Episode 147 Jesse Jatoft | The Brad and Taylor Show

On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Jesse Jatoft from eXp Realty!

He talked about how he’d spend his first $1,000 if he had to start all over again and his favorite business podcasts. To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube. To listen, head over to Apple Podcasts.

In the meantime, here’s a transcript of the conversation…

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED FROM JESSE JATOFT…

00:00:00:14 –> 00:00:03:17
Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor Show, today we have Jesse Jatoft

00:00:04:03 –> 00:00:15:13
Brad: You’re listening to the Brad and Taylor show podcast, inspires entrepreneurs, just pursue their passions. We’re sitting down with some of the best to learn how they got started and some lessons they’ve learned along the way.

00:00:15:13 –> 00:00:16:02

Taylor: Hey Jesse, how’s it going?

00:00:16:29 –> 00:00:18:14

Jesse: Hey, another beautiful day. How are we doing?

00:00:19:02 –> 00:00:23:15
Brad: Good. Doing good. Let’s get this started. Tell us a little bit about you. Like what do you actually do?

00:00:24:23 –> 00:00:34:01
Jesse: So my name is Jesse Jatoft. I’m a realtor with eXp in the Southwest Michigan area. Been doing it for about two years now and it’s been absolutely wonderful.

00:00:34:10 –> 00:00:36:07
Brad: That’s awesome. So what’d you do before real estate?

00:00:37:01 –> 00:00:49:10
Jesse: Before real estate? So, I’ve had many jobs. I was a roofer, an electrician. I’ve done a lot, but the most recent job I actually currently still work is I manage a Battle Creek business, a local vape shop.

00:00:49:21 –> 00:00:57:06
Brad: Nice. So how so that’s probably how you got into real estate by all your, uh, roofing and the electrician. And you’re like, well, I guess I might as well be our agent.

00:00:58:10 –> 00:01:03:05
Jesse: Yeah, yeah. That, that work is not as fun. Let me just tell you that, um, I’d much rather be on this side.

00:01:04:03 –> 00:01:07:12
Brad: Okay. So, when did you decide to get your license?

00:01:08:13 –> 00:01:44:23
Jesse: So that’s a funny story. When I was in college, I basically had to take this class and it was, you know, telling you, what do you want to do for the rest of your life? And I had no idea, um, I’m kind of a really indecisive person, so I was kind of all over the place. I just knew it was somewhere in sales. Um, and so I had actually made a presentation of, I couldn’t choose one. So, I chose real estate and insurance and I wasn’t sure where I was going to go. My grandfather actually retired as the president of an insurance company out in California and he was very successful and, you know, lived a great life. So I kind of always seen that and was going to take that route. But, I don’t know, real estate just spoke to me.

00:01:44:24 –> 00:02:29:20
And so, I met a gentleman who was rather young, he was doing really well for himself. I was also looking for a house myself at that time. And, you know, looking everywhere I couldn’t find anything. And I’m like, well, you know, why is there nothing on the market? And they’re like, well, realtors kind of get the first look at them. And I’m like, well, what does it take to be a realtor? And so that began the journey. I personally took my courses online there. I know there are, you know, ones you can do in town that take like three days. But, I wanted to take it at my own pace so that I could really lock in all that information and just kind of, you know, go day by day. It worked really well for me. It took me about six months because I, I really wanted to, you know, take a lot of notes since there’s a lot of information. I mean, you learn a lot. I don’t know how people do it in three days. That’s just nuts.

00:02:31:15 –> 00:02:34:08
Brad: Yep. That’s awesome. I like it.

00:02:34:13 –> 00:02:44:21
Taylor: Take us to your first transaction after you got all your testing, everything was out of the way you got licensed. How was your first transaction and when did that come to play? How long before you got that first transaction?

00:02:45:14 –> 00:03:42:09
Jesse: Oh man. Okay. So, I jumped in, I want to say it was like January, February now when I hopped in, it was like, right as the pandemic came. So, it was a beautiful time. Everybody was locked down, you really couldn’t show houses. So it was a little crazy in the beginning, but it gave me more time to learn, you know, and get a little bit more understanding of what I was dealing with. And so my first actual sale was a young woman who was buying her first home. I was very thankful to be able to help her. Everything actually went very smoothly. I think it was due to me taking that extra time to really just make sure that I knew what I was doing. I felt competent. But my first sale was I’d have to say probably I think it was June. So, you know, roughly six months after I got licensed and everything. And then from there it just kind of kept rolling. It was really awesome.

00:03:42:28 –> 00:03:46:18
Taylor: And when you started out, you were solo, right. Did you join a team? Are you solo?

00:03:47:13 –> 00:04:15:14
Jesse: So, I am solo. We’re not a team as far as like split profits or anything like that, but we’re a team as far as, like, I was paired with great leadership, you know, that any questions or any, you know, brick walls that I ran into my team was right there to help me knock it down. I’ve never felt like I was, you know, like lost or, you know, alone or anything like that. I always had somebody I could just call that, you know, as years of experience and that, you know, it takes a lot of stress off, made it a lot easier.

00:04:15:26 –> 00:04:31:21
Taylor: Oh yeah, definitely. Was there any advice that you got from anybody from that team who maybe you could go to with a transaction that you had a question on or anything like that? Anything that came up, you had a question on, is there any advice that that person or anybody on your team had given you when you first started?

00:04:33:08 –> 00:05:12:15
Jesse: Oh yeah. So, there there’s a lot the main ones I’ll touch base on is, is be thankful, be grateful. And, you know, a lot of people, they always ask, you know, how are you so happy? Cause I, I live day-to-day life, just, you know, smiling and grateful. I feel though, coming from a place of gratitude is the best way to do that. If, if you wake up daily and you’re thankful, you will never, you know, you’re not angry that you’re without, you’re thankful for what you have, you know what I mean? That was a great piece of advice that my mentor had given me is just, you know, be thankful. And if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want. That was another good one.

00:05:12:16 –> 00:06:01:07
Uh, and you know, I mean, don’t be a secret agent when I first got in, I was kinda like, you know, Mr. Secret agent, man, I was kind of hiding in the back corner, you know, hear talking about real estate. And I’m like looking over there. I’m like, you know, I know what they’re talking about, but I don’t know if I should dive in. Uh, and that, that is probably the greatest piece of advice I could give to somebody that’s just hopping in is you need to be shouting from the rooftops that you are a realtor, you need to call your friends and family. You need to reach out to your sphere of influence that already know and love you. And you need to leverage that, let them know, hey, I’m in the business. If you know anybody looking to buy or sell real estate, please give me a call. You know, I’m available. Here’s my phone number. Don’t hide away. You know, you’re not going to get business if you’re not talking. So, that’s the biggest thing is just build relationships, talk to people, get yourself out there and just help as many people as possible.

00:06:02:05 –> 00:06:09:28
Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. Over the last couple of years, what is the worst showing or property that you have been to, any of them that pop into your mind?

00:06:11:03 –> 00:07:03:07
Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve seen some stuff. Um, the foreclosures are usually the worst ones. You just never know what people do when they’re leaving there. I got two that pop into my mind. One of them was literally decayed. I was worried about walking through this building. I’m like, I don’t know, you know, these stairs don’t quite look safe, but we got upstairs. There were no walls. I mean, it’s just insulation. There was a couple of like decayed, dead animals in there. It was pretty bad, just stuff everywhere. That was pretty rough. And then the other one I was in, I mean, that one had that roof caving in, it had black mold. I mean, you name it, it was there, it was rough. Kind of one of those houses, you just kind of walk into, you know, hand sanitizer ready, and you just kind of wait.

00:07:04:28 –> 00:07:47:13
But yeah, those two are the worst. Now I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff too. I’m thinking of the coolest things. I’ve seen a bomb shelter. And so maybe I’m, you know, twenty-five years old. Yeah. Showing this house and we look in the backyard and there’s like a hill and I’m like, well, what’s up with that? And there’s a door going into this hill. And I’m like, I’ve never seen that before. And we walk in and it was like, yeah, like a 1940 or 50 bomb shelter, it was really cool. You know, I don’t usually see things like that. So that was pretty unique. And um, some weird stuff you see being real there’s, you know, sometimes I’ve, I’ve walked into like an attic and someone’s got a creepy doll hidden up there. And that’s like the first thing that meets you as you come up into the darkness and that’ll get you out, that’ll give you a little bit of a hard job.

00:07:48:24 –> 00:07:51:24
Taylor: Like they purposely place it there.

00:07:52:14 –> 00:08:01:08
Jesse: I feel so. I mean, there, there’s no reason you should just have this creepy doll sitting there. You know, I feel like that is directly before, you know, people showing your house like, yeah, that’s funny.

00:08:03:17 –> 00:08:12:07
Brad: That’s awesome. So, let’s say you had to start all over today with all the knowledge you have now. How would you spend your first thousand dollars?

00:08:14:07 –> 00:09:01:28
Jesse: So, with real estate, you gotta be careful because, you know, you gotta make sure you have these fees covered. Um, as far as, you know, your MLS fees, your broker fees, things like that. So like personally, if I started out with a thousand dollars, the first thing would be to buy real estate signs. You know, you need signs in the front of people’s houses so that you can sell their property. Of course, you need business cards as well. Now, eXp does offer like free, like a thousand or 2000 business cards when you first joined with them. So that was pretty awesome. Um, out-of-pocket I would say initially, you’re going to need signs and then I would just save, save, save. You always want to have, you know, a savings account and, you know, financial backing just in case, you know, say something doesn’t work out, you don’t get a closing for a couple of months.

00:09:01:28 –> 00:09:48:11
You know, you want that, that background there to not only help your bills but to be able to manage your fees as far as to be able to continue doing real estate because that is one of the things about real estate is it is a roller coaster. Sometimes you are on the top thrill dragster, you’re all the way on top. You’re on top of the world and you feel like you are unstoppable and then it drops down and you know, you, you go a couple of months and, you know, even without getting paid, I think we all know what that could be like. And you started to think back like, oh my God, you know, maybe I’m not on top of the world, but then you hit that, that pole again and you go straight back up to the top. So, it is quite a game. It’s a lot of fun though. It’s never a boring time. You’re always kind of either excited or nervous, you know, you’re not sure what’s going on, but I, I wouldn’t change it.

00:09:48:28 –> 00:09:52:29
Brad: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. What kind of business books have you read that?

00:09:54:12 –> 00:10:44:21
Jesse: So, I am again, a younger cat, um, and I’m, I’m kinda on the go often. I don’t find too much time to read. When I do, it’s usually the Bible that I find a lot of wisdom from like the book of Proverbs. That is one of my favorite pieces to go to whenever I need guidance or, you know, just kinda need that push. But I do listen to a lot of podcasts and some business podcasts that I could recommend would be, Dave Ramsey. He’s really good. I’m a huge fan of not being in debt. Um, and so I love his teachings on that. I do really like Grant Cardone. He just partnered with the XPS. So it’s really cool to, you know, be able to see that inside knowledge, help directly to my business. Um, and Tom, Ferry’s really good too. You know, if you just need some motivation, you just need somebody that’s, you know, gonna get you pumped up, get you out there and get you wanting to sell some stuff, Tom Barry’s a good guy that you could listen to because he’s pretty out there.

00:10:45:23 –> 00:10:48:05
Brad: I like it. I like it. That’s awesome. How can people get ahold of you

00:10:49:08 –> 00:11:10:02
Jesse: So, I can be reached on most social media platforms through Facebook messenger, text message, phone calls. You can call me or text me at (269) 967-3524. My email is [email protected]. You can also shoot me an email there. Um, any way you can get ahold of me. Yeah.

00:11:10:21 –> 00:11:14:11
Brad: Sweet. I like it. That’s awesome. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.

00:11:15:02 –> 00:11:18:06
Jesse: Yeah, not a problem. Thanks for having me guys. I hope you enjoy the rest of this beautiful day.

00:11:22:02 –> 00:11:40:05
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eXp https://swr.exprealty.com/agents/247873/Jesse+Jatoft