Episode 174: Jim O’Neil
On this episode of The Brad and Taylor Show, we sat down with Jim O’Neil from Keller Williams Realty!
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 Jim O’Neil…
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Taylor: Welcome to The Brad and Taylor Show. Today we have Jim O’Neil.
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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 Jim, how’s it going?
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Jim: Good. How are you guys?
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Brad: Doing good. Doing good. Well, let’s get this show started. Tell us a little bit about you. What do you do?
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Jim: I’m a residential real estate agent in Northeast, Ohio. I’m located in Barrel One Ohio, which is just outside of Akron. Pretty much work in Summit county, but I do jump into Portage occasionally into Kyle County, Medina County, Stark. That’s pretty much it.
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Brad: Okay, nice. So when you were younger, was this what you wanted to do for your future? Do you want to be an agent or what’d you have planned?
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Jim: Not this. I had no plans, which I think, I think that’s how some people end up in real estate. Just lack of planning. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I had a long list of things that I didn’t want to do. So here we are.
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Taylor: And real estate wasn’t on your list of do not do?
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Jim: No. I knew nothing about it. Yeah. The only thing I knew when I was a kid is that if you pop out the insert for a real estate sign and then pile a bunch of dirt underneath it. It made a pretty decent ramp for your bike. Because when I grew up, they took down this farm behind our house and turned it into housing in the mid-nineties. So we just take the answer to the sign and make a ramp for our bikes out of it. Try to jump over puddles and stuff to do.
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Taylor: Sucha a boy thing to do. I could see my kids doing that.
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Jim: And that’s all I knew about real estate.
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Brad: So how’d you get into real estate then? How’d that all go?
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Jim: So I was looking for a way out of the career I was in. I was in landscaping and I was an operations manager for this company and I had been to a couple of different companies and it was just more of the same, it was long hours and zero flexibility. So I wanted to get into a sales job, or I just wanted to get out of the landscaping industry. Snow removal, it’s like torture, but it’s fun for the first week. Anyway, it was 2012. I was having a hard time during interviews because I really had no experience outside of landscaping. And so someone suggested, Hey, why don’t you get a real estate license? I talked to a friend of mine who was in real estate at the time and he told me a little bit about it. And then I went and met with a market center leader then that was pretty much it.
00:03:19:08 –> 00:03:28:28
Taylor: Did you start right away, full time from that? How did you transition from landscaping over to real estate? Did you do it part-time time or did you just jump right in?
00:03:31:25 –> 00:04:40:02
Jim: Kind of both? So there was a lot that went into it. I was 29 years old. My wife and I owned a home. A family is in the very near future for us. And anyway, I went and kind of said, Hey, what do you think of this? I thought she was going to meet that conversation with some apprehension. Before I even got halfway through, she was like, yeah, you should do it. Fast forward, I put in my notice at my job and took the classes, passed the test. I worked part-time. I worked at a golf course. I mowed greens and fairways and all that kind of stuff. So I’d get there super early, get there at six and work a full day. You’re done by 2:30 and there’s plenty of time to do real estate after that. Some full-time agents don’t do anything until 2:30 anyway.
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Taylor: Especially when clients are getting out of work and you’re going to go show homes and everything.
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Jim: Yeah. And then on weekends, big golf day. So on weekends, we’d be done by 9:30 or 10. It was a perfect job. It was perfect for getting into real estate. I worked there when I was a kid. I started working there when I was 17. So they all knew me well and I had a long leash. If I needed to answer an email or make a phone call or something like that, they were really accommodating. It was really a blessing. The other thing was I could stay as long as I wanted, they were always trying to manage labor. So if someone wanted to go home at 9:30 or 10: 30 or noon, you know, say, Hey, I gotta leave today. Super flexible, super flexible.
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Taylor: How long have you been in real estate now?
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Jim: Since 2013, I got licensed in April of 2013. So I did the part-time stuff really through, I mean, really, it was more like two full-time jobs. That winter I plowed snow for a company. That winter, the winter of 13 into 14 was pretty slow. By mid-2014, I went full-time in real estate.
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Taylor: Okay, nice. And since 2013, since you started in real estate, how many kids have you seen take those inserts out of the signs and make a ramp out of it?
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Jim: Zero. If I got a kid doing that today, I would not be happy.
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Taylor: Right. It does sound kind of fun though. You have to admit, if signs weren’t expensive, would you still do it?
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Jim: Would I still make a ramp out of it as a little kid?
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Taylor: Would you go back and do that?
Jim: Of course. So fun.
Taylor: Yeah, exactly. So fun. What is the worst property you’ve seen over the last couple of years? Maybe the worst showing you’ve been to?
00:06:56:07 –> 00:08:10:03
Jim: When I started, I mean, foreclosures were still a real thing. I show a lot of them, so I’ve been in some homes where it was really bad. I mean, it’s usually a sad story though, you know? I just don’t dive too deep into that. Usually the worst homes, there’s something going on with that person and that’s why the home is in that condition. I held an open house at a place where it was probably 8,000 square feet. It was super eccentric, like mirrors everywhere, giant fountains, and an indoor pool. It was like, just not in good taste. Way over the top.
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Taylor: It sounds kind of cool, but it was a little gaudy maybe, a little too much.
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Jim: It was really bad. You’d go through and you’d laugh. It was probably like somebody who came into their prime between 88 and 92 and just crushed it.
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Taylor: Yeah.
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Jim: I mean, why doesn’t that light switch have wallpaper on it? Somebody, please!
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Taylor: Goodness. I’m imagining this home as you’re talking about it. I feel like I need to look up the images. I feel like I need to know.
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Jim: It would take a million dollars to redo it.
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Taylor: That’s crazy. Did you get any advice when you first started out in real estate that stuck with you through the first couple of years?
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Jim: I think the best advice I’ve gotten in regards to real estate is, be good at selling real estate. To be good at the contract. Know what the contract says, advise your clients on the contract, keep at it. Probably the best advice is to keep my ego out of the deal because my name’s not on that contract anywhere at all. My money’s not involved. Do you know what I mean? That was something that really stuck with me. I’m here to help a client navigate the contract and that’s it. Find inventory, get them in the inventory and then help them navigate that legally binding contract that they signed.
00:09:52:27 –> 00:10:06:24
Taylor: Speaking of the inventory, how has that been since the shutdown? Have you been able to get your clients in homes right away and have ’em get the deal? Or if I know the market’s going really, really, really fast still. So how has that been for you?
00:10:07:19 –> 00:10:43:29
Jim: I was forced to leverage, but that’s also where I’m at in my life. I’ve got three children that I like to see and like to see me. For now. That might change when they get older, but like in all they like me, I want to see them. The biggest thing that gave me an advantage in the 20, let’s just say, I mean, really honestly, since like 2019 through today was utilizing a showing agent. I just have a licensed agent that shows houses.
00:10:45:04 –> 00:10:52:14
Taylor: When did you hire that person? When did you hire that showing agent? Was it in 2019?
00:10:53:01 –> 00:11:05:07
Jim: I hired my own showing agent in 2020, but in 2019, I kind of had a showing agent that I could share with somebody. So, I had my own dedicated showing agent in 2020.
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Taylor: I’m sure that helps out a ton, especially.
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Jim: Yeah and I didn’t stop showing houses just because there were two of us showing houses.
00:11:16:19 –> 00:11:23:13
Brad: Oh, for sure. That’s awesome. I like it. If you could start over today with all the knowledge you have now, what is one thing you would change?
00:11:27:13 –> 00:12:42:19
Jim: I guess I probably would’ve just believed in myself earlier. There’s such a high washout rate in real estate and that confidence is, is really a delicate balance because I see a lot of people coming in and they get out of the way, cause they’re gonna sell every house on every block in every city that was ever built. And then you don’t see them after a little while. I knew that I had what it took, I knew I had what was needed to succeed in real estate, and by succeed, I mean, like be a full-time real estate salesperson and make it out of your three through five, you know? I think it’s maybe just the nature of being a commissioned salesperson.
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It’s like one of the wheels is going to come off, you know? It took a long time to develop the confidence that I’m here to stay and this is what I do now. I think if I would have maybe believed that a couple of years earlier, but who knows? It’s really hard because I could go back and rewrite so many things, but specific to real estate, I think it was just maybe just that confidence because there were some times where it’s up and down and I’ve got three kids and my wife and this is what we depend on for food, water, and shelter. So this is a high-stakes game.
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Taylor: Do you have any advice for anybody new starting out in real estate that maybe would just help them out and build that confidence? What’s one thing you did to build your confidence with real estate? How did you start believing in yourself? Was it just motivational stuff that you were doing on your personal side? Or how, how did that work out for you?
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Jim: That’s tough. That’s a really good question.
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Taylor: Did you just develop over time? As the transactions came, it was just there one day.
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Jim: Yeah. That was a big thing. Just seeing transaction after transaction, getting familiar with different situations because not every situation or transaction is the same. You have different players in every single game, you know? It was just the development of communication with somebody who was under stress because selling and buying a home is stressful. So I think it was really just a skilled development of taking. It’s just that the time it took to learn took time. I think that’s probably the best advice I could give someone, let it, it’s going to take time. And it’s a journey.
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Yeah. Don’t give up and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Also, it’s not about the commission because most people who get into real estate now are young. So they’re not going to sell one house in retirement. Number one, because they’re young and number two, because they’re not going to make enough money off of one transaction to retire. So develop a vision of a long game. And don’t be afraid to ask people for help. Don’t be afraid to be on a team, you know, because I think a lot of people, like, I don’t want to be on a team cause I don’t want to give up any of my money. Well, you don’t have any money to give up, so what are you hanging on to? So that was something I did for about five years.
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Taylor: Yeah. I’m sure you learned a lot from that too. I know a lot of people who go on the teams and it’s a learning experience for most people.
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Jim: Yeah. You don’t walk in like most people, most people don’t walk out of high school into the pros. So why does everyone who gets a real estate license just assume that they’re going to be the one who really walks into junior high into the pro you know?
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Taylor: Goes back to that confidence, right?
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Jim: Because I mean, none of this gets taught in school. This is like complex people problem-solving. You’re helping people solve a problem at a very high level, in a very elevated emotional state. Nobody likes to be told what to do. So I’ve heard agents well, if they just listened to me, well, no, one’s gonna listen to you then why would they listen to you? So it’s a really cool job. Most of the time.
Brad: Tell me, what did we get ourselves into? Just kidding!
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Brad: That’s awesome. How can people get a hold of you?
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Jim: I have a cell phone. Do you want the number or? My cellphone number is (330) 714-4720. My email is Jim O’Neil, J I M O N E I [email protected].
00:17:32:00 –> 00:17:34:25
Brad: Sweet. I like it. Hey, thanks for coming on and sharing your story with us today.
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Jim: Absolutely. Thank you, guys.
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Check out Jim O’Neil:
Keller Williams Realty
https://www.jimoneilteam.com/connect
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