Episode 207: Sara Ston
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Sara Ston from The Stonway Group!
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 Sara Ston…
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Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have Sara Ston.
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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.
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Taylor: Hey Sara, how are you?
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Sara: I’m great. How are you doing?
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Brad: We’re good. We’re doing good. Well, let’s get the show started. Tell us a little bit about you. What are you doing? Where are you located?
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Sara: So I have a little real estate team in Troy. We’re at Brookstone Realtors we’re nine strong right now. We’re like a little family niche group.
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Brad: That’s awesome. I like it. So how’d you got into real estate?
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Sara: Oh, I had a not-dramatic quarter-life crisis. I used to be a special needs teacher in New York City. And I realized that if I was going into an administrative role, I’d have to get another master’s degree and also be a bartender while getting a master’s degree while having a teaching career. If I ever wanted to own a house, like any good elder millennial, I called my parents and asked if I could move back in with them and start a real estate career.
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Brad: That’s awesome.
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Taylor: Are you originally from Michigan then?
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Sara: Yeah, I am. I got into teaching through this program that pays for you to get your master’s if you teach in a high-needs school.
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Taylor: Okay, cool. What kind of got you into real estate over the years? I know you were teaching. What kind of brought you back home and made that decision?
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Brad: Yeah.
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Sara: Yeah. You know, I went to Michigan and I got a psych degree, which is one of those degrees that’s super helpful for a lot of other things, but it doesn’t necessarily give you a ton of job options. And I was like, well, I don’t want to be a doctor, even though I thought I wanted to be one and I was always passionate about interior design. So I went back to Oakland Community College to start getting an Interior Design degree. And the housing market crashed. So people couldn’t afford their homes, let alone decorate them. And I had a good friend from high school. I’d actually known him since preschool, called me one day and he was like, Hey Ston, I coach girls basketball. And I’m in this program where I teach math and they pay for everything. I think about you all the time when I’m coaching because I used to be an athlete. So I started to look into it and started substitute teaching and got into that. It was actually just a reaction to the housing market crash. And then once I was kind of at that space where I was like, I’m turning 30, I gotta make some decisions. I did some soul searching and I was like, I was passionate about that. I went back to it. Let’s give it a shot again.
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Taylor: Nice. And how long have you been in real estate now?
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Sara: This is my sixth year.
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Taylor: Okay, yeah. And you have a team of nine right now?
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Sara: Yep. Nine, including me. So, yeah.
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Taylor: Awesome. When you first were looking into real estate, how long were you solo before you decided to start a team?
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Sara: I’ve never been solo. I started on a team and it was a really great learning experience for me. And I just kinda realized, in my previous teaching roles, I had done a lot of coaching and I was the head of the English department. And I was kind of in this program that helped build team teaching and teams in New York City public schools. And they would satellite out other teachers from the district to come to our classrooms and see how we did things. So once I started to really learn real estate, I was like, you know, I can really apply all this team stuff to real estate and maybe do this on my own. So after about nine months, I branched out and did the damn thing.
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Taylor: Good way to just jump on into it. And you’re still doing the team building? You said you guys had a team-building meeting recently.
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Sara: The sticky notes behind me. Yeah.
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Taylor: That’s awesome. Over the years, what is the worst property you’ve been to or the worst showing? Which one sticks out the most?
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Sara: Oh, okay. The worst showing I’ve been to there was, it was a vacant house, but there were like multiple pairs of women’s underwear on the floor, in the house.
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Taylor: Just randomly scattered?
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Sara: Yeah. And it was just one of those things where there were new clients. So I wasn’t sure if I could joke around about it or not. How do I manage an awkward situation without humor? And then at some of the grossest houses I’ve seen, I bought the grossest house. I’ve been there with my teammate, Kelly. We’ve been great friends since college. She’s my best friend. And I was like, okay. I’m starting to think about buying houses. And we went into one she’s like, this one has really good bones, but it’s just, the cats use it as a toilet, so, oh no. And bought it.
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Taylor: I imagine the carpet or the flooring, whatever was in there had to be removed probably right away.
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Sara: They left their mattresses when they moved out. And there were, you could tell the cats were like backing it up and peeing on the mattresses.
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Taylor: I know we talked about goals a little bit before we started recording. What are your personal or work-related goals for this next year for you?
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Sara: Work-related, I would like to lead people on my team to beat me in sales. So I would, I don’t know, like, if someone’s going to kick my butt, I want it to be my guys. Yeah. And so I’m excited about that. I’ve got some really cool new people on my team that is, I think gonna hold me to the fire there, which is great. Personally, I’m engaged. So my fiance, Amanda, got engaged in May and we are both bad at setting down dates and planning things. So Chris, on my team, my admin, it’s one of her personal goals on one of mine to make us get married and hammer that, hammer that out.
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Taylor: Oh, congrats. Yeah. That’s exciting!
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Sara: Yeah. Well, we just want to have a big party, but both of us are not good at that kind of planning.
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Taylor: Awesome. If you could start over today with all the knowledge that you’ve learned, what’s one thing you would change?
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Sara: Oh, one thing that I would change, I wouldn’t worry so much. Yeah. There’s so much. I’m a big planner and I wouldn’t say I’m an anxious person. I’m like a doomsday planner. Like, okay, if this situation happens, what’s the best way? And yeah, you lose a lot of time and energy and you miss out on some fun when you’re always thinking about how to make everything perfect. Everything. So maybe some of my perfectionism would get out of my way.
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Taylor: I know you were talking about the team goals, kind of having three agents beat you in sales this year. Do you guys have a little competition going on each month that you’re setting up to see where you’re at to check-in? Or how are you guys kind of going about that?
00:07:53:11 –> 00:08:39:24
Sara: Yeah. So my team’s a little bit different. We’re more of a lifestyle team. So it’s like, I have a lot of part-timers. We look big, but there are really only four of us that are full-time. The rest are part-time. So our goals and competitions are really like, did you reach a personal goal? Are you setting your goals? So it’s kind of hard for us all to compete with each other because you’re trying to build a space where people can create a lifestyle where they want to stay and meet their needs. And if they want to be a mega-producer, great. And if they don’t, then, you know, as long as everybody’s happy we did, um, this year, they all kind of banded together. And I told him, I was like, okay, if we hit 20 million in sales, I will have a team trip.
00:08:40:11 –> 00:09:10:15
And so they kind of all got together. And uh, and I was like, I don’t want to plan it. I mean, this isn’t my strength, but I’ll just give you a budget and you guys can let it rip. So they got it this year. It was 20 million and they got it in like October or something. They do all this stuff to harass me. Like I was at the concert, it sounded like, I dunno, guys was like 19 five. I was like, I don’t think we’re going to make it. You guys looked silly. Our group chat was pretty lively during the week.
00:09:11:25 –> 00:09:13:17
Taylor: That’s awesome. So where are you guys gonna go?
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Sara: They decided to stay in Detroit. We’re going to Shinola Hotel. And a lot of my folks have kiddos and stuff like that. So they wanted to kind of do more of a staycation then. Yeah.
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Taylor: That’d be fun.
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Sara: It was really brilliant that they plan that too because we can do more. Yeah. I don’t have to do all this stuff, so yeah.
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Brad: Yeah. I like it. That’s pretty cool. Good for you guys. What is one of your favorite business books you read?
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Sara: I love The Miracle Morning. I can’t remember. I can never remember the author’s name.
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Brad: Yeah. I can’t remember his name either, but I know exactly who we’re talking about.
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Sara: Yeah. I don’t want to butcher it. I feel bad. I think the big thing for me was like what I was talking about, like perfectionism and all of those things, spending time, dedicated time at the beginning of my day to take care of things that weren’t work-related or perfecting things, it set the tone the right way for me. And the book’s all about Lucy on my team. She’s funny. She’s like, I read the book. It’s good. But basically, it’s like, dude, wake up early and get your shit together.
00:10:28:19 –> 00:10:34:14
Taylor: It’s so much easier if you do it that way too. If you just get up an hour earlier and just get it done then. Yeah.
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Sara: Yeah. Yeah. I take it a lot more literally than a lot of people do. I’m like, Ooh, I can time it out this way.
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Taylor: I know when the time change happened, not too long ago and we, we kinda came the hour. I kept getting up early and that’s when I got my stuff done in the morning. So I don’t feel like I’m missing out on the hour.
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Sara: It’s so funny. I feel the same way.
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Taylor: Yeah. Right. You did that too. Didn’t you?
00:11:01:27 –> 00:11:21:14
Brad: Yeah, last year I took, so you know how the hour changed. I got up and the same body felt the same time. So I saved an extra hour. I think I was getting up at five and I was like, it changed the good thing up before. And I did that for the full-time change. And I was like, man, I saved it. I gained an entire hour for that entire time change. Like for like?
00:11:21:14 –> 00:11:22:03
Taylor: Six months.
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Sara: Oh yeah. It’s like your business. And then when it switches back, you’re like, all right party.
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Brad: The bad part is, it’s like the opposite from the busy season. It needs to be the opposite way and be like, relax now because it’s winter, but no it’s changed.
00:11:40:05 –> 00:11:57:28
Sara: It’s you being fully present in being able to be in the moment and relax and not try to keep your head above water. I love this time of year. Cause I’m like, well, I know what money I made for the year. And you know, I can coach myself into not going, go, go all the time.
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Taylor: Yeah. Especially around the holidays too. Now you have time to just kind of sit back and take it in at the moment.
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Sara: Oh, I still have not, I don’t know how we have a new stove and a new microwave and I don’t know how to change the time and I don’t take the time to like watch a YouTube video on it or heaven forbid I read the manual
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Brad: So true. Well, how can people get a hold of you or your team?
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Sara: So if you want to get a hold of our team, you can go to stonway.com. But my last name is spelled incorrectly for its pronunciation. So it’s S T O N w a y.com. You can see our website if you want to get a hold of me directly. It’s Sara S A R [email protected]. I’m great at text messaging though. So 2 4 8 7 3 6 5 4 0 9 is the best way to get a hold of me.
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Brad: Awesome. I like it. Well, Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
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Sara: Oh no, I appreciate the invite and I love working with you guys. So it’s been exciting to collaborate.
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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 Sara:
The Stonway Group
http://www.stonway.com/
Facebook: @stonwaygroup
Facebook: @sara.ston
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