On this episode, JD Reese shares how he rebuilt from that exact moment and what came next. He takes us inside Genuine Real Estate Group, one of the most consistent teams in Southern Utah, where 60 listings stay active and under contract, and agent turnover is nearly zero.
He breaks down how they keep that kind of performance steady without burning out. From pricing strategy and emotional sellers to tracking accountability and team culture, JD gets into the decisions that drive results. “You’ve got to be the best house and the best offering in the neighborhood,” he says. But that’s just the beginning.
JD also unpacks how his team uses tools like Sisu’s new product “Battr”, to track every step of the lead journey, flag breakdowns, and stay focused on what actually moves the needle. “It’s not about more leads. It’s about calling fewer leads more.”
No outbound recruiting. No scripts. Just structure, speed, and real coaching. “If you're not converting anything into your name, your database is too small.” You’ll hear how they onboard new agents, use mentorship to drive growth, and create space for real conversations instead of surface-level tactics.
Top Takeaways:
(1:56) Listings sitting longer & seller strategy
(3:22) Pricing strategy that actually works
(7:26) Impact of interest rates dropping to 5%
(10:31) Lead gen strategy for every listing
(11:26) Sisu's new product “Battr”
(12:29) Tracking lead life from start to close
(18:24) Lead spending vs. accountability
(20:45) Training agents without scripts
(23:53) Using Sisu dashboards to coach agents
(28:05) Picky recruiting & low team turnover
(31:05) Builder partnerships through lead strategy
(33:58) Real estate and Porsche passions
(36:47) The 1% rule for long-term growth
If you’re trying to build a business that lasts and lead in a market where most are pulling back, this one’s worth your time. Hit play and dive in.
About JD Reese
JD Reese is the founder and CEO of The Genuine Group, a real estate team based in Southern Utah. With nearly a decade in the industry, he’s facilitated close to 1,000 transactions and continues to stay active in both sales and team leadership. Raised in St. George, JD brings local expertise and a strong focus on systems, follow-up, and agent development. He’s also a licensed general contractor and runs his business with a hands-on, practical approach.
Connect with JD Reese:
JD Reese - Instagram
The Genuine Group - Instagram
Episode Transcript:
Brian Charlesworth 00:34
All right. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Grit Podcast. I'm Brian Charlesworth, the founder of Sisu, and your host of the show. And today I am here with a returning guest. JD, Reese. JD, Reese, out of St George or Southern Utah, we'll say, is the market hotter in Ivan's or southern or St George, or where's the hot spot down there? JD,
JD Reese 00:54
I would say you're probably Ivan's. I mean, Ivan's definitely has the highest sell ratio and cost per square foot in St George, which is funny, because if you told me 1015, years ago that you lived in Ivans, I would have been like, gross. Ivans, that's ghetto, but now it's one of the bougiest towns and highest selling places you can be in southern Utah. So also the new Black Desert resorts there, new golf course, it's pretty sweet.
Brian Charlesworth 01:21
Yeah, right across the street from our rental property.
JD Reese 01:24
Yeah, it's killer. I went to the PGA last year and got to watch that. And, man, that is just such a cool thing that they've done. I never thought a million years St George would see anything like that. I mean, I feel like all the developers that are coming to St George just keep doing things, and I'm like, Nah, that can happen. And now we have a lagoon out in the desert with a whole vacation community and just all these really, really neat things happening in St George. It's growing so fast here. So it's been, it's been cool to see.
Brian Charlesworth 01:52
Yeah, that is cool. So the market down there, I'm noticing across the country listings are sitting highest inventory in eight years in a lot of areas. Yeah, same here or longer? Is it that way down there?
JD Reese 02:10
Yeah, things are sitting just a lot longer. The thing is, sales are actually up. The listing is just way up, which is crazy. So I mean, I think there's a lot of smart buyers out there just looking for a deal, and they're just shopping so many different things. So for us, like we have like a 95% 96% I think, last time I checked list to sell ratio, that means 4% of our total listing inventory either hasn't sold or went canceled or expired, like it's currently active. And for us, I think the secret sauce to getting a property sold is we're just telling our sellers, you have to be the best offering and the best house in the neighborhood. You know, if you have competition in that neighborhood, you got to be the best offering, meaning price, features, etc, and the best house just the best choice, because if you're competing against 30 other homes similar to yours in that range, like, if you're not, you're just not going to get the views or foot in the door. And really, the trick is to get people in the house.
Brian Charlesworth 03:07
So in other words, you need to have the nicest house in the neighborhood, and you need to be priced the lowest, exactly, and then, and then you're basically insured to sell the home. Otherwise, there's a bunch of options, and it's likely not going to be enough to get them excited.
JD Reese 03:22
Yeah, if your home's been on market over 45 days here, like you're likely going to get an offer low, you're likely going to have to start doing price reductions. It's not like you're going to be able to stay at your list price for 45 days and then not make something happen. So we're really, really, really just trying to educate our sellers, like, we have to be priced aggressively. We have to be competitive. If your neighbors drop, we gotta drop. And it's just, it's not a waiting game like you could wait forever. It's a who can get a better price more effectively, quickly. So when we go to market, like, for example, I just listed a property on Skywalker lane, which is a really cool that's like one of the coolest spots you can be at. We made a really cool video of, like a Star Wars tribute to this thing. We were under contract in like 18 days on that one, which for us is three days prior to when we start having talks about price reductions and to get that one accepted, the sellers got a low offer, like 80 or 80 to 100k below, asking. And they immediately were like, so offended. They were like, now we can't take this offer. This is just way too low. I'm offended. And I was like, I don't blame you guys. Like, there's a lot of emotion that goes into selling a house and everything that you guys have put into it. However, we need to counter, right? Even if it's 5k off of our price, we need to counter. We need to do something which is exactly what we did. You know, we ended up countering like right near our Ask price, and then we threw in some furniture. And the they came back and asked for all the furniture my my clients came back and said. Okay, but only if you take a little less on the buyer's agent commission. Funny enough, and boom, we run a contract. So like there's still opportunity to get near your ask price. But just know that you know buyers are looking for a deal, right? And they're going to be if they even remotely sense weakness, they're going to jump in on that and try to throw a little offer at you. And right now, it's just navigating that. I think we currently as a team, we have almost 60 listings. More than half of those are under contract right now, but I would say 100% of them, except maybe the rare five or six, have had some type of offer below asking. And okay,
Brian Charlesworth 05:41
so with that, you say, on your team, there's that many listings. How many agents are on your team?
JD Reese 05:45
We have 13 agents, 15, including myself and my director of operations. And you're still in you're still in production. I'm still, I'm still in production. We actually have 16, technically. But the 16th guy, he's our brand manager. He does all of our in house filming and photography and everything. He takes a couple of deals here and there, but for the most part, we have all of our marketing team in house.
Brian Charlesworth 06:08
Cool. Okay, all right, so I saw, I saw a post from a mortgage guy yesterday, and as I was telling you before we jumped on the recording, I'm now a mortgage guy, in a sense, because, yeah, simply mortgage for team owners like yourself to do. JBS, but this post he did really caught my attention. He showed a video that said it was from the 25th so that was three days ago, and it was he was videoing an open house, and the open house had, jeez, must have had over 100 people go through it while, while he was showing it was just packed. And he, he basically said that it was because interest rates just dropped a little bit recently. And he projects that interest rates are going to drop substantially before too long. I know Trump's been working on that. No, not everyone likes that. Not everyone believes that after three years,
JD Reese 07:06
that would be amazing.
Brian Charlesworth 07:08
But what he actually predicted was that in the near future, we're going to have 10 offers on every home again. Now anyone in real estate is like, wait a minute, homes are sitting longer. It's a buyer's market. How could it change that way? But let me ask you this, if interest rates were to go down to 5% today, what would you see the market being like, I'd
JD Reese 07:34
have multiple offer situations on almost all of my listings, even even at like, high fives, I think I would probably start seeing multiple offer situations again. I mean, I'm still seeing them on stuff that I'm like, for example, if I sell in a vacation area like Duck Creek, Brian had always tell my sellers, let's price significantly below, asking like, below where we comped it, because it is better in those areas to price that way and then drive a multiple offer situation, basically drive the offers back up. It's not effective everywhere, and it really is only effective if your offering is really cool, like, it's a really nice house or, like, there's something unique about it. But if rates were to do that, we would, I think we would be even in high fives. Like, let's call it 5.5 to 5.9 you know, I think we would be in multiple offer situations, which is kind of a tricky situation, if you think about it, because if you're, if you're the lending companies, right, you don't really want to have that happen too quickly, because that's going to force a ton of refinances where, you know, you're making this great interest on all these current loans, and then on top of that, like, you don't Want it happen too quickly, or else it's going to cause chaos in the market too. So I'm sure there's lending companies out there that are like, okay, yes, this might be an opportunity where rates dip, but we need to dip them very slowly, because if all sudden, overnight, interest rates are five and a half, it's going to be chaos. It'll be tricky.
Brian Charlesworth 08:59
Fingers crossed, right? Fingers
JD Reese 09:00
Yeah. I mean, we're ready for it. The funny thing is, like, I've been telling my agents, like, the ones that have been with me for like, the last three years that have really, like, figured out this market. Like, I got a kid on my team named Seth. He's 26 years old. He'll sell 30 homes this year. He's making 250, $300,000 a year as a 26 year old kid with, like, no responsibilities, like trying to figure out where to put his money, and I've been telling him for the last three or four years, like, dude, rates come down, it's gonna be crazy. Like our team is built in a way that we're gonna be able to manage this and be so much further ahead than the average agent that, like, yeah, we'll sell 250 homes this year. Like, if it happened next year, we'd probably sell double. Like, it's going to be crazy,
Brian Charlesworth 09:47
but you guys are picking up market share in a declining market. Anybody that's Yeah, and I watch our Sisu customers. So many of our Sisu customers are picking up market share in a declining market, which you are one of them. So
JD Reese 09:59
yeah, and. And it's, it's sad to see agents and lenders and people leave the the you know, leave the industry, but in the same breath, I'm like, All right, that's just less competition, less worry, and having to worry about someone's cousin beating us out for a deal like and when you know how to navigate it, and you can show clients, we literally print out our sell ratios, and we take them to the listing appointments, and we go, look, we sell pretty much everything we list, because our clients listen to us, and this is how we do it. And we go over our whole process, and it's not just list the home, put it on the MLS. You know, there's a whole campaign that we build for every house. We generate leads for every single house. We have a team calling every single lead that comes in for every single house. We have remarketing campaigns, like, I'm not just posting a video of our listing on Instagram, like, I'm using that and creating ads to drive traffic back to our website, to get people to do more business, and not only just for their house, but for our team, you know, and our team converts all of our online leads that at a over 2% ratio, which, for industry standard is pretty great for Facebook and PPC leads. You know it's it's not as high as a conversion ratio for like Azula, like we were talking about previously, off camera, but it is definitely fairly high. So we take advantage of that to compete in a very niche type market for way we generate business. If that makes sense.
Brian Charlesworth 11:20
Okay, so you just brought up something. I'm glad you brought it up. You're talking about lead conversion. So you've been a Sisu customer for a long time. We just rolled out a new product called batter. Batter is all about the number of at bats you're giving your agents. Yeah. And the cool thing I love about it is that it allows you to set standards for your lead follow up. And this is i This is what I believe has been the differentiator for Zillow flex, is that they make their people follow up, or they're going to take you off. You have to have certain results, or they're going to take you off. Yeah, not going to be a flex team anymore. So what happens the team leaders, the ops leaders, all focus more with the agents. They make the agents do it. They follow up with the agents every week. And this is going to basically be a leads manager, just like that, to manage the rest of your leads. So you just talked about PPC and
JD Reese 12:14
Facebook and PPC, Facebook and PPC, yeah,
Brian Charlesworth 12:17
so you've been on batter for a while. JD, what? Yeah, it's obviously a brand new product. But tell me, tell me what that's done and what, how that allows you to manage your agents more effectively.
JD Reese 12:29
So obviously, every team should have, like, a process right when the new lead comes in, how the life of that lead gets converted. And it's easy to, like, Go, click each lead and see, but then you generate, like, I generate 30 leads in a day. You know, 500 leads a month. It's impossible for me to be like, okay, every single one of these leads being worked correctly. So what batter has been doing for us is to get really granular and see the life of that lead. The thing that's been the most valuable and the most eye opening, though, is how many at bats individual agents are taking. And when we say at bats, like, how many leads are they putting in their name? So when we generate a lead, all those leads get dumped into a pawn, right? And we can see, like, the first five or six stages of batter that say, like, Okay, did this lead get hit like, six times when it first got created, because that's our initial tap. Is a six tap, right? And then did it get did it get hit? You know, 25 times over the course of 10 days, which is like, email, text, all, whatever. And then after that, gets put into an agent's name, then it gets put through their lists, and it's like, Did it hit? If it's a hot is it weekly? If it's cold, is it getting bi weekly? Or, sorry, warm? Is it bi weekly? Is it cold every 45 days? And it's hard to see all that, like, from the top down view, but batter really lets you, like, just peek at and be like, Oh, okay, we can see this. We can see where it dropped off, which has been awesome. So then that way, we can give a list of those leads to our client or to our agents, and be like, hey, these dropped off. Why? What happened here? So this has turned into a monthly meeting for us to really get super granular on our agents, one on ones and see, okay, how many leads are you taking for one you know, we've had agents be like, Oh, I'm so slow, or I'm not, you know, I don't feel like I'm doing a lot. And it's like, Well, dude, you've taken 15 leads in the last two months. Of course you feel like so you're not converting anything into your name. Your database is too small. So that's been a huge eye opener for us. And then, you know, if they've had a conversation with these leads, but they haven't set appointments, or they've had multiple conversations and they haven't set appointments with these we can be like, Hey, you talked to this person. You obviously connected? Why? Where? What is holding us back on that next step, which is the appointment? And so for us, it's that. It's that list of being able to get them to set those appointments. It's a huge part of our business now and now with the alerts, like sending out alerts when things are past due. Um, just it's going to save Nathan on my team, our Director of Operations, that's his job. It's going to save him a ton of time, which means he's going to be able to place his value in other spots, like coaching and being a bit more present in those areas. Rather than dedicating his Friday mornings to audits, which I still think we're going to do, we'll still have some, some, you know, audits there, but for the most part, this will be a really cool system to keep our agents super accountable. And if they don't, then we'll just sweep it from their account back into a pond, and we'll let up somebody else work, and that's a little bit more dedicated on getting those leads.
Brian Charlesworth 15:37
I've seen personally a bunch of teams. I can think of a few in particular who have actually had full time people in that role. Some of them have a full time VA, some of them have a, you know, a true leads manager. They call it that you one of the things you said at first, JD, is you don't have time to go in. You could click in the CRM and one at a time. But how long would that actually take you, if, like, that's the way you managed it,
JD Reese 16:03
it would take you forever. And we've built within follow up boss we have actually have, like, we call them proprietary, but anyone can go build these lists of audit lists, you know, to go look at these leads individually that haven't been worked correctly or something's missing. This basically takes away like 90% of those audit lists for us. You know, there's some very specific ones, like, how fast did the agent respond to a text type audit? But for the most part, like this is going to replace that, and it's so quick, and the fact that you get an automatic email of your out of compliance for each list that sends to a shared email between Nathan and myself is really cool, because then we can peek at that and be like, Whoa, dog. You have so many leads out of compliance. Fix this, or else you got to give them to somebody else you know. Or if they're crazy, out of compliant on a lot of lists our agents, when we list homes, we use one phone number that rings to agents that are on sign calls, and to be on a sign call through a team, you have to be within, you know, your our KPIs have to be met to be on that list, which for us, is cleared smart lists, and your calls have to be over x amount for the week to be on that sign call list. And we get, you know, six to 10 of those a day, and those actually convert high. Those are like a 10% conversion. So agents want to answer those sign calls. Answer those
Brian Charlesworth 17:23
sign calls, right? Oh, yeah. Sign calls are great. So you talked about the standards that you have. You have certain standards for following up the first week, certain standards for following up well, and you, you base it off of, if they're hot leads, warm leads or cold leads, one week, two weeks, or every 45 days, right? Right? So the cool thing I love about this is every team runs their team differently, and all we have to do is figure out with you the way you want it run, and it'll do the work for you, right? It'll take the leads from, it'll sweep the leads from, from the agents who aren't following up. It'll give you the notifications. It'll nudge the agents let them know it's time they they better work their leads, or they're not going to have the leads. And so anyway, it's really fun to see, because what I've noticed in this market, and JD you tell me, if this is true, where you're at, but what I've noticed, and I think based on what you told me beforehand, you said you have a team down there spending over $80,000 a month on leads.
JD Reese 18:22
Not my team No. But what I've found
Brian Charlesworth 18:24
is people team leaders are willing to spend money on leads and willing to spend more money on leads and willing to spend more money on leads, but most of them don't realize, if you just make a little shift and hold the agents accountable the way that you should as a team leader, that to get higher conversion, to make sure they are actually calling the leads, it's it's more important that they call the leads that you have right then that you give them more leads. Why give somebody more leads who's not calling the leads you have? So I actually did a webinar the other day, and Matt, who was on our launch webinar. Said,
Brian Charlesworth 19:12
Instead of thinking your agent should call more leads, it's not about calling more leads, it's about calling less leads more. Yeah, that stuck with me. That's huge.
JD Reese 19:23
I mean, that's why we I spoke at while oppo, like, a year ago, or maybe a year and a half ago, one of their events, and we went over our process, like our lead flow process. That's all they asked me to do. They gave me, like, 30 minutes to talk about just how we convert leads and why our conversion so well? And it's just because we call the crap out of the lead, like, to a point where I they don't stop until we were told stop, you know, like, even if they say stop, I train my agents to call and apologize and be like, hey, we'll definitely stop. But while we have you, just tell me about your point. So we can kind of, you know, adjust our notes on our end. It is about how much you're calling but for us, it's not just about how much. It's about what you're saying, right? We coach on a few things. It's called Socratic selling. And Socratic selling is asking the right question with the right person at the right time. And time is a big part of that, that if there's a luck factor, it's, it's about timing. When you have that conversation, right? And you can, you can almost create your own luck there. You can ask questions like, you know, what is the best time for you to communicate with me? How do you prefer to communicate as a text, email, calling, what do you prefer as a client? But the right question at the right time with the right person is a huge part about what we coach, and it's all open ended. My agents don't read off of a script. I've never put a script in front of my agents. We role play three to four times a week about how to have more effective and meaningful conversations, where we can actually show people on the other side of the phone and in person. You know, empathy. We really listen to what they need. We listen to where they're at in their journey, and we try to identify that journey and then help bring value. You know, I call it ammunition, with my with my agents. Like, what kind of ammunition can you bring to the conversation? And maybe that's not the best word, but like, what are you providing? You know, let's say they want new construction. What builders do, you know? You know, in their price range, let's say they have a house to sell, but it's in a weird spot, you know. What do you know about that area? You know? What statistics can you give them? Maybe they need contractors to fix a flip. You know? What contractors do? You know? Have you given them our contractor list? Like, is that an, you know, an effective way to move the conversation forward and provide value. So yes, I would say the amount of times we're following up with the lead is very important, because if we don't do that, we don't get the opportunity. But once we have that opportunity, a brand new agent coming in, our team is going to convert a lead. And I say convert, that's a from a conversation to an appointment. And conversations for us are two minutes, their conversion ratio is like two to 3% as a branding agent on our team, like every 100 conversations, they'll maybe set to appointments. So they churn a ton of conversations, right? Yeah, but once we have them fully onboarded and trained, within 60 to 90 days, that conversion goes from seven to 10%
Brian Charlesworth 22:19
How do you know that? Sisu? What does Sisu do to tell you that because most team leaders could, most team leaders couldn't tell me any of those two, either of those two items you just shared,
JD Reese 22:29
Sisu literally gives you that analytic. It literally you can go look at an agent's analytic. They're one month in of conversations to appointments set and as a brand new agent, it's generally always between two and 3% that's usually what we can expect.
Brian Charlesworth 22:43
And is that any extra work for you? I know you said you have follow up boss, so your agents are all just working out a follow up boss, and you have that data real time, just like you have the lead follow up data real time with batter, right?
JD Reese 22:53
Yeah, it's real time. It's right there. It's a click away, and we can see it when we have our one on ones, we pull up our Sisu dashboard, which shows their conversion. We actually pull up three months of dashboard just to see, and then we compare and contrast those between each other. And we can just see that right away. You know, if they've really taken the training, if they've really done role play, we can see that initial conversion. You know, our trick too is we get that conversion up really quickly, and then once they actually start meeting people, to sign, that's the next ratio that we have to start training on. That's a hard one, because at that point, they're meeting people, but they're not signing any contracts. That's in person training. And really the only way that we can train that is like either having them go on appointments with us, as you know the professionals we are and or going and shadowing their appointments, like going to more listing appointments, etc, as a duo. It's That's a harder metric to fix, but we see that one too is like an opportunity for us to increase our conversion.
Brian Charlesworth 23:53
Yeah, I talked to somebody who said they changed their business by $3 million a year in GCI. Wow. I finding a shift in that. So imagine being a team owner that doesn't have that kind of data, and all you're going to see is that you have these agents that aren't producing. You're probably gonna be like, I don't even want that agent anymore, yeah, but you probably have a lot of agents who are going on a lot of appointments. I mean, if an agent's going on three appointments a week, that's a really good agent. Yeah, how to ask for the business, right? Right? How to bring up, show up and ask the right questions and bring value, right?
JD Reese 24:36
Yeah, it's going from like a servicing hat to a sales hat, like, where you need to be able to gently guide that person into that decision by offering the confidence or the knowledge or advice that they're looking for that makes them feel comfortable to do that next step, because it's a big step for a lot of people, there's a large part of that too. That's part of. To train, especially in person, like I've always said a set in person, it's like 7% of what you're saying actually matters. It's more about like how your tone is and how you're presenting yourself. I think it's like 7% of what you're saying matters. 38% is your tone, and I think the other 55% is your body language and how you carry yourself. And that's really hard to train. And we try to do live role plays, not just phone call role plays, but actual, like live knocking role plays, or live listing appointment role plays, because that's just another feature. Or another thing about sales is just, it's hard to train. It's hard to get somebody on that page. It's, it's a something they just learn with time, you know, by seeing it or being around it, or there's, you know, there's a part of sales and real estate where you can only give them so much. You've given them all the tools to do it now they just have to go put it in place and see if they
Brian Charlesworth 25:50
can make it happen. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's fun to see your growth. I know you plan on adding another 10 agents or so before the end of the year. I can do to help you with that. Let me know. But what's your plans on that? How are you going to add those agents? What do you do to recruit? Yeah, we have
JD Reese 26:10
an onboarding platform that I built, and it's a two week platform, and then there's one month of like tasks that are due within that month for them to stay on the team, tasks for the agents. Yeah. So the first week is a lot of like, hands on. Second week is more hands off, but they they have a list of things that they should be doing, training, etc. And then during that one month, there's a few books that they're required to read in the first month. And then some things that they have to be doing, like they their first month with us, they need to do four open houses. They have to be on the Mojo dialer at least once a day, five days a week. There's just things that we just really want them to do a ton. Like, it's almost like boot camp for their business, like, right off the start. And then once they once they've accomplished that, then they can move on, and they get assigned a mentor on our team, and we have two mentors right now that get a portion of their first few deals and hold them accountable, which has been a big boon for us, because, as you know, it's not easy chasing, you know, 15 agents down and trying to hold each individual accountable. So the mentor stepping in has been a huge part of our business and growth. But as far as the recruitment side goes, genuine has never done any outbound recruiting. Ever. We let our social media presence and our name and word of mouth kind of drive our business and have and with that, because of St George is a smaller market. It's, I think it's been more effective here than in other places for that, but because of that, I mean, I interview probably twice a week, just out of people reaching out. I haven't even imagined what outbound recruitment would look like consistently for genuine and and I don't know if that is even like on the horizon for us yet, maybe, maybe eventually, but like we kind of have this hyper local mindset for St George. There was a part of me back in the day that I was like, I'm just gonna get as big as I possibly can and recruit as many agents, and then the market chipped in, and I was like, I think I just want a bunch of killers, people that are just really, really good at what they do. I like to be around them. They're great people. They fit the genuine brand. And so we've been focusing on that. And so we are really picky about who's joining our team. They go through a multiple day interview process, they go through a multiple day shadow process, and then once we feel like they're the fit, then we hire them, and we've onboard them. And so far since the birth of genuine we're going into year five. I've only ever had two agents lead my team. So
Brian Charlesworth 28:40
Wow, that's impressive. Yeah,
JD Reese 28:42
it's been cool. That's great. None of them went and started a team with her husband. The other one got a job for DR Horton, and he couldn't pass it up. It was a great opportunity for him. So other than that, I haven't had anybody lead my team. Really cool. That
Brian Charlesworth 28:55
That says a lot about genuine. So again, you guys, JDS team is genuine real estate group. You can see it if you're watching. You can see that in his hat. But you know, one of the, one of the words he used is, when they go out on appointments, empathy. And you talked about ammunition. When you talked about that, I was thinking, instead of you were using the word ammunition. It's really genuine, which is your your name, right? It's true about being genuine.
JD Reese 29:18
It is. It's about being yourself. We are who we are. Yeah, I was in my real estate career early. I kind of lost myself, in a sense, you know, I've been doing this 10 years, and I would say the first four, four and a half, I literally just was, JD, the real estate agent. And yeah, I was good at what I was doing, but I lost a portion of myself. There's so much more to me to be able to connect with people and things that I can share so genuine is about being like a true version of yourself, like down to your roots, things that you love like being authentic, right? I guess is another word for genuine, but being the best version too, like, I almost think it was our company as like a. A like a mindset or like coaching company, in addition to real estate sales, like, we have a lot of young people that come join our team that want to do this full time, that we're motivating, not only on a real estate sales side, but just life, you know, just trying to let them think bigger and learn more and be a better version of themselves, and try to tell them like you don't have to change who you are. You can just add to it and be that version of yourself that's truly authentic and genuine. So that's that's kind of the culture that we've built around. And I think that's why people stay those are
Brian Charlesworth 30:33
impressive numbers. So before we wrap up, one thing I wanted to hit on, JD is one of your talents, I think, is landing builder accounts. Yeah, and you just landed one, actually, in northern Utah, so good. How does that work? Like maybe, if you're willing, maybe you could share with our listeners, just you know why you focus on that and how you go about it, because it's definitely a way to have a strong business, and it's also a way to keep agents around, right? So, yeah,
JD Reese 31:05
builder accounts are great, especially if you have builders that are doing business and and, you know, actively staying healthy. And what I mean healthy, they're they're moving product for us, the the northern Utah stuff, and the pipeline will keep you updated on that. Excited. Genuines never been in northern Utah, but we're going to be in the Springville area now, so that'll be kind of cool. Congratulations. But as far as like landing the builder accounts for us, it's simple. Builders want to see results, right? You can go to them and show them how you're going to do things, whether it's your Legion or how you're going to market, and you can show them an actual game plan that's going to be a rare thing to them, because a lot of builders are familiar with just having, like a builder agent that sits in their model home and waits for business to come to them. But if you have a powerhouse team that is effective at lead conversion, not only just on the actual lead side, like we generate leads for all of our builders, but on the agent production side, meaning using agents as a lead conversion tool, where we're consistently calling agents and we can show them how we're doing that it's pretty much a shoe in for us, because if they're even open to the idea of trying out another agent, we're going to outwork them. We're going to out market them, and we're just going to create an environment for that builder that they've never had before.
Brian Charlesworth 32:25
And my experience when I was in real estate for 18 months before I had this weird idea to start this company named Sisu, but my experience was, if I had a buyer, I primarily sold to listings, but if I had a buyer or my listing wanted to buy a home, I would always take the builder out first, because I could go in and not have a competitive offer. You know, you go in, they have the inventory. You get the inventory, right? So it's just the easier way for me, especially in a competitive market.
JD Reese 32:55
But yeah, it's also there's another part of this too, that I feel like people are afraid to be honest with their clients. A lot of agents are afraid to be just deadly honest with them. You know, if they have a pricing issue or an image issue or something like that's obvious that you can see, just be straight up. Just tell them straight up, hey, this is your your price is wrong, or the way you're presenting your your business is wrong. Let me show you how I would do it, and let's just have a conversation. Now, obviously you're not going to be like, you suck. You're wrong, but you are going to go after them and you're going to say, look, this is what we need to improve. Here's the game plan. This is what we're going to do to make it happen. And if you're honest with them, you show them a game plan, and you do it effectively and fast. They want results quick. Most builders want things done fast, especially on their subcontractor side, then you'll have a big shot at taking over those accounts.
Brian Charlesworth 33:44
Yeah, okay, thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate it. JD, it's, it's been really fun to have you as a customer. We're grateful to have you now as my Sisu customer, but a better customer. Yeah. And you know, one last story I want to share, because it was a lot of fun for me. When I was down at our investment property down in St George or in Ivan's, I should say, right, came to visit us play a little pickleball, and thank you for that, and you showed up in your 997 911 Yes, sir. That was fun for me too. I got to walk across the street and see it, because you all know how passionate I am about Porsches. So big Porsche enthusiast. Loved seeing it, loved hearing it, drive away. But tell me, tell me what's on the on the horizon for you, as far as Porsche goes,
JD Reese 34:29
I think my next purchase is going to be I want a 993 target,
Brian Charlesworth 34:36
993 target,
JD Reese 34:37
yeah, yeah, I stumbled, or nine or 967 but I think I want 993 because I stumbled across this guy who has one on Instagram, and he makes these videos of him just like, getting it ready in the morning to go drive and like taking the top off, and then he's, like, ripping through canyons. And in my head, I'm like, man, what is such a classic? He just turns the radio on? I'm like, that sounds like so nice. I don't even need to go fast. I just that that sounds like something I'd want to do. So I think that. And then I do still want a GT three. That's that's on the list. I just don't know which one I want more now, yes,
Brian Charlesworth 35:15
you know, I just got my first air cooled, the 993 Yeah, but mine is, uh, sunburst, which is a Japanese street racing street car out of Japan, so side body. But here's the thing, it's amazing, but it's true. Like I went on a drive yesterday, and I was with a group of people, and I was like, Okay, I know this group drives fast. I need to take my GT 4s I'm not gonna go do that with this 993 but I haven't really pushed the 993 hard enough to know yet how it does of that. But I can tell you this, when you go in 70 or 80 in it, it actually feels pretty fast, whereas it feels like I'm stopped, right?
JD Reese 35:55
Yeah, yeah, the new cars hold their speeds like they they don't even feel like you're going quick. Like that was especially true in the RS six that I had, that I had tuned and everything done to it, like I'd be going 140 and I was like, Oh, it doesn't even feel like 40. It just holds its way so well. So I don't know there's something to be said about those that classic feeling. And I feel like I've always wanted a 993 in my heart. I see it, and then I see it, and then I see the price of it, and I'm like, I don't know if it's worth it, but now I'm slowly getting a little bit more inclined. And I never wanted a target until, like, a month and a half ago, until I started following this guy, I was like, dang, a target.
Brian Charlesworth 36:34
Send me the link so I can follow the same guy. Yeah, and I could talk Porsche with you all day. But last thing, do you have any advice you want to leave with our listeners for any topic?
JD Reese 36:47
Yeah, I guess the one advice, I would imagine there's a lot of real estate professionals listening. Yes, we're going to get a little bit of insight. The one advice that I just rang true to me my whole 10 years I've been doing this is no matter what, even if you're on vacation, or if you are taking a day off or whatever, whatever it is, if you can just work on your business, 1% just a little bit little something, move that needle forward, just a little ways. Every single day, it's going to compound over the course of your career. And then one day you're gonna look back and you're like, Wow, 1% every day I've just been chipping away at this mountain, and you're gonna dig a hole right through it. So don't give up. This is a marathon, not a sprint. So
Brian Charlesworth 37:33
that's great advice. One thing that I recognized when I was selling was every time I went out of town, just happened to be when I would go under contract with everybody, yeah? So you have to, you have to block that time off to go under contract. And maybe the reason you're going under contract when you're out of town is because your head space is in the right space, so you can actually do that kind of stuff
JD Reese 37:53
right. Yeah, it's all about the energy you put out in the world. Like, if you feel a little bit more light and a little bit airy, like, things tend to happen a little easier, and you give space to breathe. So it's true, I mean, and when I go out of town, I always, you know, I always try to take a little bit of time each day just to even if it's in the morning or at night, I tend to be a night owl, so it's usually at night for me, but I take a little bit of time to just make sure things are where they need to be. And I do it in a way that's light and communicated with my wife that I'm doing it. Everybody's on the same page, so it works out really well. Yeah, 1% all you got to do. 1% every day.
Brian Charlesworth 38:30
JD, thank you for that advice. Thank you for joining me again on the show, and again, it's really cool to see you run a business where you have no turnover with your agent. So cool. I mean that that says a lot about you and your team and the way you run your business. And again, we're grateful to have you as a customer. For those of you listening, go on, give this a like. We want to get more top team leaders, more top leaders from the industry to really, really bring you guys value. As I ramp this podcast back up. I actually have not been doing consistent podcasts on a weekly basis, just because my travel schedule has been a little crazy lately, but we are back on that page now, and so JD, thanks for joining us on the show. Everyone. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you all in next week's episode. Have a great week. Everyone.
JD Reese 39:21
That was fun.
