Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is not a drill.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: This is the age of mine podcast.
Welcome back to the Asian Mind podcast, everyone. I'm so excited today because we are. We've been away for a while.
Season two kind of ended a while back and now we are refreshing it. We're coming out with new season three. I'm excited to introduce Frank Warren as a co host for this season.
We both, we've committed to 10 episodes. So I've said it out there, I've put it on record that we're bringing 10 episodes for season three.
It's going to be great stuff. We had a lot of stuff. We're going to share a lot of experience. We're going to talk about a lot. Frank is a, is a wealth of knowledge and he's got a lot of experience to share, but he's a coach and actually, Frank, welcome. As a co host, man, I'm so excited that, that we're in this together for season three. I get tell. Tell the audience who you are and what brings you here.
[00:00:57] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, tj, first off, thank you. I'm excited to do this.
I'll be honest with you. This is my first time to participate in a podcast. This is a new experience. I have done videos, I have presented through to a group of people. I've actually taught college classes before, but I've never done a podcast. So this is a new experience for me and I'm excited to have this opportunity. My name is Frank Warren and I live in Carterville, Tennessee. It's a suburb of Memphis. I've been in real estate sales for about 11 years now.
I just switched brokerages in January of 2026. I'm with Real broker. I do have my broker's license in the state of Tennessee and that's kind of me at a high level from a professional standpoint.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Nice.
Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that you are a teacher professor, because that's, that's huge. And some, some folks that are listening out there have heard you present and have heard you talk and it's, you just have a great way of, of conveying information that's, that's easy for simple minds like me to understand.
So I love it. I'm so excited that you're a part of this and it's great because today is going to be really about, like new beginnings or like a, like a fresh start.
We're really speaking to the new agent, the stuck agent. It's been a little bit of a rough year. It's been a weird year with, you know, when Interest rates went up and we went from like the wild west of the 2.5 interest rates to, you know, where we are now.
And it's just, I don't know, listings are sitting a little bit longer in most markets. So there's a lot of agents that I speak to out there that are, they're just like, I don't know, I do not know what's going on. Like, my listing is sitting.
Buyers aren't really making decisions like they used to. It's like I just feel stuck. So. And if you're new coming in, the good news is that if you're a new agent right now, if you learn how to, how to be an agent in this market, I think you will be pretty set up, you know, for any, just about any market going forward. So I mean, what, what are your thoughts on that? What do you, what do you think?
You know, what do you think about the market right now? And then once, once you kind of talk about that. Well, I want to dig into like what when you first started and, or a moment when you felt stuck.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: That's somewhat of a loaded question. I am an economics geek. I really enjoy looking at data at the macro level and at the micro level.
My approach in terms of my business is very data driven. So if we start going down this trail, tj I'm afraid this podcast could end up being two hours but just at a high level. I think, I think the market has been impacted by interest rates rising this year. And I emphasize this year. If you remember going back to say February, rates were trending in the right direction. We saw the 10 year treasury dipping below 4% and there's approximately about a 200 basis point or 2% adjustment to the 10 year that would give us about where the 30 year mortgages are trading.
So we were starting to see mortgage rates, long term mortgage rates going below 6%.
I was very optimistic about what the spring was going to look like and how the summer selling season would function in my market. Here in Memphis, we follow the school academic calendar. So the best months for us pretty much start mid April through first part of August and school starts back next week in our market. So we would expect a seasonal pullback right about this time of the year.
Well, unfortunately that did not happen.
We, we had a conflict arise in the Middle east and there was a significant increase in the cost of oil, which pretty much means everything is going to become more expensive. And so we've seen inflation increase which in turn has caused interest rates to rise.
So back in February we were looking at possibly going below 6%.
We're trending up closer to 7%, 30 year fixed mortgage. And I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.
So that has slowed our market down quite a bit. We're seeing a lot fewer showings on our listings. We're seeing fewer offers.
It's a challenging market. I want to be very straight and upfront. It is a very difficult market.
And that kind of leads into what I hoping we're going to talk about today is the motivation for why we're in the industry, why we are working in real estate. Because I feel like if we don't have a clear understanding of what we're trying to accomplish, these seasonal adjustments, these difficult times we're going through, they can sidetrack us quite easily.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah. 100. And we, we all know the agents that are, that don't seem to be affected or at least that's a, you know, our perception is there's agents in our own markets. I'm in the Atlanta area. I think if anybody's listening to the show before, they know that. But yeah, there's agents in my market that seem like they're just still killing it out there. And I think that that's. We see that, we see the success sometimes. Like it almost like, like it happened overnight.
But, and I'm not the first person to talk about this concept, but it's, we don't see the, the years of, you know, putting in the work, the consistency to get to that point. We're just looking at the, at the other end of it and seeing the success of it.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: So.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: And that can be discouraging for a new or stuck agent where you're like, how come, how come this person can get all these, get all this business? And I'm like, how is this, how is this happening that I, I can't even like get somebody to come look at my listing.
Yeah.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: And that makes for some very awkward phone calls when you have to talk to your seller clients and try to explain to them, well, we had no showings in the last two weeks.
What does that mean?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And a little plug for the, for the rest of this season, we're going to talk about all of that. We're going to talk about how to have those conversations, what to say, what, what information to give them, you know, without killing with data and, you know, killing with like market market trend data graphs and things like that. I've tried that route. It hasn't really worked.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: So we're going to Go into all that like how to, how to present the information to your, to your clients, your sellers, your buyers and really set, set your clients up for, for success or set you up for success to be able to serve your clients at a, at a super high level. So. But does start with motivation if you're not in it for the right reasons, I hate to say it, but you're never, never going to be successful.
So let's start there and what, what motivates you? Why did you. We'll go back, you know, for a few minutes here. Why did you get into the, into the real estate business? And like what keeps you getting up in the morning and going. Getting it.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Very good.
I made the switch to real estate sales in 2014.
So I've been in this business a little more than 11 years at this point. It is a second career for me. My first 15 years were spent working in finance. I worked for an investment company. I did consulting work for banks and credit unions across the country.
It was a very rewarding job.
But I wanted to make a switch right about that time for a variety of reasons.
Going back even further in my past. I started off in real estate as an investor. I bought my first rental property in 2005 and I've owned rental properties since then. I don't know if you can tell, but I've got a lot of gray hair up here and part of that is been driven by some of the issues, some of the challenges of owning rental properties. But it's been a wonderful source of generating wealth for myself and my family, so I would not trade that. But I got my start in real Estate in 2005 when I working with investment properties while I was also working in finance.
And then right around 2013, I switched departments at the company I used to work for.
I had been a senior level person in my previous department and then switched departments and I knew right away it was not the right fit. And so I went through this process of trying to figure out how to make it work. And then it became clear after about six months that it was not going to be an improvement for me.
So I began this process of going through and evaluating what I had done, where my strengths lie, what challenges I had in my career up to that point, and identified four different career paths I could pursue going forward.
One of them which really resonated with me is real estate. I had experience as an investor. I liked the idea of being able to manage my own schedule, work on projects that I felt were important or valuable or rewarding. To me, my income would not be as capped as it was working in the corporate environment.
So I was really excited about the possibilities of working for myself.
There was another aspect to this, and I don't know, TJ if you've worked in the corporate world, but you're pretty much constrained in terms of how you use your time.
And what I found is there was always this expanding list of things I wanted to do in my life that I'd had this idea that someday I'm going to get to this, well, you know, we're not promised tomorrow, that someday might never come. And then I recognize that what if I spent all my good years working in a corporate environment and then by the time I had control of my schedule, I didn't have the health or the ability to go out and do a lot of these things. My wife and I were really active. We enjoy hiking, we enjoy traveling to see different parts of the country.
And so the idea is, well, if we don't want to count on that being available to us in the future because we don't know if it's going to be there, what if we could transition to trying to do some of these things? Now that aligned perfectly with going into real estate. Because we are self employed, we can manage our own schedule as we see fit.
So in 2014, I left the corporate world. I think September 30th was my last day and August 1st, excuse me, October 1st was my first day as a full time real estate professional.
And it was a challenge.
I'm someone who likes working within specified boundaries, knowing what I'm doing, so in essence, coloring within the line, so to speak. And all of a sudden I've got this blank canvas and I had no idea what to do and how to go about creating a successful real estate career.
But as I mentioned earlier, I had that experience as an investor and my intention originally was to go into full time investing, get my license and maybe do some sales on the side.
My second set of clients were relocating to Cardierville, my hometown from California, for a job.
And they relied on me exclusively to provide guidance and counsel to them, to help them navigate through the complexities of moving to a community they had no contact, no information about beyond that's where his employer was.
And it was so rewarding. TJ I got so much out of that experience, it kind of changed my perspective. Instead of becoming a full time investor with some sales on the side, I decided to pour into becoming a full time real estate sales agent and continue to hold my investment properties on the side.
And so I started that in 2015, and it has been a fantastic experience.
On the personal level, I've been able to do so many things over the last decade that I would not have been able to do if I was still working in the corporate world.
I ran for elected office and had the good fortune of being successful in that endeavor. So I served for four years on our school board, and that took up a lot of time, something that would not have been possible if I had continued to work in the financial realm.
As I mentioned earlier, we love traveling. My wife and I started taking our sons out west to go visit the national parks in 2021.
And I've been blessed to say I've been able to go back there every year since then. It's just an incredible experience.
But I will also say that doing what we do is so rewarding to me. On a personal level, I often share that. The most impactful moment, the most joyful moment for me as a real estate agent is a time when I get to call that set of new home buyers and let them know that the house that they want, that their dreams for their future are based upon, they're going to get. And I've actually had people squeal and yell out when I have that call, and it's so rewarding. And I'll let you in on a little secret. There are times where I'll get my wife, Sue Ellen, she gets to listen to those calls on the side. I make sure she doesn't say anything because I don't want my clients to know that she's listening to them. But it's good for her also to hear kind of some of the rewarding things about our career.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's, it's great. And listen to you talk.
I'm, I'm really reminded of just how flexible our business is.
And there's going to be some folks out that are listening out there. They may have turned it off already, like, oh, that's a. You have to hustle, hustle, drive, drive. You got to dial, dial, knock on doors. Like, hustle, hustle, hustle.
I know that that's not your style. That is not my style. So if you, if you're out there listening in the audience and like, you're expecting us to, to really drive home the, the, you got to wake up at 4:00am and, and hit the phones by 8 and, and make calls all day long. Like, we're not the podcast for you, for sure.
We, we believe in the philosophy of you.
Like if you're, if your goal is to have two deals a year, then do everything you can to get those two deals a year and have time for your family and be flexible. If your goal is a hundred hundred deals a year, that's awesome too.
How you operate, the decisions you make are going to be a little bit different, but they're both very much okay. And they're both, as long as they align with your goals and where you want to see your career going, then that's the most important thing. So, so that's a, so kind of a good, a good segue into the, into future episodes here like that we're not gonna, we're not gonna tell you like what you have to do. We're just gonna give you the, the tools to, for you to apply at whatever frequency you want to apply them. So we might give you, you know, a really good buyer's consultation.
And it, we're not going to say like you need to have eight buyers consultations a week in order to close X amount of deals. And like that's just, that's not our style. So what, that's a long way of saying I love that, I love the, the conscious choices that you're making and you're, you're, I'm not, I don't want to take away like you're definitely doing a lot of business. So you're, you're probably more successful than most, most agents out there. But you found a way to balance your schedule to have time. Number one, what I heard was time with the family and time to, to give back to your community.
And those are the important things to you. So I think whatever, if you're listening out there, just don't lose, don't lose sight of the most important things in your life and make sure that those are on your vision board and you're, you're in your goals. When you're writing your goals down, if you don't have time for, to nurture your family relationships, that's not in your, in your written down goals, then it's not, it's not going to be nurtured. So I think those goals are important to be right alongside your, you know, I want to close 12 deals in the next six months. Yeah, the next goal should be I'm going to have a date night with my wife once a week or every other week or whatever it is. Like those, those have to align. So I, I, I love that. That's why I think we get along so great is because we, I think we believe that we can have it both with. With intentionality and starting with having a really good foundation of an understanding where you want to be rather than where you think you should be because of how you perceive other agents in the. In the market.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah, tj, you raised a couple of good points there I'd like to just expand upon.
Let's say we are talking to an agent who has built a very successful career.
Door knocking or cold calling or. That's not how I built my career. And I suspect that's not tj. How TJ built his career.
What I hope you will do is you'll continue to join us this season and you keep doing what you're doing. We don't want you to stop what is successful and what's working for you. But my hope is that we're going to present some different ideas, some different things for you to consider, and maybe it would give you another tool for your toolbox. So if you hit a point where your cold calling is not as successful, maybe some of the things that we're going to discuss the. This season will give you another avenue for potentially creating the business that you desire. The other thing I'd like to say and emphasize what TJ said is spending time with your family.
One of the things I really enjoy and appreciate about real estate is it allows me to lead the life, the highest and best version of myself.
And what I mean by that is I get to do things that are of interest to me and I have a passion for because of my career and the business I've created where maybe I would not be able to do that in my previous career working in the corporate side. So as you're listening to this, I hope some of you will get inspired to think in terms of what is your highest and best lifestyle look like highest and best version of yourself. And then how do you go about creating that? How do you go about from where you are now to. To becoming the person you desire to be? And that's the thing I love most about real estate is it really gives me so many opportunities for growth and so many ways to manage my time and my energy level, my focus.
So it's. It's a fantastic thing. And so that's what I wanted to kind of emphasize there.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah, most definitely.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: And I can.
I have a similar. Similar reason to getting into real estate. I was in.
I guess it was corporate. Corporate restaurant business. I was. Worked for a big restaurant groups. I'd worked in New York City for. For groups and then in Atlanta once we moved down here. And it was a grind. Anybody that's worked in the restaurant business in any capacity knows that it's a. It's a grind. And I wasn't seeing my kids. I wasn't seeing my family.
But during. Towards the end of that, we had.
You know, my wife gave birth to our second daughter, and I was missing a lot of stuff, so I completely left that.
My intention was to get into investing, and that's. That's why I got my real estate license, was to just get immersed into the real estate industry and then focus on investing and go from there, which I. I did. I was. I was able to. I flipped one house a few years back.
That's. That's a story for another. Another episode. But it was such a cool experience.
I learned so much doing that.
But in the process of. Kind of similar to your story, where I started helping other people find their dream homes or find their first home or move up, move down.
I've done a lot of probate since then. And like, helping a family that is kind of thrust into this position of that, like, there's. There's property and, you know, an unexpected loss and all that stuff. So there's. There's so much rewarding and gratifying moments in. In this business.
We could sit here and list them about probably all day long, but there's nothing better than really knowing that you made a difference in somebody's life. And one of their. The biggest financial decisions that they're making, whether they're buying or selling or selling a loved one's home or whatever it is.
So that's. That's really. It just makes me feel real good that I.
That I can, you know, be a part of that. And this is a little. Kind of an anecdotal side note, but in Georgia there, when you're at the closing table, there often needs to be an unofficial witness to some of the documents. And I just love being the unofficial witness, you know, during the transaction, because it's. It's a. I always joke around like, no, I'm. I'm a part of your. I'm a party. The purchase of your house forever now. It's on record. So. But it's just a little way of, like, participating in helping someone else in such a big decision in their life is so rewarding. And I think we're kind of preaching to the choir out there. Any agent that's listening that's had one closing, I think can completely relate to that. But it's. You said something before we wrap it Up.
I just want to kind of note on a couple of things you mentioned you're leaving, leaving your career to, to get into this business. And one of the things was, and I'm kind of paraphrasing what you said, but there's no income cap, there's no limit on what you can make.
And I often.
That was a struggle when I was working in man, I was in management in the restaurant business. And you'd get the, the 3 to 5% increase every year, which ended up not being all that much, not making that big of a difference.
And I get to wake up every morning and look at the person in the mirror and know that what I do and the decisions I make are going to directly relate to how much money I bring in the door. So it's, it's like I'm in full control of that. I think sometimes agents lose that, lose that sight like you are in full control of your income. And don't, don't release that power to, to anybody else and release that power to potential clients, prospects, you know, and we can, we'll dig more into kind of what I talk about when I say don't release your power to them.
But you focus on who you are and what your goals are, and then your clients, your tribes, will find you. And it's kind of counterintuitive. Like you want to, you want to present yourself in the best, most attractive way to clients, to, to people, the prospective clients.
But if you do, if you just know who you are and know what you want out of life, others that want the same things and have the same kind of mentality, want will naturally gravitate towards you.
So I think that's, if, if nothing else from this episode, I think it's, you know, run your.
I also like to, to distance running in a. I've run a couple marathons. Not trying to brag on myself, but we have a saying in the running community is like, run your own race. So whether you want to walk half the race, if you're doing a 10k, or have marathon, whatever the distance is, if you want to walk the whole thing, that's your race.
So figure out what it means to run your own race, run your own business. And careful of shiny objects. We're going to talk about those and just focus on, have a, have a plan that's congruent to you. As one of the mentors, Neil Mathwig, always says, have a plan that's congruent to you. Stay consistent with it, and then that's where you Find success.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: TJ you said something that really struck a thought with me.
You get a lot of control over this business.
And one of the ways you control is pretty much the people you work with. You're going to attract folks like yourself or people that you want to work with.
And early on I was working with anybody I could. But what I've realized over time is that there's certain types of people and have to kind of be a little careful how I phrase this, but there are certain people that I identify with and I connect with at a deeper level.
So therefore, as I'm working with them, there's more of an appreciation of my efforts and what I'm contributing to them. And that in turn helps me feel more appreciated, more valued. And that is so rewarding. And there's nothing more draining than working with somebody who is, you're just not connecting with and your style of operating doesn't fit, excuse me, fit with their style of how they want to go about and transact business. There's just round hole, square peg type of thing. And so that's one of the beauties of working in real estate is you just have so much control on how you create this business.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: You really do. Yeah. And I, and this is going to speak to like, no matter how long you're in this business, you still know, fall into, fall into, make mistakes or whatever. I don't know if we call it exact mistakes, but I'll tell you a little story real quick. I had a, a listing in my neighborhood.
I'd been working with this person for four years, showing them houses, giving them valuations on their home, their property. They finally went to list and it, the market was kind of going a little bit weird and like, showings kind of stopped. Houses started at the moment when things really sitting on the market.
So we were talking about price drops and, and just unwilling to, to price, to make price adjustments appropriately. More like blaming, blaming me, you know, for not selling the home when I, I definitely, you could say that maybe I didn't explain it well enough to her, but it was, I've known this person for four years and, or longer. And we really went through that.
The, There's a lot of comps, there's a lot of comparative houses that have sold and a lot of price drops in the area.
So long story short, wasn't, wasn't listening to my advice.
Was not, did not value me as a professional and didn't really try. At the end of the day, she wasn't trusting me.
I don't Think it was just me. I think it's others as well. But long story short, the listing expired and she ended up listing with another agent. Now, this is my neighbor. It's in my neighborhood. So you can imagine, you know, how
[00:27:32] Speaker A: you gotta drive by the other agents sign in the yard every day, every
[00:27:36] Speaker B: time, every morning I go for a run. I'm. I'm going by a. Another brokerage, another agent sign in a yard that I had the listing for.
But it doesn't affect me. And here's what I wanted to say. I have. I've had neighbors that know me and I, you know, we hang out and our families hang out.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: What.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: What happened. What happened to the house? And my answer is I'm. I'm not for everybody. Like, I just. I'm just not for everybody. So. Yep. And that's okay. It is what it is. I think that like accepting that I don't back, you know, a couple years ago, I would have been like, beside myself with embarrassment and.
And what does the neighborhood think of me? Like, I just. I let this listing explain expire and now there's another agent everybody. I'm gonna. I'm gonna, you know, go out of business in shame. And yeah. You know, although all those things of like limited belief and fear.
But I think that the journey of growth I've had through the real estate business, which is if you want to go through a journey of growth, like get your real estate license and start. Absolutely start making that your only. Your only source of income. You'll. You'll grow real fast and continually for a very long time. But. So I'm in that place now where it's like, I'm just not for everybody. You know, we. We gave it a shot.
It's. It just didn't work out. I'm not the person that should have taken that listing. And that's the. At the end of the day, like, that's probably where I should. Should go back. And we were talking about pricing the home and all the little red flags that come up that I know better. But it was my neighbor and I wanted to help and. And he know, be. Help her get to the next. Next phase in life.
It didn't work out because I'm not. I'm. No, I don't jive with. Our personalities did not.
Did not mesh well. And it just. We kind of were butted heads.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: On. On certain things that we both had beliefs and. And you know, one of us had more information than the other, but we still. That's a little Dig I shouldn't be petting.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: That sounds like it's going to be a great topic for a future episode. When to say no to the opportunity?
[00:29:40] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
Well, we'll be doing this almost a half hour right now. Do you have any last, last minute or last word, final words before we, we sign off?
[00:29:50] Speaker A: This was a lot of fun. As I mentioned at the start, this is the first time I've done a podcast. I think it went fairly well. I enjoyed it. So that's a, that's a thumbs up for me. I'm looking forward to spending time with you and hopefully our audience over the coming weeks and months. And is there a way for somebody to get in touch with us if they had a question or they want to maybe submit an idea for a topic in the future?
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say just the Facebook page. So we have.
Well, it's kind of convoluted and I know that we're, you and I are both of the philosophy done is better than perfect. So I would say the best way right now is go to the Facebook page, the Agent Mind podcast, and, and send a message. It'll come to me. If you want to talk to Frank, we can get you in contact with Frank, but we are setting up an easier, more streamlined way to do it. You can email me at TJ McGraw@the agent mind.com.
yeah, so those two ways for now are the, are the best, quick, quickest ways to do it.
You know, we're looking into getting the website set up and all that, but I mean, honestly, we're just, we're here. Our passion is just sharing our experience, sharing our knowledge and understanding that, you know, we have both been stuck, we've both been new agents, we both been stuck agents. So we just kind of want to pass that, that, that, that, that light along saying, like, it's okay and just keep coming back and listening and, you know, hopefully you'll find some nuggets that will, that will help pull you out of, out of anything you might be struggling with. Excellent.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Well, thanks again, tj. I look forward to the rest of our season together. And thank you for joining us today and we'll catch you next time.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks everybody.
Sa.
