Episode 379 - Richard McDonough - Sothebys International Realty

00:00:00 - Richard McDonough

You just can't stop learning, in my opinion. And you have to take it all in and do what works, even to the point of, in some respects, going full circle now. And I went to ninja training last year with, you know, larry Kendall in that program because I'm starting to feel that you almost got to go full circle and really focus on the relationships that we have.

00:00:28 - Bill Risser

You're listening to the real estate sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Riser. 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 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 379 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we're going to head up north. Yep. We're going to Minnesota, actually, the Minnesota Wisconsin border. A little area called Stillwater. Right, a part of the St. Croix Valley. I'm sure you all know about it. You're going to know a lot more about it after this episode with Richard McDonough. Richard's with sotheby's international realty. I was introduced to Richard's through a mutual friend, Anthony Malafrante. A lot of you know him as well, and we're going to have a lot of fun with Richard. He has a fascinating backstory. I think you're going to enjoy this. Some things are going to be covered here that have never been covered in this podcast before. So let's get this thing started. Richard, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:38 - Richard McDonough

Well, hello, Bill. I'm happy to be on.

00:01:41 - Bill Risser

It's going to be a lot of know I know you through Anthony Malafrante. We'll chat about that a little bit later. And as I'm sitting here, we can see each other and I'm in Florida and you're in Minnesota, and you have a tuke on or a beanie, whatever you want to call it.

00:01:57 - Richard McDonough

I have a beanie today. The beanie is very typical for me in the winter, although this year we've had an unseasonably warm winter and I haven't been wearing it much. As I was telling you earlier, I've only had to shovel snow once this year.

00:02:11 - Bill Risser

Wow. Now, when you say unseasonably warm, what is the temperature right now?

00:02:16 - Richard McDonough

Well, today it kind of cooled off. So today the temperature and even for today, even though it's cooled off, it's warm. We're in the mid to high 30s, which normally this time of year would be more like in the, yesterday the high was 53 and the day before it was 57.

00:02:36 - Bill Risser

I know we're going to talk about where you're located, but you're right there in the Minneapolis area, just east of it over towards the Wisconsin border. You're way up there. You're supposed to be. Don't you get the windshield factors in the sometime.

00:02:52 - Richard McDonough

Oh, easily. Yes, easily. And the actual temperature in the wintertime can be 20 below or a daytime high can be eleven below zero. And that's before the wind chill. So this year it's been so weird. January was super long with no snow and cloudy skies and fog. It's really strange. So it's really messed up a lot of local businesses. And it's weird. I don't know if it's global warming or what it is, but it's unseasonable. Although on the plus side, we're lucky because other coasts, Florida, east coast, California, they're just getting slammed. And so Madison, Wisconsin is 200 miles from here about. And they actually had a tornado there last night.

00:03:43 - Bill Risser

Wow. Okay. So things are going nuts right now up in the northern plains. Yeah. That's amazing. Well, Richard, I love to find out from my guests where they grew up. And I think you're in Stillwater, Minnesota. Correct. Which is right on the border with Wisconsin. Is that where you were born? Were you born and raised there?

00:04:08 - Richard McDonough

Yes, I was born and raised here in Stillwater. We're on the beautiful St. Croix river about 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis St. Paul. And actually I'm a fourth generation Stillwater. Right.

00:04:19 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:04:19 - Richard McDonough

So our family has a long history here in what we call the St. Croix Valley.

00:04:25 - Bill Risser

And I think I do a little bit of research. The St. Croix drops into the Mississippi somewhere kind of on the border there, am I right? Pretty close, yes.

00:04:36 - Richard McDonough

It's about 20 miles south of here and it's an interesting transition. You can really see the sparkling blue waters of the St. Croix river flow into the muddy Mississippi. There's actually demarcation line that says clear as day.

00:04:52 - Bill Risser

Wow, that's cool. I think for look, a lot of us, there might be some people listening. They go, really? The Mississippi's in Minnesota. I'm like, yeah, I think that's the headwaters. That's where it starts and obviously ends up in New Orleans. Yeah, good. It sounds to me like where you live could be people commute into the city or is it more of a place that people have second homes? How would you describe the Stillwater area, the St. Croix Valley?

00:05:17 - Richard McDonough

Well, the Stillwater area in St. Croix Valley is, I wouldn't necessarily call it a bedroom community. We're home to Anderson windows, which is one of the foremost window manufacturers in the world. We can be a bedroom community to three m is 20 minutes from Stillwater. Target corporations 30, Medtronic. So we have a lot of great corporations nearby, and then we have a lot of other very successful businesses in the Stillwater area as well. So it's truly not just what I would call a suburb, but it's a beautiful small town and we still have that essence of being a good, great small town. Yeah.

00:05:57 - Bill Risser

And I'm sure that the people that live there and like you who grew up there would love to keep that small town feel, right?

00:06:05 - Richard McDonough

Yes. Although I will say it was interesting on a real estate side, when I got into selling real estate here, I thought I'd be selling to my friends and family. Well, a lot of my friends don't move. I have friends who have generationally, that's a tongue twister, lived in the same house. It's been handed down to different kids within the family. So a big source of my business is people moving out and moving into the area because they love what is offered here from a sense of community, the schools, things to do. I mean, the St. Croix river, which I mentioned, it's one of the narrowest national parks in the country. It was one of the first two rivers that was designated as national scenic Waterway. So there's a lot of protections on that river. And we're consistently part of best small towns in America. Good morning America was here last summer. We are home to the world snow sculpture competition. It's just a great place to call home.

00:07:05 - Bill Risser

Yeah, that's really cool. Growing up in San Diego and then living in Phoenix for 17 years and now being in St. Petersburg, Florida, for the last seven years, we have a lot of snowbirds. Right. It's been a part of my life pretty much growing up. And Minnesota, that whole Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan area, they could go either way. Sometimes they go to Arizona, sometimes they go down to Florida. And I know that we have that term called snowbirds. And look, I don't think it's a bad term. I just think it just means these are people that have two homes. Is there a reverse for that? Are there people who actually, where they grew up and where they live is where it's hot or steamy and they're escaping up to your way. First of all, is there a name for them? And you must work with those sorts of clients.

00:07:53 - Richard McDonough

I'm starting to work more and more with them, but we really don't. Yeah, most people are known as snowbirds for leaving, but not so much for coming here. And that might be because a lot of the folks that you're talking about are going to some of the lakes farther north from here. However, we are starting to see more and more people, and I'm actually selling homes to those people that are calling Stillwater and the St. Croix Valley their summer home.

00:08:20 - Bill Risser

Yeah, that's great.

00:08:20 - Richard McDonough

But we don't have a name for them yet.

00:08:22 - Bill Risser

We got to come up with that, Richard. I think that'll be great. I think that would be awesome. We have to come up. We'll talk about that later after the show. So, born and raised 30 minutes from Minneapolis. I'm just going to hope and assume that you're a fan of the Vikings and the twins and the T Wolves and the North Stars when they used to be there. Am I right? Or did you get pulled over to that Wisconsin side of things at all?

00:08:50 - Richard McDonough

Oh, no. True blue Minnesotan supporting the sport teams, which sometimes can be very frustrating. I've been fortunate to have attended a lot of the great competitions, or I should say games. I was at the World Series when Kirby Puckett hit the grand slam home run. I was also there then the following night when we won the World Series. I think I was at both World Series championships games. I was at the last game at the old Met center for the Minnesota Vikings when we played outside under Bud Grant and Fran Tarkington. And basically people came there with wrenches and took the place apart, and then.

00:09:36 - Bill Risser

People were dragging seats out behind them, right?

00:09:38 - Richard McDonough

Oh, yeah. We were in the process of hooking up a telephone booth to a pickup truck, and the police came by and said, you probably don't want to take that. Of course.

00:09:53 - Bill Risser

Quietly unhooked it and moved on. Right.

00:09:56 - Richard McDonough

We just backed away and walked. Yes, very much. Again, there are times when it's been very frustrating to be a Minnesota sports fan. We've been so close so many times, especially with the Vikings and even with the Timberwolves. But our time will come. I'm sure the Detroit Lions are feeling that a little bit this year, but I think our time will come. And it's great to see all the people get behind our sports teams and so mean. We've never won the Stanley cup, and here we are, the state of know. We won.

00:10:33 - Bill Risser

Just amazing right.

00:10:35 - Richard McDonough

Yeah. It was because of Minnesotans that we won the gold medal in the Olympics, beating the Russians, but we can't seem to win the Stanley cup.

00:10:45 - Bill Risser

There are a lot of people that are going to be rooting for Minnesota when they do get there. They're not like the Cowboys or the Yankees or these other teams where everybody just hates them. Yeah. There's going to be a ton of support nationwide. Right. So you'll have a lot of love. I think that's going to be a big piece of it. And I'll tell you what, I can't imagine what it's been like growing up with the division you're in in football where it's packers, okay, lions, okay, whatever. But bears as well. I mean, that black and blue, right. That had to be a brutal division to be a part of over the years.

00:11:19 - Richard McDonough

And it still mean, those are hardcore rivalries in all of mean. It's just amazing. And then, of course, I was fortunate enough to be. I can remember the purple people eaters, and those guys didn't have bench heaters. They didn't have Bud Grant made those guys stand out there in the freezing cold. I mean, it was hardcore football back then. But yes, those rivalries are still today. I'll say. As fresh as ever.

00:11:55 - Bill Risser

All right, that's cool. All right, well, we got to talk about real estate a little bit. So I'm going to move off this because I could sit here for the next 2 hours and we talk sports. So you head off to college. I think if I look, remember right from my research, you actually crossed over the state line. You went to school over in Wisconsin. Do I have that right?

00:12:12 - Richard McDonough

Yes. Oh, I had a little bit more of an unusual trajectory through college. I did the eight year plan, and that was due to I was a competitive freestyle skier in high school. And then I left school to ski a couple of winters. And then I left school and I started working on, which also began my first career after college, and that was working in the luxury yacht industry.

00:12:39 - Bill Risser

Wait a minute, Richard, I can't believe I've had lunch with you. I've had a couple of meetings. We sat down and chatted. Freestyle. Competitive freestyle skier. First of all, I'm going to try to do my best to define what freestyle skiing is. It's crazy, people doing flips and stuff off of moguls and just going nuts off ramps and stuff. Is that what I'm thinking about for freestyle?

00:13:02 - Richard McDonough

Yes.

00:13:03 - Bill Risser

How many surgeries have you had, Richard?

00:13:05 - Richard McDonough

None. Wow. Okay, awesome. I dislocated a shoulder and I bruised a sternum. That's the extent of my injury.

00:13:16 - Bill Risser

How was it? That shoulder going back in, that feel good?

00:13:19 - Richard McDonough

Yeah. And it was at a national competition in copper Mountain after that fall. And I made the highlight reel, though, by the way, after that fall, I've never been able to throw a baseball the same.

00:13:33 - Bill Risser

Do you still ski recreationally today?

00:13:37 - Richard McDonough

Yeah, I do, actually. Interesting. When I was working on the luxury yachts, there was like a ten year period where I didn't ski at all. And then a friend of mine got me back into it. And so I do go. I haven't gone in a year or so, but it's kind of like riding a bike. And the funny thing is, it's one of those things where I never tell anybody I'm a good skier. I had this one friend asked me to go meet him out west, and I think after he asked me, he didn't think I'd go. And then he's going, God, can this person even ski? And then I get out there, I go, okay, we're going to go. And then the next thing you know, we're out there shredding. And I know you golf a lot. It's like all of a sudden having this guy come golfing with you and you have no idea. He's a scratch golfer. But I guess even though I won a lot of trophies and a lot of competitions, one of my best highlights in my skiing was we were doing some, what is called cat skiing, where a snowcat takes you up and you're powder skiing. And when a snow cat, because everyone's always trying to impress the snowcat guides the people that are guiding you. And when a guide tells you you're a good skier, I think that's a nice feather in your cap.

00:14:56 - Bill Risser

Wow. Just a couple of questions. Yes, I got to the low intermediate level of a skier, maybe in my career, before my wife blew her knee out at Brian head, Utah. And that just ended it for all of us. This is going back to the 80s where I could look, I could get down anything, but I was going to go side to side all the way to one end to the other if it was really steep. But then when it got a little less steep, I could function and do all right. You're telling me, like, if I took you to a place where you had to drop in 10ft before you really even hit snow, you're like, yeah, no problem. I'm just going to drop in. I'm going to go do this thing. No big deal.

00:15:32 - Richard McDonough

No big deal. Even at my older age, no big deal. Yeah.

00:15:38 - Bill Risser

That's awesome. Okay, well, that's very cool. And so now yachts.

00:15:42 - Richard McDonough

So I worked on privately owned luxury yachts, basically. I was on the east coast and bahamas, and I worked for one family that we'd actually would bring the boat up the Mississippi river back here to Stillwater.

00:15:59 - Bill Risser

Wow. And then you did that for ten years?

00:16:02 - Richard McDonough

I did that for ten years, yes.

00:16:04 - Bill Risser

There are yachts here. I walk by them every morning. And there's one called the Debbie Lou. That's massive. It must be four floors, I'm guessing, because one below water, and then you can see the other three up above. And so you had your own quarters, you lived on the boat? Yacht. I shouldn't say boat. And was there a chef on the boat as well? And how big was the crew?

00:16:29 - Richard McDonough

So, largest yacht I worked on was 125ft. We had a crew of six, so we had a chef, a captain. I was the first mate, so I was right below. And then we had an engineer, and then we would have a stewardess, and the engineer took care of all the mechanical, of course, the chef, captain, myself and the stewardess, and we would help out each other, especially. We had guests on board. I would help out with the stewardess and even the engineer, making sure the guests, everything they're attended to and so on. I did not work on many charter boats. I only worked on one boat that was in charter, and we did not charter that much. That's a whole different ballgame. I preferred to work for families, old money, per se, because they would treat us a lot better.

00:17:21 - Bill Risser

Is that family still around in Stillwater? The family that you worked for? I imagine someone's still there.

00:17:26 - Richard McDonough

Yes, they are. It's kind of an interesting story. I didn't get the job because of my father, but my father was also general counsel for this family, and it was the Hubard family, and they developed satellite television, and they're celebrating 100 years in broadcasting this year, so it's quite interesting family. And then I'm kind of holding out, but I worked for two years for someone that was in the construction business in New York City, and you can take that for what it's worth.

00:18:01 - Bill Risser

Oh, Nellie. We will leave that for another show. We'll talk later.

00:18:15 - Richard McDonough

All right.

00:18:15 - Bill Risser

So somehow the world of luxury and yachting and all this great stuff is going to transition into real estate?

00:18:26 - Richard McDonough

Yes.

00:18:26 - Bill Risser

How's that happen?

00:18:27 - Richard McDonough

So I was getting to the point where even though I had my captain's license and I've been working on these boats, I didn't see that as being a long term career path for me because it's a great occupation, but your life is definitely not your own in that situation. It's changed a lot now where there's a lot more. You'd be three months on about and three months off. There. We were full time, we were year round. We would get time off. But really you're at the beck and call of what the owner wants to do with the boat. So I'm back in Minnesota. I'm starting to look at homes, and I know what I want. I want know one level home. And in, you know, called off a sign of one property. Then I'm working with this agent, and it was kind of interesting. The only thing that was consistent was we kept seeing her listing. We didn't see the houses that I want, but we kept seeing her listing so she could get both sides at the same time. I was getting interviews for jobs, and it was interesting. I'd get interview introductions from the chairman of the board of the company, right. With HR and some of these jobs I was very capable of doing, but I'm sure the people hiring thought, well, this is coming down from the top. He's probably going to take my job. So I would not get a callback or I wouldn't get the job. So all of a sudden the light bulb kind of goes off. And I kind of said, I think if this person can sell real estate and make a living at it, I think I can. And so I go and interview. At the time, there was not the big teams in the teams like we have now. We had the major brokers and in Minnesota, the major players at that time, back in the mid 90s, was Edina Realty, which was now the first company that Berkshire Hathaway purchased, Coldwell banker, and then of course, remax, Keller Williams, exp real. None of that was on the horizon at that point. And it was interesting with my first interview, the manager goes, are you okay with unusual hours? I'm kind of what's. So I go, yeah, that won't be a problem. At least here I know I'll be home every night at some point. So I get my to. I chose Udonna realty because of its history as being a family owned company. It was started by Emma Rovick back in the 1950s, and here was a mom who wanted to make some extra money and get a piano for her family. And wow, Edana Realty is. At that time, I started, there were already at 2500 agents and growing in 40 offices. And Ron Peltier was the president at the time, who went on to be the chairman and president of home services of America. And it was a great company and it's still a great company. So that was my start. And it was also interesting. We had a downtown Stillwater office and bricks and mortar, and I still feel very strongly about that whole concept.

00:21:49 - Bill Risser

Tell me, how were the first couple of know, at least you knew the knew you had a sphere, right? That helped.

00:21:57 - Richard McDonough

I'm sure I had a sphere. Yes, I had a sphere. Probably the biggest thing for me was our friend Anthony talks about this all the time. You got to do the work. What most agents I see don't do is they don't look at this from day one as the business. They get their real estate license. I'm a realtor, and they're all transactional in their processes. They're waiting for the phone to ring. They're waiting to see what happens next. They're not really planning so much for their future. I was fortunate in that when I dropped into the office and we call it Cubeville or whatever you want to call it, my space was right outside the top agent within that office. She always kept the door open. I kept my door open. I listened to what she was doing. I watched what other people were doing and, you know, did the work. Even if I had nothing going on, I would show up to the office. For example, I got my Wisconsin license as well because we're right on the border. Just by happening to be in the office, this guy calls up and says, I have two properties I want to look at in Wisconsin. Is there anyone that can show me these properties? Because the agents won't call me back and I'm going to buy one of them. I got in my car and I went, sold the guy. He bought one of the houses. And again, to this day, I still do open houses. I still feel it's so critical to be at the office, and I feel it's very critical to keep learning every single day.

00:23:41 - Bill Risser

I see that in you. I see that in the conversations we've had, the times I've had a chance to sit down and have a chat. But I also know that you've definitely embraced what's new. You're talking about these older, I want to say old school things, but face to face kind of contact that a realtor has to have. But you're heavily involved. When websites and social media and that sort of stuff came around, my guess is you were right there going, this is going to be important. I need to figure this out.

00:24:11 - Richard McDonough

Yes. And it was interesting. I kind of fell into it, Bill, and how I fell into it, I'd gone through a divorce, and the divorce I went through, we were a husband and wife, you know, I was freaking out at first of what's that going to do to our image that I'm getting a divorce and it's no longer Richard and Kelly McDonough, but now it's Richard McDonough again as a real estate agent. And there was a time at that first year that I kind of checked out, but then everyone was at the rah rah meeting. And it was the first time in whatever years that I hadn't been to know top producing agent award. As you know, most of us agents are very competitive as well. And my background is being competitive. Edana Realty is known for having great speakers. And they had this guy by the name of Chris Smith there. And at the time, this is when Chris Smith and curator had started and I called them up and I was talking to their salesperson and he was interviewing me as much as I was interviewing him. And it was one of those situations where I couldn't afford not to do it and I dove right in and I would say curator was one of the first true innovators in that whole idea of having a stunning website combined with an awesome social media presence. And my business went from $79,000 that year. And I think this is 2009, and I'm not a big one for bragging with numbers, but I just want to illustrate the power of social media and technology went from 79,000 to the following year of 485,000 in GCI as a solo agent.

00:26:03 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:26:04 - Richard McDonough

And that doesn't include the extra stuff I had to give away because I couldn't handle it all because that's when we were like shooting fish in a barrel, because we had landing pages. I was with follow up boss. I think I've been with follow up boss ten years and they've been around for maybe eleven or twelve, but it was just a great platform. And that's where I met Anthony. And because of that growth, the next year I spoke at their excellence event and then meeting other people like Judy Weinegger, Katie Lance, now moving forward, Phil M. Jones, and even to Ryan Sirhant, John Sheplack. You just can't stop learning, in my opinion. And you have to take it all in and do what works, even to the point of, in some respects, going full circle now. And I went to ninja training last year with Larry Kendall and that program, because I'm starting to feel that you almost got to go full circle and really focus on the relationships that we have because there's a lot of noise out there with all the social media aspect of it, and you forget to make those calls and those connections.

00:27:30 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I like these communities you talk about. I don't think they're understood enough or used enough by a lot of agents. Right. Like the information that you get from that curator group. And sometimes curator group is slightly different than some of the people in the follow up boss or slightly different than the Phil M. Whatever it is. I think those are. You're like that really like a shining example of why being connected there is going to help your business. Absolutely.

00:28:03 - Richard McDonough

So much. Because oftentimes I think it's getting better, but because of the competitive nature, which in my opinion, I've always felt that there's enough business for everyone in any and all markets. But because of that competitive nature, oftentimes we don't share enough within our own sphere. And when I say sphere, I'm talking about my peers as agents and companies within the marketplace that we work in. If we just shared more and helped each other more, it would make it that much easier. I mean, part of our inventory problem is our own fault because agents who are transactional are saying, yeah, we have nothing to sell. And so they don't have the proper speech. And not that it's a sales speech, but really talking about how the market is, because right now we have an inventory problem, not because of interest rates, it's because we don't have enough properties to sell.

00:29:00 - Bill Risser

Seems to me, especially in your world, and that's what you do, is you educate and you help and you commiserate and you do all kinds of different things with your customers. Having the right thing to say at the right time is invaluable.

00:29:16 - Richard McDonough

And then the other thing I've noticed, and I'm very guilty of this, the follow up after the sale. There's a big lack of follow up after the sale. And again, I said I'm guilty of this. So I think I'd be retired now if I would have just done a little bit better job of it, of following up with both. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love selling real estate and I love working, so I don't know if I would retire. And I think my wife would be crazy if I was home every day, all day. But anyway, it's interesting how after this sale, we do not follow up like we should and stay in touch with our clients like we should, and we feel that they're just going to use us again because we did such a phenomenal job the last time.

00:30:03 - Bill Risser

Well, that leads to a question, Richard. What percentage of your business today is referral, repeat, right. Versus lead generation that's going on with the sources you use?

00:30:15 - Richard McDonough

I've been looking at that a lot lately, and it's a lot more than I realized, and that's where I need to focus more. I'd say it's probably a good 60% of my business, maybe even 70, is referral or repeat business, and then the other 30 is lead generation. And in some respects, it's due to having a quality website and spending the time and energy with having a Google presence. I've been really thinking a lot about this lately, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this, too. And although we're going to see a big shift with homes.com, I hear they spent ungodly amount of money coming up for the Super bowl and all these events, and they've really turned into a big player in the search aspect of it. But at this point, my $0.02 is people search for homes on Zillow and they search for agents on Google.

00:31:18 - Bill Risser

I would completely agree with you. Right. I think the lack of energy that agents are putting into that Google Business profile, which is like the holy grail of everything you're doing for search, it's got to start there. And that leads to a lot of other places, right? Because now, especially in a smaller market like you're in, I would call it smaller. I think that's fair. Those local service ads, if they're there and when they get there, that kind of stuff is going to matter. And I know that that's all know you have tools that are helping you get to those places. But I just don't understand why on a Google post feed that's not flowing with content about the business. Right. Like everything you put online anywhere about the business, it better be in that Google Business profile because that's what Google's going to use. It's part of that algorithm to make sure, wow, all these people are leaving these reviews about real estate and he's posting about real estate and it's all about Stillwater, and here comes all that love, right? It's the answer.

00:32:21 - Richard McDonough

It's so true. If you're posting something to, and you have to be careful, it's not the same as that's where you have to be so careful today. And I think, really think about what you're posting from a content standpoint because it's interesting. With our business, our industry, we've really created a lot of noise for ourselves with the selling of being on social media. I mean, you have to do this, you have to do that, the omnipresence, all that. And then it's like, okay, sign up for our free template and we'll give you all these templates for what you should post and so on. But at the end of the day, it needs to be real and it needs to be informative because it's amazing. We talk in our jargon, and a lot of times people don't know what the hell we're talking about. Don't know what. Because one of the biggest things right now in our market, it's that coming soon listing. It'll show up on MLS. But what does it mean? And why can't I go see it right now? So a little education with that aspect of it. But yeah, it's interesting to see what is going on in the marketplace right now and especially with some of the big teams and some of that aspect.

00:33:45 - Bill Risser

As know you've never had a team that's never been a part of what you wanted to do. It seems like you're very comfortable being Richard.

00:33:53 - Richard McDonough

Well, no, actually I've gone full circle, Bill. I left the dynamite Realty in 2018 and I started my own brokerage.

00:34:03 - Bill Risser

That's right.

00:34:05 - Richard McDonough

And I started my own brokerage. It was called RM Realty. And it was more from a standpoint of, yes, that's my initials, but we kind of used the tagline room. RM is the abbreviation for room. So room to buy, room to sell, room for information. And I had a main street bricks and mortar business in downtown Stillwater. Love being downtown Stillwater. Love being part of the community. That's very important to me. It was amazing, the walk ins that we would get, and we still do. I think we did like $2 million worth of walk in. Just people walk in and we want to buy a house in Stillwater. And then I had a cross transaction with an agent with our local lake Sotheby's affiliate, and he mentioned to the powers of b about me. And then they started talking to me. And the next thing you know, they made me an offer for my know, it was one of those things where I hadn't really thought about selling it. But the recruitment thing is that's a hard, never ending process. And when I talk to them more and more, and I love being an agent and learning about that. Sotheby's brand was amazing. And so we came to terms. They were on the western suburbs of the Twin Cities. They wanted to move to the east side, where there is a lot of luxury properties. But again, luxury is not a price point. It's kind of an experience, as we know. And so we came to terms, and I went from being a broker owner back to an agent again, and I'm loving it. And I really underestimated the power of that brand. Sotheby's international realty. And then the addition to that is the auction house. I get a much different vibe when I had some of my card and it said sotheby's on it than I ever did with the diner realty or RM realty. I mean, people kind of go, oh, it's a little bit of an aha moment. And I was really surprised about that. I was not prepared for it, quite frankly.

00:36:25 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I think part of that probably your market, too. It's not all over the place, right. If that makes know, entering into that Stillwater area, it was also this new territory, which you.

00:36:42 - Richard McDonough

Yeah, yeah. Very new territory for them. And then also going into western Wisconsin and some of the lakes nearby and the properties nearby. A lot of people think even though on one hand we are a small town, we've always had one of the highest median sale price for houses in the area.

00:37:01 - Bill Risser

Got you. Are you doing anything in AI right now? Because I'm just watching the time, too. I don't need to ask that question.

00:37:14 - Richard McDonough

I'm loving AI.

00:37:17 - Bill Risser

Oh, we're going there then. Here we go.

00:37:19 - Richard McDonough

I'm loving AI.

00:37:20 - Bill Risser

Let me refresh. Let me ask the question. Yeah, so, Richard, I know you're a techie guy, and so I have to ask the question. Are you exploring that brave new world of AI? Are you using some of those tools out there?

00:37:35 - Richard McDonough

Most definitely. I'm loving AI again. I've actually been using it for, I'll say, the last four years because one of my tech partners is Ylopo. And as you probably know, Ylopo for the last four years has Raya, which has been an AI text communication assistant for us as agents with new leads coming in and so forth. It just went live literally a week ago. I now am part of their AI voice, and their AI voice is amazing as far as following up with leads, because I'm guilty of it, too. We do not follow up with our leads enough via phone and just staying in touch with our folks. So the AI voice I just is going to see as being a game changer. That could be a podcast in itself, you cannot tell that this is a digital person on the other end of the phone. You cannot tell, not at all. And then one step further, AI with Chat GPT. I've been using that for months. I've been Chat GPT plus subscriber from day one. And that's made my life so much easier from a standpoint of writer's block copyright and all that thing. I will share this, though, because I'll just put in there, this is what I want to say. Put it out there, then know gives it back to you. And then I'll have my wife and or office manager look it over and they go, this is great, but you need to dumb it down, Richard, because that really doesn't sound like you said.

00:39:23 - Bill Risser

In a loving way. It's said in a loving.

00:39:29 - Richard McDonough

I took the critique. They were correct. It didn't sound like me. But it does really help as far as making things flow a lot better and hit the top points that you want to and also include things like SEO or you take one. Okay, I want this post to be for Instagram. I want this post to be for Facebook, and I want this post to be for LinkedIn. And those are all three different platforms, but it's basically the same message just tailored for those three platforms. And it just helps immensely from that standpoint. I wrote one the other day where they even added emojis and all that for you. So I can't say enough about how it has helped me from being now a solo agent to be that much more productive and getting through things quicker and making it my business that much better.

00:40:28 - Bill Risser

I've heard lately some people talk about using AI on your imagine because you're allowed to pull some data from the MLS, right? You can pull data and you can take that data and you could create a prompt that says, look at this data and give me a report or give me a graph or give me a chart. And you're reaching those levels now because now it's only looking at data that's true and accurate. Well, it's true and accurate as everyone's input the data. Right. But it was very interesting. I thought, oh my. Because I use AI on my podcast, but it's just listening to the episode, doing a transcript and pulling out quotes and doing all this stuff. Because when you use Chat GPT in the real world and you know this, you've got to double check it a little bit, make sure it's not saying something weird, right? But imagine the mimalist data and you using it as a tool.

00:41:22 - Richard McDonough

I haven't gone down that road yet, because basically with chat, GBT plus, it's dated back to what? 2022. 2023. So it's current in that regard. I'm not sure how current it is from a standpoint of up to the minute data, but I'm thinking if you do put that data in there, yes, you should be able to do that. Canva is one of the graphic software companies. I think you can take Canva and AI with this data and put it together. I personally, I love data, and I think that's, again, where we can help our clients. I use Altos research and I use their reports and they have the graphs and everything right there. So, yeah, that's what I've been using from that standpoint to be much more accurate. Aside from what the MLS give you for, especially in our area, it encompasses a 13 county metropolitan area, which is western Wisconsin. It's a big area when you think of 13 counties here in the Midwest, but then we have micro markets within that, as you can imagine.

00:42:37 - Bill Risser

Right?

00:42:38 - Richard McDonough

The price point on the western suburbs is a lot different than the price point here in the St. Croix Valley.

00:42:44 - Bill Risser

Well, look, Richard, this has been fun. This has been great. I'm going to ask you the same final question I've asked everyone. I think you know the question. It's what one piece of advice would you give a new agent? Just getting started to really treat this.

00:42:57 - Richard McDonough

As your own business. Think of it from a standpoint that you just bought a subway franchise and you need to keep the doors open.

00:43:05 - Bill Risser

It's very rarely assumed or followed that it's a business. I think that's so critical and thinking about even long term, you have built this database of people who like and know and trust and love you. And somewhere down the road you said you didn't want to give up working, but maybe you just work with these ten, but maybe you find somebody to help you with the rest and it turns into annuity, right? Like you just have this passive income just flowing to you.

00:43:38 - Richard McDonough

And that's the great thing about this business. It can be that so easily. The entry to real estate is way too easy. And that's why I didn't tell you this. When I was in high school, I was a garbage man. For five years, I collected garbage. I worked on the back of the truck before school. No, this is high school. Into college in the summertime. And to this day I tell people I got more respect being the garbage man than I do today, being a real estate agent.

00:44:14 - Bill Risser

Sad on that note, Richard yeah. I'm going to ask you, if someone wants to reach out to you and compare garbage men and realtors, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

00:44:25 - Richard McDonough

The best way to get in touch with me is either through any of the social media platforms, which Facebook or Instagram. My email is Richard Mcdonough@lakesmn.com or my website, richardmcdonna.com. And if you're an agent, you're out there working. Happy to. I think, you know, it does take a village and it takes all of us to make our business and our industry that much better.

00:44:53 - Bill Risser

Richard, this has been a really, I really thank you for your time. Today. We are going to talk a whole lot more about just, that is unbelievable. And I can't wait to sit in a room with you again and have another conversation. Thanks so much.

00:45:09 - Richard McDonough

You're welcome, Bill. I really enjoyed this, too. And you have a great day.

00:45:13 - Bill Risser

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