Episode 159 Transcript: Kim Laforet & Kelly Lebel
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Kim Laforet & Kelly Lebel from The Laforet Team!
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…
Here’s what you missed from Kim Laforet and Kelly Lebel…
00:00:00:28 –> 00:00:04:16
Taylor: Welcome to the Brad and Taylor show today we have Kim Laforet & Kelly Lebel!
00:00:04:17 –> 00:00:17:02
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.
00:00:17:02 –> 00:00:17:11
Taylor: Hey ladies, how are you doing?
Kim: Doing great, thank you!
Kelly: Great, how are you both?
00:00:20:17 –> 00:00:32:04
Brad: Doing good, doing good. Well, let’s get this started. Tell us a little bit about you guys. What do you guys do? Who wants to go first?
00:00:35:08 –> 00:01:04:02
Kim: I’ll go first. This is Kim. We have been in the business of helping people achieve the American dream through homeownership. I’ve been selling real estate since 1976, so 45 years now. Started a team back in the 1990s and Kelly has been with the team as our administrative assistant, licensed admin since 1997.
00:01:04:18 –> 00:01:17:01
Brad: Nice. That’s a pretty good amount of time. Good for you guys. That’s awesome. So you do the admin stuff, Kelly. That’s awesome! How do you like that? I’m sure you like it because you’ve been doing it for a while.
00:01:18:25 –> 00:01:45:11
Kelly: Let me back up a little. I started off in sales early on in 97 and quickly discovered that I am not a salesperson. I am very good at being behind the scenes taking care of details. So Kim and I eventually found a role for me to hunker down into the assistant, helping her run the office type role. From there, we started to form a team with other agents coming.
00:01:46:00 –> 00:01:53:11
Brad: That’s awesome. I mean, you pretty much run the show. We know how it goes around there. We know who knows all the answers.
00:01:54:27 –> 00:01:55:29
Kim: It’s all in check.
00:01:56:29 –> 00:02:05:23
Brad: That’s awesome. So when you guys were, Kim when you were younger, what you had planned for your future? What’d you do when you were younger?
00:02:06:16 –> 00:02:48:08
Kim: What did I do? I watched a lot of Tiger baseball games, rode my bike. I sold greeting cards, door to door to earn money, to be able to earn my first bike, and fun things like that. So girl scout cookies, all that kind of stuff. When I was a kid, I wanted to be the first woman newscaster alongside Walter Cronkite on the nightly news. Now, most of you probably have no idea who Walter Cronkite was, but he was the infamous newscaster on the nightly news that everybody in America watched and I wanted to be alongside him as a journalist.
00:02:48:27 –> 00:02:49:23
Brad: That’s awesome.
00:02:49:23 –> 00:02:54:17
Kim: I had no idea what to get into, I didn’t even know what real estate was, to be honest with you cause we’d never moved.
00:02:56:05 –> 00:02:59:10
Brad: So how did you get into real estate? How did that happen?
00:03:00:06 –> 00:03:48:08
Kim: I answered an ad to become a secretary in a real estate office. By the time that I left there, I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t want me to take a typing test, but I had to take a state test. The gentlemen said at the time, oh no, honey, this is back in the day when you could use those verbs or adjective sayings and not get in trouble. He said you’re going to sell homes. I said, oh, okay. So I just totally stepped out of my comfort zone. They asked if I had any questions and I said, yeah, what’s the listing? I had no clue about anything in real estate. By the third month, I was their top salesperson. So it was certainly a providential path that I was led upon.
00:03:48:20 –> 00:03:59:05
Taylor: Yeah. And from your background too, it sounds like you grew up kind of having a little bit of sales experience selling those greeting cards and girl scout cookies. So you kind of had the ropes down a little bit.
00:03:59:20 –> 00:04:02:16
Kim: Yeah. Hot dogs at Tiger Stadium too.
00:04:03:16 –> 00:04:08:29
Brad: That’s awesome. So Kelly, what did you do before you joined the team?
00:04:11:00 –> 00:05:09:25
Kelly: It was really my first career other than some odd jobs, waitressing or working at a coffee place. Back in high school, I always thought that I don’t know why I thought this, but I always thought I wanted to be a telephone operator. You know, you push zero and you get the telephone operator. I don’t know if it was so cool. What do they do? What’s it like anyways, graduated high school and went to college for about a year or so and dabbled in some different courses, but just didn’t find a passion for what I wanted to do. I thought maybe teaching, I didn’t really like the teaching courses. I thought, okay, well English, maybe I’ll do something with an English major. And while I liked it, I’m like, Nah, I don’t really have a direction for that. So in the meantime, Kim had said, when you come into the office and help me, part-time? Help my assistant to just work on this and that, that she’s really busy and we can pick up some slack. And from there I just decided to get licensed and thought, yeah, I’m going to be a salesperson. And then it morphed into where I am today.
Brad: That’s awesome
00:05:10:07 –> 00:05:20:29
Taylor: Yeah, that is awesome. When you started in the business, was there any advice that both of you had gotten that just stuck with you right off the bat?
00:05:24:05 –> 00:05:25:03
Brad: Kim, you want to go first?
00:05:25:18 –> 00:05:56:17
Kim: I remember a piece of advice that I got when we got married and it applies to all aspects of my life and it’s never to go to bed angry. I’ve morphed that over into real estate as well. And it’s settled disputes quickly, whether it be with coworkers, other agents with clients, or whatever, get to the bottom of the issue and settle it before the end of the day because to let it linger on only allows it to fester.
00:05:57:20 –> 00:05:58:22
Taylor: What about you Kelly?
00:05:58:22 –> 00:06:20:23
Kelly: You know, I was, I still am shy, I am a bit of an introvert. I remember Kim just telling me, just try. Each day, just try and remember if you don’t ask, you won’t get it. So early on, I would just try to push myself out there and ask and see if I got it and many times it worked.
00:06:20:29 –> 00:06:22:24
Brad: Yeah. I know. Because you always ask us stuff.
00:06:25:17 –> 00:06:27:21
Kelly: It works! Thanks for playing along.
00:06:28:21 –> 00:06:29:12
Brad: We’re just trying to help
00:06:31:08 –> 00:06:35:26
Taylor: Kim, over the years. What is the worst property you’ve been to? Which one sticks out to you the most?
00:06:36:02 –> 00:06:39:24
Brad: Yeah, let’s see. Let’s see. What have we got?
00:06:40:08 –> 00:07:11:14
Kim: This is probably one of them. It was a guy who liked to buy fixer-uppers. We went to this house and I walked in the front door and my foot fell through the floor and I almost fell down into the basement. The floor gave way. I walked out and told them he’s great, to be able to look at it on his own if he wanted to, it’s a vacant home. And when he came out, I said, so do you want it? And he goes, I love it. I’ll take it.
00:07:13:01 –> 00:07:13:18
Taylor: Okay then
00:07:15:29 –> 00:07:37:09
Brad: That’s awesome. It’s funny cause you just talked about falling through the floor. I went to look at one like two weeks ago and that was literally it. The homeowner actually had to show up to the showing because they’re like, you have to stand here and you also have to stand over here. That was your way to walk through it. So that reminded me of that one.
00:07:37:17 –> 00:07:42:07
Kim: Did they have little red Xs on the floor? So you wouldn’t fall through?
00:07:43:17 –> 00:07:47:23
Brad: That would’ve been perfect. Yeah. So he ended up getting it right?
00:07:48:13 –> 00:08:17:16
Kim: Yeah. Yeah. That one and another one where back in the day you used to have city inspectors come out and do their inspections. We went into this vacant home that I had listed and we all came out and jumped around in the street because we were covered in fleas. So taking off every piece of clothing we could and still be legal in the middle of the street, shaky belt, the fleas. Yeah. So we’ve had some real fun experiences.
00:08:18:19 –> 00:08:23:15
Taylor: What about you, Kelly? Have you been to a home that maybe you would deem the worst one that you’ve been to?
00:08:24:14 –> 00:08:39:28
Kelly: Well, I wouldn’t deem the worst home. I showed a home one time and when they opened the door, the whole family was there and they were all sick with the flu. But they were like, come on in, come on in, I just politely declined and said, no, that’s okay. We’ll come back another time.
00:08:39:28 –> 00:08:42:21
Brad: Imagine that now.
00:08:43:10 –> 00:08:44:17
Taylor: Imagine that, yeah.
00:08:45:06 –> 00:09:06:06
Kelly: I did show a home one time and it was vacant and I went to the corner or the corner of the room. I thought it was just some trash or some bark in the corner. I went to pick it up and as soon as I picked it up, it moved, it was a bat. So I quickly just called the listing agent and said, oh, you got something over here, you need to come to get it out.
00:09:07:12 –> 00:09:08:06
Taylor: Not a piece of bark. Don’t touch it.
00:09:09:25 –> 00:09:13:27
Kelly: No, I’m now very hesitant to touch anything or pick anything up that I might see in a house. Right.
00:09:15:00 –> 00:09:34:20
Taylor: Right. Bump it with your foot maybe or with a stick. Over the years in your guys’ business, what has changed the most, do you think? In the marketing aspect or just in your plans in general, what has changed the most for you guys over the years? Because I’m sure there have been changes.
00:09:35:02 –> 00:10:18:26
Kelly: Yes. Technology 1000%. I mean, you know, even just when I started, it was still faxing one page by one page until the signal would go through, printing out photos at Meijer, like physical photos, and gluing them onto flyers. Now email is everything. Cloud devices. It has streamlined everything to be so much more efficient and a little bit easier. In turn, we also can work a little bit smarter as Kim says, not harder. Get things to go through faster because it’s just an instant transaction.
00:10:19:08 –> 00:10:19:20
Taylor: Yeah.
00:10:20:20 –> 00:11:36:29
Kim: One of the things that I’ve noticed is the difference in the generations of buyers. When I first got into real estate, it was back in the 1970s and people were looking to buy a starter home, get established there for a few years, sell that and use the equity to buy the next home. And then I noticed a trend starting in the nineties where people wanted to buy a home that they could move into and live in there for a much longer period of time. In other words, it would have been the second home that the starter home generation would have bought, but they wanted to get into it right away. Now, I’m finding that even more so with the newer generations, the millennials, and everything else, they have no desire to get into a starter home. What they want to do is they want to get into their Taj Mahal. What they want is for their end all, be all home. That just tells us a little bit about our society and our generations and how things have changed a little bit. I’m not gonna say whether that’s good or bad because there are good and bad points about both of them, but it’s something that’s certainly a lot different than what it used to be.
00:11:37:10 –> 00:11:51:26
Taylor: Yeah. And do you find now that people who are maybe looking for their forever home as their starter home or having a lot harder time finding that because it’s so specific rather than just that starter home and growing as the years go on?
00:11:52:04 –> 00:12:29:02
Kim: Definitely, and the features that they’re looking for in homes, many times, they don’t have the features that they say that they need, really aren’t needs, they are wants. So it’s to try to get them in alignment with what their pocketbook says they can do. It’s something that is a little bit more challenging too. You have to have to come to Jesus meetings with them occasionally and just say, okay, you know, is this really a need or is this a want, and is this something that you can, you know, hold off on for a little bit, or maybe buy a house where you can add that swimming pool in the future or whatever the case might be.
00:12:29:07 –> 00:12:35:02
Taylor: Yeah. It’s almost like a reality check is needed sometimes, but I have a feeling it’s a lot to do with HGTV.
00:12:36:19 –> 00:12:40:21
Kim: I agree with that. Looking at three homes and saying, okay, I’ll take that one.
00:12:41:00 –> 00:12:48:02
Taylor: Right, and not realizing the price point. This is going to cost you a little extra than the typical starter home would.
00:12:48:12 –> 00:12:54:04
Kelly: I always tried to promote shows where they take them through the home and then tell them the price afterward like that’s not how this works.
00:12:54:13 –> 00:13:01:25
Taylor: Right. I know. Yeah. I mean maybe a reality check in some cases that would bring them down back to earth.
00:13:01:25 –> 00:13:04:08
Brad: Oh let’s change our budget a couple hundred thousand more.
00:13:05:11 –> 00:13:09:00
Taylor: You need this, this, this, well, this is the price. There you go.
00:13:10:06 –> 00:13:26:23
Brad: Yeah. That’s crazy. So tell us a little bit about your team, Kim. So I know you guys are a lot more team-oriented. I mean, we worked with you for a long time and can definitely tell how you guys work. We also interviewed Erin the other day. So tell us more about your team. Because you do it a lot differently than everywhere else.
00:13:27:13 –> 00:14:32:01
Kim: Sure. Well, I started back in the 1990s. I noticed a lot of the long-time superstars in the industry were beginning to retire and when they were retiring, they were basically orphaning their clients. They would say, okay, well so-and-so is going to take over, you know, my business and so on. That would work for a few transactions, but that would dwindle off after a while because that client didn’t have any relationship with that new agent. So I thought there’s gotta be a better way of doing this. I loved how real estate gave me as a working mother the ability to be a mother, be a girl scout leader, go to all the kids’ events that I wanted to. Do what I wanted to do personally, as well as what I wanted to do business-wise but I did find that by doing all of that stuff and still work at the level that I wanted to work at,
00:14:32:11 –> 00:15:23:20
I was burning myself out. I thought there’s got to be a better way to do this. And I thought if I brought other people in and trained them, I could create a generational business and I could create a lifestyle that could be passed on to generations. So my first focus was to hire an administrative assistant and it wasn’t Kelly. This was back in the early nineties. I had Carrie with me for, I don’t know, five or six years, I guess, until she decided to get married and start having a family of her own and be a stay-at-home mom, that’s when we brought Kelly in. I wanted to be able to show that a working woman could still have balance in her life and not be overwhelmed by work and not feel like she had one foot in and one foot out of being a mother as well and a wife.
00:15:24:02 –> 00:16:19:21
I developed a team not to make more business, not to create more business, but to create a lifestyle that other women could emulate and could pass down through the generations. From that admin assistant that we first hired then came from there first was a buyer’s agent. Then I brought on that buyer’s agent as a full partner and then brought on another buyer’s agent and eventually brought them on. Right now, our team consists of myself who is the team leader, I guess, but I’m more of a mentor and a coach at this point in time. Kelly is the admin assistant. And again, everyone on our team is licensed. So if a client calls, anybody can answer the question for them. From that, we have Erin who is one of my daughters also as is Kelly.
00:16:20:01 –> 00:16:55:00
Erin is in sales as a full partner. Lee Henry’s is in sales as a full partner and we just hired Christy Price as a full partner in sales. So we’ve got a team that is well-rounded, like Lee’s on vacation right now. And I know that Lee or Erin and Cristy can cover for her while she’s gone. So it works as a nice balance. So nobody ever feels like they can’t go anywhere or you hear about agents going on vacation and having to take all this work with them. We all have to do that.
00:16:55:26 –> 00:17:00:15
Brad: Yep. That’s awesome. Making it into an actual law of life too.
00:17:02:02 –> 00:17:03:15
Kim: Yeah, definitely.
00:17:03:27 –> 00:17:05:04
Brad: That’s awesome. Good for you.
00:17:05:05 –> 00:17:52:15
Kim: We can be the best that we can be when we have a balance in our life. Every year we have a planning session, we’ve got ours coming up at the end of October to set out our goals, our budget, our market plan, all that stuff for the following year. In those goals, I always ask the women to not only put down what their business goals are but also their personal goals and their family goals, because I want them to be well-rounded. I don’t want it just to be business. That way we can look at it and we can hold each other accountable. Hey, Lee, you are going to go to Italy. Are you still planning on doing that? So on and so forth. We can hold each other accountable. And I think it makes for a fun synergy within the team too.
00:17:52:22 –> 00:18:04:08
Taylor: Absolutely. I love that you guys do that too, because like you mentioned, it just balances your life. So you’re not burnt out. You can still enjoy your family time. You can still enjoy your personal time and still work.
00:18:05:21 –> 00:18:17:20
Kim: Right. And we’ve all gotten to be close friends because of it. I look at all the girls, it’s almost like more daughters that I’m bringing.
Kelly: I hope…
Kim: Of course, definitely you and Erin.
00:18:22:26 –> 00:18:29:12
Taylor: Are you guys planning on growing your team at all anymore? You guys want to keep it kind of how it is for now. What are your goals with that?
00:18:31:02 –> 00:19:25:17
Kim: We needed one more salesperson on the team and that’s why we brought Christiane recently because we need this three-legged stool. It’s going to balance that way. I’m comfortable with just having the five of us on the team but if there comes a point in time where we feel like we need more, I don’t want to grow for the sake of growing. We make a very comfortable income. We’re happy with where we’re at and, but enough so that we’re continually striving to push ourselves just a little bit by upping our goals every year, business goals, and so on. We’ll just take it day by day and if we feel the need that we have to bring in somebody else. There’s going to be a need for it. We’re not going to look for somebody and then try to create a position.
00:19:26:08 –> 00:19:35:25
Taylor: Right. For both of you, if you guys could both start over, Kim, maybe you go first and this one says just because you’ve been in the business a little longer, but if you could start over, what’s one thing that you would do differently?
00:19:38:23 –> 00:20:30:21
Kim: I think I would spend more time and energy developing a deeper relationship with the clients that we have instead of trying to spread out and constantly getting new business. Because I do know that. I think we do a pretty good job of keeping in touch with our past clients and so forth. Many of them have become close and longtime friends. Instead of, you know, you go to the seminars and stuff and they say, oh, buy this swag and give this away and host this big party and extravagant things and everything. You don’t really have to do that. It can be something as simple as making sure that you’re contacting your folks. So I like to ask the girls to contact at least one past client today, just to say, hi, see how you’re doing. Maybe say, Hey, let’s meet for coffee next week.
00:20:31:09 –> 00:21:08:21
Just keeping in touch with them and offering them things of value like when we learn about new legislation that might affect their home value or whatever, making sure that they have that information, telling them about any new listings that happen to come up in their neighborhood, should they want to maybe have one of their friends move into their neighborhood, something like that. So anything of value that we’re constantly on the lookout for from all different sources to see what might be out there that we could pass on to our clients as something of value to them.
00:21:09:11 –> 00:21:13:28
Taylor: That leads me to the next question for you, Kelly, how do you guys keep track of all of that?
00:21:16:11 –> 00:21:18:13
Kelly: Uh, it’s a lot to keep track.
00:21:18:26 –> 00:21:19:11
Taylor: I bet, yeah.
00:21:20:16 –> 00:22:16:07
Kelly: Over the years we’ve created systems procedures to be able to help us follow through, a database manager. Things just worked for us that aren’t necessarily big technology platforms but just a running checklist for anything that we might need to do and calendars to remind us and hold each other accountable, especially the business goals. When we go over those each year and really look at what we did the year previously, did we accomplish that? If not, how can we accomplish it this year? What will we do differently? And that’s part of what we do when we write out our goals is not just, okay, we want to sell homes to more clients this year. Well, how are you going to do that? The best way to do that is maybe creating more relationships with our past clients, following up with them more, or putting yourself out there and other areas, networking or joining some more groups within the community, that sort of thing.
00:22:17:22 –> 00:22:24:02
Taylor: Yeah. I love that you guys are taking it from all aspects and just kind of combining it and making it the whole way around.
00:22:26:07 –> 00:23:37:18
Kim: Well, what’s really cool too, is before I bring anybody on the team, I have them do a disc profile, to show what their dominant traits are like and their personality traits. I know what it takes to be a good salesperson or to be a good admin person. So when we see those traits and then we know how to communicate, to be able to help that person achieve the most that they can achieve through their personality type. It’s just fun trying to put all that stuff together. I love the idea of psychology and the psychology of sales and so on. To be able to take that and then teach the team members, okay. If you’re meeting with a client and the client is sitting back folding their arms, you know, how do you, what does that tell you? And should you, how should you alter your style of speaking to them or communicating at that point in time. If they’re leaning in, they want to hear more, what else are you going to do, how can you engage them more in the conversation by maybe asking questions, and so on?
00:23:38:18 –> 00:23:42:13
Taylor: Is there a business book that you guys would recommend to anybody who may be starting out?
00:23:43:29 –> 00:24:14:19
Kelly: A couple of years ago for our annual team meeting, Kim had us all read this book called Strengthsfinder 2.0. I’m not the type of person that really likes to read that kind of stuff but I was fascinated with this book and not just talking about your strengths and weaknesses, but Hey, here’s my weaknesses, but they’re not really a weakness. Look at what you can do with this. So that book to me was really a good read.
00:24:19:12 –> 00:24:21:06
Taylor: I haven’t heard of that one. I’ll have to look it up and check it out.
00:24:22:09 –> 00:25:26:24
Kim: Excellent book. One of my favorites, of all time, long ago was Raving Fans. How can you create raving fans? What things are necessary in order to not just get suggested by somebody that, oh, you need to call the Laforet team, but you have to call the Laforet team. Erin just went to an appointment this week where her clients said, you have got to call this team and have them come out and talk to you. She went out and did her presentation. So that’s what we want to create as raving fans so that somebody is passionate about telling people that they care about what their experience was like with the Laforet team. So Raving Fans was probably one of my top ones. The next one that I could think of was, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, which just sums it all up.
00:25:26:29 –> 00:26:16:05
What’s it all about? I mean, why are you doing what you do? You’ve got to have a purpose to it. If you don’t have a purpose for it, it’s just a job. This is not just a job for any of us. This is our passion. We realized that this is the largest single purchase that most people will ever make in their lifetime in most cases. And how can we make this easier for them? the best situation for them, how we can advise them as to how they can do this the best way so that the result turns out in the best possible scenario for them. So it’s more of a passionate kind of thing I believe.
00:26:17:12 –> 00:26:20:09
Taylor: Yeah. Before we go today, how can people get a hold of your team?
00:26:24:03 –> 00:26:32:11
Kelly: We have a website, Laforet.com.
00:26:32:28 –> 00:27:01:23
Awesome. I like it. That’s awesome. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today, guys.
Check out Kim & Kelly:
The Laforet Team
kimlaforet.com
https://www.cb-hb.com/agent/7062555/k…
Facebook: @/kim.laforet
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