Justin Stoddart 0:00
Hey, welcome back to the think bigger real estate Show. I'm your host, Justin Stoddart. And so excited to be here today with a friend of mine, someone who I admire and I think everyone in the Portland area, real estate industry admires this lady. And for those of you that are outside the industry, let me give a little background on Debi Laue and the treat that we have today. For me, first of all to have her here in studio. Thanks for being here, Debi. I know video is your favorite thing in the world. So this is this is really exciting for her to be able to impart her knowledge. And anyway, so background on her, been in the business Debi for 42 years, really that 42 years. And her team is still one of the very highest producers in the entire city. Just phenomenal, phenomenal amount of production that they do. And I think even more impressive than that isn't the numbers, but the people the way you guys go about doing business.
Debi Laue 0:47
Is that can I clarify, it's not my team anymore?
Justin Stoddart 0:49
Yes. Yes, please, please.
Debi Laue 0:52
Misunderstood proposition. Rick and Kiesha Brainard bought out on our team January 1, 2017. So what they've built from that point on is what we're doing now.
Justin Stoddart 1:00
Very cool, great distinction. So Debbie laid the groundwork for what Rick and Kiesha are now building, which is something phenomenal. And anyway, I'm excited to spend the time here with Debi and really try to extract from her, how she built what she built, it was really set the stage for what the team is doing now, which is really exciting. Super cool. So let's see any other bio points on Debi, I'm sure if anybody pops in here and wants to ask any questions that Debi, feel free to bring that up. But I know I've we've kind of pre-discussed a couple of different topics. So one of the things that I'd love to hear, Debi is if you were right now able to go back and talk to Debi Laue, it was just getting into the business. Now. Were you married to Bob at the time that you guys got in the business?
Debi Laue 1:43
No.
Justin Stoddart 1:43
Okay, so this was pre even pre-marriage you've been? You've been married to real estate long have you been married?
Debi Laue 1:50
That is true.
Justin Stoddart 1:53
if you were to go back and give advice to that person that's maybe a year in the business, like maybe they kind of give, What real estate is, but they haven't obviously built the career that you have. What advice would you give to yourself? So my first managing broker was lead Davies mother, Dorothy Davies mother, okay days.
Debi Laue 2:13
The best advice she gave me, she gave me a lot of advice. But the best advice was to surround yourself by positive people. And I understood very quickly why she told me that because in that era and continuing on, there's always office drama. And if you just avoid that, then you'll have a lot of time to spend with your family and your clients, which is what you should concentrate on. And going forward from that consistency has been the number one thing I would share with people. There's a quote out there by some entrepreneurial book writing Speaker I can't remember his name Darren Hardy, I think but he says because consistency is the one thing that achieves and continues the momentum. So in this is if you're not continuing the momentum, then you're stopped dead. It's called filling your pipeline, whatever you want to call it. consistencies, the number one target to achieve. And some of the ways almost that I'm hearing you say that people aren't consistent as they get caught up and stuff that doesn't matter. Right, right. You've got your clients to get the growth of your business, then you've got as you said, this office drama, stuff that's maybe not other stuff or other stuff, right Life Life drama, you can't avoid life. But if you can focus on the things that are productive, that that will help you be successful. So that consistency, I know that that is a big challenge for any of us that are entrepreneurial, right? We see shiny new ideas all the time.
Justin Stoddart 3:38
At what is that what is considered the consistency? How have you found to be most consistent? Is it certain by just having a calendar having a planning session? I mean, what's it look like for you or do you just have the discipline to be able to do it? Well, so this is this goes back to Bob. So Bob was a corporate guy, you know, he came out of the corporate world which most realtors didn't back in the day.
Debi Laue 4:00
He put systems together that kept us consistent. In other words, we had a CRM since 1983.
Justin Stoddart 4:08
Wow, that was pre-sales free CRM, wasn't it?
Debi Laue 4:11
I bought my first computer, which was this big and cost $5,000. But I had no idea how to use it until Bob came along. And he figured out a mail merge system where he put all of his clients into the system. And we started sending out these anniversary letters. Congratulations. This is the seventh year since you bought or sold a home with us, we hope you're doing well, etc. And always asking for business, of course, but that was our first attempt at being consistent. And then you move forward with client events. Yeah. And just staying in touch with pop buys, which our team now does because we have this lovely person named Melissa Nichols who said,
No, listen. So she's made it really easy for us to achieve that consistency on a whole new level.
Justin Stoddart 4:54
Like it's funny. I saw Melissa and Justin Nichols in the team picture and I was like, What did they do? Now I know the role very cool, good quality people, you guys have just done such a good job like everybody that joins the last one like, Oh my god, it's just another amazing person, you know? Well, that's you can have that direct indication they have built the business in the last two years. And I'm a very special way. So we have four producing agents, okay, and for support people, okay, which is a pretty, pretty amazing sort of ratio of support to producing brokers, you don't typically see that right? You see, very few support people or fewer support people and lots of agents. So what does that allow you guys to do by having almost like a one to one support to producing agent and allows you to do the stuff you're talking about? It allows us to spend our time with our clients, which is exactly where we need to be.
Wow, lots of profound wisdom there is whether it looks like people or what it looks like and or systems or tools. But whatever you can do to reinvest time back in your clients, right? is key, right. So we have gentlemen in our place.
Debi Laue 6:00
We go office that I don't know if he has a CRM now. But for years it didn't except he had his phone, which was his brand new form of Rolodex. And he said he would, you know, we had 10 minutes before a meeting, he would just go through and look at people's names, and you'd call somebody, it was that simple. Who Have I not talked to recently pick up the phone column. So in this era, when people are a phone at first, maybe go back to something as simple as picking up the phone and calling somebody you haven't talked to in a couple of weeks or a month or a year. But I do think that technologies take an interesting turn. And a lot of people use technology to be the contact with people. Right? It almost takes the place of contact with people. What I hear you saying is that that that technology should empower people, or it should empower us to spend more time with people, not less time with people, rig...
