Episode 396 - Sammy DeStefano - Russ Lyon Sotheby's International Realty

00:00:00 - Sammy DeStefano

I actually tell them, I said one of three things will happen, Bill, and any of them is all right. The first, you may have the opportunity to, you know, list your home with us, and we're excited about that. If it works out, you may decide not to, for whatever reason, that's all right. And the last one is, we may decide not to work with you. And that's okay, too. And I find people keep telling me that's very different in real estate.

00:00:28 - Bill Risser

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 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 396 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. This week we're headed to Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to be chatting with Sammy DiStefano, Sammy's with Russ Lyon, Sotheby's international realty. And Sammy's been in the business about four and a half years doing some really cool stuff. I think it's just great when I get to talk to a young agent who really works with their craft in the industry, and I can't wait for you to hear his story. So let's get this thing started. Sammy, welcome to the podcast.

00:01:22 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, thank you, Bill. Thanks for having me.

00:01:24 - Bill Risser

Yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun. I, you know, it's funny, on the podcast, I have a lot of different types of interviews that I do. There's. There are CEO's of big companies. There's people in the tech space. But some of my favorite interviews to do are people who are relatively new in the industry but doing some really cool stuff. So that's what we're going to talk about today. That's you. This will be. This will be fun. I always start at the beginning. So I'm going to ask you this. I think I saw somewhere. You were born in Chicago. What part of Chicagoland? And because it's a huge area, right? You could be north, south, west. Tell me, tell me about it.

00:01:58 - Sammy DeStefano

The short time I was in Chicago, you know, my parents met in Chicago and I was born there in Tremont, as well as Morton Grove. And so those are suburbs of Chicago. Most of my family was there for a long time, most of my life was here in Arizona, about 25 years here in Arizona.

00:02:15 - Bill Risser

Oh. So it's not fair to get to kind of put you through the wringer on all the Chicago stuff, right?

00:02:19 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah. Well, we've been back and forth a lot, still have family that lives there, but, yeah, to live there. A great, great place to visit, for sure.

00:02:27 - Bill Risser

And also, I'm sure, you know, this, having been, you know, in the Phoenix area for 25 years, you get a ton of visitors coming out already. Right. It's that seems like that it's that dividing line where they're not going to Florida, they're going to Arizona if they're in Illinois. Yeah. That's cool.

00:02:42 - Sammy DeStefano

A lot of people from Illinois out here.

00:02:44 - Bill Risser

So I'm not going to ask you if you're a Cubs or a White Sox fan, but I am going to say, do you follow the teams? Do you follow the teams in Arizona?

00:02:50 - Sammy DeStefano

I do because of my family. Yeah. And we're Cubs fans.

00:02:53 - Bill Risser

Oh. So you got absorbed into that world against your will. But it's okay.

00:03:00 - Sammy DeStefano

Just trying to make my dad happy.

00:03:02 - Bill Risser

So you visited Sloan Park a couple times. I'm just guessing. Spring training. Okay, cool. Cool. So as a Cubs fan, give me your favorite sports memory.

00:03:14 - Sammy DeStefano

I think, just thinking back, it was just how large the stadium was, you know, as, as a kid, I think we don't see anything that large our entire life. And it's, it's louder than it probably should be, and everybody is unfiltered and passionate about being there. So as a kid, it was just, everything was massive. And going back now, it's kind of disappointing, you know, because things grow in memory, but it was, it was fun. It was just time with my dad. I'm the oldest, and so I think I got a lot of those experiences when I, you know, my siblings hadn't. I remember we met up with my uncle right before going in, and it was just, you know, I got to hang out with the adults, you know, at the adults table, and it was just special memory, nothing specific about it, just that they actually wanted me there.

00:04:03 - Bill Risser

So, yeah, there's, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's cool. You know, what, what brought the family out to Scottsdale or to the Phoenix area?

00:04:10 - Sammy DeStefano

We moved out here for dad's work, and daddy joined the force out here. He was on Phoenix PD for years and then later joined the military, and we didn't have any family out here. It was completely unpaved what they were doing, and then they ended up having three more children, and nowadays it's kind of fun nowadays, you know, my nono, we're all italian, so my Nono and Noni, they live out here. My. My mother's parents and a lot of their family moved out here, and it seems like both sides of the family are all out here, give or take a few that are still in Chicago and then also down in Naples, Florida.

00:04:47 - Bill Risser

Naples, yeah, that's. That's about an hour and a half south of me. I'm in St. Pete, so that's great.

00:04:51 - Sammy DeStefano

There you go. My grandmother's out there now, but, yeah, we're pretty divided now among the country.

00:04:58 - Bill Risser

So I lived in Arizona or the Phoenix Gilbert area for 17 years. I gotta ask what high school you went to.

00:05:05 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, I went to sunny slope for the first year. That was in the west Valley in Phoenix, and then later moved to North Point Preparatory. And I was really. I was just following a girl, you know, that I wanted to date there and ended up dating her. But it ended up being a great school. It was a lot. It was a lot more. It was newer. It was a lot more focused on the arts and communication, joined the speech and debate team, and then later on, once it became established, really just became sports high school, like every high school seems to become.

00:05:36 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Yeah.

00:05:37 - Sammy DeStefano

That was a fun experience. A little different.

00:05:39 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Especially the prep schools. They. Brophy, did you go to university in the state?

00:05:46 - Sammy DeStefano

I did. I did partial. You know what's funny is I did partial freshman year at Scottsdale community. I ended up moving to Colorado, Colorado Springs. Wanted to pave my own way. You know, it was just here where everyone grew up. So I did second half of my freshman year out in Colorado Springs, and somewhere along the way, I got sucked into business, marketing, communication, and it was just so much fun, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And that's where we segue into. There was a brief bar bartending job in there, but that's where we segue into the car business from there.

00:06:24 - Bill Risser

Well, that's.

00:06:25 - Sammy DeStefano

I got to put everything I learned into that.

00:06:27 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Let's talk about. I don't. I don't want to skip over bartending too quick, because I've had close to 400 interviews on this podcast, and I would say by far, by far the most common gig as a right out of school, or is everybody's bartender serving or bartending or something along those lines?

00:06:47 - Sammy DeStefano

Serving.

00:06:48 - Bill Risser

What did you learn about relationship building and connecting with people?

00:06:52 - Sammy DeStefano

I'll share something I haven't shared in interview before, because no one's really dug into that side of it. And I don't think this is unique. A lot of us go through serving and bartending, and you're either passive and kind of submissive, where you're very scared about upsetting anyone and you want to do it perfectly, or, and a lot of my friends would agree with this is when we were in the restaurants. It taught us that. I'm going to call it playful confidence. And so what I realized now, I mean, it was a pretty fine dining restaurant. It was Tommaso's, if you're familiar, really high end Italian. You know, Shaquille O'Neal came in once. You know, some actresses and actresses would come in. I was so scared of messing up when I first started. And then later on, I realized these people are here to have a good time. They're not taking dinner seriously. And so playful confidence and learning how to approach, you know, the gray area, approach that line of saying something kind of edgy, you know, and it really causes them to respect you because you're showing them that you're genuine and you're kind of unapologetic with how you're being, and they feel like they're actually getting to know the real you instead of you being at work and putting on facade. I've used that in real estate successfully, more than probably any other skill I've ever learned.

00:08:12 - Bill Risser

Yeah. The authenticity. Right. I mean, that's.

00:08:16 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah. People love to laugh. Yeah. And most. Most of them, if you, you know, once you. Once you kind of get the hang of it, is you could be pretty edgy. You know, it's. It's how you are with your friends when you're by the fire having a beer. You know, that clients love you getting to that point with them.

00:08:30 - Bill Risser

So was it the same way when you got into the dealership world?

00:08:35 - Sammy DeStefano

It was the same way, if not more. Yeah. I started selling bmws, and I stuck with BMW. Held different roles, from sales to management to finance within that world. But I was there for five or six years.

00:08:47 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:08:48 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah. The clients, the maintain. The main lesson takeaway that BMW taught me, and I probably wouldn't have learned it if I wasn't there long enough, was I went in. My parents never had much money. Right. My dad was a cop. My mom kind of went from business to business, and we never drove a BMW. I'll say that my thought of a BMW driver was pretentious, snobby. It was everything my parents said. You know, we grew up in the West Valley and in Arizona. It's more humble neighborhoods than the East Valley. It's not as nice of restaurants, it's not as much entertainment, but it's where you raise a family. And they'll always talk about the East Valley being a little more pretentious or caring about the looks. And BMW taught me that was very far from the truth. These were just people. I mean, we were selling bmws because financing is available. We were selling bmws to people who made 20,000 a year, all the way up to 500,000 a year, and on a pretty regular basis, too.

00:09:51 - Bill Risser

Would you say it was a benefit for you to be at a luxury dealership as opposed to, you know, a domestic. I don't want to throw out a name. I don't want to upset anybody out there yelling at me for picking a side, although I have four Ford f 150s. Talk about that.

00:10:11 - Sammy DeStefano

I think the reason I ended up at BMW is because early on, the mentor and sales trainer that I was lucky enough to run into used to be the top salesman at that BMW. So there was no one my age working there. And I was pretty heated immediately when I got in. I was 19. Every salesperson was 50 years old or older. And they did that on purpose, was they didn't want drama and aggressive sales tactics. They didn't want lack of experience. They told me, you know, we don't get hired here until you've had five to ten years of sales, sales experience. And I pushed a nod and didn't take no for an answer, and I got in. And I think the main difference was it showed me how to respect my time, which is something that's come back into play in my life this year, specifically in the way of when you. When you work at a Chevy or a Ford or a Honda dealership. It's not just that the cars are cheaper, because you can buy $100,000 truck these days. That's a Ford. What it is, is there's more competition. So Ford allows 15 to 20 dealerships in the same city. And so you have dealers cutting each other's throats and coming out with absurd offers. And on the radio, they're barking at you, and, you know, you get a free cat when you buy a truck, and it's all the gimmicks. BMW, they limit two to three to a city, depending on population. It's very tactful. So now we have four, and that was a big deal a couple years ago. Fourth entered the. Entered the city, but the clientele was respectful of my time. And because they were, I was respectful of their time. There's less back and forth. It was a more professional experience, and they weren't coming in with, you know, this guy over here is going to do it for $3 cheaper. Right. And so we were able to make a little more money, and it put me into abundance. So now I absolutely interview my clients just the same as they interview me in the beginning. I actually tell them, I said, one of three things will happen, Bill, and any of them is all right. The first, you may have the opportunity to, you know, list your home with us, and we're excited about that. If it works out, you may decide not to, for whatever reason. That's all right. I'm. And the last one is, we may decide not to work with you, and that's okay, too. And I think it's very different in real estate. I think it's not common, and it's not common in any sales industry. I've learned in car, in the car business, they'll do whatever they need to do to get the deal. Until you get into a high line dealership in real estate, they'll agree to list your property at whatever price you tell them to list it at and do the job however you tell them to do it, until you work with a professional. So. And whatever that means to you.

00:13:05 - Bill Risser

That's interesting. So there had to be this aha. Moment for you, where you went, I'm, you know, what's this real estate thing going on here? I want to get in that instead.

00:13:16 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah. I loved BMW. My, my intention was back then, and I was really close with. His name was Bob Cole Bianchi. He was the general manager, and very young one at that, for years. Chapman BMW on Camelback in Phoenix. And he was tailoring me, took me under his wing to. He said, what do you want? I said, I want to. I want the dealership at 19 years old. And he said, oh, it won't happen tomorrow, but I can get you there. And for some reason, maybe it was just fun for him, is he just. He just took me in as a son, so he was tailoring me to own a dealership. Only when Covid came out, it changed the way that he and a lot of the staff, you know, looked at the business and kind of treated employees, and they changed the way business was done in a negative way, in my opinion. And it was a pretty easy, it was a respectful walk away. I just shook his hand. I said, you know, we've had a few of these talks I've shared that I'm not happy I don't like the way that the business is being run anymore. And, you know, I think I'm going to find another industry.

00:14:19 - Bill Risser

Real estate, though. What made you go there?

00:14:23 - Sammy DeStefano

This is gonna make a lot of people laugh, I would guess, is I sold a lot of cars to Realtors. And so realtors came in thinking not all 97 of them were the same. So it was 97 people. I sold car realtors. I sold cars to over five years, but maybe 90 of them fit one class. And they came in very, very proud that they were a salesperson, and they knew exactly how the car business worked. They told me that we did the same thing, and they, you know, and because of that, they knew we did have $50,000 of markup in the $60,000 car. And so, you know, it was, it was comical to me because I didn't feel like they were trained. And the negotiation tactics they used, just horrible. Is like out of the eighties, you know? And so whenever they showed up, I didn't, I wasn't excited about working for, with them or to get them a car. But we went through the process. When I was looking at sales towards the end, which industry should I get into? I figured out of five years, 90 out of 97 realtors were pretty poor salespeople, and I don't think they make very much money. You have to write down your income when you finance a car, so I know what you make. However, the intriguing thing was, and I'll filter the name out, there were two agents that walked in, bought a car, wrote a, wrote a check for cars that were over 100,000 pretty, pretty easily. And on their credit application, they wrote over a million dollars for the year. And I was thinking, maybe they own a company. And I asked both of them at the end, and they said, yeah, that's just what I report. And I was like, oh, my God. I go, so. So they make even more than that. I didn't know anybody made that. And I knew my, I knew my general manager of the store made that, the owner made that. That's why I wanted his job. But when I saw that a realtor could make that, I was just intrigued. And then I met Robert Kiyosaki. He actually walked in one day as a client, author of Rich Dead Fortune, and he was driving some yellow Ferrari or something. And I asked him, I said, why are you buying cars? I thought, you buy homes. You know, it looks like you already have a nice one. I was just ignorant. And he said, well, there's never, there's never going to be a better industry to be in than real estate. Because it allows us to buy whatever we want, whether it's cars or anything else. And when I looked him up, he was in real estate too. He wasn't an agent, but he probably could be, you know, he was the buyer. He just buys everything he's up to. He said he was $1.2 billion in real estate debt. So that was scary to me, you know. But they all do it a different way. And I guess I won't stay on the topic long. I just. It was impressive. I felt like I am at least qualified to do what these 90 agents did. And maybe with a little luck I might become the two that I met.

00:17:32 - Bill Risser

Nice. I know you're now with Rust line. Sotheby's international, right?

00:17:36 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah.

00:17:36 - Bill Risser

Know that I still have an office down on Lincoln.

00:17:40 - Sammy DeStefano

Love that brand. They have twelve offices now. Yeah. On camelback in Scottsdale Road. In Scottsdale is where my.

00:17:48 - Bill Risser

Gotcha. And then. But you did you start right with them right away? A lot of times there's always kind of an entry. Okay. So real quick hit on that.

00:17:55 - Sammy DeStefano

Sure. Yeah. I went through. I started at a really cheap brokerage that just churned out a lot of business and leads and low splits. Which just means you do most of the work. You don't get paid much, but they're factoring in the experience they're giving you is the pay. So I thought that was a fair deal. I went to north and company. So. Brian, north owns North and company in Arcadia. Fantastic brand if you don't know it. You know, I would say they're probably 200, 250 agents. They were really good. I felt like they didn't have as much manpower or as deep of pockets as Sotheby's. It's just an Arizona brand. And Sotheby's is a global brand. You know, they have art auctions. They auction off yachts and land and islands.

00:18:38 - Bill Risser

Yeah.

00:18:39 - Sammy DeStefano

I found out they sell real estate too. So I started working for them.

00:18:42 - Bill Risser

Nice. Well, they somewhat. You have to have a place to put that art. And that's the whole point, right?

00:18:50 - Sammy DeStefano

That's true, yeah.

00:18:52 - Bill Risser

First year in the business you were with that training. We'll call it training brokerage.

00:18:57 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah.

00:18:58 - Bill Risser

What was the biggest surprise for you? As you were? It was easy to get the license. It doesn't take much. You just passed a couple. Passed that test. But how'd that first year go? What was that aha moment again? Did I do the right thing or. This is going to be great.

00:19:13 - Sammy DeStefano

It was difficult it was really difficult. My first year, I ended up doing a, I think, close closing and selling about 20, between 25 and 30 homes myself. And most of those were from cold calling. So that that brokerage taught me how to cold call. And I think the most surprising thing to me was, like, the real estate business. You need to find your own leads or buy them. So three ways to find business in real estate, this is a big question people ask me. You either buy it and you can go pay for Zillow, Redfin Realtor. They all have these little things. You type your name and number into it, they'll sell that information to an agent. You can go find, you can go get it, which is cold calling, door knocking, making friends, staying in touch, or you can wait for it. And a lot of the staying in touch and friends fall into the waiting for it category for me. But it's more of a passive approach to the business. You're sitting at open houses, we're sitting on floor time at your brand and for someone to come to you. So the dealership, they bought it. They run ads, they run commercials, they generate leads, and they give it to salespeople. They train the salespeople so that we know how to be polite and respectful enough to take that person, actually want to work with us once they contact us. And the hardest part was finding the business. So that that was the same in both industries, actually.

00:20:40 - Bill Risser

You went into the coaching world early in your career, which I compliment you on that. Yeah. So, Mike Ferry, let's talk about how that. Love talking about Mike.

00:20:52 - Sammy DeStefano

Still one of the best coaches I've ever had. I'm not with him anymore, and I've had two since him. The way that I found Mike was the agent that was mentoring me in my first year, actually used to coach with Mike, and when he shared with me how much the coaching was, this was near time. We were about to part ways because I was learning my feet underneath me. I had. I had never had a car payment that big, and it was close to paying for rent my whole life. And it was on a monthly basis, I think, for four different 30 minutes calls per month. That was it. So I signed up. I was terrified. It was a month back then, and it's now $2,000 a month for coach, and I still pay it. I've always been in coaching, and it just seems to net well, because what coaching is is you buying the time of a person that's been in real estate for a long time and is currently producing a very large amount of business so my coach right now sells over 150 homes per year himself and teaches me how to do the same.

00:22:03 - Bill Risser

You know, you said you had 25 to 30 homes that first year. I don't, you know, you know, that's, that's unusual as well, right?

00:22:11 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, I've been told. Yeah. National statistic right now because things change every year in real estate. I think, I think National association of Realtors says that 98% of agents in the United States are selling between four and six homes per year.

00:22:27 - Bill Risser

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that.

00:22:31 - Sammy DeStefano

I just blame that on a reactive approach instead of a proactive. I think they're probably amazing agents if they were more proactive, but that's, that's just been my experience.

00:22:42 - Bill Risser

Let's talk about how, how you continue to grow your business then. So you talked about the different types of leads that are out there. Are you big on the referral based kind of activities, the, you know, staying connected to your customers? Let's talk about that.

00:22:57 - Sammy DeStefano

I am now because of coaching my first year, I wanted fast, instant business, and I didn't have much of a track record back then, and so I felt I probably couldn't get referred often nowadays. For the last three years, I've been selling, I've been interviewing for the job of helping clients that previously fired their agent because they never got the home sold or they didn't do what they promised. People who didn't renew the agreement with their agent, which just means they didn't sell it in the time they thought they were going to sell it, say six months or twelve months, or people that had a bad past agent and sworn off agents as a total. So they're, they're trying to sell their property themselves and it does happen from time to time. So selling that, so interviewing and helping those types of clients for three years now, I get a lot of them sending me business in the form of just sharing their story with their friends or family members because, I mean, once you, once they met me, they felt comfortable and confident I can get the job done. They put me to the test and then I did it in the promised amount of time. That's, I feel like that's a pretty, that's a pretty powerful way to get business. And, and they seem like they're advocates, like, they seem like they're actively looking for people to send me business, which is so fun. I really appreciate it, but that's become a big part of my business, maybe 25% of my business this year.

00:24:27 - Bill Risser

You have an interesting niche. Market niche. I'll go with niche. It's what I grew up on. Yeah. You help people that are. That have to deal with a property in probate.

00:24:39 - Sammy DeStefano

Oh, yeah.

00:24:39 - Bill Risser

Or for somebody like you had to have some customers. When you first meet them, they kind of go, how old are you? That had to be a thing, because most agents are.

00:24:48 - Sammy DeStefano

I never had it.

00:24:50 - Bill Risser

Never had it.

00:24:51 - Sammy DeStefano

Mike taught me this. He said, the way that you speak, because if we fix the way that you speak so that you actually speak professionally, you're never going to have anyone question your ability.

00:25:01 - Bill Risser

Nice. Nice. Yeah.

00:25:04 - Sammy DeStefano

That's never had the age, we call them objections, reasons, concerns you have before hiring me. And I've never had the age concern. You know, it's funny, I've had a lot of people say, you haven't sold in my area or in my price point before, but at the end of the day, I'm selling in your price point. I'm just, you know, the people I've helped and the friends that they sent me that have needed help just haven't happened to be in your neighborhood yet, you know, and then they hired. So it is funny, you know, it's. Some things matter in this business and some things don't. Things that the normal person would be concerned about.

00:25:43 - Bill Risser

Right. Let's. Let's talk about the probate angle. That's interesting.

00:25:47 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The probate stuff, I just seek a challenge, you know? And because of what I was seeing when I was in BMW management, just the fact that I think a lot of realtors don't work on their skills doesn't make them bad realtors or bad, doesn't make them bad people, but they don't work on their skills. And so there's some jobs that we can get in real estate that are really easy, like helping someone buy a home, I would say, is the easiest. Sell a home is harder. And then working with attorneys alongside a court case to sell a property, probably one of the hardest, and that's why I wanted to learn it. And you have to deal with the, you know, what I thought to be back then. Scary attorneys. They're amazing people. I love them. So, yeah, if you have someone in your family that had owned a property but never did the paperwork to set up a trust or a will, which is basically just a contract that says who the property goes to when they pass away, if that never got completed, unfortunately, that property will go to the state and your family doesn't get to, doesn't get to own it. So your family has to start the paperwork, go through the court, system. Hire an attorney. A lot of times, they're three to $500 an hour. And this process will take months, you know, two, three months on the low end, up to 910 months on the long end. And all the while, I'm working with the attorney, I'm working with the estate, I'm working with, you know, companies that will clean the house out, tear stuff down, move it, throw, you know, landscaping, whatever you need to do to get the property in the condition that the homeowner wants it to be in. So that's been a really sensitive type of client, because if you lose your mom, you really aren't even thinking about selling the house. You're just thinking that you no longer have a mom. So you have to talk to these people with empathy and really step into the situation. And I joke now, now that I've done it for so long, I joke that I really haven't. It feels like 10% of my job is selling the property, 90% is handling the attorneys, answering the questions, making sure paperwork's filled out on time, and then sometimes counseling sessions, you know, where the client calls you up and talks to you for an hour or 2 hours about just being sad.

00:28:05 - Bill Risser

I.

00:28:06 - Sammy DeStefano

And going through the process. So it's a very unique job compared to just selling a home.

00:28:11 - Bill Risser

And I'll tell you, sammy, with your demeanor just in this conversation, big shout out to Mike ferry for helping you with his part of it. Yeah. You have a very calm demeanor that makes it really easy for people to understand where you're coming from, trust you, like you, you know, important. All that stuff is. It's fantastic. Yeah. Super cool. So let's. Let's talk about real quick. For those that don't know the Phoenix market that well, do you live in Scottsdale yourself? Where are you at?

00:28:38 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, I moved to Scottsdale as soon as my office got moved to Scottsdale.

00:28:41 - Bill Risser

Gotcha. So you got Scottsdale, North Phoenix. Glendale is, like, northern Tier, which. Which are really quite different. And you work across all of those. Right. So how do you. How do you. How do you explain those?

00:28:54 - Sammy DeStefano

I help all of Maricopa county and a lot of partners parts of Pinal county.

00:28:59 - Bill Risser

Okay.

00:28:59 - Sammy DeStefano

Which is the southern side of it. And I guess I just explain it. I oversimplify everything. I think that's a big reason why, you know, clients like. Clients will work with me or people like yourself. It's. It's a little easier to understand. Like, the questions is, I think we overcomplicate a lot that we don't need to. So I first when someone's new to Arizona, I just split the state, the county, into two. So the west Valley and the East Valley. And the West Valley, as I previously mentioned, more tailored towards families. You know, not necessarily just families, but it's more suburban, nice, older neighborhoods, because they're older neighborhoods, they're a little more affordable. So the average house price over there is going to be anywhere from 300 to 450,000, depending on the size. And then you move and think chain restaurants, you know, red robins and easy, you know, TGI Friday, stuff like that. As soon as you get into the East Valley, homes are a little more expensive. You know, Scottsdale's average home price right now is 1.05 million for that city. And a lot of the parts in the east Valley, the average price is two or 3 million for those little neighborhoods. And then Chandler and Gilbert are part of the East Valley as well. It's just all so new. Like you used to live in Gilbert. Gilbert's brand new. Now downtown Gilbert looks like downtown Scottsdale with all the nightclubs and bar scene, it's all getting very vibrant. So those restaurants, those entertainment, those are locally owned by small boutique chefs. Very fun experience, but you're going to pay a little more for it. And that's. That's the easiest way to explain it. You know, West Valley and East Valley, they're both amazing places to live, and I work in both, and they're very easy for me to understand. It just depends on how social do you want to be on a weekly basis wherever you live?

00:30:56 - Bill Risser

Yeah, that's keeping it simple, just like you said, sammy, I'm going to give you this really boring, cliche question, but it seems. Seems fitting for you. You know, you're. You're on these five cycles, I think. So let's go with where do you see yourself five years from now?

00:31:13 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, I haven't put a lot of thought into that. And it's mainly because ever since I got into sales when I was 19 and I'm 29 now, is every single year the abundance and, like, opportunity. And it's not only been good and happy, you know, life does have some ups and downs, but every single year it's opened up my eyes and my mind to what's possible as far as a financial standpoint or where I can live or, you know, the type of business that I. I can have. And honestly, it's great. People like you, you know, telling me about how I sound and that it's really, you know, it's calming and trusting. I never knew any of that. So I have clients tell me those things all the time. And after I hear it over and over and over, I begin believing it. And they tell me, a lot of them kind of just laugh and smirk and they're like, you have no idea where you're going to be in ten years. But I can see it and it's a lot more than this. And so that's exciting to me. I think I'm going to be living in Arizona. I'm getting into buying investment properties this year. So having an investment property in another state, maybe Colorado or Texas or something like that, that I can visit for a month or two. I'm able to work on the road and work remote many times with my clients because they're not here in Arizona year round, there's snowbirds. And so, yeah, I think expanding the business and becoming even sharper as far as knowing the contracts and all of that's been pretty fun to me while.

00:32:49 - Bill Risser

I'm watching the clock for you. And we need to get you out of here. So let's the same final question I've asked every guest since day one. And that is what one piece of advice would you give a new agent? Just getting started.

00:33:02 - Sammy DeStefano

Join coaching. I would say first, close your eyes and decide if this doesn't work out in a year, are you, are you going to commit to learning this business? Because I think, you know, I've met enough agents and enough people in this business that if you don't, if you don't understand the business or it takes you a little longer than it does other people, that doesn't matter. However, if you join coaching, you know, take out a loan or pay that, pay that somehow and be completely coachable, don't ask any questions. Just do what your coach tells you and you're going to be. You're going to be fine. It's not very easy, however, coaching fixes every single problem you'll ever have.

00:33:49 - Bill Risser

Nice, Sammy, this has been great. I can't thank you enough. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

00:33:57 - Sammy DeStefano

Yeah, it's a Sammy Distefano Destefano. And I'm sure it'll be in the show notes. But if you guys want, just call me, you know, phone number is 919454 6482. And you'll find me online just because that's how my, my clients and other attorneys and other brokerages will find me is just type in my name. But I would be more than happy to help anybody you know, you know, coming to or leaving Arizona or at least interview for the job of doing so.

00:34:30 - Bill Risser

This is great. Shout out to Jennifer for introducing us. I'm always looking for interesting guests. And Sammy, that I nothing but the best of luck for you moving forward.

00:34:39 - Sammy DeStefano

Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time. Bill.

00:34:41 - Bill Risser

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