Rob Mager: Tackling the Real Estate Market with a Pro’s Grit and Game

Rick Ripma (00:00)
You're going to be excited about this show today. had Rob Mager. Rob is with the agency Indy, which is a boutique firm, but they're a worldwide company and they do luxury properties. But it's really the service that they give is luxury service. That's what he explains. But he's a guy, he's been in the business for four years, which doesn't sound like a whole lot, but in four years he is closed.

almost $50 million in homes and sales. He's almost 118, I think it said 118 homes somewhere in that neighborhood in that four years. He has done phenomenally well in an industry that 86 or 87 % of people who start in real estate in first five years are no longer in real estate. So this is a tough industry.

and he's done extremely well. also a, he was a professional football player in the arena league. He played football at UND. Great guy, great real estate agent, phenomenal person. I think you're really going to enjoy this one.

how they build their dreams from the ground into the blue. He talks of dedication, the long nights and the grind from small town beginnings to the big deals they find stories of success through sweat and tears. Well, welcome to Indy's Real Estate Gurus and today I'm really excited I have Rob

Mager. Mager. Mager. I thought I had it right. And you're with the agency, real estate? The agency here in Indy, yes. And it's on Zionsville Road. It's in Zionsville right by Holiday Farms. we're a boutique brokerage. Just getting started in Indy. But it's a global brokerage. It's actually spreading like wildfire across really the entire globe, which is really cool. Lots of awesome things going on with the agency.

You know, I drove by it the other day because I live about a mile away from it. Yeah. So we were going up to the Meyer and 32 and drove by it and I specifically look for it. You're going to move, but it's a cool little building right now. Yes, it is. They took over the old farmhouse, which is right in front of Holiday Farms, renovated the entire inside of it and it

It acts as our office currently. It's like walking into a home, which is really, really cool. So they've got different parts and different areas you can go work out of. But yes, they're developing that entire area right next to it. we'll pretty soon be in, there's a couple of different spaces that are gonna be built with some retail shops and restaurants and whatnot. And we'll be in one of those. And then another tenant will end up taking the old farmhouse, which is kind of neat. So lots of things happening there.

Yeah, it's a cool spot. there's, I mean, like you said, there's a community going up there that's phenomenal from what I can see. I think it's the same community. They have a trail behind it. And for some reason, I can't remember the name of the trail, but my wife and I walk it. And it's got a golf course there. Yeah. So you walk by the golf course and all that, and you see the back of these houses, and there are...

many of them are magnificent. yeah, there are just some beautiful, beautiful homes in that area. That whole area is just blossoming, which is phenomenal. And there are some absolutely stunning homes in the area. Which is saying something for a guy who works at a company that when I looked at your website, you got homes in there for 20 million, 25 million. There's some pretty stunning homes all over the world. It really is. there's, I mean, that's really, you know, the agency is a luxury boutique brokerage.

Luxury is more of a price point or an experience than a price point. So we do sell anything from $100 ,000 to $20 million. We sit in an area of holiday farms where it's like $2 -3 million easily. But it's not just the price point, it's the experience, which is really cool.

I just love the opportunity to go in and build something with the agency to start here in Indianapolis. It's really cool. Yeah, that's cool. I'm going to go back a little bit. let's find out, did you grow up? Where did you go to school? What did you do before you got into real estate? Yeah. I grew up in small town Seymour, Indiana. I moved there when I was five. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, which I absolutely love.

love when people go visit it. It's much more of a tourist attraction than it ever was when I lived there. But we moved when I was five to little old Seymour, Indiana, John Cougar Mellon Camp. Great place to grow up and then spent my childhood there and ended up going to the University of Indianapolis for college where I played football and at that point in my life I wanted to be a physical therapist and don't know why other than just maybe helping people.

I just had that innate sense to where I wanted to do something to help. So I thought physical therapy is going be great. UND is a phenomenal physical therapy program and at the time they were and they still are really really good at football. So I wanted to do both and that's what brought me to UND. played division two college football there and quickly realized I didn't want to do any physical therapy after that first year.

And so switched to business and then kind of the rest is history from there. So feel like I was always made to be like a in sales of some sort marketing. So I majored in business and marketing and in management. And that was that was a really cool time at UND. Probably the best suited for me as well as a smaller, you know, tightly knit.

tightly knit group, can't get away from anything there. yeah, I loved it. I loved being so close to Indy. And then after that, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was like, okay, well, I can either try to continue to play football or whatnot. But honestly, I just didn't want to be my age now. I just turned 43. And I still feel like I'm 20 something. But I didn't want to be my age now.

and have regrets of like, could have like, I watch, because I'm big football guy. So if I'm watching football, I didn't want to have regrets of, I could have played and I wish I would have done this or I wish I would have done that. So I said, you know what, I'm going to just give it a go and see what happens. didn't make it to the NFL. That was the goal. had a couple of workouts and those were super neat and lots of learning from that, but landed in the arena football leagues.

Indy at the time had one and that's what kind of like spurred me to think maybe I could do that if if the NFL wasn't an option. yeah, I just I wanted to try to keep playing and see what's happening because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And ended up in the arena football leagues and I spent the better part of the next four or five years after college playing and I played in a for a couple different teams, one in Louisville and one in Chicago and Chicago was absolutely.

a blast and met some lifelong friends that I still stay in contact with today. So I kind made my way through arena football and if I back up just a tad, which is crazy, right as I graduated from UND and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

I actually got my real estate license then. you did? Really? I did. knew that I, and part of when I made the switch from physical therapy to business, I knew sales and again, helping people get to some point or in some way, shape or form help people, that I wanted to be involved with something like that. so real estate just became very appealing to me towards the end of my college career.

And so I took five years at UND. I had the red shirt season in my fifth year. But I graduated in four. And that's when I got my real estate license. It literally as I graduated, I was like, all right, well, let's see what happens here. Failed miserably that very first summer. And I don't know if I even had a client or talked to a client, but that still was very appealing to me because I knew that I wanted to do it. Real estate just had this like,

draw for me because I loved homes, I loved houses, I loved helping people as I mentioned. so when I tried it and then failed, I had all this ambition but just no guidance, no real like mentorship or somebody to kind of help me along the way, which is very difficult. And now where I'm at, you can kind of understand, okay, this is not so easy. So

After I failed, was like, well, I better go back and finish my fifth year of eligibility. And that's what I did. And that's when I was like, well, what do I want to do now? And that's where the thought process of, OK, let's try this football thing out for a little bit. And ended up in Louisville and in Chicago and did that for a little while. And then the economy crashed in 2008. And I had to figure out what the heck I was going to do then because it wasn't going to be football anymore. So I figured it's probably time to get a real job now and grow up and turn in the

Sweatpants and sweatshirts and in the locker room, right? And I had a couple buddies that worked in the corporate world at a company called Aerotech Okay, to this day that that's that's one of the best things I think that had ever happened to me from a business standpoint because as I mentioned I knew nothing other than like sports and the locker room and They are a phenomenal company a lot of people join there Either their first job out of college or maybe it's their second

gig after they complete their college career. It's a recruiting and staffing firm. They're really good at that, but their best traits are that they just train people to be leaders in business. That was phenomenal for me, and it was exactly what I needed. It was a super competitive environment, hard working, hard play. But I think it translated super well into what I'm doing now with real estate because

You know, for then I was in the sales portion, eventually working with businesses around town to help put people into jobs. And now I'm putting people into homes. So it's all the same fundamentals, all of the same things that I applied there and learned for the better part of 10 years in the corporate world. And now I'm doing that in the real estate world. So that's where I'm from, how I kind of came to be, I guess, in the real estate world. After Aerotech, I thought,

real estate was going to be my exit strategy, which it kind of was. And then had a buddy from Aerotech that actually took a job with Striker, mentioned to me, hey, know, Striker's hiring Indy, do you know anybody? And I thought, I did want to go to Striker as well. So I raised my hand and said, let's do it. And I took a short stint there. And you know, I'm a firm believer in things happen for a reason.

I thought Aerotech was gonna be straight into real estate after that and I ended up going to Stryker. Had all the ambition, got excited about it, started building my business up and then COVID happened in 2020 and it was kinda like, all right, now we're back to square one and I just, it wasn't what I thought it was. There's a lot of great things at Stryker, a lot of great people. It just wasn't for me. And I thought, okay.

2020 my wife probably thought I was crazy too that hey, it's about time maybe I get into the real estate like I talked about and I think she looked at me a little funny like I was maybe crazy for trying to switch jobs during the middle of a worldwide pandemic for a zero salary, know, 100 % commission job in real estate. But I felt like it was time. It was just drawing me in.

And that's what brought me into real estate. I got linked up with a great, great mentor this time around, Andrew Schrader over at EXP. And that's what got me started into real estate. And I thought he did a phenomenal job of kind of showing me the ropes, taking me under his wing, and really getting me started taking and pulling some of the aspects that I'd learned from Aerotech in sales and business and applying them to the real estate world. So in a nutshell, that's it.

You have a pandemic. Real estate is, you can't even hardly show real estate. You know, it's very difficult. You have a wife. Do have any kids? I do. So I've been married actually seven years on Monday. congratulations. On the ninth. Yeah, nine, nine. So it was easy to remember. But yeah, seven years on Monday, we have two kids. We actually didn't have kids at the start of the pandemic. Okay. So I'm, you know, we're

Well, let's see here. We actually got pregnant on July 4th of 2020. So it was the middle of the pandemic when we started our very first baby, July 4th, middle of pandemic, and I'm also starting real estate. And then we get pregnant shortly thereafter with our second. So they're 13 and a half months apart, almost Irish twins. But yeah, at the start of kind of when I started,

started to trickle into real estate, because I did it part -time for that first year. Where I was able to, because of the pandemic, it was really difficult being in medical device and then the healthcare industry, you couldn't even get into the hospital. So it was almost like I'm just sitting here with a job and fortunately I was with one with Striker that had a base salary, modest, but at least gave me some sort of income.

while I could get my real estate career up and running. And I juggled the two for a while in addition to the pandemic and two kids, toddlers, infants, you know, at the time. two dogs. And two dogs. yeah, you had a full house. We did, we did. was kind of, again, now you're probably seeing why my wife thought I might be crazy for wanting to choose then.

to get into real estate, so yeah, pretty well. have to be a risk taker to be able to do that. A little bit. You have to have some of that ability to handle risk, to have a family and do all that. So that's phenomenal. But one of the things you said is one of the things I truly believe, and we'll talk about here in a second, which is the mentors. But first, if somebody is interested in working with you in real estate, what is the best way for them to get ahold of you? Call me up.

Send me a message on my Instagram. My number is 317 -703 -9990. Just shoot me a call. Shoot me a text. Text is usually easier just because I'll see it be able to respond if I'm in a meeting or shooting a podcast or something. Then I can get back to you right away. Yeah, or Instagram message, Facebook message, any way to get a hold of me. Email is probably another way, but it might be the least favorite.

of mine anyway because I don't check that as often as I might my phone which is usually right in front of my Phone's the easiest now. It is. And your number you said 317 -703 -9990. Correct. That's pretty easy. 9990. How'd you get that number? That's a good number. I'd love to say I assigned it to myself but no. My anniversary's 99. My football number in college was number 9. It was destiny. Yeah. 9990. All nines. That's awesome.

Let's move to where now you've started real estate. You really wanted to be in real estate. Many, many people fail when they get in. I think it's 80 or 90 % fail in the first five years. 87%. 87%. I knew it was a high number, big number. And so you made it. a lot of that was having a mentor. Now, did you go on a team or did you just have a mentor? How did that work and how did that affect you?

I did and I would strongly advise or recommend joining a team or at a minimum having a dedicated mentor that's going to be truly vested into your business. the way that I saw that that worked was to join a team or basically form with Drew Schrader a team and in that way I knew that you know hey I'm essentially looking at you as my mentor slash business partner.

and I'm willing to join your team and give you a part of my commission in exchange for you to kind of help me through some of these transactions. Like, I can figure a lot of this out on my own, but I'd rather speed up that learning curve by leveraging his, at the time, 17, 16, 17 years of experience, I think it's now over 20, which is really cool. And he was a phenomenal guy and took me under his wing. But yeah, that for me was,

was priceless and I think certainly the catalyst to helping me grow my business so quickly. I think it's just incredibly important to have that, to have the mentor. And I think it being on a team. I know when I look at it and the people I talk to, almost everyone who's been successful who did it really in last 10 years, because before maybe 15, but you get way back there. They didn't have teams. They didn't have mentors. You were on your own and you just had to figure it out.

But this has made a big difference to help people get going. It helps both sides. It helps the person that's mentoring you because they have somebody who can hand things off that needs to learn it. And if they have the right person, it can be really a benefit for both sides. if anybody's out there looking, I would agree with you 100%. Somebody's out there looking to become in real estate, you need to be on a team. 100%. I mean, I think that it is just such a difficult.

job to do. You're dealing with people. You're dealing with an emotional process, which is their biggest investment, either buying or selling their home, and they're trusting you to guide them through that process. if you're just starting out and you haven't, let's some people start out, and I think the requirement should be you at least have bought or sold a home. And or a requirement should be that you're part of a team if you haven't so that they can guide you through that because it is

There's so many layers to every single transaction. And it's part of what I love about real estate too is that it always provides different problems to solve. And every transaction is gonna be different. Because I like that variety. But it's very difficult when you're starting out because you've never seen any of it before. So the more that you can do and the more that you can work with somebody to say, okay, I've seen this before, I've seen this before, I know how to handle this, the better.

But yeah, I think that's why there's such a high fail rate of realtors in our industry. quite honestly, it doesn't do the general public any good or shed realtors in any bright light, if you will, because there are so many people that start and then fail. Or they try to do it and then they work with somebody and it just ends up being a horrible experience. yeah.

That's probably one of the tougher things of having such a low barrier of entry. But it certainly makes it easier to stand out once you start doing well. Yeah. And you've done extremely well. You've done almost $50 million in the first four years. That's somewhere in the 118 sales, 120 sales, somewhere Roughly, yeah, somewhere around there. But yeah, it's been...

It's been a really exciting past four years. you know, even that first year where I was part -time kind of juggling striker and real estate, you know, to have done that, I'm very grateful. Again, I think I owe a lot to Drew and how he took me under his wing, but it's been a lot. It's been super, super exciting. So when you got into real estate, what were you surprised about? it wasn't...

maybe wasn't exactly what you thought it might be. Sure. Well, I think like probably so many others that want to get into real estate, you look at the shows that are on TV or you just see very nice houses that are all over the place, right? And I'm surprised by the amount because when I bought my first home, I wasn't a realtor. I loved the realtor that I worked with and he did a phenomenal job and he kind of showed me.

But I think any good realtor will make that process look easy. And they'll make it seem like, boy, I could do this, which is exactly what I thought. And I'm sure a lot of other people do. But once you actually get inside, you get an accepted offer, or you go under contract on a home, it's that escrow period of where you're dealing with not only the negotiation to get it accepted,

But then you're dealing with inspections you're dealing with the appraisal whether it's low or who knows what all of the different problems and things that can come up in how to deliver and frame anything up in terms of what's the solution how am I going to figure this out for my client and advocate on their behalf in order to keep this moving forward towards the closing table or

Sometimes the toughest part is having to say this might be a transaction or a home that you want to stay away from based on this information or we can't come to an agreement. you know, good realtors make it look easy and might make others want to get into it because of that, but I can assure you it is not an easy thing. so many different layers were probably the biggest thing that surprised me. And then the other piece would be, boy, you know, we see a lot of really nice homes and they're

fantastic homes in the Indianapolis area, but there's also some really yucky ones, know? So it's not always the glitz and glamour that you see behind the scenes, whether it be on anybody's Instagram or on TV or whatnot. So that surprised me a little bit too, but certainly poses a different challenge when you look at a home that maybe not so great shape. Yeah, you know, it's funny what you said is I always relate it to an ice skater.

So you watch the Olympics and you see the Olympic ice skaters, you know, twirling around and all that. And they make it look so easy. That's so true. Right. Yeah. And then you get on skates, you can't even stand up. Right. That is a great analogy. I love that. I think it's the same way. think it's exactly. my gosh. Yeah. I can't remember like watching even ice hockey or ice skating. yeah. When doing that, it's just like this looks incredibly easy. But yeah, any time I get on the ice rink and just go skate with the wife or the kids, I'm like, I'm like wobbly.

That is a phenomenal analogy. that's how I always look at it. I think it's a compliment to you if somebody looks at you and they go, man, you make this, I want to get into real estate. It looks like it's a lot of fun. And it's telling you, you're that great ice skater, right? You're that great hockey player that they look at and they think, well, who can't do that? Right. Yeah. No, that's always a fun one when you get it from your clients. Kind of happens several times.

Definitely a compliment, you know, and in something that I don't take lightly and yeah, it is I love talking to people about wanting to get into it and in trying to reassure them that it could be very fruitful, but it could also be extremely, extremely difficult. Yeah. So what about the technologies today? Because you've got a lot of technology. What what are some of the like the things that you use a lot that are vital to what you're doing today? Boy, that is a

That's a great question actually, because there is a lot of technology, some I love, some I don't. I think at the end of the day, it's about the work that you put in, and especially in a sales -driven career, you're gonna get out what you put in. There's automated things that you can do. I love and I hate some of that, right? It's not bad because it takes...

your ability to communicate with your clients and keep them either updated on the market or hey, here's what's going on in your neighborhood. But sometimes it's a little impersonal. I think despite all of the technology that's out there, there's nothing better than a direct phone call or a direct text. I like to video text as well, something I learned from Drew.

Which is like a phone call they get to see your face they get to hear you, but there's nothing that beats The direct nature of that so I think Outside of all of the technology that's probably my favorite thing is just directly connecting with my people Or sending them a little note to just say hey, I'm thinking of you But yeah, there's all kinds of different tools that you can utilize to to help stay connected with your people Yeah, because because ultimately

It's not really about real estate. It's about people. It is. It really is. And it's about people knowing, liking and trusting you and you know, outside of and I guess I should probably also mention one of the biggest tools that I use is social media and you know that outside of a direct text, this is a way for me because nobody likes cold calling. Let's be honest. Hate it. And I don't want to just call up.

some random person and say, can I help you or, you know, however, whatever scripts you can follow for that. I want things to be as warm as possible. But social media provides that avenue for people. It's kind like your billboard, you know, for people to go on. Hey, who is Rob, Rob Magher, you know, what's he about? Well, you know, he's a small town guy, former football guy that likes to compete and he wants to work hard for my business. But it's a way for me to put something out there that's value driven.

that ideally provide some sort of value for my client and they see my name and consistently. And I'm consistently reaching out to them in some way, or form, talking about whether it's the market or what's happening with interest rates or what's happening with a certain transaction. I don't know, maybe it's a crazy story, maybe it's a testimonial, but that is a phenomenal way to reach the masses.

without having to make 300 to 500 phone calls. Because if you look at views and if you look at each individual post or story, you're seeing hundreds of people view it. They may not read or digest everything from it, but I'd rather do that than make 200 phone calls. Yeah, to people you don't know, right? 100%, right? And these are going to people that are either following me,

And in some cases it does reach people that don't follow that might become followers, which is which is all we want And so so they're already they're they're warm if you do have to you know You do get the opportunity to call them. They're gonna be a warm lead. It's not a cold lead any right absolutely now Do you do the all I'm in this training? I know you have a coach that's something that also interests me is that you you know you played football So you obviously I had a coach all those times right and you get into real estate

and you realize the value of having a coach. So you're paying a coach to help you get better and to do the things, hold you accountable. How is that going? That, you know, it's great. And I think you said it right there. It holds you accountable, right? And if you're going to perform at a high level, which I was doing in football, know, college, there's not a lot of people that play college football and

But you still have coach. They're there to help you get better and they're to help hone your skills and to go out and perform. And that is exactly what my coach and I's relationship is like. He holds me accountable every week and if I don't do something, he'll let me know. Or if I'm not getting better, we'll go back and make sure that we're honing my skills. And that's all because I want to serve my clients to the best of my ability.

And at the end of the day, it's about providing the best service that I can possibly do. And again, it's having somebody in your corner that's giving you different ideas, different perspectives, different things to help you hone your skills. And sometimes they're not always fun because it might be a challenge, right? It might be something that I'm like, ooh, I'm uncomfortable with that. Like, I don't know that I want to do that.

This right here is something that I hadn't done before. And he nudged me to come on and talk to you and tell my story. You're hard to get to talk, so I can see why you didn't want to come on a podcast. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But it's good. I think having a coach, it's not for everybody, but I think for me, I want to perform at a higher level and I want to constantly get better. And he challenges me to do that every week.

The only thing I disagree there is I think it is for everybody. I really do. think that everybody can benefit from it. I was one who it took me years to do a coach because I always first I thought, I'm not going listen to them. And I didn't do sports. Right. Because I was terrible at it. But I also didn't like being coached. then when I hired a coach,

I realize it's totally different than what I thought it was. they're actually there, they're coaches, they hold you accountable, but they're cheerleaders, but they also, they help you get guided down the right paths. Because I don't know if you're like me, I have tons of ideas. And I think, this is going to be fantastic, right? And guess what? Not all of them are.

Yeah, but I think they are right. Yeah, you can bounce it off somebody who knows yeah, and it makes a big big time That is absolutely true and in my coach his name is Adam Roach. He's phenomenal super successful in the real estate industry, but also just in business and in life right like he's not just We don't always talk about just real estate like we'll talk about life and how to be a better husband how to be a better father

And that's phenomenal for me too, but it's crazy just hiring a coach. Within that first week of me chatting with him, it was like, I know I have a call with Adam coming up next week. And I forget what book it was I read too that was like, it's crazy how when you just hire a coach, all of sudden you start, crap, I need to do this because we're getting on this phone call. It's the accountability piece that is really absolutely huge, because without a coach,

You can go weeks and that's the tough part about real estate is there's nobody, there's no corporate, know, higher up coming down to say, hey, where's your numbers? What's going on with your business? Nobody does that in real estate. For me, it's my wife and my coach, right? Like what's happening? And just that accountability piece is absolutely huge because I can't go weeks. This is how I provide for my family and my dogs.

That's important. Those dogs have to be taken care It's super important. They do. They do. yeah, I will never regret hiring Adam and certainly could be more coaches down the future. You just never know. Yeah. Well, he's probably made you money. That's the thing. What I found is they don't actually cost you anything. Yeah. They actually help you make money. This is true. Yeah. Despite the money that you do pay them.

I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I would imagine he's from a, I'd have to go back and see what might influence or what that looks like from a numbers standpoint, but he has helped organize my business that I think has just got me like a well -oiled machine and I'm forever grateful for it. That's awesome. And you know, it's so important that you have somebody that you like and you trust.

and that you listen to them. it's, any coach, I just really think people should have a coach. I think it makes total sense, and I'm one who fought it forever, so that's kind why I keep hitting on it. just think coaching is invaluable. But you also kind of had that when you started, you had the mentor, which is kind of your coach, right? And is there a difference between a mentor and a coach? Do you see a big difference there?

That's a good question. And I did look at Drew as sort of like a coach or a mentor, even though we referred to ourselves as business partners. But yeah, there was, you know, I think there's a heightened accountability with a coach as opposed to on a team. know, it's like you're constantly talking about business. it's, for me, it's almost like, all right, well, if I don't have any business, that's, I'm gonna hold myself accountable naturally. So it wasn't like Drew was.

you know over the top of me saying hey where's your you know where's your business what's happening but there's always constant check -ins which is really good and that sort of acts like an accountability factor whether you're meeting you know at the beginning of the week to talk about what's going on for the week or your plans for whether it's client appreciation things or different things like that to kind of hey here's the steps and the touch points that we need with our clients I think we focus more on the inputs with Drew

And a lot of what we talk about with coaches is we talk about inputs, but we also look at where the results, know, and where's the gaps? Like what can we figure out? So Drew is extremely beneficial and certainly looked at him like a coach for me. Yeah, that's I just I just think it's it's it's awesome. So as you as you look at you're talking about, you know what you do touch points that type of thing.

How do you plan that out? What? How do you come up with what you're going to do for touch points? How do you do that? man, this is another thing I think that took away from Drew. mean, and I'll be forever grateful for him. He's the master of talking to people without saying anything real estate related. It may be, hey, I just drove by your neighborhood or something, or I'm going to just drop off these cookies. I'm just going to.

Remind you that I'm here, but I'm not gonna you know say anything real estate related Maybe it's the summertime and we'll send you some beach towels or whatnot or we'll have a client appreciation event or We'll send out like right now. It's football season So we'll send out calendars that say Purdue IU Notre Dame and the Indianapolis Colts, right? Like it's a good way to just where's you in that? I wish you would be on there. We don't quite stack up to Purdue IU Notre Dame, but

trying to appeal to the masses. We'll have a select crew. But there's also ways for you, Wendy, like I'll have a tailgate coming up and I won't really pitch this as a real estate event or anything like that, but it's certainly gonna be something where I'm just trying to get some people together. Because at the end of the day, real estate is about relationships. And that was one thing that Drew was really good at is creating and maintaining relationships and staying in front of people.

without constantly blasting real estate in their face, right? It's like, hey, how can I deliver value to this person without ever bringing that up? Or genuinely be interested in somebody else. And that's the key there is genuinely being curious about somebody else's life. Ultimately, they're gonna wanna know what you do and what you might be up to. So it'll come back to that, but don't lead with it. And he was really good at that and it kinda showed me the way to try to

Create and maintain relationships without just saying this is what I do. Let me help you You know so I thought that was very interesting something. I took away from him big time you know so It's so important that that it's you don't always talk about business. I'm sure you do it on social media You probably you probably I'm guessing you have a plan and there's probably like for me. I have I have a three two one plan. I do three three

Posts like this two posts like this and one post like this. I mix them up, but that's how that's my plan right now and Do you have something like that so that you're not good because? Especially in mortgage I think real estate is a little better than mortgages in that nobody wants a mortgage right nobody wants one Yeah, right they want the house so they have they have to have a mortgage But they don't want a mortgage and they want to pay it off as soon as they can right and nobody is

excited that they get to have a mortgage. They're excited they get to a new home. But do you have a plan that you know what you're going to do and so you can post the things that let people know not only real estate but who you are and what you're interested in and

and what you do. absolutely. And I think you have to have a plan, otherwise it just kind of looks like, when we talked about earlier, this is your billboard. somebody is going to jump into your profile. That's their first, sort of like a home, they're going to look at the pictures. They're going to vet out the home. Do I like this home? It's the same thing with the real estate agent or a mortgage person in this case. They'll go online and vet out, because everybody knows five different realtors.

to know, and trust you and that is your avenue to do so on social media and I take that very seriously and I want to portray that. So I am very intentional with what I put out on social media and I try my best to make it very, very value driven so that at the end of the day I'm speaking to my audience that I want to work with so that they say, yeah, I like that guy. Okay, I didn't know that about either real estate or

or whatnot, but I'll post real estate things all the time, but I also mix in, my kids, right, people need to know I have a wife, I have two kids that are young toddlers, I'm dealing with the same things every other dad has to deal with in trying to balance work and life. And mixing all of that together, mean, some of the biggest engagement I get is things that are non -real estate related when it involves my kids, or, you know, we just had a.

I had my 43rd birthday this past weekend and we went out and hung out with some friends and posted a little bit about that on It wasn't Monday. It was Tuesday. It felt like a Monday because it was Labor Day But yeah, I have different buckets that I try to hit and stay intentional on this is something that my coach and I derived as well Part of my DNA is hype humor and hustle So I'm your biggest advocate. I'm your biggest hype man when it comes to being your guide in terms of buying or selling

And I'm going to go after that passionately to help you get to the closing table to either save you the most money or make you the most money if you're selling. But I'm going to do it in a way because it's such a process. Again, there's so many layers to it. We should have a little fun with it. Or I try to be a little bit of comic relief in a way like, let's laugh a little bit through this. This is a stressful situation. But we don't need to be so uptight that we can't

you know, work through it in a way that we might chuckle a time or two. So I try to portray a little bit of funny, a little bit of humor in my Instagram to try to say, hey, I'm not just this stiff guy that's gonna like, we're not gonna have any fun. We're gonna be all business. Like I wanna have fun. It's life. Let's be ourselves. Let's drop the guard down a little bit. But know that at the end of the day, I'm gonna work harder than anybody else you've ever worked with. And it's my intention to prove that. So if somebody's looking at listing a home,

Mm -hmm. What how do you why should they use you? What what do you do? Why should they use it's a great question and I've listed I mean Numerous homes of the 50 million that that's been my production the majority of that has been listings and I've been entrusted by numerous sellers to help me or help them through that process and what I would say is there's a step -by -step process that we've got like

We've got, and I can go into details, give me a call and we'll talk through everything, but initially it's a consult. Like what are your goals? What's going on? Why are you selling? Like, and I've talked people out of it. I'd rather talk people out of selling if it doesn't make sense. But to try to understand their goals and then align myself with that. And then we'll come in and we'll look at a design consult, I'm not a designer by any means, but I partner with people that can help you stage your home and make sure that it's sold.

the way that it needs to or presented to the market the way that it needs to be because many people are living in their homes, right? And you sell a home differently than you live in it. You walk into the showroom floor in a car dealership and it looks totally different than when you take your car home. You're like, boy. It's like that in real estate. Yeah, so you get all of that, right? We've got to understand how.

a home needs to be staged and sometimes we'll call minor edits so we might use the client's furniture if it makes sense or if they've already moved out we'll bring some furniture in but that's part of the process where I think it's super important and we'll talk about all of the things that go into staging and decluttering of your home but then we'll prep it and get it ready for photos, professional photos always. Again I'm a big social media guy so between photos and then

I have a videographer that I work with. I try to make sure that we do a tour of every home that I sell. Because I think, again, that's the first, know, people, may not buy the home on social media, but if they see that it's listed and there's a home tour, that might entice them to say, okay, I'm gonna contact my realtor and go in and let's go look at that place because I just saw that it got listed, right? And that's where things start to get generated nowadays.

And then it's working through that period of, let's negotiate on your behalf to make sure that we get top dollar for your home. And all of those things that you do leading up. when you list and then get it under contract, that's just like the tip of the iceberg. So it's all of those steps that I just mentioned prior to that have so many other things that are like subsets of that to make sure that you get it ready and you have that first chance at a first impression to hit the market and do it right.

and make sure that it's priced well. So do do open houses? I do. I've kind of had a different, I've had a mixed bag of my beliefs in terms of open houses and the law changes I think have really started to change my perspective on that and I think that's something where a long time ago open houses were a thing.

and we'd be along for our Sunday drive and see some signs, open house, let's stop in, let's check it out, or we're in the market, we're gonna go see what open houses is, we're gonna take a drive. And that's how I believe a lot of things started to happen, where you might see an ad in the paper that said open house this weekend, and so you go to it. With everything being so prevalent and the John Q. consumer has access to a Realtor Zillow,

Homes .com, Redfin, all of these different portals, they can see what's listed. They can see, yeah, okay, there is an open house. They choose whether or not to go to it. I do think that there's plenty of agents that have built their careers on open houses. When I started in 2020, I didn't really have the belief that that was the primary method to success.

done well with open houses. I've had plenty that have just flopped. So I kind of had that mixed back. But then recent law changes with the NAR settlement, buyers having to sign a buyer's agency agreement before they can go see any home, I think is changing the landscape of open houses once again to kind of reverting back to what I just mentioned to where it's like the caveat to signing or

being able to see a home without signing a buyer's agency agreement is the open house. And so I've started to do more recently and I think those are gonna be a thing in the coming months and years ahead unless the laws change again. But that's a way for buyers to get out and see a home without having to sign a buyer's agency agreement. And a lot of times that's when they're first starting, right? So they may not wanna sign an agreement just yet.

They just want to get some idea of what's going on and where they might be from a price point standpoint. And that's why I think open houses are really, really big and will be big again in the future. Now and in the future. Have you been having open houses? Is that who's showing up right now or is it still in transition? I have. And it's still, I haven't quite figured it out. I will tell you, I'll be the first to tell you, I'm not the best open house person.

I mean maybe that's because I'm still kind of internally struggling with myself of is this good or is this not trying to manage it on a Sunday with my wife and kids and you know if you're gonna do the open house you really have to do it you got to put your signs out you got to knock on some doors you got to figure out okay what's going on and when when I've had the chance to do those that's when it performs the best is because

You might want that neighbor. They may not be looking right now, but again, it's about relationships. If they can come in and you can create that relationship, that's where you're going to nab some clients. And it's your chance to really interact with them and show them who you are in person. And I have on my last few listings, I tried to do that. And I try to do it intentionally the second week, right? Not the very first week, because if somebody's going to look at that home or a home that I have listed.

I'd rather them go with their realtor initially because I don't want to take them away from their realtor to go look at it privately because they see that there's an open house. I'd rather them go there with their realtor. Let's make decisions right away. And if it's still not sold within that first week, that second week, we'll have an open house and try to gather some more transaction or sorry traction on the home. That's a good plan. Sounds like we're running out of time. So if somebody wants to get ahold of you, they want to list their house, they want to buy a home. What's the best way to get ahold of you?

Text message is usually the easiest, 317 -703 -9990. That'll be the easiest way. You can obviously call me and leave a voicemail if I don't answer right away. Email at Movewithmager@gmail .com or you can reach out to me in a message on my social media at robmagar underscore realtor on Instagram. Okay, but your best way to get a hold of you is a phone call or a text. A text is probably the best. Text And that's 317-703 -9990, even I can get that one right, 9990, I love that. That was your number in college, you said. In my anniversary. In your anniversary. That's amazing. Super easy. Yeah, and you were born in September. I was born almost September, August 31st. you missed it. I a half hour away from That would have been the other one. Yeah, that would have the other. Your parents messed up. 31st, yep. They did, they did.

Should have held out for a little bit longer. that didn't work out very well. To get a hold of me, Rick Ripma, your hardworking mortgage guy, if I can get this switched over, just you can call 317 -218 -9800. That's 317 -218 -9800. You'd think I'd remember my own number, but you know, I have like seven numbers and it's, I can't remember the Dagon thing. Plus I'm older, so I have that excuse. I got lots of excuses for not being able to remember my number. Thanks so much for joining me. I really do appreciate it, Rob.

fantastic you do a great job and I mean you've done phenomenally well it's amazing how well you've done. Thank you. Thanks for the compliments. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. You're welcome.