Episode 157 Transcript: Deanna Powers
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Deanna Powers from EXIT Realty.
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…
00:00:00:07 –> 00:00:02:27
Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor show. Today we have Deanna Powers.
00:00:02:27 –> 00:00:15:00
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. Hey Deanna.
00:00:15:23 –> 00:00:19:12
Deanna: Hey, how are you doing?
Taylor: We’re good. How are you?
Deanna: I’m doing great.
00:00:19:29 –> 00:00:23:11
Brad: Awesome. Well, let’s get this started. So tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
00:00:24:16 –> 00:00:31:12
Deanna: Well, I’m currently a realtor. I’m in my eighth year and I’m with EXIT Realty Select Partners and I love it.
00:00:32:00 –> 00:00:39:01
Brad: That’s awesome. So when you were younger, is this what you had planned for your future?
Deanna: Not at all.
Brad: What’d you have planned?
00:00:39:23 –> 00:01:29:20
Deanna: Well, when I was younger, I seemed to think I wanted to be a pediatrician. And then I discovered I really didn’t like cuts or the inside of the human body, so that wasn’t a good fit. I ended up having kids and along the way, decided I didn’t want to keep my children in daycare. So I wanted to raise my own children. So along the way, because of people that we knew, I kind of ended up in daycare, which I never really planned, but eventually that envelops into, my goodness! I had three kids of my own and at any time watched 12 to 18 other kids in a group daycare setting. Many of my original daycare kids came back to work for me. After 30 years, I decided that it was now time to change to something else.
00:01:31:28 –> 00:01:35:14
Taylor: So what got you interested in making that change over to real estate?
00:01:36:12 –> 00:02:16:12
Deanna: Well, I tried to retire after the daycare gig. I actually sold my business to someone. But I’m just not a retired personality. I love working with people. Without going into a lot of details, I had what I would call a bad real estate experience. When I sold my business, I also sold my family home, purchased a new home and that transaction didn’t go how I thought it should go. So in less than a year, I had a for sale by owner sign in my yard. And before you know it, an agent had met me and I was in, interviewing, looking at real estate, something I had never thought.
00:02:18:02 –> 00:02:20:25
Brad: That’s awesome. So how’d that first transaction go?
00:02:22:16 –> 00:03:26:14
Deanna: Well, it’s a funny story. The way that I started real estate is what they tell you to do. You get out and you tell people what your new plan of action is. And I was handing out business cards. This is going to sound tacky, but literally at one of my friend’s daughter’s weddings. The person that I gave my card to, she literally, we laugh about it now. She literally said, “I don’t need a business card. I’m not selling my house.” Within about six weeks later, she found a property on Chippewa Lake, immediately called, and asked if I could help with that. So my very first transaction was with someone who said she was not going to be in the market over two hours away from our market and the home was a foreclosure. So I got a very quick education. It was a huge blessing. These people are still friends. I sold some other houses for them and it was a great start.
00:03:27:14 –> 00:03:33:01
Taylor: That’s awesome. When you first started out in real estate, did you get any advice that has stuck with you throughout the years?
00:03:34:25 –> 00:04:33:14
Deanna: I don’t know. I’ve heard lots of little tidbits along the way. The pieces of advice that my broker has said, Sue Dickinson’s my broker, you know, in real estate, these can be highly emotionally charged transactions and I want everybody to be happy and I want everything to go smoothly. I mean, don’t we all? Sue once just calmly said, just remember this isn’t heart surgery. You’re not holding someone’s heart in your hand. And I thought, what a great analogy, because even when we want to make everybody’s heart happy and we’re talking about feelings. We need to sometimes just take a deep breath and realize that even though it’s an important job and you want to do a good job, it’s not like I’m laying there with somebody cut open in front of me. My responsibility isn’t quite that huge.
00:04:34:02 –> 00:04:44:16
Taylor: Yeah. That’s a good one to compare that to. Even though it is huge, like you said, emotional, we want to make everybody happy, but at the same time, it’s not life or death.
00:04:45:22 –> 00:04:56:00
Deanna: Yeah. Let’s have a reality check here because people in real estate transactions can become very heightened.
Brad: That’s awesome.
00:04:56:02 –> 00:04:57:23
Brad: What kind of goals to get for the next year or so?
00:04:59:22 –> 00:05:26:21
Deanna: Well for myself, I’m an individual agent. This is my own business. I’m not part of a team and I pretty much handle all the moving parts because I want to make sure it’s done right. My biggest goal is to settle into a little more balanced life. What I mean by that is to have more time for family and friends, in addition to doing a good job at real estate.
00:05:28:03 –> 00:05:28:24
Brad: Do you think you may add an assistant, maybe?
00:05:29:29 –> 00:05:32:10
Deanna: Maybe, but I don’t know.
00:05:33:17 –> 00:05:34:07
Brad: You just never know.
00:05:35:03 –> 00:05:46:20
Deanna: I’ve gone that route a couple of times and you, we won’t really go there. I don’t really mind. I pretty much don’t mind any part of real estate. Well, except for when things aren’t going our way.
00:05:48:22 –> 00:06:03:20
Taylor: It’s hard too, especially when you’re so used to doing it all by yourself, then just passing another section off to somebody else, that’s hard to do in itself, letting that part go and having someone else do it. And now I would have trouble with that too.
00:06:03:20 –> 00:06:04:22
Deanna: It really really is.
00:06:05:08 –> 00:06:11:03
Taylor: If you could start over today with all the knowledge that you have, is there anything that you would do differently when you first started out?
00:06:14:07 –> 00:06:51:18
Deanna: You know, actually probably not. I had a lot to learn and if there was one thing that I know now that’s made a big difference in my life is at EXIT Realty, we actually have an app and it’s called prompter and I write different affirmations. I write them every single morning and you get an affirmation for 21 days. And I sincerely believe that those affirmations have helped me in many, many ways. So the only thing is if I could have started affirmations from the beginning, I think that would have been helpful.
00:06:51:19 –> 00:07:07:23
Taylor: Yeah. That’s huge. Being in the right mindset, especially early in the morning. when you first are getting up and you’re getting your day around having that to look forward to that’s big. I agree with that 100 percent. Are there any business books that you’ve read that you could recommend to anybody new starting out?
00:07:08:17 –> 00:08:24:11
Deanna: Well, it just so happens, I have two books that I think were phenomenal. So I went and found my good copy. This is called, Organize Tomorrow Today. As a business owner and a real estate agent, we are going in all directions. I probably covered this book at least three times. You’re never going to implement everything in a book, but you can find certain things that really touch your personality and your business style. An even better book than this, and yet I don’t just buy books because they’re yellow. This one’s kind of worn out. This is my worn-out copy called The Power of Focus. This has been the biggest game-changer. I read this and then my broker and I, and then other people in our brokerage did this as a study. And I actually have even encouraged agents from other companies with that book. Because again, there are just certain things that are gonna resonate with you personally. And I don’t know a realtor alive who could not use more organizational techniques on any given day. So, those are two great books.
00:08:24:24 –> 00:08:29:17
Taylor: I haven’t heard of either of those books, can you touch base on a little bit on what they’re both about?
00:08:30:21 –> 00:09:19:12
Deanna: Organize Tomorrow Today is pretty much right there in the title. It’s really laying out the framework and how to get to the point. Organizing your tomorrow tonight before you go to bed and how that affects your brain at night time, knowing that you’re all set for tomorrow. The Power of Focus was written by three gentlemen who have made a lot of business mistakes and they really put some great words in there on how to avoid some of the things that they would have done differently. So, The Power of Focus, again, comes down to where is your greatest focus? Lots of times we get busy doing a lot of things that don’t make one bit of difference for our families or our businesses.
00:09:20:13 –> 00:09:26:06
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Before we go today, how can people get a hold of you?
00:09:27:09 –> 00:10:08:18
Deanna: I’d give out a phone number, (517) 230-4697. I’d also just like to put it out there while I have another minute. For any agent who’s maybe not 100 percent happy where they’re currently at, I will say EXIT Realty that we started the first brokerage, I think six years ago. And there’s like six of us in the area now, different brokerages. The company does things differently. They are very agent supportive and I just would recommend any agent to give myself or my broker a call.
00:10:08:24 –> 00:10:10:29
Brad: That’s awesome. How can we get more information about that?
00:10:12:05 –> 00:10:18:05
Deanna: They could give me a call or they could contact Sue Dickinson at EXIT Realty Select Partners.
00:10:18:10 –> 00:10:20:26
Brad: Sweet. I like it. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
00:10:21:18 –> 00:10:26:05
Deanna: Hey, you’re welcome. Thank you so much for having me and you guys have a great afternoon.
Check out Deanna Powers:
EXIT Realty
deannapowers.com
Facebook: @DeannaPowersRealtor
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