Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a realtor? Anita Stephens from Simply Stephens Real Estate joins us this week to give us advice on what you should know when you first start out. Hearing from this successful entrepreneur about how she runs her business and plans to pass on her legacy is something you won’t want to miss!
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk! I’m Bekkah and I’m Ruthie!
Bekkah: And today we get the opportunity to speak with somebody that I’ve been super excited to talk to for a while now, Anita Stephens! She is going to tell us about her business. That’s the first question for you! Thank you so much for being with us, Anita! Tell us about what you do!
Anita: Okay, well, first of all, thank you, guys! What an honor to be on your podcast today. So thank you for having me! We serve Northeast Georgia real estate needs. Basically, we help people buy, sell, and invest in real estate in the Northeast Georgia area, North Metro Atlanta area.
Bekkah: What’s your business name? Do you want to tell us that?
Anita: Yes! It’s Simply Stephens Real Estate. We’re with Keller Williams Realty, Atlanta Partners, but we have our own corporation underneath the Keller Williams umbrella. It’s called Simply Stephens Real Estate.
Ruthie: Yeah so why did you get into real estate? What was your why behind what you’re doing now?
Anita: I’m passionate about serving people. We just love being part of people’s life story because when you’re serving people in this capacity you’re walking through the story of their life. It could be their first home. They just got married and they’re first-time homebuyers and the excitement there. It could also be a couple getting a divorce and they’re separating assets and having to sell their family home. It also could be an older couple downsizing and, you know, moving into their empty nester home or even a family moving Mom and Dad into assisted living. You’re on this really important journey of their life, and it matters. We’re passionate about that.
Bekkah: I’m going to just move a little bit more into this question about why do you do it. How did you get started in real estate? What’s your story behind getting into it and thinking, “Yeah! This is what I want to be doing.”?
How Did You Get Started in Real Estate?
Anita: Well, I actually was in property management first. I had started at an early, early age, right out of high school working as a leasing consultant and helping people run apartments. I thought, “You know if I can help people find apartments I can help them find more than just an apartment here. I can help them find other apartments.”
I started a company that was kind of apartment locating really is what it was. Then I thought, “Well, if I can help people find an apartment to live in I can help them find homes to live in!” And that sort of transitioned. I got licensed at a very early age and was licensed at age 23 and took off from there!
Bekkah: Wow! That’s a lot of risk really young!
Anita: Yeah, I was very driven. I’ve always been very driven.
What Made You Decide You Wanted to Work For Yourself as a Realtor?
Ruthie: So keeping on that theme of personal drive, what made you want to start working for yourself?
Anita: A lot of things. It’s the building a business that matters that will help people. Being able to have your own schedule to fit around your family. Even though it’s a very hectic schedule that realtors live and you have to manage that in certain ways which we can talk about some more, but also for me it’s building a legacy for my children and their children.
If they choose to do that and grow a business together that you can either sell to someone else if you wanted to or passing it down to your family. All those are very appealing things to me and no limit. I mean you get what you put into it. Really the sky’s the limit. There’s no ceiling to what you can do and accomplish in real estate.
Ruthie: So kind of like that heart of entrepreneurship really is pretty captured in that. That’s cool.
Anita: Yeah.
In Real Estate, What Did You Spend Doing The First Few Months & Years?
Ruthie: What did you spend most of your time doing in the first few months / first few years of your kind of what you said at 23 you got licensed and then kind of moving forward from there what occupied most of your time?
Anita: Learning, learning, and more learning. Because there is a difference probably in a lot of industries of what you learn textbook-wise and what you had to learn to pass the real estate exam versus real-life practicality and how it really works. Being out there beating the bushes, but you’re learning how to prospect. You’re learning how to market. You’re learning how to write contracts and negotiate effectively. So I just say lots of learning can’t stop learning.
How Do You Get A Real Estate License?
Ruthie: When you said that you got your license right away what did that process look like? Did you go to school for that or did you have to take classes? How did you get licensed?
Anita: Yes, here in Georgia you actually take a real estate course and you have to pass that course first. Then once you pass that they give you basically a certificate that allows you to go sit for the state board exam. Then you have to go past that exam. Thankfully, I mean, these days I hear a lot of people don’t pass it. Especially, the first or second time around. It must have been a lot easier in the 90s, but you know they’re trying to weed out people that are not. Because there’s a lot of real estate law in it, things like that. I would say it’s not super easy but it’s obtainable if it’s a career that you’re thinking about getting into. That’s pretty much how much the states work.
How Does It Work to Add People To Your Real Estate Team?
Bekkah: There are so many things that you’ve mentioned so far that I just have so many more questions about and just so you guys know when she’s talking about, “Yeah she wants to pass this off to her kids and everything,” Anita is not alone in her business! She has her daughter as well as her daughter-in-law working for her now. Obviously, if you saw her Instagram or whatever when we post this video er – this podcast you’re gonna see that in the pictures and everything. That’s so cool to me about you saying, “Yeah, this is what I want to pass on to my family.” How does that work as they’re getting educated going into it? How did that work for them as well?
Anita: Well, as Marie started because Bre came to me first when she was in college and said, “Hey, Mom, I don’t think I want to get my math and science degree. I think I want to go into real estate and at first, I was like, “Oh my!” But at the same time I was like, “Oh, that’s awesome!” Because this is the one thing I know that I can show her. She asked if I would help and at first it was just, “Hey, would you help me get started?” It wasn’t necessarily “Hey, let’s work together” and that just kind of progressed and as we decided, “Yeah, let’s do this together.”
We had to have a lot of conversations like a lot of families need to do. I think it’s wise to sit and talk through your plan ahead of time. What does it look when you have a bad day? What does that look like when we don’t agree on things? What do we do when we’re both having one of those days where we don’t agree so we can still get our jobs done and walk away and love each other and be still family first? We had to talk through all that ahead of time.
Then Breanna came on board first as an administrative assistant, worked with me for a year, took the real estate course, and got licensed. Then went into production. For us, you can have a team with different roles on it. If you’re in production you’re on the sales part of it. Then we also have support staff that is like operations. It’s all the behind-the-scenes paperwork, marketing, things like that so when she decided to go into production she came on as our buyer specialist.
She works with all of our buyers and is amazing at it and actually did so good her first year I was planning on making her a partner with me by the time she hit 25 but actually made her partner this past year. Now she’s 50/50 owner in the business with me. As you mentioned, my daughter-in-law joined us this year which we’re super excited about and she’s amazing. As she’s with us longer we’ll see what direction she wants to go. If she wants to do what she’s doing on the admin side or she wants to go into production. At some point, I will retire and give the business to the girls.
Ruthie: That’s so cool!
Anita: Knowing that we started that legacy and it’s something that they want to do. Of course, they approached like Bre approached me on it. It’s not something that I was like, “Oh, you need to do this. You need to do this!” I think your children if you are going to go into business as a family, need to be the ones to take the first step because they don’t necessarily always want to follow in their parent’s footsteps. That’s okay, right? We want them to do what they have a passion for and love doing so it’s been great. It’s been the best decision I’ve made.
What Kind of Education Helps With Becoming a Realtor?
Ruthie: You mentioned that Bre had kind of been going to school and then came to you. Do you think that education-wise that that was valuable for her going for math and science? Does that really play into a lot of the stuff that she does on a day-to-day basis with you?
Anita: It does. I mean she’s fast on her feet when it comes to math and helping people figure things out because we’re a lot of problem-solving. There’s a lot of critical thinking and problem-solving involved. Yeah, I think that definitely plays into it. If you were someone who has a marketing degree or a sales background, I think all of those are valuable.
Good Realtors Are Successful Because They Know Business
Anita: I think it’s also valuable if you’re on a business track in college, because I think sometimes the pitfall is people get in and think, “Oh, I’m going to drive around and look at beautiful homes with people all day!” And yeah, you get to do that.
That’s awesome and you get to help people sell their property, but there is so much that happens in between. You’re negotiating a contract and in Georgia, we write special steps that are in there. You have to make sure you’re doing that right and that you’re protecting your client. There are also days that things are turning upside down because somebody didn’t do something they’re supposed to do. Whether a lender said, “Yeah, they’re pre-approved!” But they really weren’t or they said, “Oh, yeah, I’m W2’d.” And then they have extra money showing up and your helping problem solve, making sure everything’s together.
I think that having the business side of it, too, so you have a business mind, but also being able to run your business. Because you can be out looking at beautiful homes all day, but you have to be able to manage money. You have to be able to know how to run your business in a business model – if that makes sense. It’s not just about selling pretty homes. It’s a business.
How Do You Pay Yourself as a Realtor?
Bekkah: Yeah, that kind of transitions into how do you pay yourself as a realtor?
Anita: Yes, we are actually incorporated. Some agents choose to be sole proprietors. You can do that for a little while, but once you hit a certain income level it’s pretty good to go ahead and get yourself incorporated or become an LLC. We actually pay ourselves a salary. We run our payroll through Centros Payroll Service. We actually do have a payroll service. We run ourselves a paycheck every other week and then we pay ourselves profit distributions. We have it set up where we have money going to our income account, non-profit account, operating account. We have a certain percentage that goes into each account – a tax account – to make sure that we’re paying ourselves that salary.
Then once we hit certain “milestones” would probably be the appropriate way to put it, then we’ll give ourselves profit distributions. That’s kind of the extra bonus gravy and that keeps us all on track because I think sometimes that can also be a pitfall that agents will have. They get a big commission check and it comes in and then they’re not really looking ahead and planning ahead. Then they might go a month and not have a closing. Especially if you’re new, you could go a couple months and not have a closing. If you spend all that money as soon as it comes in a month or so later you’re like, “Ah!” You still need the money to run the business, right?
How Have Work Life Balance as a Realtor
Ruthie: It’s almost like finding that balance and finances and your work, too. Speaking about balance, how does that look like in life? Because it does seem like it’s such a – You’re working for yourself, there is a big element of work-life balance that comes into play there. Specifically, with your family and things and having to be available to clients, what did that look like when you were transitioning to that and does that still affect you now with the work-life balance?
Anita: It does and it goes through seasons. In the very beginning whenever I was first getting started, it was definitely you’re wearing all hats by yourself for sure. You’re running around crazy. Then you have to decide at what point am I going to leverage my time and that leverage can look like multiple things. It can be, “I need to add a housekeeper so it takes cleaning the house off of my plate.” It can be, “I need to add a landscaping company so that when the weekend comes and I have a few hours to spend with my husband he’s not having in the yard mowing the lawn.”
Leverage can look a bunch of different ways. It be somebody cooking meals for you or being able to pick up meals. Leverage can be that way. Especially, when you’re first starting out to start with the small things and then it can turn into, “Okay, I need to add a full-time or a part-time administrative assistant.” And then “I need to add a full-time admin.” When you get to the point where you’re pushing the limits and it’s taken away from your family. We do this to build businesses worth having and lives worth living so if you’re spending all your life and you’re working and you’re not living then what are you doing it for, right?
You have to put the boundaries there. Now there are times, that being said like right now we’re in a very low inventory market here in Georgia. That’s pretty much across the country. Because of that low inventory, there’s a lot of buyers and not enough sellers, buyers are fighting over homes. When I say fighting over them, there are bidding wars. So there could be 15 offers coming in on one particular home.
Ruthie: Wow!
Anita: What that means is if we have a client that we’ve been out looking with and let’s say they’ve been looking for the past two weeks and they really, really gotta move, when that listing pops up on the market today at two o’clock you better bet we need to be there by 2:30. Because everybody’s going to be looking at it. So it does, right now. it’s a little challenging. Because if you’ve really got your client’s best interest at heart you gotta pick up and be ready to go and look at that property because if not they could lose out and that could be the one.
How to Manage Your Time as a Realtor
It’s not always like that, though. It’s a season. I think there’s some be flow but I would say time blocking your time, leveraging your time, so if you – There’s a thing in BOLD. We have a – Keller Williams has an amazing higher level productivity coaching that we can attend a couple of times a year called “BOLD” and one of the BOLD Laws is “Our work expands to fill the time allowed.” So you can let your work keep filling all your time or you can control that. Time block it and say, “This is how much time I’m giving to this and then this is my family time.” And then, there’s another BOLD Law that says, “You teach people how to treat you.”
I think that that’s very valuable in any business. When we return a text message to a client at ten o’clock at night, we’re telling them, “Hey, it’s okay to text us at ten o’clock at night.” Now sometimes we’re negotiating and that’s inevitable, but there is a point where you do have to put the boundaries up and say, “Okay, I’m with my family now I want to put my phone down.”
Bekkah: Yeah!
Anita: I think that maybe answered your question.
Ruthie: Yeah!
How Many Hours Should a New Realtor Expect to Work?
Bekkah: Yeah so just a clarifying question on that, if you’re a new agent just starting out or whatever what’s the typical close time for a listing to sell? What should they expect and then, this is the second part of this question, what kind of time frame should somebody be looking at putting in a day or even a week in terms of hours when they first start to really get momentum?
Anita: We have – I know people that have done it part-time while they’ve started out somewhere else. Like if they had another job. I think it’s just doing the right things during the time you have. I mean you can accomplish it and most certainly a 40-hour workweek. It’s just deciding what you’re going to do, what kind of activities – income-producing activities that you’re going to do during that time.
We have, for example, there’s a fireman in my office. He’s a full-time firefighter and he practices real-estate on the time that he’s not on the clock with the fire station. He’s done quite well! Done really, really well! Of course, he wants to still keep serving, but a lot of people will do it that way and transition over. I didn’t start that way. I just jumped in with two feet and kept right on going, but you could definitely do it in a 40-hour workweek. It’s just making sure that you’re using the time that you’re putting in wisely.
How Long Does It Take For A Realtor to Make Their First Sale?
Ruthie: Yeah and then kind of the second part of that question how then do you – like the closing time. If you’re just starting out and you’re like, “I really have to make my first sale.” How long is that time frame usually?
Anita: Well, once you get something on the market or under contract for a buyer, it’s usually a 30-day closing period. A lot of that’s going to be dictated by their lender and the type of loan they’re getting. But usually, the turnaround time is 30 days. Most realtors, I mean, if you get involved with a company like Keller Williams is amazing about new agent training. We have even a course called Ignite that’s kind of the “Okay, now I have my license, now what I do with it?”
This is great and it goes ahead and gets them started right away building their database. Sending out note cards. Calling the people that you know and letting them know that you’re in the business. If you’re doing those things you could get a buyer, get out showing them right away, and then have a closing 30 days later. For a lot of agents, it’s going to take a couple of months. I would say before you have a really good income coming in, it’s going to take you a year to two years before you’re going to have real good consistency and a good, good income coming in.
But that said, you can do it part-time and get started but you don’t want to stay part-time. Because I think the part-time realtors out there, it can get challenging as you continue to get busier and busier. You need to, at some point, take the leap and jump in with both feet.
How to Your Build Your Network as a New Realtor
Ruthie: That makes sense. How did you when you were starting out or even now – how did you build your network of people who help you do your job? Whether that’s like adjusters or appraisers, cleaning staff, how did you kind of go about building that network for yourself?
Anita: Yes, you find the ones that are fabulous at it. Usually, a lot of them try to connect with us as realtors and then we have a strategic partner list that we sit down and we’ve met and spoken with these folks to make sure when we recommend them out they’re going to do their business at a high level. Because we don’t want to recommend people that are not really giving it their all like we are. Our people that we connect with all the time are like our lenders, our home inspectors, our closing attorney, pest control, termite, mold remediation, roofers, handyman, subcontractor, radon!
I mean there are so many things when it when you think about a home because when you have a home on the market once that home is inspected so let’s say you’re listing because it’s not all about just finding buyer homes, we certainly do that. But, also, you represent sellers and when that home goes under contract and that buyer gets their inspection, now there are some things that might be happening with the house that that seller wasn’t aware of. So you got to have those go-to people that you know are going to give your client a good price to take care of an issue. But a lot of them we find because they’ve searched us out and have networked with us.
Some of them have been people somebody else recommended to us. We use them. We give them a try if they do a great job then we keep them on our list. Ask around. Referrals is really the best way. We reach out to our clients, “Hey, have you guys had a painter that you’ve really loved?” Ask other realtors. If you’ve got a real – especially if you’re brand new. Let’s say you are a brand new agent and you have your first contract and all of a sudden now it had a crawl space and the crawl space has mold, now what do you do?
Especially, with Facebook, there are so many great Facebook groups now like here in Atlanta we have some that are agents helping agents that are in the state of Georgia group. Agents put on there all the time, “Hey, I need a surveyor or I need mold remediation. Who do y’all recommend?” You know if you can get a recommendation from another realtor there’s so much help out there to find good people. Then you find a good one, you put them on your list.
How Has Technology Changed Real Estate?
Bekkah: How have you seen technology change in real-estate?
Anita: Oh my goodness! Back in the 90s, we really had one photo in our FMLS and you couldn’t even really email that to your clients. It’s so sad to think back what it was like back then. You actually had a printout that you had to look at and there weren’t all these photos online that people could look up. Also, we would advertise in the newspaper and in a book called Harmon Homes or Real Estate Guide. As a realtor, it was great because you’ve got your ads ready to go. That magazine would hit the shelf and it would be out for a month so you were kind of doing that once a month.
These days things are moving so fast! You’re producing ads and doing a lot so much faster and a lot more. Like on Facebook or social media, Instagram. But, also, too virtual tours to be able to for the buyer it’s just great. Because used to people would do a drive-by on a home and then they would call you and say, “Okay, well, the outside looks good so I guess we want to go inside and see what the inside looks like.” Now with virtual tours, online people really can walk through a home and narrow it down a lot faster. You’re not just narrowing it down by on the outside you’re also nearing it down like, “Oh, okay well we really wanted stainless steel appliances and this doesn’t have you know what we’re looking for.” So then you’re not wasting your time looking at those homes. That’s been great! And social media definitely has changed the way we do business.
Ruthie: Yeah, you’d kind of mentioned like with the Facebook group and stuff too and even with ads and everything. That’s huge!
Anita: Yes, it is. Facebook ad marketing has gotten to be such a big way for realtors to advertise their listings. A lot of people are scrolling through Facebook and clicking on when they’re looking at homes.
Advice Every New Real Estate Agent Should Hear:
Ruthie: When you’re talking with someone who is interested in getting into this what would be something that you have learned that you would never want someone else to repeat?
Anita: Oh my goodness, so many lessons, so many lessons. I would say the big one would be to make sure that you pay your taxes out of each closing. And I’m not saying that to say, “Hey, people aren’t paying their taxes!” That’s not what I mean by that. Because realtors, if you’re not set up like a corporation or an LLC and you’re not being wise with how you set that up out of the gate, you’re a sole proprietor the real estate company is cutting you that check, and realtors have a tendency just to put that in their personal bank account and they don’t set aside and do a separate business account.
If you’re not pulling that money out from each closing and putting it into a tax account, you’ll be surprised! You might your first year you’ll do okay because you’re going to have a lot of expenses and your CPA will be great at balancing out the income versus expenses piece of it, but then the following year if you have a jump and you go you know from a maybe, let’s say a 60 to 80,000 income. Then all of a sudden you jump to 250,000 or 300,000 income.
You get thrown into a different tax bracket, and so if you’re not meeting with your CPA regularly and making sure that you’re planning for that I think a lot of people think, “Oh, well, I’ll save the money next closing. Or I’ll save the money the next closing.” And the next thing you know you get to the end of the year and you’re like, “Oh, we actually made a lot of money and we need a lot of money to be ready to pay those taxes!” So that’s one that you gotta really be careful of.
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