Episode 162 Transcript: Nykole Pfaff
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Nykole Pfaff from The Brokerage Real Estate Enthusiast. To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube below. To listen head over to Apple Podcasts.
In the meantime, here’s a transcript of the conversation…
Here’s what you missed from Nykole Pfaff
00:00:00:08 –> 00:00:15:01
Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have Nicole Pfaff.
Brad: You’re listening to the Brad and Taylor Show, a podcast that inspires entrepreneurs to pursue their passions. We’re sitting down with some of the best to learn how they got started and some lessons they learned along the way.
Taylor: Hey Nykole.
00:00:15:23 –> 00:00:18:06
Nykole: Hey, how are you guys?
Taylor: We’re good. How are you doing?
Nykole: Great!
00:00:19:21 –> 00:00:22:29
Brad: Awesome. Well, let’s get the show started. So tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:24:05 –> 00:00:38:21
Nykole: I am a real estate broker. I co-own the brokerage with Sarah. I’ve been doing it for about nine years, so I sell houses all day.
00:00:39:07 –> 00:00:44:02
Brad: When you were younger, is that what you had planned for your future? What’d you have planned?
00:00:44:20 –> 00:01:59:11
Nykole: Absolutely not. I started out as a pre-med major, which is very odd because I don’t like needles. I don’t like blood. So where I thought I was going with it, was mind-blowing. I ended up with a finance and economics degree because I think after I wasted my first two years being in pre-med, I was like, not for me. My mother said I had to graduate from college, so I went in, I slapped my transcripts down and I said, find me my fastest way out of here. She said the fastest way is finance and economics. I said, all right, let’s roll. So that’s what I got my degree in. After that, I sold cars for maybe a year when I came home. My mom’s an accountant, so I lived with my mom for maybe eight or ten months. I just remember going to work. I worked at Jim Waldens and Davison, and I remember I was hustling and I didn’t say anything to my mom. So when she got my 1099 in the mail, she made me get my own place.
00:02:02:08 –> 00:02:32:02
I was making a good amount of money, so she said, you’re not living here anymore. As I said, she’s an accountant, so she’s always giving me ideas. I knew I couldn’t work for anybody else like that. I ended up getting into buying gold, platinum, silver, diamonds, and coins. I did that for four or five years, which was a four or five-year plan for me. And then, I had no clue what I was going to do next and I got into real estate and here we are.
00:02:32:12 –> 00:02:39:07
Brad: I like it. I like it. Well, I think you mentioned this before we started, you just got a couple of new buildings.
00:02:40:05 –> 00:03:39:22
Nykole: Yeah. Our first office, Sarah and I opened down in downtown Clarkston, not much of a project for us, you know, we just moved right in, it was our first office and slowly but surely people started coming on over. We thought it was just going to be us and our office manager, Alexis. I ended up getting an assistant because Alexis got too busy and we didn’t think we were going to get this big. We then got bigger. I live in Fenton, so I’ve always wanted a Fenton office. We got up to the Fenton building right on Leroy street, we redid the whole thing. We’ve always had the Davidson office. We got the Davidson office right after the Clarkston office. So excuse me on that one. We ended up buying a building downtown Davidson right after we bought Fenton. Hopefully, I can finish those renovations here in the next week or so.
00:03:40:13 –> 00:03:41:24
Brad: I like it. I like it. So how many agents do you guys have now?
00:03:43:13 –> 00:03:43:25
Taylor: Yeah. How many are on your team?
00:03:43:25 –> 00:04:28:22
Nykole: I think we are pressing 50, we’re selective, you know. I mean, we’ve turned away a fair amount of people, but we just like to keep our reputation. We don’t want to hire everybody and anybody. Plus, we have a really, really great group of girls and guys. We’re more women dominant, sorry guys, but we do accept men and we love them. They just have to know there are lots of estrogens, but yeah. We’re selective, but we love who we have. We have a great team. I think all our offices are prospering and our agents are growing, which is what everybody wants.
00:04:29:14 –> 00:04:37:13
Taylor: Do you have any goals for your team finishing off this year and going into the next one, do you guys want to keep growing or kind of stay where you are for a little bit?
00:04:37:28 –> 00:05:11:25
Nykole: I always tell Sarah we’re done. We’re done opening offices after that. I just told her, Hey, if I finish this one by one, by this time, can I have one more office? So I’m praying that she may let me have a Grand Blanc office. I have some girls in the camp that I would love to have under the brokerage name and for them to run their teams under the brokerage. They’re powerful women and a few men, but they’re powerful women. So I would love to have them with a brokerage logo.
00:05:12:20 –> 00:05:20:22
Taylor: That’s super exciting. Do you have an ideal timeframe when you want to maybe go that route or do you just kind of whenever it happens, it happens?
Nykole: Sooner than later, duh.
00:05:22:12 –> 00:05:24:24
Nykole: Maybe I’ll send this to Sarah and make her listen to it.
00:05:27:26 –> 00:05:28:07
Taylor: Yeah. It’s on-air now. It’s recorded, Sarah.
Brad: It’s public.
00:05:30:16 –> 00:06:40:26
Nykole: I’m hoping maybe in the next two months I can find something. We really do look for locations. Our first Davidson office, the one that we rented, was more like our biggest spur of the moment because we had a lot of girls that wanted to come over. It was the biggest spur of the moment. When we found a building for them downtown, we couldn’t pass it up. This is probably going to be more like, where do we want to be? What location? Which part of Grand Blanc? There are so many different parts of it. We’re probably going to have to figure that part out and really just kind of sift through and see what’s available. What works for us, our interior. I don’t know if I have any pictures of our Fenton office. There are probably pictures on our Facebook. That’s more like our design like everything is modern, but it’s fun. It’s got some warm woods in it. It’s got some industrial feel to it. Like all our ceilings are sprayed and black, you know, we try to keep it kind of similar. Hopefully, we can find something that we can do that too.
00:06:41:13 –> 00:06:45:20
Taylor: That’s exciting. You guys are designing the whole interior yourself, right?
00:06:46:02 –> 00:07:05:08
Nykole: Yeah. Well the two that we bought, we obviously put money in on to, cause they’re great locations and they’re great buildings. We have glass partitions up. We’ve got some warm woods that surround the top of the ceiling, our ceilings are all black stuff like that. We’ve redone a lot.
00:07:05:14 –> 00:07:07:09
Taylor: I’m going to hop on Facebook and check it out. I’m going to see if they’re there.
00:07:08:23 –> 00:07:23:02
Nykole: You have to. It’s 1219 north Leroy Street and then our Davidson one, which literally, like I said, I’m headed thereafter. It’s 205 East Second Street. It’s right behind the secretary of state. It’s actually a really cool building.
00:07:23:21 –> 00:07:35:14
Taylor: Awesome. Yeah. I’m going to have to check those out. Those sound really cool. How you guys have it set up. Let’s kind of backtrack here a little bit. Take us to your first transaction. How did that go for you? Was it smooth? Was it everything you had hoped for? How did it go?
00:07:37:16 –> 00:08:11:17
Nykole: I don’t even remember my first transaction, but I did. I started at America’s Premier. So I’ll give Tim Green and Karen Green a shout-out. Great. Literally, I couldn’t have done it without Karen. I love Tim. No offense Timmy, but Karen probably taught me more than anybody could ever teach me. Do you know what I mean? If you don’t get on somebody’s bandwagon, I know people hate doing that. Giving up a little commission here or there or whatever, being somebody else’s, you know what, you gotta do it.
00:08:12:08 –> 00:08:15:21
Taylor: I think the word is a female dog. Right? Is that the one you’re calling?
00:08:16:21 –> 00:09:12:27
Nykole: Yeah, that’s it. You have to do that. I mean, I am perhaps to her. She definitely taught me the ins and outs and there’s a loophole to this and a loophole to that. Yeah. The way to do things. I don’t even know my first transaction, my first transaction was probably with an investor. I think it was Ray Oliver and he bought a condo from Ash. He loved me. He bought a lot from me.
Brad: That’s awesome.
Nykole: It probably wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t bad because I had Karen with me. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t have very many bad transactions. As long as you have somebody that’s experienced with you and you’re running stuff by them, you’ll be good. You have to have somebody with experience with you though.
00:09:13:04 –> 00:09:28:04
Brad: Yeah. They’re awesome. I know, we’ve talked to them a couple of times too, so they’re awesome. So what kind of advice did you get that has stuck with you along the way? Maybe when you started out or maybe a couple of years ago or something you give your agents now?
00:09:29:09 –> 00:09:45:20
Nykole: Now it’s tough. It’s getting really competitive now. So now, in my opinion, you probably need to start out on a team, you know?
00:09:48:27 –> 00:10:56:17
Nykole: You’re dealing with people’s biggest assets. If they want to use you, great. In my experience, they always see, there’s always something I’ve had a lot of people buy because they think all they do is open doors. A lot of things can be messed up like that, inspection times, inspections. If you don’t have the right inspections listed, possession time, closing dates, application date, anything could be messed up on a purchase agreement. You still want to have somebody with experience. So I always told them, if you’re starting out, get on a team, it’s not going to hurt you to be on a team for 12 months, learn the ropes and then go out on your own. The girls on my team, like on my specific team, like being on a team because you get a lot of your paperwork taken care of for you. You get a lot of leads, you get whatever. That’s really what they should provide you. If you’re shaping them, then your kudos to yourself, hopefully, they stay within your company, and then you’re fine.
00:10:57:00 –> 00:11:07:05
Taylor: Yeah. When you are going to hire new agents for your team, are you looking for somebody that maybe has had a couple of years of experience, or do you want someone with no experience at all and you want to teach them the ropes?
00:11:08:17 –> 00:12:25:23
Nykole: Karen probably loved me because I had none. I had no experience, it was perfect. She could train me how she wanted to train me. Now, being a broker, owner, and still an agent, I still do 20 million a year and I flip houses. So I don’t necessarily have all the time in the world to give to a newbie unless they are super motivated. I’ve got one that’s really motivated. He probably calls me twice a day and he thinks he’s bugging me, but he’s not. I might not answer right away, but I always answer his questions. He called, and I talked to him this morning already. I talked to him last. I walked them through a purchase agreement yesterday. He just made a fizz ball for sale by the owner, by himself, you know? So he asks me all these things, which I’m okay with. I’d rather them do that when they’re really motivated like that. It makes it a lot easier. If you’ve got to yank the motivation out of them, that’s not for me. They might want to go somewhere where they have a team lead or they have more of a corporate setting where they have someone that can instruct them.
00:12:26:13 –> 00:12:34:10
Taylor: Awesome. Switching it a little bit here too, what’s the worst property you’ve been to over the years, which one stands out the most?
00:12:35:02 –> 00:12:35:19
Brad: Or showing.
00:12:36:01 –> 00:12:39:02
Taylor: Yeah. Or showing. I know some of those can be interesting.
00:12:42:17 –> 00:13:38:12
Nykole: Oh man, I’ve been to a lot of flip houses. I’ve probably been to 20 houses and I would say still to this day, the worst, I guess I’d have to just say the worst type of house. I can deal with mold. I can deal with a foundation issue. I can deal with anything. The number one thing that is disgusting is when you’re unlocking the door and you can smell cats. I know this sounds really random, but I just did one last weekend. I got one foot in the door and my client was right behind me. I turned around. I said, can you smell that? And she is like, yeah, we don’t have to go in here. That is the worst smell. I think it’s just like, people just don’t, they have carpet and they don’t take care of their cat or clean up. And it’s gross.
00:13:42:03 –> 00:13:44:29
Brad: Yeah. We call those scratch and sniff houses. Yeah.
00:13:47:09 –> 00:13:49:17
Taylor: You know when you’re at the front door?
00:13:50:12 –> 00:14:13:27
Nykole: Oh yeah. There’s a couple, you can smell animals, obviously, you can smell through the front door, smoke, you can smell through the front door. I would say the other one, which is around and not used that much anymore, is like the mothballs, like older people. Like I’m always like, please don’t put those out.
00:14:13:27 –> 00:14:15:17
Taylor: They don’t smell good.
00:14:17:04 –> 00:14:19:25
Nykole: Nothing about them gets rid of any odor.
00:14:21:25 –> 00:14:28:10
Brad: That’s crazy. So what are some business books that you’ve read that are your favorite or one you’d recommend to agents?
00:14:29:07 –> 00:15:25:23
Nykole: Okay. I have a book right here at my desk. Maybe I don’t. I read a lot of Gary V. I’m real. Some people say, oh, you’re, you’re like the female version. I’m nowhere near Gary V like that. I am very out there. I’m very rough around the edges. I really don’t care what people think. I would say if you’re going to read anything, I would probably read something by him. Just to get motivated to just get out there, you know? That’s not the easiest thing. It’s a mind game to get motivated. I’ve been in it for nine years. I’ve been in sales since I was 20. I’ve been in sales over a decade and I’m not, I’ll tell you, I still have those days where I’m like, maybe I should just get a nine to five. I can’t do this anymore. It’s a mind game. So just stay motivated and get out of your head.
00:15:27:02 –> 00:15:29:05
Brad: Yep. For sure. Awesome. Hey, how can people get a hold of you?
00:15:30:10 –> 00:16:11:28
Nykole: If you are a huge social media person, you can totally just Google my name. My name pops up. I have a Facebook and my Instagram is @notsosilentp which is comical. I’m definitely the furthest thing from silent. My P in my name is silent. So it’s comical otherwise they can always call my cell phone. Call, text. It’s literally as easy as that, it’s always on me. If you don’t get an immediate response, you’ll get a response the same day. I mean, I always respond. You can always reach me, my cell phone number’s everywhere. If you Google my name, everything pops up.
00:16:13:04 –> 00:16:15:26
Brad: I like it. Awesome. Hey, thanks for coming on here and sharing your story with us.
00:16:16:13 –> 00:16:18:21
Nykole: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me guys.
00:16:22:00 –> 00:16:40:02
Check out Nykole Pfaff:
The Brokerage Real Estate Enthusiast
http://www.soldbysilentp.com/
Facebook: @soldbysilentp
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