Episode 189: Barbara Chick
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we have Barbara Chick from Real Living Great Lakes!
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 Barbara Chick…
00:00:00:15 –> 00:00:15:03
Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have Barbara Chick.
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 Barbara.
00:00:16:01 –> 00:00:20:13
Barbara: Hey, how are you?
Taylor: We’re good. How are you?
Barbara: Doing great. Thanks for having me on today.
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Brad: Yeah, for sure. Well, let’s get this started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:25:12 –> 00:00:36:22
Barbara: I am a licensed realtor in Southeast Michigan. I am also a wife to my husband, Brian. We just celebrated 25 years of marriage and I’m a mom to four kids.
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Brad: Awesome. So how’d you get started in real estate?
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Barbara: Well, I have always been doing some form of marketing. I received my bachelor’s in Business in Marketing and every kind of step of the way I’ve always done some type of marketing. So I moved through working in advertising, GMC National Account back in the day. I didn’t get a lot of internal satisfaction from that. So I decided to shift to nonprofit marketing and did some fundraising and event planning, public relations. After a stint with that, I went back to the corporate world and worked for a small company that was a one-person marketing department. So I did everything, the negotiating contracts and the creative and the writing copy event planning, everything. Then when the kids were little, I stayed home with them, but I always continued to do volunteer work and marketing capacity. My husband and I even started our own publishing company for a while.
00:01:41:01 –> 00:02:37:05
And then I went back to the corporate world again, and I realized quickly that the lack of flexibility in the day was not working so well for that life family balance that I needed with four children and just how I wanted to live my life. So I worked with a number of high-end builders, residential builders, as well as high-producing realtors. I would market to them and talk to them and see them driving Lamborghinis. And I thought, well you know, there’s a lot of potential here. And even though driving a Lamborghini isn’t my goal, knowing that potential was there and learning about the flexibility of that type of work, it really just was an easy shift into real estate and I absolutely love it. I get such satisfaction with helping people and having the flexibility for my family.
00:02:37:22 –> 00:02:42:23
Brad: That’s awesome. So tell us about what you’re doing right now. Like, do you have a team of people or do you just do it by yourself? What do you have going on?
00:02:43:13 –> 00:03:22:20
Barbara: No, I’m a solo agent. I have a great broker that I work with at Real Living Great Lakes. She’s been a wonderful mentor to me. I have a number of awesome agents that are friends that are a phone away for any kind of advice or anything like that. But no, everything is on my own right now. I really enjoy that. It’s that entrepreneurial spirit that I really enjoy. Yeah. At some point in the future, I don’t know if that will shift or not, but for right now, I really like having my own time to make my own decisions and work in that capacity.
00:03:22:27 –> 00:03:29:00
Taylor: Yeah. When you first started out in real estate, did you get any advice from anybody around you that maybe just stuck with you?
00:03:30:17 –> 00:04:29:18
Barbara: Well, specifically, I remember a couple that I was concerned about because there’re so many realtors, right? Everybody knows a realtor and that was kind of my hesitation to join in because I felt like, well, everyone knows a realtor but a friend of mine said there’s enough business to go around. And there really is. And so I appreciated that advice just to go for it and really not specific to real estate or even to business, but the people I’m surrounded by are so authentic. There’s a lot of my friends in this past decade that have joined that entrepreneur side doing their own thing. And that’s so motivating and inspiring to me to see everybody kind of taking life on their own terms and doing their thing, taking all the skills they’ve learned over their life and applying it on their own terms. So that’s been a huge motivating factor to me and inspires me to move forward and do that.
00:04:29:29 –> 00:04:34:15
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Over the last, how many years have you been in real estate? I’m sorry.
00:04:35:10 –> 00:04:37:22
Barbara: I’ve only been in about three years.
00:04:38:04 –> 00:04:39:26
Taylor: Well, that’s plenty of time to see a bunch of homes.
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Barbara: Yes. Oh yes, yes, yes.
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Taylor: Over the last three years, Barbara, what is the worst property or showing that you’ve been to?
00:04:48:17 –> 00:05:42:28
Barbara: There have been a few that I can think of. One in particular, since we just celebrated or had Halloween, it was kind of a scary property. I was showing this wonderful family. They have five little kids under 10, all these properties, old farmhouses and acres with burns, and out in remote areas. So we’re driving out, and this one was beautifully updated. Chip and Joanna Gaines would be so proud of all the updates in this house. And it was beautiful, but one of the bedrooms was decorated with horror movie paraphernalia. So there were little figurines and posters and all these horror movies’ weapons and stuff, like all around this room that the kids didn’t even want to go in. So it was a little creepy. So we then went out to the barn.
00:05:42:29 –> 00:06:33:14
This is a big, huge, beautiful barn. And it was unlocked with a latch. We go inside and the door closes shut behind us. It’s like a hinge. And though it wasn’t locked, there was no latch on the inside of the barn. So we couldn’t get out and all the other doors were padlocked shut. We were stuck in the barn. All I could think about was the horror movie stuff in the bedroom thinking, we are part of a new movie here because you know, this was just creepy. So anyway, we were not. Thankfully. We were finally able to find a sliding door that we were able to push out a bit five, I don’t know, about 12 inches. And one of the five children was able to fit through that, go around and let us escape from her demise.
00:06:34:18 –> 00:06:46:13
Taylor: Yeah. That’s a creepy situation.
Barbara: I wouldn’t want to be caught in that one again.
Taylor: I’m sure you don’t either, no way, man. So did the house ever sell, did you end up selling that one?
00:06:47:05 –> 00:06:54:11
Barbara: No, it wasn’t my listing. It actually was for my buyer so that they didn’t buy it now. They didn’t buy that one.
00:06:55:17 –> 00:07:01:27
Taylor: I can’t imagine Chip and Joanna Gaines turning into another horror movie, right?
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Barbara: Yes. So that’s what it felt like, but thankfully all was well, we made it out safely.
00:07:06:11 –> 00:07:11:26
Taylor: Yeah. That’s crazy. What kind of goals do you have in place to finish up this year and onto the next year?
00:07:12:18 –> 00:08:18:23
Barbara: Yeah. So I just recently celebrated a milestone birthday, which always gets you to kind of thinking about life, I guess. So you know, I think for me, as far as my business goes, I’m always supposed to do better, streamline things, and reach out more. One of the things that I want to do more of what I used to do, more volunteer work and just being out in the community because I just enjoy people so much and, you know, with our lockdowns and all of that, I really missed those opportunities to be out with people. So for the next year, I want to get back to that, meeting with people and helping out where I kind of volunteer capacity and building my business, and our personal goals, you know? So, as I said, the bucket list, things that while I still have my holding grasp very carefully onto my youth, to do some of those fun things with my kids, adventure travel type stuff, and get back into my running and health stuff. So yeah.
00:08:19:03 –> 00:08:21:15
Taylor: For traveling as a family, where do you want to go?
00:08:22:23 –> 00:08:42:10
Barbara: I think what’s top of our list is Colorado too. You know, I have teenagers so they’re more active and they want more adventure. So doing either whitewater rapids and rock climbing and hiking and that type of stuff. Because they don’t want to look at the museums quite yet.
00:08:44:08 –> 00:08:52:26
Taylor: Colorado would be fun. I haven’t been, but I’ve heard a lot of good, good people and good places over there from people over there. So yeah, definitely adventurous.
00:08:53:21 –> 00:08:54:08
Barbara: Yes.
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Taylor: Yeah. Awesome. Well, if you could start over today with all the knowledge that you’ve learned over the years, what was one thing you would do differently?
00:08:59:00 –> 00:09:58:01
Barbara: You know, I firmly believe that all experiences lead you to the person who you are and where you are in life, so good or bad. So I feel like I really wouldn’t change anything because even the bad experiences and probably more so the bad experiences really were the things that pushed me to make changes. Whether it’s in my career, my personal life, or whatever. So having a bad experience, if you’re tolerating an okay situation, then you tolerate it and you just sit there and you’re not living your best life. So I feel like the good experiences help you to do better, the bad experiences help you to make those changes. And so you know, I would say, I wish I would have gotten to real estate sooner, but at the same time, I wouldn’t maybe be as motivated or as eager had I not had the other experiences to know what the alternative was to that, you know? So yeah. I don’t think I would do anything different. Okay.
00:09:58:10 –> 00:10:05:00
Taylor: Speaking of being in the real estate market, when you first started in real estate, how did you get that first listing?
00:10:06:25 –> 00:10:44:05
Barbara: Ah, my first listing, I just reached out as soon as I heard about somebody moving to the area, like a friend of a friend type of situation. I just kind of took the bull by the horns, you know, went outside my comfort zone and reached out and just said, Hey, I’m a local agent. I would love to help you find your next home. And really that was it. And I think most of my contacts are referrals. I get people that will refer me out and I feel like that’s the biggest compliment and the best way to get this.
00:10:44:23 –> 00:10:55:08
Taylor: Yeah, that’s awesome. I know it can be nerve-wracking talking to other agents who are newer going into it and how to reach out to those first clients. But like you said, take the bull by the horns and just jump into it.
00:10:55:29 –> 00:10:57:14
Barbara: Exactly. You have to reach out.
00:10:57:20 –> 00:11:00:14
Brad: You’re like, I don’t have a clue what they’re going to say.
00:11:00:14 –> 00:11:02:08
Taylor: What’s the worst that they’re going to say? No.
00:11:02:12 –> 00:11:13:21
Barbara: Yeah, exactly. And you have to have thick skin too, to deal with that type of response as well, but you know, you just brush it off and move on and that’s how it goes.
00:11:14:26 –> 00:11:17:22
Taylor: Awesome. Well, before we go today, how can people get a hold of you?
00:11:18:26 –> 00:11:38:18
Barbara: Yeah, they can email me at barbaradotchickatcomcast.net is probably the easiest way. And you know, they can send me the information there. I believe you also put in the links for my website, which has my cell phone and email address there. So any way like that would be great.
00:11:39:15 –> 00:11:42:06
Brad: I like that. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
00:11:43:04 –> 00:12:56:29
Barbara: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
00:12:56:34
Hello. Hello. Are you there? Are there, are 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 Barbara Chick:
www.realliving.com/barbara-chick
linktr.ee/Barbarachickrealtor
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