Episode 170: Connor Kobilarcsik
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we have Connor Kobilarcsik from Russell Real Estate Services!
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 Connor Kobilarcsik…
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Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor Show. Today, we have Connor Kobilarcsik.
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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 Connor.
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Connor: Hello.
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Taylor: How are you doing?
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Connor: I’m doing great. How are you two?
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Brad: We’re doing good. We’re doing good. Well, let’s get the show started. So tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
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Connor: Yeah, I’m a licensed realtor and I work in the Northeast Ohio market and my broker is Russell Real Estate Services. It’s a small family brokerage. There are 11 offices in Northeast, Ohio. That’s a little bit about me and my life in real estate.
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Brad: How’d you get started in real estate?
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Connor: So I’ve been licensed for about nine months now. I was a social worker for six years then I started dipping my toes in different entrepreneurial ventures and landed in real estate and got my license. I was working my other full-time job for a while and I left that job three months ago and now I’m a full-time realtor.
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Brad: I like it. I like that. So what were your first adventures? You said you tried some entrepreneurial things. What are the other things you tried?
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Connor: Well, I did my dose and then a few different things. I never fully dove into anything. I actually sometimes work at a warehouse. My friends sell third-party on Amazon, through Amazon FBA so I thought about getting into something like that. I thought about any kind of business I could do, selling things to third parties to make some extra money. The more I looked into that kind of stuff, it just was too much overhead. I mean, they have a big business that they run in it. I fell for real estate because there’s an entrepreneurial aspect to it, but the groundwork was already laid out. You don’t have to come up with everything from the ground up, which suits me a little bit better.
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Brad: When you first joined real estate, were you on a team? Are you still on a team or are you just solo? What are you doing?
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Connor: Solo agent.
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Brad: Nice, nice. I like that.
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Taylor: You said you came from social work, right? So that kind of has some similarities to what you’re doing now. I’m sure you see some of the same things maybe.
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Connor: For sure. Yeah, I was a caseworker and a couple of different capacities for some years. I think it really gave me a leg up in a lot of ways. I do a lot of phone prospecting and going on listing appointments with people I’ve never met is like, really no big deal to me because I’ve been in and out of random houses for a lot of years, meeting people at their front doors isn’t an issue which is nice. I already have that competence going into things.
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Taylor: Yeah. Speaking of going in and out of a lot of different homes, what is the worst property you’ve been to since you’ve been an agent?
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Connor: Since I’ve been an agent. I looked at that question. I was going to say when I was a social worker, there’s a lot.
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Now as an agent, I’ll look at the homes, I’d be like, Hey, it’s not that bad. I will say I have a listing right now out in Madison but it’s a gorgeous old-century home. That has been my first experience with listing a home that needs a lot of work. It’s definitely posed its fair share of challenges just because different buyers are coming in and estimating different amounts of work that need to be done. It’s definitely been a challenge in that regard. But you know what, I honestly think that question is tough because of the places I’ve based as a social worker.
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Taylor: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of situations in homes.
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Brad: Tell us about your first transaction. How did you get that?
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Connor: My very first transaction was actually an old friend who I hadn’t talked to for some years. It was his girlfriend. He referred her over to me and that was my first transaction on the buy-side.
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Taylor: Okay. How did it go? Was it smooth on your end? No hiccups in the way or did you have some learning experiences from it?
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Connor: You know what, I think that almost every deal I’ve done so far, I’m under contract, had its learning experiences. Just because it’s also new. So this particular transaction was, the seller had listed their home on the MLS through a limited listing service. He paid some money to get it on the MLS. So my very first transaction, I was basically managing both sides of the deal essentially. It definitely had its challenges, but it ended up working out because negotiating was really easy, he didn’t really have representation.
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Brad: That’s awesome. What is a piece of advice that you got at the beginning that kind of stuck with you along the way? I know it’s only been nine months, but still, what’s some advice that you got at the beginning?
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Taylor: Or maybe some advice that maybe you got that you didn’t take. I know that seems to be common.
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Connor: Yeah, that’s a good one. The advice I got that I didn’t take is, I didn’t get a buyer broker agreement signed with one of my clients and they bought a home off-market. I showed them a lot of homes, spent some time, and didn’t get paid. That would be a mistake that was recommended to me that I did not do. What was the other one?
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Taylor: Yeah. Advice that you may have got and didn’t take, or the worst advice that you got.
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Connor: Yeah. I guess another piece of advice that was given to me that I try to stick with every day is that I need to make content every day. So the longer I’m in real estate, the more I realize that Tom Ferry and other real estate content creators and coaches talk about it being a contact sport. So every day I try to make contacts, whether that’s calling clients, calling sphere, cold calling, calling for sale by owners, or anything like that.
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Taylor: That’s awesome. Did you start doing that from the get-go or is this something that you just started implementing in time blocking? So you have the time to set aside to make those calls?
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Connor: Yeah, I’ve pretty much been prospecting since the beginning. I got two of my deals right now or for sale by the owner that I prospected. We’re closing on the listed home sold, we’ll be closing on the buy-side tomorrow. I’m actually on my way to the final walkthrough. The prospecting has started to pay off in a couple of different ways. So yeah, I hit the ground running with that for sure.
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Taylor: That’s awesome. Yeah. And you’re on your way to the next one. That’s super exciting. It’s almost done.
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Brad: Yeah. That’s awesome. Moving forward, what are some plans you have coming up, what’s the next step?
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Connor: Yeah, so I have really high goals for myself. I guess my next step would be since I work some hours a week at my friend’s warehouse to kind of bring in some extra income. My next goal is to not have to do that anymore. Um, and then, My goal for next year is to double what I did this year as far as production. I’m on track to do possibly 3 million this year. My goal next year would be to do six or seven.
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Taylor: Absolutely. Do you have any business books that you can recommend to anybody starting out or any business books that you like?
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Connor: Yeah, right from the beginning, I was given the book Ninja Selling by Larry Kendall. It has some really cool groundwork in it to implement into your business. I can’t say that I’ve done it to the extent that it probably should be done, but I definitely take different tidbits from it and apply it to how I interact with people. It’s a pretty sweet book.
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Brad: That’s awesome. I like it. How can people get a hold of you?
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Connor: The best way to get a hold of me is on my cell phone. The other best way is through my Instagram. My Instagram handle is @connorkobyrealtor. On Facebook, it’s just my name, my personal page and I have a business page: Connor Kobilarcsik Russell Realty.
Brad: That’s awesome. Hey, thanks for coming and sharing your story with us today.
00:08:50:11 –> 00:09:06:11
Hello. Hello. Are you 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 Connor Kobilarcsik…
Russell Real Estate Services
http://ConnorKobilarcsik.RussellRealty.com/
Facebook: @connorkobyrealtor
Instagram: @connorkobyrealtor
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