The Non-Team Team – Kendra Todd Group

In this week’s episode of The OT Only Teams for Real Estate Podcast, we’re thrilled to host Kendra Todd, a powerhouse in the real estate world with over 21 years of experience. Kendra takes us on an incredible journey, sharing how she transitioned from obtaining her real estate license during a recession to building a successful and efficient team in Seattle. Her story is packed with valuable lessons, resilience, and reinvention, making this episode a must-listen for real estate agents at every stage of their careers.

In the world of real estate, Kendra Todd’s story stands out as a beacon of resilience, innovation, and joy-driven success. Over 21 years, she has navigated economic downturns, television fame, and personal reinvention to become a leader in the industry with a client-focused team in Seattle.

From College Graduate to Real Estate Pioneer

Kendra’s career began during a recession. With limited job prospects after college, she drew inspiration from Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and decided to pursue a real estate license. Her intuition proved right—within her first year, Kendra achieved an astonishing $15 million in sales in South Florida’s booming market.

However, the 2008 financial crash brought devastating challenges, including a 70% drop in property values. Rather than retreat, Kendra pivoted, demonstrating the adaptability that would define her career.

Reinventing Herself Through Media

Kendra’s resilience caught the nation’s attention when she became the first woman to win NBC’s The Apprentice. This victory opened doors, leading to a four-year tenure as a host on HGTV. While she enjoyed the break from direct real estate involvement, Kendra’s passion for the industry eventually drew her back.

Building a New Vision in Seattle

Relocating to Seattle, Kendra partnered with Stacy Brower and tackled a challenging market. Their team thrived by leaning into REO (Real Estate Owned) properties, at one point completing 350 transactions in a year. Yet, the high-stress, high-volume approach left Kendra unfulfilled.

Recognizing the need for change, she restructured her business to prioritize joy and efficiency. Today, her team consists of herself, Stacy, two full-time agents, a Director of Operations, and a showing agent. This lean setup emphasizes personalized service and strategic client management.

Leveraging Technology and Innovation

Kendra’s team uses tools like Brevity to streamline operations and enhance client experiences. They’ve also introduced unique services such as general contracting and staging, adding value to every listing. This innovative model ensures exceptional customer service while allowing the team to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Expanding into Real Estate Investment

Kendra’s commitment to financial freedom extends beyond client transactions. She has built a diverse portfolio of over 200 investment units, including multi-family properties, mobile home parks, and self-storage facilities. Her approach emphasizes low maintenance and consistent cash flow, aligning with her long-term goals.

The Future of Real Estate and Content

With an eye toward the future, Kendra plans to expand her marketing through YouTube, leveraging her media experience to create engaging real estate content. She aims to connect with a broader audience while continuing to refine her business model.

Lessons for Aspiring Agents and Investors

Kendra’s journey offers invaluable insights:

1. Align Work with Joy: Success isn’t just about numbers; it’s about building a business that aligns with your passions.
2. Embrace Change: Don’t be afraid to pivot and start fresh if your current path isn’t fulfilling.
3. Invest Wisely: Focus on long-term goals and reverse-engineer the steps to achieve them.

Her story is a powerful reminder that the key to lasting success is resilience, adaptability, and a commitment to what truly brings happiness.

Connect with Kendra Todd

For referrals or more information about her team, you can connect with Kendra on social media or through her website.

Whether you’re an aspiring real estate agent, a seasoned professional, or a budding investor, Kendra’s story is proof that with determination and the right mindset, anything is possible.

Tune In Now

Whether you’re a seasoned agent, a team leader, or just starting out, this episode is packed with insights to inspire and guide you. Learn from Kendra’s remarkable story and take away actionable tips to build a business that aligns with your goals and values.

🎧 Don’t miss Episode 37 of The OT Only Teams for Real Estate Podcast. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify, or visit onlyforteams.com for more!

Transcription

Jay Hendrix  00:00

Well, alright. Well, Kendra, listen, we are so excited to have you here today, and we appreciate you saying saying yes to us, and we we’re looking forward to hearing some great things from you. So again, I apologize that Daren Phillipy is not here today, but he is going to join us in about 30 minutes, but I’m going to go ahead and get us started. So hey, if you don’t mind, just tell us a little bit about who you are and who your team is, and sort of what you guys do that’s unique.

Kendra Todd  00:27

Oh, that’s like five questions in one. Okay, who am who am I? So Well, as you just, you know, let everyone know, my name is Kendra Todd. I’ve been in a real estate agent for 21 years now. So I got my license when I was very young. Not going to tell you what age, because then you do the math and you know how old I am, but I got my real estate license because I graduated college during a recession and all the people getting jobs the year into before I graduated, were all getting laid off when I graduated, so my nearly 4.0 GPA didn’t mean crap when I graduated college. And so, you know, like many Type A’s, I’m like, Well, I guess I’ll just make my own job. So I was in Florida at the time, as we’ve alluded to, I went to the University of Florida, and I was waiting tables. I was bartending down in South Beach in the real estate market was really good here, and all these people making all this cash, you know, at these service jobs, were buying and flipping real estate and making a ton of money. And I’m like, Wow, that sounds really interesting. So I got my real estate license after reading the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which really just kind of blew my mind, because I grew up like in a typical middle class family that had the big, nice house and the middle upper class neighborhood, but secretly, we lived off of credit cards. And, you know, so when we would go out to eat, it was like, oh, we can’t afford that, or we can’t have dessert. It’s too expensive. And it was kind of like this, I don’t know is this weird combination of poverty mentality, but also, like, spending more than we actually had, which was very confusing to me. So when I read, read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I just like, you know, was kind of mind blown. Was like, wow, I want to be a real estate investor. So I got my real estate license to help get me access to deals. And then in the process of that, I accidentally discovered that I’m kind of awesome at selling real estate. And, um, so I think my first year in the business, I did like, 15 million and just kind of took off from there. And, you know, it was really, really great. You know, the market was just booming in South Florida, and I was selling properties, and it was buying properties, and it was really great, until it wasn’t, and then it all came crashing down. And it was like giant blood down. And I think our property values, like, plummeted like 70% in one year. And I was like, Well, gosh, this isn’t fun anymore, you know. So that was kind of my intro to real estate. And just like in sort of the interim of all that experience, I had the honor of being selected to be one of 18 contestants on the third season of The Apprentice. And by the grace of God and sheer will, I won. And then when the real estate market crashed, I got blessed again, and I got out of real estate, and HGTV offered me my own show. And I was like, Well, this is the most awesome thing I’ve ever heard. I get to be paid to travel around the country and wear cute outfits and talk about real estate instead of actually having to do it. And so I did that for four years, and I swore that I would never, ever get back into real estate, because, you know, the high was high and the low was low. And, I mean, when it crashed, it was really bad. I saw, you know, a lot of my clients go into foreclosure, and, you know, I got sued because people didn’t understand the idea of personal responsibility. So instead of blaming themselves for buying the nine other properties, they blamed the builder and the mortgage broker and the agent. So, you know, my first, you know, couple of years in real estate were kind of like a rock and roll concert, but then I moved to Seattle because I wanted the West Coast experience, and I connected with somebody that I knew that was from Florida, and I’m from Florida, and they were in NAR 30 under 30 honoree, and so am I. So we had this like connection, and we get together for coffee, and he’s like, You should join teller Williams, you know, and he was the team leader of the local Seattle Keller Williams office. And he, you know, he sold me on this whole idea of, you know, branding myself and being in multiple markets and leveraging my national name and, you know, all this stuff. And I got really excited and started to look at real estate differently. And he stopped. Me in to getting back into real estate. So that’s kind of my kind of, you know, long answer to short story. I sort of started my second career in Seattle and built a team over the last 15 years with an amazing business partner named Stacy Brower. One of the things I learned the first time around is that I’m horrible with HR. I’ve really learned over the years how to put a bow on it and ask people to do the job that I’m already paying them to do, but ask them to do it very nicely. Um, you know, I’m an east coaster that was dropped in Seattle, which is an extremely passive aggressive area, and I really had to learn how to say please and thank you, and put the bow and the glitter on it. And I did. I’ve really learned over the years, you know, how to navigate HR, how to just be an encourager of people, that it doesn’t come naturally to me. So, um, I knew I wanted a business partner and Stacy, and I just knew, within five minutes that, you know, we were just a great fit. And so we built a team over 15 years. We actually started it right as the real estate market was crashing in Seattle, because, lucky me, the market in Seattle was about 18 months behind the rest of the country. So we literally escaped a market in Florida that had crashed, only to decide to get back into real estate, into a market as it was crashing. But I had a friend tell me, Hey, you should, you know, I’ve had some success with this REO stuff. You should do that. So we ended up building our, you know, initially, building our team in Seattle during the reo days. And I think we did 350 sales our first year, I went out and got every REO account. There was we had 18 employees. You know, it was an insane time. We sold 1000s of homes. I cried a lot, and I’m not a crier, because that was a really tough business. And then when the market started to come back, we acquired somebody else’s team, and we started to pivot into, you know, doing regular residential real estate again. So we brought on 40 so at one point I had 45 agents, I had a call center, and I had 18 employees, and I decided that I was miserable and my partner was miserable, so we blew that all up, and we discovered that, like we were happiest with a very small team of six to eight people, where everybody was producing at a high level and just kind of doing their own thing. So I told this really long story to tell you that I have done real estate in a variety of different types of real estate markets. Over the years, I’ve had a variety of different business models, and I’ve not been afraid to blow it up and start over again, you know, to make sure that you know, I’m finding joy in what I do. I think it’s really easy to build a company, because everyone around you tells you that you should instead of building the company that you want to have. And so now, today, we have, there’s like, maybe five, four or five of us, and we just kind of do our thing. We kind of maintain where we’re at. We’re not really interested in growing our business. I have little kids, and we’re trying to figure out how to, you know, just make it more efficient every day so that we can maintain, you know, the level of business that we do, but we can work less in it. So that’s kind of where we where we are now, but it’s been a wild ride. I mean, real estate can be a big blessing.

Jay Hendrix  08:38

Wow. That is that. That is amazing story. I mean, you have, you have really seen a lot and done a lot, yeah, so, so now, so now, after you did all that over the last 18 years, and you’ve gotten now to, like, this efficient, smaller team that’s probably very nimble, what sort of, sort of, what is the what’s the organization look like now that you lead.

09:02

I mean, it’s just, it’s Stacey and I, and we kind of divide and conquer with our clients. Some of them will both work with them. Others, I’ll take lead, and she’ll take lead, and we may not ever, you know, speak with that client over the course of the transaction. So it all depends, um, and then we have two full time agents. We have a Director of Operations. It’s been with us for 11 years. She also we let her do her own business, which is kind of cool, like some years she does three, some years she does 14. You know, we just always let her do whatever she wants. We want her to be happy. She basically runs our lives. And then we have another agent. Who is he? He’s our showing agent. He shows all of our all of our buyers. So I very rarely show buyers anymore. However they talk to me almost daily. So. So I still love the client management and the negotiations and all of that. But you know, showing a buyer 30 to 40 homes is just not tenable for me. So we’ve kind of set it up so that, you know, we have somebody who does that for us, and honestly, that right, there has been life changing, because Stacey and I are, we’re actively working with clients. You know, that’s kind of where we’re at right now. We haven’t quite, you know, seventh leveled out of the business. I don’t think we’re ready to. But, you know, we we have built it in a way where we can just add more layers and so that we’re not having to do all of the detail work, we can just totally be client facing client calls. I pick up the phone like they feel like I’m, you know, they’re the only client, even though that you know, they know that they’re

Jay Hendrix  10:51

so that’s interesting. So, so the the showing model, where you have an agent that’s showing for you, and you’re not actually out there. We have heard that two or three times, but tell me, how did you actually make the transition from you being the traditional agent of going out and showing people, and I know you guys do a lot of volume, so how did you make that transition from actually not leaving your office and saying, Here’s my showing agent. They’re going to actually show you the homes, but I’m going to do the negotiations.

11:22

Good question. Well, I am, I am terrible about getting out of my own way. And so the reason I was forced to do it is because I had four kids in less than three years. I have two sets of twins, and so I, like, emerged, re emerged from COVID. And, like, where did all these kids come from? And, you know, I, I had no choice. I, you know, I literally, my lifestyle changed so much that I just I could not do what I was doing before, um, and so I did it out of total necessity. And then we built another, we built a home in Florida, because we, you know, we always kept the business in Florida. And when the market in Seattle, you know, kind of dipped. The market in Florida was strong. So I, you know, I started traveling back and forth, like building up the business in Florida, and so me being not there, you know, 100% of the time, and me having four kids, like I literally forced me to and it’s the best thing that I ever did. I don’t know that I ever would have really done it on my own if it hadn’t been for life circumstances. We talked about doing it for at least five or six years, and we just never did, because we’re control freaks. We just, we don’t like to give things up, you know. So it really, it really has been a journey, but it’s been life changing. And listen, there are some people who don’t like it, but we’ve set it up in a way where, you know, they understand how we operate in the beginning. And I would say, you know, there is a small percentage of people where, you know, when they’re interviewing a bunch of agents, I don’t get, you know, I don’t get the client, and because I am transparent about how we work, you know, but it’s really their loss because, you know, I know that I’m one of the best agents in the whole marketplace. And so, you know, you know, I’m still handling all of the most crucial portions, you know, of the transaction. I’m just not opening the door. I mean, that’s it. That means the only part that I’m not doing, um, you know, and it is great, because when we have a new client, we set up a we set up everybody on a group text immediately. And so my business partners on it are showing agents on it. I’m on it, and our, you know, Director of Operations. And so whenever they see a house that they like, they send it to all of us. And so somebody’s on a computer. And so, like, we rapid fire, get people responses. I would say our time from when somebody tells us they want to see a house to the time that we have it booked in the MLS is five minutes. I mean, so they feel it’s like it, you know, people leverage when used, you know, appropriately, you know, actually creates a better customer service experience. And if they like the property, like we’re writing the offer while they’re still driving away with a showing agent, by the time they get home, they have an offer to look at right in front of. And so, you know, if you articulate all of that, I think, as a powerful value, I think you can, you can really leverage that. Or, you know, in our showing, agent has been on our team for six years, so he’s extremely knowledgeable. You like, we all really work well together, and we’re pretty you know, we give really similar advice, so that’s the right way of still working with buyers.

Jay Hendrix  14:55

So is that person? Is that person? Is that a salaried person? If you don’t mind me asking us. Salary person or a salary with a bonus, or is it like per door kind of thing or per showing what? What

15:05

does that look we gave him a couple of different options. He he decided he wanted to be hourly plus 5% of the commission, because he figured that, you know, the Seattle market’s a really competitive market, and you know, sometimes we have to write four and five offers to get people under contract. So he makes more money just being paid hourly than he would if he got a percentage of the commission. You know, some people we show four homes to. Some people we show 40. You know, it’s a crap shoot. So that’s so,

Jay Hendrix  15:34

so, so, so where for for to feed this, this team, where do the leads come from?

15:43

Well, I don’t feed my agents anything we we gave up on that a long time ago. Um, you know, are, are the agents that we have now have been on? I mean, one’s been on the team for 14 years, you know? I mean, everyone on our team is really tenured, like they just stuck around with us because, you know, even even though they do their own business, they can’t walk into a listing appointment and say, you know, I’ve sold $1.2 billion in real estate, but being on our team, they can, right, you know, or say, I have over 505 star Zillow reviews. Being on our team, they can. And so they recognize that, you know, they’ve got that there’s power to that, right? You know, we have a really, really, we have really cool service offerings on the listing side. And, you know, as long as we approve it first, like they can offer those services to their clients. So they have a significantly higher conversion rate, especially on listings, you know, by being on our team. And so there’s value to that. And, you know, the people that do a lot of volume, like, you know, once they had a certain number of deals like, you know, their commission splits for their end go up a lot. So it’s not, you know, it’s not when we don’t have agents on 5050, you know, we have agents that are high producing. They’re doing like, 10 to $15 million on their own, and being with us just gives them that extra oomph. So, and then, if they get, like, a luxury listing, like, they’ll bring, bring us in, you know, to do the listing appointment with them, and and that kind of thing. It’s a little non traditional, right? Like, you know, the value for us is having access to us, for their clients, if need be, you know, having access to our unique service offerings. You know, our great marketing and, you know, just our production,

Jay Hendrix  17:42

when you say unique service offerings, what would be an example of that?

17:47

Sure, so on the listing side, listen, I am always thinking about, how can I make more money and do less work, right? I want more time with my family in real estate can be all consuming and totally life sucking if we let it right. And so, you know, listings, you know, Gary told me a long time ago, when I first joined Keller Williams, you know, like she with the most listings wins, period. And that just always stuck with me. So, you know, you know, I figured out a model in which we rarely don’t get the listing, and we make a lot more on our listings and your standard agent. So here’s how it works. We walk into, we walk into a listing, and we say, Hey, Mr. Mrs. Seller, you have a beautiful home, but every home needs something, right in order to to prepare it for sale. And honestly, like most homes need, I would say, on average, five to 12 grand. And work, I mean, and that’s only just because labor costs are so, so much higher now, right? And materials too. So if we’re doing painting, you’re like, that’s a couple grand, right there. We’re doing landscaping, like, there’s 1500 we need to replace some paint, you know, some carpet or, I mean, it adds up pretty fast. And, you know, we have found that a lot of our clients either don’t have the money available or they’re just not willing to part with it right now in order to do those updates, but they understand that they’re important and that they would yield them a higher sale price. And so we, you know, we’re a licensed general contractor, so we’ll say, Hey, listen, we really feel strongly that if we put 15 grand into the house and we stage it, which we stage for free. We have our own staging inventory. So we stage for free. So if we come in and we do all this work and stage it for free, then you know, you’re going to sell it for x amount higher. And so you know we will get the bids. Um, we will attach a, usually, a. At a 20% markup, because our vendors that we use are good, and they, you know, they give us pretty low prices. So we’ll usually do a 20% markup, sometimes 10. It just depends on the situation. We do a small markup on the actual bid, you know. And that’s normal, right? That’s what general contractors do, right? They, they, they get all the subs, and they, they, they come up with the bid. So we’ll give them the bid, they’ll sign off on it. We’ll lend them the money. We’ll charge them a 10% loan fee, no interest, for 90 days. And then it used to be like 8% per annum, like, you know, yeah, I think we’ll probably just still keep it, keep it like that, because, again, we’re it’s not really like a big money model for us. We’re just really trying to sell their home. We, you know, we’re just not going to part with 50 grand and let it not be earning interest for us. So we’ll so we, you know, we have the markup on the general contracting. We get the 10% and I’ve only had one person ever have to pay me interest, but we get the loan fee, and then, you know, we charge them 6% two and a half percent is the listing side commission, and 1% is the project management fee, because I have to get all the bids, I have to source all the materials, you know, I have to book them. I have to make sure that they’re doing a quality job. I have to make it like I have to project manage the entire thing. And so then the buyer’s agent is offered two and a half percent. And just, you know, like in Washington state, in our MLS is one of three MLS is that was ahead of the curve. We started offering listings was was 0% by your agent compensation on the MLS in 2019 so we were not subject to any of the class action lawsuits. We gave, we did not opt in to the NAR settlement, and we published commissions, and sellers offer commissions. And so the way I have everything set up still works great today, because I’m not charging the seller more, so I’m making an extra 1% on the listing, just to recap, 10% on the loan fee and then a small marginal markup on the GC, plus the real estate commission. So I have, I have four different revenue streams on almost every listing, you know, and we stage for free. So it’s like, they, they hit the real estate broker like, like, jackpot at the lottery, right? And we have incredible before and after, you know, examples and, um, you know, people are just deeply, deeply grateful. I mean, we work with a lot of people who are older, who are either, you know, transitioning to retirement homes, or they’re leaving the state or but I would say, I would say at least half of our clients are over the over the age of 55 and a lot of them have owned their homes for 15 years, and even though it’s worth a million or 1,000,005 today, like they bought it for like, 300,000 right? And so, you know, they don’t have a ton of disposable income, but I know that I can get them an extra 75 grand if we do this work. So I mean, we’re really blessing them, you know. And they know it. So it’s really been great for us. So, you know, our agents are able to go out and offer that, you know. So it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s been pretty cool.

Jay Hendrix  23:31

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, So Tim, so what is the mix on your of your business, between listings and buyers?

23:39

Depends on the year. Sometimes it’s 60% listings, 40% buyers. Some years it’s it’s even, I will say year after year as time goes by, you know, I would say we do. We’re doing more and more listings, just because we’ve had hundreds of buyers buy, and then now they’re calling us to list, in addition to all of the listings that we generate on our own. Wow, you grew a beard in the last 10 seconds. It’s some kind of miracle.

Daren Phillipy  24:16

Thank you for letting me step in. I appreciate it. Jay, you’re awesome, dude. Where are we at in this thing? I’m sorry. Ooh, this is my favorite part. So, Kendra, I’m curious, what are some of the things that you do to help your team hit, hit their numbers? We always run into teams that

24:37

you I don’t. I’m the I’m the wrong person to ask about this. Like, building a team is not where my joy is. I learned that a long time ago. I remember you telling me about that, yeah, and so I’m just not the right person to talk to about it. I have built. I think there’s different definitions of a team, you know, there’s the team you know that we’ve got a bunch of agents, and you feed them. Leads, and you train them, and you have meetings, and I’ve done that, and I’ve just didn’t really find a lot of joint so the team structure that we have right now is we built a team around us and our clients and providing them the best customer service experience that we can and really leveraging as much of the work as we can so that we’re really just mostly client facing, like just dealing with the clients, having high level, strategic conversations, that kind of thing. So the agents that we have do their own thing. I don’t coach them anymore, like they’re doing 10 to 15 million they don’t really need me. And I’m really happy with that. So

Daren Phillipy  25:41

that’s perfect. Then I’m curious, what is that value proposition, because that sounds actually like the ideal team. Hey, you do your own thing. You’re welcome to use my tools, my resources, my whatever. You

25:58

just had that whole conversation, so I just shared what my value, what the value proposition was, why those agents want to be, want to be on the team, you know. And you know, open houses are really coming back, you know, with all all the industry changes, and you know, they have first dibs at open houses too, and all of our listings, which you know, they really like, but it really is just more being able to go into the room and say, Hey, we do all of these cool things. We’ve sold this much business. You know, we’d love to get to work for you.

Daren Phillipy  26:30

Do you have systems that you use for, like, your team functioning, like, like technology, or like processes or anything like that, like your admin might use, or anything like that.

26:45

Yes, um, you know, I think real estate is one of those rare industries that has never quite figured out how to have a cradle to grave system that is useful. So, just like everyone else we have, kind of, you know, MacGyvered a bunch of systems together with, you know, gum and paper clips. Um, so right now we’re, you know, we’re using brevity. Um, honestly, for many years we used a really unsexy but incredibly robust platform that we used back in the reo days. Um, because it had a lot of really cool auto tasking and that kind of thing. But technology is really improved, so we use brevity. I think it does a lot of good things. Yeah, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s really about it. I mean, you know, we have, we saw some things on spreadsheets, but not, not a whole lot. You know, we do run some things out of command, but not a whole lot. We’ve tried to use command a couple times. Frankly, it’s just not, just doesn’t work for teams. Yeah, yeah.

Daren Phillipy  27:47

I hear, I hear across the board brevity. I don’t know if you can go wrong with brevity.

27:52

No, I don’t, I don’t think so. I mean, if I could start all over, I’d probably use, like, follow up boss. And we almost went to them, but then Zillow bought them, and you know how we feel about them exactly,

Daren Phillipy  28:03

right?

28:04

So, but they’re probably best in class. But anyway, you know it is what it is. So I’m

Daren Phillipy  28:13

curious, then, what, what are, what are some of the steps that you’ve made in the past that have like, if you can, like, you said, hey, if I started all over whatever, if you were now building a big team, and you’ve got a big team with big, big you know, you’re, you’re growing it and doing that, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned that you could share with us?

28:36

Only do it if you really, really have a passion for it. If you really have a passion for helping other people build their businesses, and God has gifted you with an within the ability to motivate others, to lead and motivate then go all in. It’s just not it’s just not me. How did you learn that? How did you figure that out? Because I was miserable, yeah, because, you know, you know, I think it’s really, I think you learn really quickly where your joy is, you know, like, you can do something once or twice and be like, I don’t really enjoy doing this, even if I’m good at it. And here’s, here’s like, my big my big thing. I really think that people need to give themselves permission to not do things, you know, if they if they don’t really enjoy them, I mean, what I mean by that is, I think that highly capable individuals do things because they’re good at them, and because they’re good at them, they rationalize that they should do them because I’ve been successful at this, and therefore I should do it, but if it brings you no joy or very little joy, you’re wasting your life. You have one life. I mean, you want to spend it doing something that, if I have no joy in so I’ve worked really hard to find the parts about real estate that bring me joy, and I’ve really fought my way towards being. Able to spend my time doing those activities. And I’m getting there. I’m not fully there yet, but I’m getting there, you know. But it took me 21 years to, you know, to really, you know, not only, not only give myself permission to kind of, you know, seek after those things, you know. But I just think, you know, wisdom too comes, with age and experience. But yeah, I just, I just found that I wanted, I was more motivated for my agents than they were for themselves. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve told people that this is one of the most difficult industries to break into, and I just saw that most people give up before they right before, right before it clicked, you know. So, I mean, I didn’t make a dime my first nine or 10 months in the business. I didn’t have furniture. I literally had pillows and futons. Sat on the floor watching television, eating my ramen noodles, you know, like I had that story. And I just don’t feel like a lot of, especially younger folks, are willing to, you know, take those risks. Um, you know, this can be the most rewarding thing, you know, profession you know, out there, and certainly one of the most high paying. Um, but you know, you have to really dig in, because it’s a it’s a sales job. It is a prospecting job, until you reach a certain level in your career, and even then, it’s still a sales job. It’s just that you’re selling past clients instead of strangers. Yeah.

Daren Phillipy  31:30

So, so I’m curious, because you you lived in misery for how long?

31:38

Well, the reo is misery. I mean, we were number I think we were number four, and Keller Williams international that year, and when they called us, we started laughing so hard, we cried like we were it was we thought it was so funny because we were so miserable, and it wasn’t even anything we set out to do. It was just like we’d build this monstrosity of a machine and became enlaved to it, right? Yeah, and so that I was my most miserable then, right? Because doing 350 transactions a year and managing 18 employees was just, it’s just a terrible, terrible, um, but that was probably, and then when we had 45 agents and 18 employees, and I felt like I was just trying to herd drunk cattle, you know, those I just, you know, that just wasn’t me. So we just blew it all up. I was, you know, sharing that story earlier. And then we were much happier with a really lean team of people who are go getters that, you know, if I said, if you go do X, Y and Z, and you do it until it works, it will work. Like, okay, and then they went and did that, I’m like, now we’re talking, those are the people that I want to be around, you know, but that’s like one out of 100

Daren Phillipy  32:44

I didn’t, I didn’t know that you hung around with a lot of the the drunk cattle. That’s usually in Yakima, I believe, if I remember living in Spokane, um, so. So then tell me this. Then you’re running a team. You’re miserable, because this is many teams. They you get caught up in your job, in your business, in your career, and you’re doing your thing. At a certain point, you can’t stop, can’t quit. And how do you get the courage to stop doing the stuff that brings you misery and move towards it’s on my terms now,

33:20

well, what we did was we started setting aside a percentage of every single commission check, and we started buying real estate, and we did that for 13 years, and we have over 200 units now. And so it’s a choice, you know, you know, that’s how we did it. I mean, yeah, you can do it within your business by, you know, carving out the time to focus on, you know, high, you know, higher strategy activities, and figuring out how to bring in people to, you know, to do the the other activities. But you know, for us, I really, and I say this with a genuine love and respect for the whole real estate industry. It’s a job. It’s a very high paying job, but it’s a job. It is, and at some point I don’t want a job anymore. And I feel like most, most of the people on this zoom call probably feel the same way when I speak, I’ll say, raise your hand if you want to be a real estate broker for the rest of your life. And I’ll always get that one or two like alien creatures from another planet or like this is what I want to do forever. I don’t think that most of us want to do it forever, even if we do up it. I think we all want an exit strategy. And so you have to make, you have to make a commitment to do that. So we’re at the point now where, instead of going to real estate, you know, real estate sales masterminds, we need to go to real estate investing masterminds and get in rooms with people that are doing 100 and 200 million deals. You know, because we have a portfolio that we’re ready to level. Up, you know, so that we can have more passive income, and then we can start scaling back on the parts of our real estate sales business that really don’t bring us any joy. And now, you know, I, you know, I would never, I would never advise to blow it up, but just find somebody to take it over, and then instead of taking 100% of it, just take a piece and be grateful that it’s making money, but you’re not having have to do anything for it. You just have check ins with that one person every now and again. So that’s kind of, that’s kind of our path, you know what? I mean? Yeah, you know, you build a giant business and then walk away from it one day, um, you know. But you you have to do you have to strategically start thinking about financial freedom, you know, or you’re never gonna have an exit. Man,

Daren Phillipy  35:46

what does that look like to you? I mean, like, how does that get you excited when you start thinking about

35:51

that? I mean, about 1,000% more than talking about real estate teams. Yes. So investing in real estate, developing passive streams of income, like I’m your girl.

Daren Phillipy  36:06

So what have you learned? This is your favorite part. What have you learned in the last 12 months when it comes to leading your team or leading your the people or in your world?

36:21

You know that’s a good question. Good question. I don’t, I mean, I don’t really do a lot of leading. I don’t think our team is really, I mean, people do their own thing. Like, like, we’re at a really unique point. Like, like, I like, I have somebody who’s been on my team for 14 years. He doesn’t need, um, so, you know, here’s how I lead, we set up happy hours, okay? We set up, like, summer barbecues, like we create community, you know, because, honestly, like, that’s what my people need for me more than anything, is that? And, you know, I lead by experience to, like, if we do something that works, we share it with everyone else, if we roll out a new, you know, system, you know, or service offering, you know, we get excited to equip our agents to go offer it too. But like I said, I don’t run, I don’t really run a team. I built a team. I

Daren Phillipy  37:16

just happen to have a name that people would attach it, attach themselves to. Yeah, yeah. Whoops not my fault that you’re awesome. What about what is the next thing that you need to learn? Then moving forward with the vision of what you just kind of described, what’s the next step? Next thing you need to learn?

37:37

Well, I’m learning new things every day, right? Because we’re building up our office in Florida again. So that’s been interesting, because I was like, if I could do it all over again, from scratch, how would I do it this time, for the third time? And, I mean, and that has been really fun. And I’m happy to share, like, some of those fun things, I mean, so, I mean, I am learning, like, do you know that I’ve never farmed, done traditional farming? It’s just like, it’s a weird thing you don’t really do in Seattle, because we don’t have, like, gated communities. And, you know, like, like, you know, those next door, like, the next door neighborhoods we have through command. Like, it doesn’t work in Seattle. Like, we don’t use that for our, like, client market reports, because we just don’t have neighbors. There’s no neighborhoods, no. And so you know, you know, to building out our Florida, our Florida office. We’re like, let’s farm neighborhoods, which is hysterical, or 21 years in the business, and we’re like, let’s do that thing that agents have been doing for 30 years, right? I hear door knocking. Might work for the first time, but here it means, but here’s the things that I’m learning. I’m learning that that farming can be extremely effective if you look at it as a long game, and if you do it every month, when I long game, I’m talking like 345, years. I think that’s my biggest aha and real estate, over the last year has I’ve been too short sighted, and maybe it’s because I’m old. And I think the irony of getting older is that you have less time because you’re old, you’re right. When you get older, you have less time and let you you’re you’re able to think in terms of years, right, right, you know. And so the things that we and we implement, we we commit to for a minimum of three years. So we have to be very serious about it, and we have to be all in, because if you give up after six months, well, yeah, duh. I mean, that’s not going to work after six months, like you might get a couple calls, you might get lucky and get like a listing leader too, you know. But you do that for three or five years, you’ll you become like the mayor of that neighborhood, as long as you’re providing value. So that’s been kind of my big aha. Is like, Don’t commit to something unless you’re committed to do it consistently, you know, and regularly for for three years, dude.

Daren Phillipy  39:55

That is so good. That is so good. Now I’m going to look like an idiot, because I just got back into this. But I want, I’m really, really curious. So you why you smiling when I said that? So you said that you are expanding, apparently, into Florida. Well,

40:11

we’ve been here. I’ve been here. I’ve had an office for 21 years. It’s just the market got really good during COVID. So I was like, we should build that. We should build that out. Everyone is moving to Florida, and so we did,

Daren Phillipy  40:22

yeah, my brother actually moved from from Bellevue to Florida this this summer, and then the hurricane hit. Um, so, so what are you’re learning now, how to break into a new market then, basically, is that right?

40:37

Yeah. But you know what? We don’t have to do it the old fashioned way like so here are the things that I if you ask me, What if I could do anything with my time? What would I do? There you go. I would do television. Okay, I loved television. I’m great on television. It’s my passion. Okay, so how do I take that and incorporate it into real estate, right? Well, funny that you ask, something happened in the past year. I think there’s been kind of like a tipping point with YouTube and social media and that. And by the way, like I loathe social media, I think it rocks the brain. You know, I don’t go on there except to post things that are necessary for business, because I do think it is valuable for business, but I think it’s very dangerous on a social level. Not that anybody asks. That’s my unsolicited opinion. But here’s but what’s happened in the last year is it’s become a powerful source of information and entertainment. You know, it’s less, oh my gosh. Look at how like, hot I am and, you know, look at how glamorous my weekend was, right, that’s really what it was for many years. You know, YouTube is the second most search is the second most powerful search engine, search engine for information, and so, you know, I’m like, Okay, well, then I’m going to build a YouTube channel, I’m going to start, you know, doing videos, and I’m going to fulfill this desire, I have to, you know, do some type of, you know, video media. And I’m going to do that for real estate, you know. And so you can’t see it, but right over here, we’ve got it out a room across from my office, and we’re building on a studio, awesome, you know. And so we’re going to start, we’re going to start doing that. I haven’t done it yet, but, you know, so instead of, okay, so then you do something like that, and then how do you incorporate that into marketing it to clients? Well, that’s a great question. Well, instead of sending somebody a boring, you know, market, neighborhood, Market Snapshot every month, send them one a quarter, and then the second month, send them a postcard with a QR code to a really cool video that you just did about like, the top three Italian restaurants within two miles of where they live. And then they go on your YouTube, they see all the other stuff. And then they, then they get sucked down the black hole that is social media, hopefully on your page, or the same thing you can, you know, route them to Instagram or Tiktok, if you’re brave enough to download that app on your phone, you know. So, um, you know, I’m looking at my business differently, like, how can we use, you know, the new way that people are communicating and sourcing information to actually, you know, connect with people. So my goal is, by the time they call they already feel like they know me, and then I don’t have to sell them, because that’s the worst part of this business. Is, oh, look at me. Let me prove like, you know, how awesome I am. Like, Oh, yeah. Like, I hate that part, you know, Kendra,

Daren Phillipy  43:38

how come I had to come in in the second half? I would have loved to be hanging out with you the whole hour.

43:44

I don’t, I don’t know. I’m just glad we’re not talking about teams anymore. I’m like, Why do you guys keep asking me questions about something that you know? I’m just, you know, I was never really great at it, right? And so I’ve just built, I’ve just built the business a little differently. Well,

Daren Phillipy  43:59

you know what I love, though, is there are so many teams that feel that same way, yeah, and sometimes the culture forces you to go that way. I I had an agent come up to me a handful of years ago saying, I don’t know if I feel like a belong here, because I’m not interested in building a team. Yeah, and, and, and if you don’t follow a model. It’s a very quick way for you to torture yourself and and bring yourself a lot of pain and also going down another path of, I’m just doing it because, and there’s no, really no purpose behind it,

44:31

no 100% but you know, as I was saying earlier, before you came on, like I just, I define team differently. I define team as, you know, leveraging people around me to take more off of my plate, so that, you know, I can focus my time on the things that bring me joy, and then also, you know, have have the highest impact, and, you know, make the most money and generate the most business. And so you can build a team around yourself, you know, that way, and I just. Bring in people to fill those positions that, you know, I don’t want to do anymore, and that’s a team too. It’s just, you know, non traditional, honestly, you know, you know, as a market center investor like, you know, I know, I’m very familiar with the makeup of agents in our office. And, you know, I would say that we have maybe two or three groups. We have maybe five or six teams, you know, maybe it’s 10 teams, you know, but, but then the rest are single agents. So it’s not like Keller Williams, is this, you know, company where it’s, you know, could grow a team or get out, you know, most, most of the people are single agents who just need to learn how to like, you know, I know we don’t do this anymore, but I love like, rstlm, like recruit, select was one of the best classes that I ever took. Mark Willis was teaching it back in the day when I did it. And it was amazing, you know. And lead, motivate, and train, and all of that, you know. And I think that we should all be going through those types of courses, whatever they’re called today. I’ve there’s so many Keller Williams acronyms, I just cannot. I need, like, a cheat sheet or something.

Daren Phillipy  46:11

Well, I think, I think you’re exactly right. And like the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book, it’s a model that teaches you to build something as big as you want and and, so Keller Williams follows that model. And I think some, you know, that’s cool. Majority of the industry is independent, individual agents. So,

46:28

yeah, well, that’s the keywords are as you want, right? Yeah, right, that’s right.

Daren Phillipy  46:35

So we, we’re, I’m gonna, everybody can click their digital their digital hands for you can’t ask questions about teams guys. Oh, you

46:44

can. Okay, however you want

Daren Phillipy  46:47

you. If you have questions, raise your digital hand. I’ve got something super important. Are you living in Florida? You living in Seattle? Right

46:55

now? I’m in both. I go back and forth. Okay, so

Daren Phillipy  47:01

my favorite thing to do, I love, usually go to San Francisco, because I can’t stand the Seahawks right now. But I do love Seattle and Bainbridge Island. My whole the whole thing I go to Seattle and I’m getting myself a clam chowder, a sourdough bowl or a bowl. Where am I going? In Seattle?

47:23

I have no idea. I’m lactose intolerant, so I would not eat that, but I can, I can tell you, I would go to the the Crab Shack, like I’m from the south, like I grew up, like cracking crabs. And so you want to go there. It’s right on the waterfront. And you want to go get some Alaskan king crab, you know, some Dungeness crab, put a bib on, get some butter out and go to town. So that’s my idea of a good time.

Daren Phillipy  47:49

Sounds fantastic. Did you ever go? Do you ever go to zips in? Spokane,

47:55

no, I’ve been a Spokane, like, twice. Okay,

Daren Phillipy  47:59

how about dicks? You ever go to downtown? Dicks you make better choices than me. Okay? I mean, you’re talking

48:05

about Dick burgers. Yes, come on, like, like, on the regular, perfect $2 burger. You’ll Ever 100%

Daren Phillipy  48:16

that’s all. That’s it. Okay, we got important things covered. Now, Christine, you’ve got an amazing question for Kendra. So, Christine, go and do your thing.

48:26

Hey, Kendra. Christine, here, um, my question. You mentioned your team was putting money aside to buy properties, and you have about 200 properties now, that’s awesome. That’s great. Um, we’re looking at getting started with that. So if you could give any advice on that, that’d be awesome,

48:45

sure. Well, what do you want to buy? When or what, what? Yeah,

48:51

um, probably single family. We’re not opposed to doing like duplex triplex, that kind of thing as well.

48:59

So the first

49:00

thing you need to do, excellent question, and thank you for asking it, by the way, is decide where you want your real estate portfolio to be in 10 years, and then you’re going to reverse engineer it. So when we sat down and started out, we were like, you know, we really want to bring in 20 grand a month each, so we can quit our day jobs. Now, remember, this was like 15 years ago, so we’ve learned to factor for inflation. No, I’m serious, that’s a thing you like when you’re doing when you’re doing your 10 year plan, you need to add in, like a three and on average, 3% per year for inflation. And so that 20 grand became 30 grand and 50 grand, right? You know, because of the cost, just the cost of living these days. But what we do, you know? So we did up that number, but we decided how much cash flow we wanted. And then we’ve tried to figure out, okay, well, we can buy, you know, how many doors do we need to buy cash flowing at x you know? Amount per month, you know, in order to get there. And so we started out like saying we needed to buy a certain number of properties of cash flow, $200 a door. And then we realized that that wasn’t really working, and we just kind of kind of reverse engineered it again and decided that, you know, we needed to kind of run the numbers a different way. Um, but, you know, it’s, it becomes tangible when you start at the end, and then you kind of figure out what you need to achieve year by year to get there. If you just go blindly, buy a property because of cash flows or, you know, it’s got built in equity that that’s not a business plan, right? You know. So you need to decide where you want to go and what you want to have at the end of that, so you can have a better understanding of what kind of properties that you need to buy. For us, we decided we didn’t want to have 30 lawns to mow and 30 water heaters to go out, and 30 roofs to replace, because the maintenance costs are exceedingly high. So we own multi family buildings, self storage and mobile home parks, and we’re actually selling a big chunk of our portfolio, and we’re going to level up into more self storage and triple net, because that’s where we are on the Monopoly board. But if you’re starting out, you know, you know, I recommend multi family just, just because of them, the maintenance costs are lower, you know. But single family homes, if you’re going to do that, you just need to know that you you know, you’re going to hold them for five years and then sell them, right? And I would probably the sweet spot for that, honestly, is two bedroom one bath homes. You know, for whatever reason, you know, two bedroom one bath homes tend to perform really well. They’re easy to rent. They’re a little bit smaller, so they’re less maintenance, because they’re smaller square footage, and they’re easy to sell to first time buyers. So you know, if you’re going to do the single family route, I would that’s what I would recommend. But really, you just need to start at the end and then reverse engineer it from there. Does that make

52:11

sense? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. Yep. Um, there’s a I guess a second part, am I Well, yeah, I guess the second part to my question, so is this, you and your business partner are the ones that are owning these Yes,

52:28

yes, okay. I, you know, I think we’ve had two disagreements ever, and one was because I showed up late, and she really hates it when people are late. I never did that again. Um, so, you know, we own everything. We own everything together. So we we build all these businesses together, because it’s more fun together,

52:50

right? And do you rope in your director of ops in that at all?

52:56

Not on that? I mean, I mean she’ll deposit rent checks for us like we’ll ask her to do some administrative stuff and occasionally run reports for us, but her hands are pretty full with the real estate sales side.

53:09

Yeah, go ahead, sir.

Daren Phillipy  53:12

I did it. Christine, awesome question. Thank you so much for asking that. And Kendra, you’re so cool. I really loved hanging out with you for a little bit, and I’m super grateful for my buddy. Trent Taylor, oh, he’s got his he’s unmuted himself. He’s been hiding behind his name. He probably doesn’t know jacket. Can I say something? Yeah, before he says something, he doesn’t know how to turn his camera on.

53:34

No, it’s worth we’re seeing like a 15 year old picture of him.

53:38

Hey, I was 35 in that picture.

Daren Phillipy  53:44

What do you say? Trent, first

53:46

of all, let me start by saying, BYU sucks, and the YouTube division anyway. So I just wanted to say, Yeah, I have basically a great testimonial of Kendra and her team. They’re amazing. So I had a referral few years ago. My in laws has had a house, and she took care of that. And then also, I had a referral a couple months ago with a piece of basically grass and trees near a lake somewhere. It was $100,000 and so I know Kendra, she didn’t even make enough to pay her flight back to Florida, but they handled it amazingly well. My client was super happy. Both clients were super happy. So if anybody has, has any referrals in the greater Seattle area that gotta use Kendra really, her team’s amazing.

54:46

Thank you. And you know, that’s the thing it does. We don’t ever look at price point, right? Like, doesn’t matter to us if it’s 100,000 or a million. Like, everybody gets the same treatment. So,

Daren Phillipy  54:56

so good, of course. Trent, thanks for giving her. Props number one and number two. Thanks for showing up. We all know the Niners are the greatest. Kendra, if we want to send referrals, don’t shake your head at me. We know we need to send referrals to Seattle. Is there? Do we send referrals to Florida? To Florida too? Yeah,

55:15

yeah. So like Palm Beach area, so Palm Beach County, you know, Port St, Lucie, all all the way down to West Palm and Boca Raton, yeah, and then basically almost all of Western Washington apparently tread calling. I’m like, Sure, let me look it up on the map. I’m like, I know where that is. I’ve sold land there before, but it’s like, three hours away from me. But no problem.

Daren Phillipy  55:40

So good. Okay, so then, if someone’s sending you a business to either shadow or Palm Beach, how do you want them to send that referral? What’s the best way to reach you?

55:50

Um, you know, they can call, they can email, they can message on Facebook, you know, all of the above.

Daren Phillipy  56:00

What’s the best phone number for them to reach you out? 206-659-5990, perfect. I’ve got your email. Unless there’s a different email you’d like me to

56:12

use? No, yeah, that one’s fine, and you can find me on social media. Kendra l Todd, so that’s me.

Daren Phillipy  56:22

Kendra, a plus for you. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. You’re so kind. I had a lot of fun, and let’s make sure we follow you on YouTube so we can see see you doing some great stuff. Thanks.

56:32

All right. Bye. You guys have a good one. You.