Episode 169: DJ Fairley
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with DJ Fairley from The Durbin Team (eXp Realty)!
To watch the full episode, check it out on YouTube below. In the meantime, here’s a transcript of the conversation…
Here’s what you missed from DJ Fairley…
00:00:00:08 –> 00:00:03:15
Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have DJ Fairley.
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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.
00:00:14:18 –> 00:00:15:05
Taylor: Hey DJ.
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DJ: Hey guys. How are you today?
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Taylor: We’re good. How are you doing?
DJ: Doing great.
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Brad: Awesome. Well, let’s get this show started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:23:21 –> 00:01:01:02
DJ: I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, run a real estate team with my business partner, Matt Durbin. We have been working together now for close to 20 years. So we met playing coach football at the University in PA and had a mortgage company back in the day in South Florida. After the ’08 crash, I took a little break. I did some technology sales, Matt kind of stayed in real estate and we got the band back together about four years ago. We moved back from Florida to Pennsylvania and now we’re just coming along here.
00:01:02:14 –> 00:01:06:14
Brad: Awesome. I like it. So how did you get started in real estate?
00:01:07:23 –> 00:01:38:17
DJ: I’m always intrigued by my father, he was in mortgages. So just being around mortgages and real estate water, rental properties. As a kid, I just thought it was pretty fascinating. How many different avenues could you do well in real estate? The mortgage side was my first passion. From there, I was just always involved in the real estate side and just talking to agents every day. As I got older, it was just a nice shift from where I fell more in love with the real estate agent side of things versus the mortgage side of things.
00:01:39:16 –> 00:01:42:26
Taylor: Nice. So from a young age, you kind of already knew this is what you’re going to do.
00:01:43:29 –> 00:01:46:08
DJ: Yeah. Took my father’s footsteps.
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Taylor: That’s pretty rare. I know most people when we ask that question to everybody, did you know you wanted to be a real estate agent when you grow up? Everyone says, heck no. That’s awesome though. Following his footsteps.
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Brad: Is he still doing mortgages right now?
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DJ: He is not. He’s retired. So he actually moved down to sunny, Florida as well. I made the jump back to Pittsburgh. He’s down there and now it’s a lot of golf, a little bit swimming, but a lot of golf.
00:02:16:24 –> 00:02:21:03
Taylor: That leaves you a good vacation spot though, right? So when you can head south
00:02:21:29 –> 00:02:28:18
DJ: And this time of the year, we’re getting into fall weather now. Soon enough, it’s pretty weird. I can just go any day.
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Taylor: So did you receive any piece of advice from your dad or anybody around you when you first got into real estate that just stuck with you throughout the years?
00:02:40:21 –> 00:03:19:21
DJ: Yeah. It’s funny you say that. Yes, but I didn’t really follow it. I think as a young kid is just really consistent, right? I mean, it’s one of those businesses where it can be challenging if you’re not consistent. He just always said, the more you talk to people and have real estate conversations, those are going to be your success. Right. I’m 41 and I still cold call quite a bit. Not that it’s the greatest thing in the world, but it’s very effective. Now, there’s a lot of social media, different ways to attract people. But I still love just meeting people, talking in person, and talking on the phone so the consistency has really stuck with me. And he was definitely right. Yeah.
00:03:20:02 –> 00:03:25:05
Brad: So you’re talking about the cold clients, not always the best, and that is not always the most fun, what’s your favorite way to market?
00:03:26:10 –> 00:04:10:01
DJ: Believe it or not, it’s that. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I’ll say, the reason that I’ve done it so long is that I am good at it. I know the numbers up, down backward forward. I know if I’m on the phone for three hours, if I contact 20 people, I’m typically one for 20 on setting an appointment. From there, typically I’m kind of nine out of 10 on getting listings. It’s still a lot of expired fisbos, but we are growing our sphere. So I’d say that is definitely a more fun way to get businesses, referrals from the sphere, and our sphere network. So that’s exciting. That part’s been growing really well for us, but yeah, I’m still a guy on the phone. As I said, it’s not always fun, but it’s effective and it’s predictable.
00:04:11:26 –> 00:04:13:28
Taylor: Do you do social media too?
00:04:14:02 –> 00:04:36:19
DJ: I do. I got to get better at it. The reason I said it, you know, I’ll post the house. I have a little boy, he’s three and then kind of like anything, inspirational workout related, some kind of like those three items. I’m trying to get better at that. I got to get into video more. I can talk to people I’m not nervous, but when it comes to that phone and videoing myself, I don’t know what it is.
00:04:37:11 –> 00:04:39:12
Taylor: When we post this, it’d be your first one.
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Brad: I like it. What are some of the worst properties you’ve been to or showings since you’ve been in real estate?
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DJ: The one that sticks out in my head was when I showed a property in the middle of winter during a snowstorm that had such a large hole in the roof. It was literally snowing on us. So when we got to the attic, it was larger, like you could stand and walk around it. It could be finished and be nice, but the size of the hole in the roof, it was just dumping snow on top of us. So that was a fun one and an investor bought it. So for an investor, it’s one of those worst properties in the best neighborhood. It turned out to be a good one for him. And it turned out beautiful after he remodeled it.
00:05:25:21 –> 00:05:29:20
Taylor: Nice. Yeah. That’s awesome. Were you able to see the after photos of it?
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DJ: It’s gorgeous. Yeah, absolutely. It was beautiful. They got it. Everything. No snow, new roof. A nice house for somebody.
00:05:41:04 –> 00:05:44:28
Taylor: That’s awesome. If you could start over today, is there anything that you would do differently?
00:05:46:17 –> 00:06:34:21
DJ: Yeah, I would actually focus really hard on growing our database earlier. So like one thing that stuck out in my mind. I follow a lot of successful agents and Ricky Crews out of Florida. There’s one thing he does and it’s just remarkable. He has a newsletter. He does it every week and he’s grown it into a database. I think it’s almost 20,000 now. Having that database, just the amount of business he gets just from the database site goes back to consistency. That one little thing has just exponentially grown his business. I think that’s one thing that as agents, we’re always chasing the next deal sometimes. We forget that if you grow it slowly every day, it turns into something amazing over time. So just being more consistent early on.
00:06:35:14 –> 00:06:39:17
Taylor: Yeah. Do you have any recommendations for anybody who’s trying to grow their database?
00:06:40:20 –> 00:07:17:06
DJ: Yeah. So I would say just for everybody you talk to, make sure you have a good email and a phone number and then make sure that you send them something of value. You know, still, for our current clients, we still send it for any potential seller. We always do market updates, run a neighborhood like seller reports, monthly. They do that. Everyone’s got their neighbors selling for the area. We’re trying it this year, COVID kind of slowed it down, trying at least having one good event. I think events are great. Kid-friendly to come to bring friends, family, etc. I think just those types of things are awesome.
00:07:18:02 –> 00:07:27:26
Taylor: Yeah. A good way to network. A good way to build those relationships with people you don’t typically talk to. I know you make the phone calls, but maybe some other people don’t do that necessarily as much.
00:07:28:16 –> 00:07:53:16
DJ: Exactly. Yeah. I’m like a dying breed. They’ll probably expire one day. I probably will. You know I think about my little three-year-old, like what does dad do? This is funny, he doesn’t even have a real job. He thinks only construction workers are actually workers. He goes from working men and he’s like, my dad doesn’t work. He just talks on the phone all day. I’m like, well, it’s kind of a job.
00:07:54:25 –> 00:07:58:19
Brad: Yeah. That’s funny. So future-wise, tell us more about your team.
00:07:59:22 –> 00:08:42:29
DJ: Yeah. We have a team of 15 under Matt and I right now, which is awesome. We really are truly a family. We pride ourselves in the culture that we’ve grown, like-minded individuals. We actually made the shift at eXp a few years ago so that the business model is pretty cool because now we have a lot of partner agents. They’re not directly in our team, but we have really great collaboration. The partner agents share, we have a lot of training, so some are great at social media. Here’s what I’m doing here. Like you said, different marketing. So that aspect of it, I love just more collaborations given back. I feel like it just comes back tenfold.
00:08:44:06 –> 00:08:46:17
Taylor: Awesome. Before we go today, how can people get a hold of you?
00:08:47:17 –> 00:08:58:24
DJ: So my phone number is (412) 335-8944. My email is [email protected].
00:09:00:08 –> 00:09:25:14
Awesome. I like it. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing a story with us today.
DJ: Yeah, absolutely.
Hello. Hello. Are you there? Hey guys, we just wanted to thank you for listening on either a podcast or on the YouTube video here. If you guys wanted to subscribe, that would be awesome. That would mean a lot to us. If you guys could give us a five-star review as well, that would be amazing. And we’ll see you on the next one.
Check out DJ Fairley:
The Durbin Team | eXp Realty
mattdurbinrealestate.com
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