Episode 199: Brett Knybel
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we have Brett Knybel of Knybel Real Estate Network!
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 Brett Knybel…
00:00:00:10 –> 00:00:14:25
Taylor: Welcome to The Brad Taylor Show. Today we have Brett Knybel.
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 Brett.
00:00:15:20 –> 00:00:21:28
Brett: Hey guys, how are you doing? Thanks for having me.
Taylor: Of course. How are you?
Brett: Doing wonderful, wonderful. It’s getting colder out now.
00:00:22:26 –> 00:00:28:20
Brad: Yeah, it’s getting cold. It’s getting cold out here. There was frost in my car this morning. I was like, Ooh man.
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Brett: Oh yeah.
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Brad: Anyways. Well, let’s get this started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:34:11 –> 00:00:53:14
Brett: So I’m Brett Kybell and I am the owner-operator of the Knybel Real Estate Network at Keller Williams Realty. I’ve been selling real estate since 2014, right after I got out of school. And it’s been a wonderful endeavor ever since I’m a licensed broker loan originator and having fun with it.
00:00:53:22 –> 00:00:57:23
Brad: I like it. I like it. So you did it right out of school. What’d you go to school for though?
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Brett: I went to college and graduated with a degree in Marketing and Business Management and right from there, I kind of high-tailed a couple of little jobs in between. I just kind of figured out where I was going to land and that’s exactly what I wanted to do.
00:01:13:25 –> 00:01:20:09
Brad: Okay. That’s awesome. Good for you. Yeah, that’s awesome. So tell us about your team.
00:01:20:25 –> 00:02:05:02
Brett: So as I got started through my real estate career there, I started out as many dudes solo agents running the show, doing my own thing. I’m a hundred percent. All of my efforts were my efforts and that was it. I assume later partnered with another agent. We started a little bit bigger team where we, I believe it’s big. I was with four agents and a couple of admins and we were running a pretty good sales business in terms of what we were doing. That was kind of a great experience going through all that right before COVID happened. Unfortunately that arrangement kind of started to fall apart, not for any financial reasons, but I think we just had two different directions. We were going with their business and we decided to kind of split off.
00:02:05:02 –> 00:03:14:20
And today it is me and I have one other agent that works with me and that is the whole show again. So we kind of reconvene the business from going from what you’re kind of pushed into doing in terms of I guess would start a major awesome big ginormous team and figuring out how to leverage more technology in our business in order to better service our clients and have less hands-on in the situation where you got too many cooks in the kitchen. From what I kind of found out as we began to grow, you would have more and more buyers and sellers or clients that would just get almost frustrated with the fact when I would say, okay, my assistants want me to call you or I’m going to have somebody else showing you houses. And it just didn’t sit well with everybody as they came through because they were coming for the experience they had with me and what they were referred to. And not that I serve every single person that comes through in that hands-on approach. But they do enjoy kind of speaking a little higher level with you going through the process because nobody wants to feel like they’re getting shuttled off to the side if you will.
00:03:15:09 –> 00:03:28:29
Taylor: Right. Yeah. I completely understand that. I know, especially if it’s a new homeowner and they haven’t worked with you and they were referred to you and they’re expecting you, and then they get somebody else I could see definitely how they would be like, oh man, it’s kinda just disappointing.
00:03:29:20 –> 00:03:59:05
Brett: And you know, it’s really difficult to, you know, you can’t service everybody. There are only so many hours in the day. There’s only, you know, summer in Michigan is just full of road construction. It can turn into two and a half hours. Sometimes, depending on what accidents and whatever time of the day is, especially, you don’t want people to get out of work at five, six o’clock. So everybody wants to do things in the evening. There are only so many hours I can go run around and play, show everybody houses, do whatever we’re doing and still have a family life and be able to do regular everyday things.
00:03:59:20 –> 00:04:06:20
Taylor: Right. Yeah. How do you think the winter time zone change with the getting darker sooner affects that too? Is it less time of the day? It sure feels like it to me.
00:04:06:27 –> 00:04:46:18
Brett: Sure does. I mean, unless you’re getting started, you know, most people are working seven to five, eight to six, or whatever they’re doing. And right now, Michigan is getting dark at quarter to five right now. So that really kind of dictates that. So a lot of times, Hey, you got a lunch break to drive over there and take a look at the roof, or I go do that beforehand just to say, Hey, I looked at the exterior earlier because we still have those competitive situations with these multiple offers. Now that is very difficult. So you don’t want to not be able to look at the exterior of a home, although the interior looks great. Photoshop can do a lot of magic with you know, light on the problem.
00:04:47:06 –> 00:05:01:15
Taylor: Yeah. That’s funny. Do you have any goals for you and your teammate coming into 2022? Sorry, I can’t speak today. Do you guys plan on growing more, adding more team members on or adding an admin? What’s your plan for the next year?
00:05:02:00 –> 00:06:00:27
Brett: We discussed it at length and we’ve been kind of torn on this situation there, because what I have learned is, by being more hands-on with our customers, we’re actually receiving a tremendous amount of referrals. So people are coming through saying, wow, this was awesome. And just the referrals that come through from the experience and knowing what we’re doing, it’s kind of blown up in that sense where just as two people were selling as many homes as we were with six or seven people on a team. So, yeah, so we’ve kind of figured that into the equation, in terms of what our goals are in terms of adding more people, we’ve actually slowly been adding, but we’re trying to redeem creating from the model a little bit where we’re trying to groom people that we want them to get out there and be single agents and learn the values and the kind of the processes and the roadblocks you have to run into as a single agent, instead of to say, here’s leads, work on my team, I’m going to do this for ya.
00:06:01:04 –> 00:07:01:29
We’re kind of saying run and operate your own business, where we trust you. We’ll give this to you as a referral and you run and finish it the same way you normally would. And we’re going to be on the back end of the transaction too, and this kind of grooming and kind of showcasing new agents in that light, giving them the boots-on-the-ground experience. Because to be honest, a lot of the people that come through say, I really want to be on a team. I want somebody to mentor me, please let me work for you to do whatever you’re going to do. And they get dependent on being handed things through the business. They get dependent on you handing in leads, internet referrals, those types of things. I don’t really dive into what the mechanics are that really create a really great business, not just a real estate business, but getting to know your customers on a deeper level and really working through relationships and making sure that the people around, you know, like and trust you and if they don’t and you’re just somebody that’s good at servicing it or trying to just for a quick buck, that’s not kind of what we’re looking to bring into there.
00:07:02:04 –> 00:08:11:02
And also it’s been very difficult with hiring on the admin side, you know, through this sense of the pandemic, people are losing their jobs, quitting their jobs, leaving their jobs. Not everybody really wants to go into an office setting. So kind of working in a more virtual model now, trying to bring that in. And we’ve looked at doing some, we can do basically virtual assistants. Now they’re highly trained and you know, we’re looking into some of that insight, you can get people from the Philippines or whatever it’s going to be going on there. The English language barrier is not difficult. It’s not as complex as it used to be. And then at the same point, they come fully trained and you know, you can kind of mitigate some payroll taxes and the cost for that labor is a little bit cheaper because right now, I mean, it’s, it’s very difficult, you know, real estate business. Until you hit a certain level of units every single year, it can be very expensive for somebody to bring in full-time staff because obviously, you know, minimum wage real estate is a complex transaction. You’re not going to pay somebody just a little bit above minimum wage to service people’s highest or most expensive assets. They don’t correct.
00:08:11:06 –> 00:08:22:08
Taylor: So true. Yeah. A hundred percent agree with that. I know you mentioned technology earlier as well. What is your favorite way to market bringing in that technology that you guys were kind of talking about?
00:08:23:01 –> 00:09:08:10
Brett: So we’ve tried to just bring a new experience and obviously you guys have been doing it for a while, too. I was just showcasing our listings a little higher and light with the videography that goes into selling a property. Everybody kind of figured out how to, you know, your iPhone now is just as good as, you know, five years ago, the most expensive camera on the market. So the photography part of it is kind of, you guys still have to understand angles and lighting and stuff that goes into that. But at the end of the day, the videography is really just kind of accelerated by the experience. And especially our sellers have with us when they’re looking at their property. One, it’s a great way to get it in front of people, because more people are willing to look at it, you know, a quick minute, I have a video of a property.
00:09:08:18 –> 00:09:55:21
And then on the same token, if you’re putting out 45 pictures on the internet, nobody’s really clicking through all those. And it’s just a quick way to kind of showcase that. That’s been kind of our go-to in that sense. Also with the way the market’s moving on our buyers and you know, realistically it’s really showcasing, Hey, you know, this is where the markets are at. This is where you’re at. What is your buying power? What would you truly have in your repertoire with where you’re currently able to be financed, your type of financing, your down payment, you know, what kind of money you have or need for closing costs? How handy are you? And we’re really doing a little bit more deep dive into the property before we even started showing it, just to save these people time because people start to suffer from what’s called buyer burnout.
00:09:56:01 –> 00:10:40:07
And what happens is, you start writing offers on houses. Everybody knows somebody right now. That’s been looking for a house for two years and gets beat out in every multiple offer situation. And they’re just struggling. And a lot of that comes down to the poaching and education that goes behind it before you buy a house, or even when you start looking at one that has your financing intact. And knowing that you’re going to have some buying power because you aren’t competing, you’re not shopping, you’re competing and going through that and understanding the property, looking through just the photography and talking to the listing agents about the condition of the property, because some of the first time home buyers, they either don’t have the know-how in order to repair and fix things, or they don’t have the finances in place in order to kind of hire that out, really bring in true professionals to do the work.
00:10:40:16 –> 00:11:28:09
So at the end of the day, it’s, is this something you’re going to want to do is probably going to be 7, 8, 10, 20 grand in order to get this place up to you’re up to par, are you wanting to do that? So really connecting them with understanding the cost of renovations and repairs, as well as making sure their financing is even remotely possible, they can compete in today’s market. And obviously, their listening is just really diving into the videography. And the videography also brings a great memory to anybody that sells a house. When you look back at your house and you really just see like, oh my gosh, this was like the greatest thing that I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe how good the house looked. And it always just brings back a memory to those people. They can look back and see it. They share that with their friends and family and people truly just enjoy seeing something they own showcased at such a high level.
00:11:28:10 –> 00:11:35:20
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. If you could start over today with all the knowledge that you’ve learned, what is one thing that you would change from the start? What would you do differently?
00:11:37:02 –> 00:12:20:09
Brett: You know, if I had to go back and do it all over again, I probably would’ve just kind of stuck in my own lane and did what I had to do. Instead of trying to kind of converge and grow through acquisition in the sense if you will. But there were a lot of great learning experiences that came through that. I think I would’ve actually if I could have started all over again, I wish it right out of high school. I just would’ve jumped full speed into this. Because I do think that there was some wasted money, although I didn’t take out any student loans when I was in school, I worked full time with the school full-time, I was busy through those years. I don’t think I needed to spend the money nor did I need to spend the time with the college education behind it.
00:12:20:19 –> 00:13:26:07
You don’t really need a college education to sell real estate. So I really think if I could go back in time, I would have taken those 4 and a half years back and really just went full-fledged into what I was doing, but hindsight’s always 2020, so I really can’t have any regrets on that. And then I guess another thing I would look at doing too, is I think I would have focused more heavily on being more listing based, but when you’re young and you’re starting out, most of your friends, family, the sphere of influence, it’s those people that trust you, I’m 30 and when I started, I was 23 and I looked like I was 17. So when you’re sitting down with somebody with the largest asset that they own, it’s, you know, a quarter-million and a half-million dollars, it kind of looks like their kids or their grandkids. They don’t necessarily think you can live up to speed there. So you get sucked into running with truly being buyer-heavy, which is a lot of hours that you’re running around, showing houses, and running through roadblocks and, and playing in that space.
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Brad: That’s awesome. So how can people get a hold of you?
00:13:29:26 –> 00:13:44:15
Brett: If you want to get a hold of me, you can email me at [email protected] or you can text me at 5 8 6 2 9 5 9 5 5 0 or just Google Knybel Network and you’ll find some more information on us there,
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Brad: The hustle is I like, Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
00:13:49:09 –> 00:13:50:23
Brett: Yep. Not a problem. Thanks for having me.
00:13:53:24 –> 00:14:11:25
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 Brett Knybel:
Knybel Real Estate Network
www.knybelnetwork.kw.com
Facebook: @knybelnetwork
Instagram: @kellerwilliamsrealty
Twitter: @kwri
Facebook: @brett.knybel
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