Episode 398 - Short Cut Session with Nick Krautter, Author - The Golden Handoff

00:00:03 - Bill Risser

You're listening to The Real Estate Sessions podcast, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. Welcome to another ShortCut Session, where I interview a guest from the past. It's a brief three to four-question interview to catch up and see what's happening in their lives and get their take on what's happening in real estate today. Hi, everybody. Yes, it's another real estate shortcut session. Today, we will talk to Nick Krautter, author of The Golden Handoff, a book I've referred to more times than I can remember. I interviewed Nick for the first time back in 2016. I think it was episode 48. We'll ask him if he remembers that. So, I wanted to catch up with Nick, see how the books go, and see if we need to know anything. Little Birdie told me there might be a second edition. So that's what we're going to try to find out. So, let's get this thing going. Nick, welcome to the podcast.

00:00:54 - Nick Krautter

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

00:00:56 - Bill Risser

Oh, it's great having you back. I mean, there is only one other guest on the shortcut sessions, Nick, that has more tenure, that goes farther back than you do, and it was Jay Thompson, who was number one. But I'm going to ask you, can you give me the month and year that your episode aired?

00:01:14 - Nick Krautter

Oh, I want to say April of 20:19 a.m. i. Close.

00:01:23 - Bill Risser

Well, you missed it by a little bit. Yeah. It's actually June of 2016, so we have to go way back, almost eight years.

00:01:33 - Nick Krautter

Wow, that's amazing.

00:01:35 - Bill Risser

Yeah. We were connected by Wendy Thatcher at Chicago Title there, who, I love her. She's great. And it was a really fun episode. And I've got to tell you right now, the golden handoff, which is what we spent a lot of time talking about, I think I've referred that or mentioned that to people without fail. Every month since we've met. There's always someone I come across and I go, you don't know what you have there. You have to understand this. Get this book. Yeah.

00:02:00 - Nick Krautter

So hopefully it's awesome.

00:02:01 - Bill Risser

Sold a couple copies.

00:02:04 - Nick Krautter

I love hearing that, you know, it's so cool. I was talking to another friend that I hadn't talked to in years, and she's like, I just recommended your book yesterday to someone. And that, to me, has got to be the most rewarding part, is hearing from people that it's helped and kind of cleared the path to growing a business or having a successful retirement. It really means the world to hear that. So thank you.

00:02:27 - Bill Risser

Yes. We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but I want to start with my typical shortcut questions. The first one's pretty straightforward. It's been. We're recording this in June of 2024. We're talking eight years. So I'm going to ask you, what's the most exciting thing that's happened to you, either personally or professionally, in the last eight years?

00:02:49 - Nick Krautter

Ooh. Well, with the book is getting to be a keynote speaker at really big conferences is super exciting. Before I got into real estate, I was in music and I was in bands, and I sing and play guitar, and there's just something so thrilling about getting onto a big stage and being in front of a lot of people. I know that probably terrifies some people out there, but for me, it's really exciting. So to have that opportunity to be in front of really big audiences and make an impact has got to be the most exciting thing.

00:03:21 - Bill Risser

Yeah, that's right. And if you want to hear more about that part of Nick's life and entry into the world of real estate, I've got the link here in the show notes for the episode 48 from June of 2016. You can listen to it there. Next question. Nick, awesome. You shocked me with some. With a post on social where you shared your handicap index, and I realized then that you really, really like golf. So, first of all, what is the index now?

00:03:52 - Nick Krautter

I'm a 0.5, so I'm at the best I've ever been in my life. Shot under par a couple times this year, which is amazing, to break par for the first time. And I did it on a pretty tough golf course. And that's. Yeah, that's. That's playing well. I'm really excited to be at that level right now and working on getting better, but that's as good as I've ever played.

00:04:13 - Bill Risser

Is there a piece of you that wants a plus handicap at least one time to have it, say, plus 0.5?

00:04:19 - Nick Krautter

No, it's not one time. I'm trying to get to, like, plus two or three, because to. To be able to qualify for national, like, USJ amateur events like the mid am, the am, I think that that's. That that's the worst you can be to qualify for something at that, like a national level.

00:04:36 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:04:37 - Nick Krautter

I'm lucky that I get to play with a lot of, like, really elite amateurs and professionals and former professionals, and people don't realize it, but the guys you see on tour, like, Bryson DeChambeau just won the US Open. He's probably a plus nine or plus ten, right. Is legitimately what he probably plays to right now.

00:04:57 - Bill Risser

Yeah. I think it's funny when you. My best handicap ever was around us in the sevens, low sevens maybe, and ever, and that was a long time ago, and you would play with somebody and I was in my thirties, and they would say, wow, that's amazing. Why aren't you? And I said, what? They're like, well, when you. Maybe when you go, you can be on the senior tour and you just go, what? What are you talking about? Those guys are light years away from this, from what I am. And here you are, plus two, or trying to get to a plus two and that still, that's going to put you. Look, it'll be really fun to be in those amateur events. I thought for sure the US Open was at one point, wasn't it, about a 1.4? You could qualify or you could go to a local qualifiers and start that regional stuff. But, wow, it's changed. Yeah.

00:05:39 - Nick Krautter

Yeah. Good memory. Yeah, it literally. So. It's so funny you say that. So the USM and the US Open were 1.4 and they changed it this year. So I got to 1.1 and they changed it that week to 0.4. And so I still need to get better than where I'm at to do the USM and the US Open and also the British Open are all 0.4, so they're going to keep moving that, because even now with that, 10,000 people started the local qualifiers for the US Open this year. So it's. It's a passion of mine. I get to play a lot and. And work hard at it. So it's. Now I'm at the point where I'm a lot of exercise to keep my body from breaking down and trying to balance, you know, weightlifting and workout and mobility with playing. So I don't overdo it and can still keep improving.

00:06:31 - Bill Risser

Yeah. It's all about that core, baby. Let's go to your next passion, which is the golden handoff you've recently. I don't want to misspeak here, but either you've kind of added a level to the book, or is it a second book? I'm going to get that right first.

00:06:52 - Nick Krautter

Sure. So it's a second edition and I added an entire new section, so the original book had five steps. In this one, I've added a new one, which is all about partial handoffs. And that's something that I learned about because I was teaching it, which is really cool. So going around all over the country teaching this, I get to meet all these amazing people and hear how they're implementing it. And the way that I've seen people implement it with partial handoffs is all the different ways. And in the book I talk about the three main ways where a retiring agent and an adopting agent can connect before that retiring agent actually wants to retire. I think this is going to open this up to so many more people because I know in my experience there's been a couple people whose businesses I really was really excited about potentially buying and taking care of their clients, but they weren't ready to retiree and the original system didn't really have a plan for that. And I realized that. I think now that that's the most important thing at the time. The original book, the Golden Handoff, was laying out a model and a path that I used successfully in buying six businesses. And my business went from 200 clients to 2000 clients, all referral clients, not buying leads. And it made an amazing difference in the trajectory of my life and my business. I think now it could be five times bigger than that because there's so many more people that want to stay involved, but they don't want to keep growing. And if you're not growing, you're losing clients. And that's the sad truth. And it's going to create this amazing opportunity for people to connect earlier when those relationships are still really strong. Because what happens is a lot of agents kind of just phase out and they lose touch with people because they're not calling back every year, they're not hosting events or not teaching classes. They're not doing all the things that they did to grow the business. And so as you lose touch with clients, they all know other agents and realtors, and so you start to lose those relationships and the value of your business goes down. And this is a way to avoid that, which I couldn't be more excited to share this. And I'm so happy that the book is out there for people now.

00:09:16 - Bill Risser

So, yeah, so as I think back on the golden hand off, your first edition, that it really was identifying that person who was ready or really close to exiting or at least was thinking about it. And in this case, there's going to be something in the book about how do you identify somebody who's at that point where they don't want to exit because they can't. They probably can't, but they're not building. Is there, is there some way that you can help people find those types of agents.

00:09:46 - Nick Krautter

Yeah. You know, the, the advice I give in finding, there's a whole chapter on finding retiring agents, and I think what it allows now is that you can connect even sooner. And so what I would say is anyone around you whose business is, is shrinking and not growing has the potential to fit into one of these categories wherever they could join your team, or you could join their team, or you could partner on certain aspects of the business and allow the retiring agent to continue to work on what they want to work on. And in one sense, you know, I think being at that stage in your career where you can be picky about what you want to do and not do should be seen as an accomplishment, right? That you're not chasing every possible client and deal, that you're focused on your core business or the people you really want to work with. But what that leaves out is all those other opportunities you could be taking and all those people you could be helping that don't fit into that core box of what you want to do because you don't want to do it. So then no one does it. Versus now, with a partial handoff, you could say, I only want to work with my a clients referral only this price point. Maybe you only want to do listings. You don't want to work with buyers. You don't want to do sign calls, first time buyers, whatever that is for you. But let someone else who's excited about that, who's trying to get in the business or grow their business, take care of all of those opportunities and all those people that maybe you've outgrown or aren't a fit for where you're at, but are still an amazing opportunity and people that still need to be helped and people that are still looking for good counsel and good guidance when they're in their real estate journey. I just see this as a way to create way better mentorship opportunities for people that want to what I call phase out but not lose all those clients and not lose the potential income. Just creating opportunities to make that such a better phase out to retirement process and to help a lot of agents around them grow intentionally and to make sure those clients don't get left behind. Because that's the other piece of this is if you have a good agent, you don't want to go try to find a new agent, you want to work with the people you know and trust. And this is a way for agents to endorse newer agents, upcoming agents, agents growing their businesses to their clients who they're not able, or they just don't have the bandwidth or the time to help anymore. And I see that as it's a huge win.

00:12:29 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Would you say the target audience for the book has changed slightly with this extra edition? Is it still the same? Because I know you, it really could have been either it was the young, aggressive agent who was looking for a way to find a source, obviously, of nice referral clients that they could take care of, or. But it also was focused on people who were looking for something, they could do something, something that would work. And to be able to turn their data base into an annuity was obviously the power of the book for them. So on the second edition, is it tailored more towards that person who's in that I don't want to call the midlife crisis, but they're just tired of the grind.

00:13:10 - Nick Krautter

I think it's funny because it's the same person, right, but at a different phase in their career and their life. And I think what this book is doing is if on one end of it, you've got your aggressive, newer, growing, I would say just a very growth focused person, it doesn't mean they're brand new or that they're been doing it forever, but in the growth phase of the business, and then you have someone that's kind of in the phasing out. If you think of it as a bell curve, the original book was the people at the front end that we're growing are going to help connect with the people at the very end. And now we're kind of getting those timeframes closer together. So you're not waiting until that retiring agent is actually ready to, like, hand it over and say, okay, it's all on you adopting agent. Now you're 100% in charge. And so it's gonna, the way I see this working is I think that's gonna create just way more collaboration, whether that's a partnership between two agents or teams merging or teams taking in adopting agents or retiring agents. And I kind of show the different ways that I see that happening. And I interviewed a lot of really great agents who are doing it in all these different ways and got their advice and their lessons from the real world, which I think gives a lot more information and clarity and a lot more examples for people to draw from and see where they fit in. That if the retiring agents were waiting till the very end, I think they're going to start thinking about this sooner. And I think it's going to just be so much better because the business is worth the most, when you're the most active and you're the most engaged. But that's the growth phase. Once you start getting away from that, whether you do it quickly or slowly, the business is losing value over time. If you're nothing, growing it and maintaining it. And so this is a way with a partial handoff to avoid that erosion of the value of the business and the quality of those relationships that aren't being taken care of and let someone come in with that energy, with that growth mindset to take over some of that work and help those people.

00:15:24 - Bill Risser

Yeah. Nick, this has been great catching up. I have been recommending your book since June of 2016. I think it's fantastic. Yeah, I think that it really solves a problem for that. For an industry that doesn't do a very good job of setting people up for retirement, to be brutally honest, there's a lot of agents I've seen out there than their seventies that are still cranking along, and it's probably because they had to. So that's just fantastic. If someone wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

00:15:56 - Nick Krautter

So the best resource is goldenhandoff.com dot. There's a really great calculator there where you can put in your numbers of how many transactions you do and your average commission. And based on the model in the book, it'll show the value of a business to the retiring agent and also the adopting agent. And I'm going to continue to add resources there and continue to update resources and a lot of, there's a lot of free information there and access to scripts and dialogues, the calculator, marketing pieces, the contracts, the announcement letter, all that's there for free. We make that available to everyone when you sign up@goldenhandoff.com.

00:16:36 - Bill Risser

Dot Nick, it's been great talking to you again. I'm so happy that you're able to continue right this way of doing business. I think that really not very many people have thought of. I hope that it continues on. I can't wait to see what the additions are to the second edition. Continued success and really work on that golf game because I do want to see you playing maybe at the memorial on a Monday. Is that where they play the last? Wherever they play?

00:17:06 - Nick Krautter

I'd love to be doing that. I'll certainly let you know if I make the cut somewhere.

00:17:09 - Bill Risser

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