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Listen "40 Million Closed In His First 18 Months! • Tony Clark"
Episode Synopsis
Tony Clark the Co-Founder of RealtyFlow shares his experience first in the investment area and how he transitioned into real estate during Covid. Tony discusses his journey in real estate and how getting a mentor helped him a lot by focusing on finding a niche. Next, Tony explains the importance of a niche and explains the cases when he thinks a niche doesn’t work. Last, Tony emphasizes the importance of keeping in touch with people in the business of real estate.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Tony Clark can be reached at (615) 977-5495 and [email protected].
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00How does somebody generate 40 million in sales in their first 18 months as a realtor? We're gonna find out today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we're going to be speaking with top producer Tony Clark. Before we get to Tony. Just a couple of quick reminders guys, we are publishing now, every single weekday, a short form video clip from one of our episodes that has some sort of nugget of wisdom that you can take action on immediately. So we want to keep feeding you with these great, you know pieces of content from our guests. So the best way to find these is just to find us on social media. We are literally on all the platforms, not MySpace and not Google Plus, obviously, but on all the others, you know, Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube, probably a few others. But anyway, just do a search for keeping it real podcast on whatever social app you're using. And please hit that subscribe button and let us know what you think of the short form videos. And please also tell a friend about the show. Think of one other agent that needs to hear what you're you're about to hear from Tony and send them a link to either our website keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up a podcast app and look for keeping it real hit that subscribe button. We appreciate you. Alright guys, let's get to the main event my conversation with Tony Clark.
Today on the show, we have Tony cluck from Beverly and company in California and also with House haven in Tennessee. Let me tell you more about Tony. Tony is a real estate agent with a background in both real estate sales and investment real estate strategy. Now this is incredible, everyone, so please please check this out with in his first 18 months as a realtor. He closed over 40 million in volume. He also realized the importance that good systems make in a real estate agents business and has since opened up his own consulting firm dedicated to helping agents improve their systems and to scale their businesses and he even has his own CRM that is dropping probably by the time this episode is released, it'll be available. So I want you to check out Tony in a couple of different places. First, I want you to follow him on Instagram. So follow him at Tony Clarke dot real estate. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. And I also really want you to check out his new CRM and we're gonna find out more about that today as well, which is Realty flow.io. Again, Realty flow.io. link to that will also be in the show notes. Tony, welcome to the show.
Tony Clark 4:13Hey, thanks for having me. I'm I'm excited to be here.
D.J. Paris 4:17I'm excited to talk to you. I rarely it's funny I've been doing the show for for five or six years now. And I always feel like I've seen and heard it all from from our guests who are all superstars in the industry. But rarely do I get to talk to a lawyer like a rookie superstar. And not only did you close 40 million in your first year and a half, which is insane, obviously, but you also are like practice practicing now in two states in two markets, which is even more incredible. I know you're mostly in California, but you also practice in Tennessee Nashville as well. So let's get let's start at the very, very beginning, which is not much that long ago. But I love to know how you got into real estate and why
Tony Clark 4:59you I, I jumped into real estate actually, from the investment space, I worked at a private equity firm that did residential real estate just kind of wanted to learn the ropes, I was all the way back when I was a kid, I was that kid trying to sell baseball cards to his friends or try to flip golf clubs in high school, you know, just the stereotypical business minded kid. And I always say houses are just bigger toys than, you know, the stuff that we we sell growing up. But um, but yeah, so started at a private equity fund, kind of learning the investment side, they were based out of California, but bought in different markets in the southeast. And so I was essentially acting as a real estate agent for them, but just sourcing properties for them and running deal analysis and really got a lot of good experience there. But realized pretty quickly that basically what I was doing for them was being a real estate agent who could only have one client. And so I wound up transitioning from the fund to getting my license, and actually wound up moving to Tennessee with my wife after I got licensed so that we could start, you know, investing ourselves and build, build a clientele there, which was where I was really focused on when I was at the private equity fund.
D.J. Paris 6:19Wow. So and, and were there lessons that you learned working in PE private equity that you were able to bring into the individual sort of realtor practice?
Tony Clark 6:28Absolutely, I think the big thing that I learned from private equity is whether you're buying one house or 1000, it all comes down to the numbers, at least when you're looking at investment, real estate, that when you're looking at a deal or looking at a market, it's all about understanding one the risks that come with investing in that market, and then also what your numbers look like, or at the end of the day, if it's a if it works on the spreadsheet and you've accounted for the risks, you know that you have a much better chance of that property being a good asset or a goodbye. And that translates to then working with individuals where it again, doesn't matter if it's a big fund or someone looking to buy their first property, you can just get down to the numbers and the end of the day, it is a big financial decision that they're making.
D.J. Paris 7:20Since I so rarely get to talk to anyone with your background. I just have a quick question. And again, I know you're still more to this industry. But you have this unique perspective. Was it any surprise to you to see the eye buyer start to the eye buyers start to fade away? You're talking about numbers, right? It's all about the numbers and we're seeing companies that really should have those numbers locked in pretty well. And I'm not here to disparage companies like Zillow. Like I love Zillow. Even they got it wrong, right? So it's, it's interesting. What do you think's going on in the eye buyer side?
Tony Clark 7:53Yeah, it's one of those things that so the model that the eye buyers use is so tough to do at scale, it was really the the PE fund that I was at, was trying to do one to four unit residential properties at scale. And they were a small fund with, you know, a few 100 houses and I couldn't imagine a fund bigger than them doing what they're doing. You have to manage so many people and so many contractors and keep so many things straight that even if you have multiple levels of management, it's just tough to get that right. And especially when you're buying with with such tight margins, which is what we would see them doing I know I brought a couple of properties to those ibuyers didn't do a lot of work with them. But you know, even the prices that they had to pay for the properties in order to win them and then try to sell them for higher. It's just
D.J. Paris 8:45like we're gonna look at those and say like, they're overpaying. This is crazy. Oh, yeah.
Tony Clark 8:50Oh, they were I was like, either they're much smarter than me because they know something or something. Something isn't adding up. And I'm not gonna say I'm smart enough to go pay more than they are for this house. So I'm just gonna let it be.
D.J. Paris 9:03As it turns out, they were wrong. So yeah, but so but let's so our That's it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get us off track. But I got Tony. He knows the private equity world. I was like what's going on with all these I buyers. But let's let's get to the real meat of this because the really impressive thing you did in the first 18 months is close 40 million in production.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Tony Clark can be reached at (615) 977-5495 and [email protected].
This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00How does somebody generate 40 million in sales in their first 18 months as a realtor? We're gonna find out today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we're going to be speaking with top producer Tony Clark. Before we get to Tony. Just a couple of quick reminders guys, we are publishing now, every single weekday, a short form video clip from one of our episodes that has some sort of nugget of wisdom that you can take action on immediately. So we want to keep feeding you with these great, you know pieces of content from our guests. So the best way to find these is just to find us on social media. We are literally on all the platforms, not MySpace and not Google Plus, obviously, but on all the others, you know, Facebook, Instagram, tik, Tok, LinkedIn, YouTube, probably a few others. But anyway, just do a search for keeping it real podcast on whatever social app you're using. And please hit that subscribe button and let us know what you think of the short form videos. And please also tell a friend about the show. Think of one other agent that needs to hear what you're you're about to hear from Tony and send them a link to either our website keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up a podcast app and look for keeping it real hit that subscribe button. We appreciate you. Alright guys, let's get to the main event my conversation with Tony Clark.
Today on the show, we have Tony cluck from Beverly and company in California and also with House haven in Tennessee. Let me tell you more about Tony. Tony is a real estate agent with a background in both real estate sales and investment real estate strategy. Now this is incredible, everyone, so please please check this out with in his first 18 months as a realtor. He closed over 40 million in volume. He also realized the importance that good systems make in a real estate agents business and has since opened up his own consulting firm dedicated to helping agents improve their systems and to scale their businesses and he even has his own CRM that is dropping probably by the time this episode is released, it'll be available. So I want you to check out Tony in a couple of different places. First, I want you to follow him on Instagram. So follow him at Tony Clarke dot real estate. We'll have a link to that in the show notes. And I also really want you to check out his new CRM and we're gonna find out more about that today as well, which is Realty flow.io. Again, Realty flow.io. link to that will also be in the show notes. Tony, welcome to the show.
Tony Clark 4:13Hey, thanks for having me. I'm I'm excited to be here.
D.J. Paris 4:17I'm excited to talk to you. I rarely it's funny I've been doing the show for for five or six years now. And I always feel like I've seen and heard it all from from our guests who are all superstars in the industry. But rarely do I get to talk to a lawyer like a rookie superstar. And not only did you close 40 million in your first year and a half, which is insane, obviously, but you also are like practice practicing now in two states in two markets, which is even more incredible. I know you're mostly in California, but you also practice in Tennessee Nashville as well. So let's get let's start at the very, very beginning, which is not much that long ago. But I love to know how you got into real estate and why
Tony Clark 4:59you I, I jumped into real estate actually, from the investment space, I worked at a private equity firm that did residential real estate just kind of wanted to learn the ropes, I was all the way back when I was a kid, I was that kid trying to sell baseball cards to his friends or try to flip golf clubs in high school, you know, just the stereotypical business minded kid. And I always say houses are just bigger toys than, you know, the stuff that we we sell growing up. But um, but yeah, so started at a private equity fund, kind of learning the investment side, they were based out of California, but bought in different markets in the southeast. And so I was essentially acting as a real estate agent for them, but just sourcing properties for them and running deal analysis and really got a lot of good experience there. But realized pretty quickly that basically what I was doing for them was being a real estate agent who could only have one client. And so I wound up transitioning from the fund to getting my license, and actually wound up moving to Tennessee with my wife after I got licensed so that we could start, you know, investing ourselves and build, build a clientele there, which was where I was really focused on when I was at the private equity fund.
D.J. Paris 6:19Wow. So and, and were there lessons that you learned working in PE private equity that you were able to bring into the individual sort of realtor practice?
Tony Clark 6:28Absolutely, I think the big thing that I learned from private equity is whether you're buying one house or 1000, it all comes down to the numbers, at least when you're looking at investment, real estate, that when you're looking at a deal or looking at a market, it's all about understanding one the risks that come with investing in that market, and then also what your numbers look like, or at the end of the day, if it's a if it works on the spreadsheet and you've accounted for the risks, you know that you have a much better chance of that property being a good asset or a goodbye. And that translates to then working with individuals where it again, doesn't matter if it's a big fund or someone looking to buy their first property, you can just get down to the numbers and the end of the day, it is a big financial decision that they're making.
D.J. Paris 7:20Since I so rarely get to talk to anyone with your background. I just have a quick question. And again, I know you're still more to this industry. But you have this unique perspective. Was it any surprise to you to see the eye buyer start to the eye buyers start to fade away? You're talking about numbers, right? It's all about the numbers and we're seeing companies that really should have those numbers locked in pretty well. And I'm not here to disparage companies like Zillow. Like I love Zillow. Even they got it wrong, right? So it's, it's interesting. What do you think's going on in the eye buyer side?
Tony Clark 7:53Yeah, it's one of those things that so the model that the eye buyers use is so tough to do at scale, it was really the the PE fund that I was at, was trying to do one to four unit residential properties at scale. And they were a small fund with, you know, a few 100 houses and I couldn't imagine a fund bigger than them doing what they're doing. You have to manage so many people and so many contractors and keep so many things straight that even if you have multiple levels of management, it's just tough to get that right. And especially when you're buying with with such tight margins, which is what we would see them doing I know I brought a couple of properties to those ibuyers didn't do a lot of work with them. But you know, even the prices that they had to pay for the properties in order to win them and then try to sell them for higher. It's just
D.J. Paris 8:45like we're gonna look at those and say like, they're overpaying. This is crazy. Oh, yeah.
Tony Clark 8:50Oh, they were I was like, either they're much smarter than me because they know something or something. Something isn't adding up. And I'm not gonna say I'm smart enough to go pay more than they are for this house. So I'm just gonna let it be.
D.J. Paris 9:03As it turns out, they were wrong. So yeah, but so but let's so our That's it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get us off track. But I got Tony. He knows the private equity world. I was like what's going on with all these I buyers. But let's let's get to the real meat of this because the really impressive thing you did in the first 18 months is close 40 million in production.
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