Epiosde 405 - Bill Risser Goes Solo and Covers the Six-Year Curse

You're listening to the Real Estate Sessions and I'm your host, Bill risser.

With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell.

It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my ninth year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast.

And now I hope you enjoy the next journey.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to episode 405 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast.

As always, thank you so much for tuning in.

Thank you so much for telling a friend.

Today my guest is me.

Yeah, me.

It's another monologue version.

No interview.

As I continue my holiday break, as I usually do, when I get to this time of the year, it's easier for me to kind of just chill out a little bit, get refreshed and recharged for the new year.

We have a couple of great guests coming up on January 7th and January 14th, but in the meantime, I'm doing my rewind sessions and today I thought I would just kind of, kind of update people on a little bit of what's going on with a couple of things that you're generally aware of.

I want to start with why I feel like there's some sort of cycle of six years that's I'm involved in.

And let me, let me explain this.

Back in 2006, I was bitten by a bunch of mosquitoes in my backyard one August evening.

And a few days later found out, well, a few days later, I got really sick.

I found out a month later that it was actually West Nile fever.

I'm one of the few percentage points of people to get it.

And it was not fun.

Two weeks of just really being laid up felt like a truck hitch just wasn't fun.

That was 2006.

Well, six years later, hence the six year cycle, we get to my discovery through a colonoscopy at the age of 51 that I had colon cancer.

So 2012 follows with another tougher regimen, but we were able to catch it early and go through 12 treatments.

You all know that story.

I've, I've talked about it quite a bit here on the podcast.

And then six years later, 2018, we're waiting.

Cindy and I are waiting.

What's going to happen in 2018?

And we escaped it.

We thought, okay, we broke it.

Nothing's there.

We're good.

There really isn't a six year kind of curse.

We're all good.

But now we're in 2024.

And I'm staring at the stitches from where a malignant melanoma was excised from my wrist.

And unfortunately they caught all of it.

So skin cancer, not one, not two, but three different areas on my body.

So they took the first one out.

I told you that was a melanoma.

Makes sense.

And it'll get the stitches out next week.

It's going to be good.

They got all the margins.

Everything's out.

The next one's on my chin.

That is a squamous cell.

And that is going to be taken care of through a Mohs surgery.

Mohs.

Let me explain the Mohs surgery to you quickly.

The doct doctor will start by scraping thin slices of the problem area.

And then he'll take the last slice, maybe just four or five, I don't know how many.

We'll say four or five.

He'll take the last slice, go on to his lab, he'll stain it and put it in a machine that can tell him and show him if there are any cancer cells in that slice of tissue.

If he finds them, he comes back and he slices some more.

And this slice and check, slice and check continues until there are no more cancer cells.

Then he comes back and sees what he's done and has to figure out a way.

And I'm sure this is all part of the process.

Then he has to kind of stitch it up.

And this is on my chin.

So they try to be really good about not scarring up people's faces.

Hence the Mohs surgery is really common on ears and the face and all that good stuff.

So that's going to happen Thursday.

And then Friday I go to see a different doctor.

Same clinic, but a different doctor.

And we have a basal cell.

It's cancer on my left arm.

And from there they're pretty much the way they put it was, this is easy.

It's a scrape and burn.

I'm like, okay, cool.

Scrape and burn.

I get it.

That'll be fun in some weird way compared to the other two surgeries.

And so this is all happening here at the very end of 2024.

Of course, it's 2024, a six year cycle, so I don't know what's in store for 2030.

I'm hoping it's another kind of like 2018 where we skip through unscathed.

But we'll see.

So that's the first thing I wanted to chat with you about.

The second thing is just maybe a little update on my friend John.

I've talked about John before.

I'VE interview John, who's a guest on the podcast.

So we all know what he's doing.

He has the Die Happy tour and I'm compiling notes for a book one day.

And John's definitely going down the path.

He's not traveling as much anymore.

He's still around.

He's still doing some great things, but he's feeling different sorts of pains.

Sometimes it's tougher to walk.

The doctor says that's the natural progression of this disease.

Having cancer kind of throughout the body.

But he's fighting hard, being strong, doing great stuff.

He's up.

I don't know how many songs he has now with his sister Lisa on YouTube.

I'll make sure I put the link in the show notes and I'll also he.

His son Paul is coming out about once a month just to hang with dad for a few days.

And he.

They did a great duet, an instrumental version of Misty.

Paul is incredibly talented when it comes to music.

To music.

He plays guitar, bass, drums, a banjo that John bought him one Christmas.

I think John also bought him a trombone.

He learned how to play that, so he's very talented.

And when he flies out here, instead of lugging his guitars, he just rents one.

So he rented an acoustic guitar and they're doing this great version of Misty.

So it's like I said, that's.

That's on the website.

You can just go see it or you can go to their John's YouTube channel and check it out there.

I really work hard to reach out to John once a week.

Generally.

It's my Saturday.

My longest walk of the week is on a Saturday.

And it's a great time to throw in the earbuds and just have a chat with John.

And time flies and all of a sudden I'm back home.

So I'll keep you in the loop as things develop.

There's just.

Just a wonderful guy.

Go follow his YouTube channel.

The other, the other thing that I wanted to talk about is just what's happening with me at Fidelity National Financial.

I am loving my role there on the sales enablement team.

There are five of us and our role is to help the sales teams around the country communicate better with Realtors.

Right?

Really understand products that we have that, that they can use or purchase depending on the type of product it is.

And really it's.

It boils down to the same things that Realtors need to do.

Realtors need to ask questions of their clients, right?

You got to find out what they need.

You're not going to tell Them, this is your house.

You go ask questions and you solve the problems that they have.

And I think that piece of the puzzle just flows up in the world of what we do in the title space.

Our title salespeople need to ask questions of realtors and find out what's.

What are you struggling with right now, or are you getting enough transactions from your sphere of influence, or are you providing enough value to your clients in between transactions?

When we ask questions like that and get answers back, we more than likely have access or know of solutions to help with those problems.

But it's when we go in, just kind of throwing a whole bunch of stuff at people.

Look at all this great stuff we have.

This is amazing.

You can see it in their eyes.

Agents just shut down.

But if you go in there and you try to build a relationship and solve problems.

Yes, Sean Carpenter, I just said that I'm not going to go all the way with it.

But it is so true, right?

The way.

The best way to build relationships in our world, no matter what level you're at, is it's all about asking the right questions so that you can determine what they need solved.

You can help them with their problems.

And so we found our best sales execs are doing that very well.

I even take it back to Ted Lasso, right?

I mean, they credited it to Walt Whitman in the show.

But I think I've been doing some reading on this quote, and there's some battle over who really said it, but it's be curious, not judgmental.

And that's so true for us.

Now we're not judging people, but we're definitely sitting there going, I know what you need to make your business successful.

Instead of saying, what do you need to make your business successful?

What are you trying to accomplish?

Those questions are so important.

So for me, that's a big piece of what we're trying to bring to the table is to make sure that everyone understands that it's all about the questions.

No matter where you are in sales, it's all about the questions and then making sure that you're solving the issues that that person has rather than saying, oh, I've got something.

You definitely need this.

And they have no clue or they don't even care what that thing is.

So that's been a big part of a, you know, my experience over the last nine months, now that I've been back, I just love the role I'm in.

I love helping people.

I love talking to people.

You all know that it's what I do here.

So it's been a lot of fun and I'll just, I'll bring it back to this again.

I can't.

And Phil Sexton, if you're listening to this, I know you're going to laugh at me, but there is such a simple, a simple path to success in the world of real estate, and it really is talk to people, document what you talk about, and then mark down or schedule the exact next time in your CRM or whatever you use that you're going to reach out to this person again.

Again, you have to stay connected to people.

If you're not connected to people, you're not going to be successful.

It's that simple.

And it works in whatever part of the industry we're in.

I don't care if you're a sales rep for the FNF brands, you need to do this.

If you're a Realtor and you're trying to grow your business, you need to have something in place that does this.

So all the top coaches talk about it.

It's easy to say, easy to understand, but obviously incredibly difficult to implement.

That's the biggest problem that happens in the world of real estate.

And I'll spit out one more factoid that hopefully all of you already know.

But the trends report that comes out, the generational trends report that NAR puts out every year talks about the loyalty gap, is what I'm going to call it.

The loyalty gap is this.

Over 90% of the people say they absolutely are, probably would use their agent.

Again, it's a massive number that they would use their agent that helped them buy their house, to sell the house when it comes time to sell it.

Yet in that same year, they interview sellers who are selling their house.

So they bought it probably five, six, seven years ago.

And the question was, did you use the agent that helped you sell it by your house?

Did you use them to sell it?

And the answer's in the teens.

So this massive gap, this loyalty gap is, is just giving leads and it's where every Zillow lead and then homes.comlead and realtor.com lead come from, from customers who had an agent who helped them and then neglected them, didn't stay connected, didn't provide value.

And if you're not doing that, why are you in the business?

Because that's easy to do if you have a system in place.

So, anyways, I'll get off my soapbox there.

I just think it's so important to understand that there are ways, Right?

And by the way, Whenever somebody says past client, I always look at me go, what?

What'd you say?

Because there are no past clients.

They're all your clients.

You just let them go.

So don't let your clients go.

Stay connected to your clients.

Go find a Sean Carpenter session somewhere.

If he's talking in your state at the association or if he's talking, you know, at a brokerage near you, go.

Because he's got amazing stuff.

And it's.

I think it's critical to.

To our success in this business.

So.

Well, there I put some real estate in the end of this thing.

That's a good thing.

Now it's a true Real Estate Sessions episode.

It's much shorter, and I think no one complains about that.

But I'm just happy that you're listening and you let me kind of, you know, clear the air on some things.

And it feels good to get this out there.

And then really, as I said, I'm putting together a couple of interview sessions right away, early January to put those out and get everything back on track.

So let's see, I'll ask myself my same last question.

Hey, Bill.

What?

What?

One piece of advice would you.

Would you give a new agent just getting started, and that would be learn how to connect and learn how to stay connected to your people always.

Never let your clients get away.

That's it.

It's pretty simple.

So, hey, if you want to reach out, you know where I'm at.

I'm all over the place, Bill Risser, everywhere, on every site.

So reach out.

Let me know what you think of this episode or if you want to share it, please share it.

And I can't wait to get my next guest back up for you January 7th.

So have a merry Christmas, happy new Year, have a great time, be kind to other people, enjoy your families, even the ones that you struggle with.

It's all part of the game.

And I'll be back with a new episode next year.

Peace.

Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Real Estate Sessions.

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Listening.

Applause.