You know,
and that comes in, it comes in handy, you know, especially in our industry, just being able to
have another spot to do a networking event or maybe, you know, a white elephant party with your,
you know, your agents or, you know, even if it's your clients that you want to appreciate.
A lot of these breweries, they're just, they're so on board with helping others. It's insane.
And a lot of people don't know if you don't know the brewery industry, it's very,
um, I don't know the word I'm looking for, but it's very, you know, I'll help you, you help me.
It's not very competitive. It's competitive, but it's not in the aspect that you would expect,
you know, each other. It is very, very heavily supported. Collaborations are huge. And, uh,
you know, this is just another piece of collaborating that we're working on. So
should be, it should be a nice adventure, um, you know, and, and, you know, the kind of little tip,
I don't know if we're going to go this far into it, but ultimate goal is there's going to be
giveaways. There's going to be, um, you know, swag that we're going to get at these breweries. And,
and, you know, the more involved you are with us, the more involved we're going to be with you.
Um, you know, we have ideas of having special guests on here, whether it's other real estate
partners or, you know, some of the big names in the industry, you know, with our connections,
we've, we've had such a incredible couple of years in the business and, and it's just going to be so
exciting to be able to bring some of those people who built us up and got us to where we're at,
bring them in to help you guys get to where you want to be. And oddly enough, that's going to be
the first topic we're going to talk about today. It's going to be, uh, your brand. And you know,
with that, I'll, I'll let Carrie kind of expand on a little bit more, but the goal is to in the new
year, build your brand on where you want to be and not where you're at. Um, you know, what I mean by
that is don't get stuck that you, you know, you're not currently doing luxury listings. You're not
currently doing, uh, you know, maybe even a podcast. Yeah. Or you're, you're, maybe you're not doing
listings at all. You're only on the buy side. You want to go on the list side or you're listing.
You want to go buy side, build your brand on where it is you want to be, you know, and stop
getting stuck where you're at. Cause if you get stuck and fixated on where you're at, you'll never
get to where you want to be. One of the things I took from my coaching, um, you know, over the last
year was, you know, don't let your dreams become your distractions. You know, you're not going to
get distracted by your distractions. Um, and I think that's huge. You, you should not focus so hard
on your dreams and goals that you don't even accomplish what you're doing at the moment, you
know, so start building your brand, uh, and, and, and get the image in your head, get an image mapped
out, um, get with us. If you don't know how to do any of those things and, and we want to help you
guys get to that point. Yeah, that is our overall goal is when we meet with agents, it's not just
with you or have coffee with you or do a happy hour with you. Yes, we love doing those things,
but it's really building the relationship, uh, with you and figuring out what your overall goals
are. And we, he has a coach for social media. I have two business coaches myself, and one of them
is a huge social media person. And then it's really where her focus is. So we are a wealth of
knowledge. And one of the reasons we started this podcast was we just have so much of it. We're
like, we've got to get this out to share it to as many people as we can, because one-on-one can do
only so much. But when we're talking to however many people we're talking to right now, it can
have a further reach. And we really feel like that's important, um, for the overall growth of
the industry. But also it makes us feel like we're doing our jobs well. When someone calls us up or
texts us and says like, you've inspired me to do this. And then I have a new listing. So motivating.
It's the best feeling. It really is. And I think that's why we, we do so well with, with helping
others is because we really do have that heart and the desire to do so. Um, you know, just to kind of
put it in perspective, you know, she's always wearing red. So if you don't know who Carrie is
with the red door, you will always see she is the lady in red, like red, red, red, red, red, red.
All the red. I am currently in red because it is red Friday. So for those who may not know me,
um, I am an air force veteran, um, served in the air force for, um, just that about just under nine
years actually. Um, and I really enjoyed my time in the military and, and the whole reason I joined
the military at that time was to do more, you know, I had a good job with making good money, you know,
in corporate America, um, you know, did well, did well at every job I ever had. It just didn't,
it wasn't fulfilling. Um, you know, and I think this is where this whole idea stemmed from and
when I met Carrie, it became like, Oh my God, we're like literally twins. Like she's my female twin.
Um, you know, same, same mindset, same drive, same passion to help people. Um, and we really
truly have that passion. Like it's not, this isn't make believe, this isn't something we do to make
money on the side or anything like that. We literally love to help people so much so that
we want to build a whole brand off of helping others. Um, you know, it's just, it's just such
a good feeling for us. Um, and I think this is where this podcast is going to head is you're
going to get a lot of insights. You're going to get a lot of fun. You're going to get a lot of quirky.
Um, if you don't know us, you will soon get to know us very well. Um, you know, but it's just,
it's going to be such a motivator, I hope for, for you guys to just, just do it. You know,
Nike came up with that slogan, God knows when I don't know facts. I'm not a history buff.
I don't know exact date, but it was like way back, you know, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
than 1872 actually off the, was the Oregon trail was that game? That one. Yeah. It fell off. Shoes
fell off and boom, just do it came alive. No, it really didn't. But, um, really this whole industry
is just do it, you know, whatever it is you want to do, just, just do it. You know, do you, you
procrastinate this podcast, we could have procrastinated and let this go. Is this perfect?
Like did we have the perfect day and everything ready to go? No, no, you should have seen us
getting ready for this one, but we knew it had to just get done. We just, just do it. Yeah. Just do
it. And so we made it a thing that we were going to at least have our first one under our belt
before the end of 2023. And that is what we're doing. And we are not going to really, you won't
hear this by the time you hear this at 2024, but we wanted to under our belt to test everything out.
And that's how it is for you guys. Like whenever you're working on something, just jump in and
then tweak it. Nothing is ever going to be perfect out the gate. Right. Work on it, tweak it, evaluate,
look at your metrics and things like that and see where you need to go. But one of the other things
we wanted to talk about in our, in our podcast, besides what the podcast is. So it is about real
estate. It's going to be just a casual conversation about real estate. We're not going to get into
super heavy topics, but more about either stories that are going on right now, market,
not so much market up there. Sounds like the right word. No, like market insights, I would say maybe
insights would be a good word. We're not going to go deep into the, I don't know, the opinionated
market. Yeah. Like the stuff that's opinionated and the stuff that doesn't have like hard facts
and things that we can go over. We're not going to get into that because everybody has a different
way to view things. Everybody sees things through a different lens. Our goal is to like give you our
perspective on where things are going. And I think the added benefit that, that, that we have is we
meet with so many real estate partners from all over the whole county, multiple counties, even,
I mean, all the way through Florida, even central Florida all together. So we get all the perspective.
We hear what people are complaining about. We hear what they like, what they don't like. We hear what
works and doesn't work. And our goal is to get that back to you guys. There's no way you'd ever be
able to meet all these people that we meet, you know, especially if you are hustling, trying to
make an income, you know, with the way the market's been and the way things have been going, you know,
like you guys can't do that. So we're going to do that for you. And our goal is to take one of our
favorite agents calling us right now. We sure do. Look at that. That's a trip. I know you're trying to hide it, but I saw the name and I'm like, oh, it's one of our
favorites. It really is. You'll know who you are. You'll know who you are. Yeah. I mean, we're just
trying to get all that guy, all that just back to you guys. So you guys can take this and run with it.
Take the pieces that make sense to you, right? There's going to be a lot of things that we'll say that
maybe don't mesh with your vibe or the direction you're headed, right? Take the pieces that work
and apply those pieces first. You don't really have to take everything, you know, for exactly what we
say, oh, I got to do it that way. No, find your way, find what works. And if you don't know that path,
get with us. We're really good resources to help you guys figure out the direction you want to go,
figure out the best way to get there. And let's take baby steps. You know, one thing that I know
we talk about a lot, we do a tech and title once a month where we just kind of open invite for
anybody who wants to come and, and, you know, we help them kind of, and we see it all the time,
just kind of figure out your life, you know, whatever it is, if you don't know how to use
a CRM, if you don't know how to use this or do that, if you want to automate your life a little
bit better, like we'll help you figure that out. But one of the things I see far too often, I know
KJ can probably relate to is people try too much all at once. Um, you know, and an easy example I
can give you a social media, you know, if you know that you want to get into social media with your
business, whatever your business may be, start with one platform, master that platform first,
before you start jumping over to Tik TOK and YouTube and Vimeo and all the other things.
What's the best one? It's like, well, which one do you like the most? Which one are you on the most?
Which one do you post to right now? The most whichever one that is, get really good at that
one. And then yeah, you can add the other one later. Yeah. Expand. What'll happen is you'll do
too many things at once. You get overwhelmed and then do nothing. And that's not what we want you
to do. It happens far too often. I think most of you can relate to that. You're like, Oh, I started
all these things in this class I took and you probably paid for coaching and paid for all this
software and did nothing with it. Um, that's how my whole, this whole job, that this, this whole
position that we built from scratch with Fairway, that's how it all came about, you know, was meeting
with agents and realizing they're kind of, they don't know, they have a path that you just don't
know how to get there. And they're buying all these things and they're buying into all this
pitches and all these, you know, events they go to and lead generations. Oh yeah. And that it's
the shiny object of the day. Yeah. It's just, and it's not, you're just spinning tires, right? And
the way we kind of roll is let's see how much we can do for free to build your business. Like that
spinning tires. That's not how we roll. It's not how we roll. You don't want to spend them tires.
You also don't want to spend money. You don't need to spend, you know, so there's a lot of that too.
And, and, and, you know, when you start to go down this path of building your brand, um, just
take baby steps. Don't over indulge in all the things. Take what you think is going to work for
you best. Find that platform that you think is going to be most beneficial for you and capitalize
on it. You know, just, just do it, just get out there and start doing it. I think, um, I saw someone
say that they were like, Hey Nike, can you like take this from me? This slogan that I'm trying to
help you out? They were like, just do it scared, just do it. Anxious, just do it. Worried, like
add a word at the end of the, just do it. And, and whatever that is, just do it anyway, whatever that
is, just do it broke. Like if you've got to, if you've got to spend some money, cause the best
money that you're ever going to spend is on yourself. And if you've got to spend that extra
money to make some more money, that's that's business one-on-one right there. It is, you do
have to spend money to make money, but spend it wisely, you know, find out what works, you know,
and again, you guys don't get to see all the things that we get to see from hundreds of people. I
mean, this year alone, I think I've, you know, whether an individual group settings, I've, I've
been able to help at least 260 people that I can think of off the top of my head. Um, you know,
and one thing I took from actually one of, um, Carrie's mentors, uh, go-go, if anybody knows
who go-go is, you know, one thing she said at her last, um, the last event that I went to that she
was hosting was, you know, the reason she does what she does is because 90% of the people won't do
anything with it. The 10% that do are going to be very successful. Um, you know, for me, I'd venture
to say, if I was up on stage talking about that, um, I would say the 10% of people that do it are
probably the people that I want to hire, you know, those are the people that I would want to do business
with. Um, you know, so again, it's not to say everybody's going to take this stuff and apply
it, but those that do, you know, I think you're going to have a step above the rest. Um, you know,
there's just so much to come guys. I mean, I could talk for days and all the topics we have lined up,
uh, you know, just, I mean, just think about anything from how to market yourself, you know,
to the power of video, I mean, there's just so much. Our upcoming topics are,
uh, the list is massive and that's why we decided to do this is because we can break it down into,
how do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. One bite at a time. I like elephant ears though.
You know, I will tear up an elephant ear. What is that? A disclaimer. We do not eat elephants. No.
But I said that the other day at one of our goal planning. I never heard that one.
And it was how do you eat an elephant at one bite at a time? And that's really how,
how we're taking on this and how we suggest other people take on whatever projects that they're
taking on one step at a time. Now the overall focus for this, um, topic today was build your brand
where you're going, not where you are. And it kind of sounds like, you know, we're talking out of
both sides of our mouth, like just do it one step at a time, but also like plan it like you're
already there. There's a middle ground. There is. So you need to, just like you said, if you want to
be in luxury listings or you want to be a listing agent, cause you're only on the buy side, or you
want to focus on community involvement or whatever it is, those things need to be where your brand
is. No matter what you're doing right now, no matter if you've never sold a luxury listing in
your life, like your branding needs to say luxury, your social media needs to scream luxury. It needs
to feel, you know, and a lot of, you know, you've seen those, those, those profiles, you've seen
those accounts where like, wow, this is beautiful. Like it has that high end, you know, like,
expensive vibe, right? If that's the goal you're going for, take some time. Now what she means by
the middle ground, you know, and, and feel free to jump in if I'm ever, you know, just saying too
much or really, I'm fishing a while. I don't know which hand. Yeah. The fine line basically is, you
know, don't throw spaghetti to a wall is what I'm going to say. When we say, just do it, do it with
intent, do it with context, do it with a direction. You know, when we say, just do it, I'm not saying
like, just take a picture and throw it up on Instagram. Like that's, that's not going to do
anything for you. You don't know how to properly do it, right? It's not going to build the brand
that you're looking for. If it just looks like you threw spaghetti to the wall, you know, so if your
brand is luxury, if your brand is this, if your brand is fun, if your brand is, you know, the
comedic route, you know, I have a lot of realtors I follow that you go the comedic route. It's
phenomenal. It's great. If you don't want to throw that spaghetti to the wall, take some time to map
that out first. So you know what it looks like. Use other people's accounts as examples, right?
Another thing that I'll kind of touch on with, with going towards the direction of where you
want to be, right? Don't reinvent the wheel. You know, I'll say that don't reinvent the wheel.
You can take content that you've already seen stuff that someone else has maybe put out there,
right? This is good. Write this down. Yeah, write this down. Take that content and just
redo it. Right. And the reason to say redo it is, is you got to get out of the mindset of
everyone's doing it. I'm not going to do that video. Everyone's talking about this. I'm not
going to talk about it. Everybody has a different realm of influence. Everybody has a different
sphere of influence. Everybody has, um, things that they're better at than others. You know,
if I was to anybody who knows me, knows I'm a tech nerd. I am all things tech, you know,
not just strictly Apple either, you know, I'm very good with understanding how I Android's work and
all the other pieces. Like I'm just a nerd. If it has technology, I'm going to get it. Um,
someone like myself talking about tech and a video that I copied, if I assigned everybody on this
podcast is listening to do the same video, I'm going to hold more weight with my people on the
tech part because they know that I'm good with tech. You know, whereas maybe someone else who
we know just got their first iPhone and the first Mac book and, you know, they don't even have an
Instagram account. Like if they did that same video and copied it, they're not going to influence
people the same way. Right? So I'm getting at is if you don't know where to go and you know,
someone else has already gotten the direction that you want. They've got the aesthetic that you want.
Go for it. Make it your own. Take it following those people, saving their stuff,
literally copy and paste, feel the real copy, paste, you know, there's someone else I listen to
all this, all the time that they just want to be as copy and pasteable as possible. Oh, I like that.
Copy and pasteable as possible copy and pasteable as possible.
Possible. Possible. Possible. I love a possible. A gluten free possible. Oh, see, squirrel.
Until we have a head lunch. But yeah, so I mean, just just just don't throw spaghetti
too well. It's really what I'm throwing, you know, throwing out there. Unless you're making
a possible and then you can spill. I still don't think you want on the wall.
Do you think it belongs in the bowl? Do it? Spaghetti on the bowl? Is it done? I don't know.
No. Oh, you see spaghetti. What if it's spaghetti to the wall? I think of like.
On the window. Not that. Oh, I think it was like, you know, when you microwave spaghetti,
don't put a cover on it. Oh, and it blows up in your microwave. And then also
you do it in your microwaveable like container and then the container turns like
red forever. You can never get the stains out of your ziplocs or your tupperwares.
Side note, not related to real estate for saving pasta spaghetti sauce. Put it in a glass container.
Like that's just a free. Yeah. All of this information is free, but that was extra free.
That was extra free. You're welcome. Yeah. We've been getting really big in the glass containers.
It's helpful. Completely derailed ourselves on that one. But yeah, everything's in jars.
That's good. Strawberries in a jar. Strawberries in a jar. They last a lot longer. All your fruit.
You put the little like moist towel at the bottom and then everything. All your fruits do.
All your fruit does stay better. The more you know, see the power of social media. That's all
the things I learned on Tik Tok. Things I learned on Tik Tok. Things I learned on Tik Tok. That
should be a sec, a section like at the end of every podcast. The things I learned on Tik Tok
this week. What did you learn? Yeah, that's glass jars for fruit. Glass jars for fruit. And then
there was something with an avocado. I forgot, but like you keep it wet or something. I don't
remember. I put it in one of those avocado straight jackets. I don't know what they're actually
called, but it really does. Oh, I have another name for those and I cannot see that. But I do.
I have them. I have the one for the cucumbers too. I'll just let you figure that one out.
Oh, the cucumbers. Yeah. All right. We're reeling or fishing over here. We're reeling ourselves back
in. I did want to go, we talked a little bit about be the brand that you are going to be,
not the brand that you are currently. Right. We talked about that, but then I also wanted to,
just because this is our first podcast, give a little bit of background on who you are,
how you got here and then who I am and how I got here. And then just our little bit of our future
coming up. Go for it. Ladies first. Oh, me first? Oh, thank you. Ladies in red first. Thank you.
Okay. Oh, that's our initials. That's our initials. So I've got a couple names. So you may see me
as AKA, AKA KJ. I am Carrie Claggett to a lot of people. Carrie is what the K stands for in KJ. KJ
is what I go by. So if you are seeing me out in the wild, the wild, the wild, I'm always in red.
You'll find me pretty easily unless I'm at a Christmas party where everybody else is wearing
red and red and green. And then I'm extra red. I'm probably wearing rhinestones or something.
Okay. But KJ Workman is my new married name. I was married in May, which a lot of people
didn't know until like August. Everyone's like, wait, you got married? They started figuring out
when your emails changed, like how your name started changing. I slowly changed everything over.
What happened? What happened there? So we did get married. We did not do like a big ceremony. If
you feel like, why didn't she invite me? Because you saved some money. We didn't. Yeah, we saved
a lot of money. We literally had margaritas and some like oysters. That was all we had.
But it was just the super private thing between us and a couple of friends. I mean,
literally the people that witnessed and notarized our stuff. That was it. No additional people.
And it was just that. And then that's why you'll see my name a couple of different ways. So if
you're looking at me on the MLS, because I am still a realtor, I keep my license active and I
don't really use it other than to help out either past clients that just refuse to use anybody else.
And I understand that. Or it's someone that's like right now I'm working with a family and
it's her parents and her parents are older and I'm not going to send them to someone that I don't
know or trust. I'll help them out. So I keep it. So if you see Kerry Claggett or if you see KJ
Workman, we're all the same person. Cool. We're all in here somewhere. But we're always wearing red.
So are my pronouns are we? Because we have a lot of us going on in here. And I was a realtor since
2017. And I was on a big team here in local Tampa area and then decided I wanted to step out of the
the I was doing real estate when it was way over asking price waiving waiving me appraised like
that was half of my career as an agent and it was just too much. I guess I was a single mom at the
time and it was just too much overwhelming. Oh yeah, it was a lot. So I switched over to this
Red Door Title is an Orlando based title company that was expanding into Tampa. And they said,
look like you seem like the perfect person with your personality and all of your knowledge with
social media and marketing and things like that. Would you mind coming in and stepping in and being
like our growth development person, our agent relationship specialist. And I was like, I don't
know what that means, but yes, absolutely. It sounds great. You're twins. It was just like,
I didn't know that this kind of a thing existed. And then because I was an agent and right, right,
because you were a loan officer, like, you know what people need, you know what their
Yep. Mind works like. And so I shifted everything when we built Tampa version of Red Door Title,
I built it like from an agent's perspective because that's what I knew. And I think it's
really paid off because now our team, our closing team, all of it, it's, they've got the app,
the inside version of an agent's life. And I just love that about our team. I love that about how
we work. Um, and then I met Melvin earlier this year and, and it was just like a, oh, hey there
twin. It really was. It really was. Um, that's crazy. I just even hearing that again, cause I
already knew that, but like hearing it again out loud, it's so bizarre cause it's almost like the
same thing that happened with me. Duh. Of course it is. I know. Of course it is. Isn't that weird?
Listen, when we talk twins, like we've made captions on photos without even knowing
that we were like captioning photos for Instagram and we've used the same exact like caption.
The exact same caption without talking about it. But we'll like, he'll be like, Hey, do you like
Chimichurri? And I'm like, I'm literally making it right now. Like when you asked me, he gave me one
and I'm super excited about it. But that's awesome. That's awesome. It's been fun. It's like, I know
you, you kind of have the same kind of career path that I had with this whole thing. It was just like
a made up position that we just were like, Hey, you're, you seem like you fit. Yeah. That's awesome.
So a little bit about me. So I'm with Fairway Independent Mortgage. I am still a licensed
lender. You know, I wear, I wear quite a few hats. Literally. Literally. I do have quite a few hats.
Literally. Fairway, if you're listening, I would love some discounts on these hats.
But no, I mean, I, I, I literally do wear a lot of hats. So I have been in the mortgage industry,
probably collectively, I'd say about eight, nine years collectively. I've tried to have everything.
I'm one of those people that really can't sit still. If it's something I want to try or something
new, I will try it. You know, when I got out of high school, I got right into mortgages. That was
right around, I graduated in 06. I'm not, I guess you can call me a baby if you want. It's fine.
But no, I graduated in 06. I, you know, my whole family has been in real estate my whole life.
Literally everyone. I got a sister that's a processor, mom and dad are realtors, brother-in-law
was processor. I mean, everybody's kind of in the industry. So it's what I knew. I got into mortgages
then. And then obviously everybody knew what happened around that timeframe. So as things
picked up for me, I made a bunch of money and then everything crashed. You know, so then I kind of
migrated into corporate America. I worked for Capital One for about six years, multiple
different departments there. You know, really enjoyed my time with Capital One. While I was
at Capital One, decided I wanted to join the military. That was when that whole piece came
in. I talked about earlier. So I did that. And then kind of fast forward, you know, got out of
the military, sort of working at USAA. I worked there for like three to four years. I even worked
at Bush Gardens at one point on roller coasters because I just, I just wanted a break from
corporate America. I wanted to do something that I enjoy. So I did that for a while.
About to give up on society and decided to take a step back.
And I did. I took a huge pay cut just because I needed a mental break. And that's a lesson in
itself. You know, don't, sometimes the money is not, it's not it. It's not it. I was not mentally
where I needed to be with corporate America and the whole call center vibe. And I just took a
step back, took a huge pay cut and just enjoyed myself for like a year and a half. It was just
the most stress free, fixed roller coasters. Like this, it was fun. You know, and then I,
and then I kind of slowly got back into mortgages again through my sister, actually. He was a
processor. And, you know, I started with Fairway as a loan officer assistant, LOA. And as an LOA,
you know, I worked with my boss. I helped him with his loans. Basically all the setup, everything.
Because my, the way I roll is I like to know the back way, the things, the way things work before
I dive in. I could have gone in and got my license and just went right back into it. But when I
started previously, I didn't need a license. So a lot has changed since, you know, 2008 to like what,
2018, 19. To protect. Yeah. So I got back into it as an LOA, did that for a while. Got my license.
As soon as I got my license, opportunity landed in my lap. Same situation. You know, my boss
looked at me and was like, listen, we need someone to handle our business development side. We don't
really know what that entails, but, you know, we're just kind of, kind of let you roll. So that's
where this whole thing built off of. First year was basically me building out all our systems,
CRMs, platforms, technology, software. It was a lot of background work. Still do a lot of that.
Now I run all of our systems and backgrounds and leads and all that. But then this business
development thing really kicked in full swing actually December of last year. So it was an
idea that I had after going to a conference. I met this beautiful Phoenix Southwest team
through Fairway that kind of do what I do in a bigger scale. And I said, you know what,
what's to say? I can't just copy paste that and try to apply it to our own local business. We're
very hyper local. We're very relationship based. You know, so I was like, you know what, this could
work. So we went that route and it's been the most incredible year of my entire career, meeting so
many people and I'm so excited to see what next year has, but that's a little bit about me. I
still do loans, but very much like Carrie with her real estate side. I try to stick that to just
friends, family, people that I can help out when I can. And the only reason being is I would love
to do loans more full time, but this has taken so much of my time. I'm very big on customer service.
And if you're not present for our real estate partners, you're not available on the weekends,
you know, you don't have with me being in front of cameras, in front of people and teaching classes,
I can't be as available as I would want to be as a loan officer. So I just don't pursue that full
time. I will keep my license and I will keep my feet wet with it because I think it's very
important to understand the industry you're in. Keep us grounded in it. Yeah. So you'll see me
still dabble in the mortgage side of things, but I feel like this is the direction we're headed.
And I'm excited for it. And we're both very excited for 2024. It's a little bit about me,
just a lot of excitement. It's like so exciting. We did a big vision goal planning session and
just to see what other people have their big massive goals. And I'm just so excited for all
the people that we're working with to see where they're going to go throughout the year, where
we're going to go throughout the year. Like I said, this podcast is going to be held inside
of local breweries. Yep. There's a ton of them. There's a ton, like 130 of them. So we're working
on that. And you know, Hey, if you're a brewery that happens to catch wind of this podcast and
you want us to host at your brewery, we're down. We're going to have some drinks, talk about your
vibe and your atmosphere, talk about who you are. If you have any additional comments that you'd
like to make as a business owner or a person that works there and then give away a swag hat,
t-shirt, stickers, whatever. It'll be fun. Oh yeah. We're so excited. It's going to be a lot of fun.
So I guess that's, you know, we'll start wrapping it up. Cause I mean, it's not, you know, this is
the beginning of this is just the beginning of something incredible, you know? So again, you know,
I'm very, very confident in saying this, you know, watch us as we, and this is something I took from
one of our HR representatives here at fairway. You know, she made a video or first video out.
She said, you know, social media is very important and getting out there is very important.
The topic we'll talk about later is how your visibility is more important than your ability.
Look, this is what I'm talking about. I literally almost said that and we had not even planned what
our second episode was, but we both knew it. It's going to be huge, man. Just be invisible.
And one thing she said was, Hey, follow me. Um, as I get less awkward, you know, and that's,
what's going to be great with us is you're going to be able to follow us and see how we progress
from, you know, the awkward and the not knowing and the not understanding. Cause this is something
new for us as well into the world of knowing what we're doing, you know, and having different vibes.
So super excited, you know, hold out. If you have any comments, questions, we'd love to hear them.
Feedback. Definitely. We're all in for feedback. Um, again, anything new, I think it's very, um,
healthy to ask for feedback and take it and accept it. Um, how harsh it may be. Um, you know,
if it's positive feedback, great. I don't think people share the positivity enough in the world.
So we're definitely down for some positive feedback as well. But also if there's any room
for improvement by all means, definitely. We do have a lot of topics like, like we said earlier,
but we also have some really good solid guests. Yes, we do. Our coaches, our other realtors that
are in our area that you will know when we say their name, I have already been excited about
this opportunity and we're excited to bring them on, share what they have to share, give you guys
what you are asking for. Like all of that. I'm excited. I'm excited. So stay tuned. Please
follow up. If you have any questions, let us know. All right. See you next time. See you next time.