Episode 403 - Julie Lawrence, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, Florida Property Group

I think it's pretty cool helping people and then also kind of getting to see that come into fruition.

You know, someone that, you know can't wait to move down to Tampa, get out of the cold up north, and you get to help them through the process and then see them here and love it.

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 and comers and really anyone with a story to tell.

It's the stories that led my guest to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my ninth year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 403 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 stay really local this.

We're going to talk to an agent who's with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, Florida Property Group here in Tampa Bay. Her name is Julie Lawrence. Julie has been an agent now for coming up on three years. I think it might be a little bit more. We'll find out for sure.

And Julie has a very interesting backstory. I won't spoil it here in the intro. We will cover that as we get going. So let's get this thing started. Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. I am happy to be here today with you.

It's going to be so much fun. Now, there's. There's a little bit of fanboy in me. My buddies know it. I'm a news guy. And so we're going to talk about that part of your life.

Are you okay with that?

Yeah, that's totally fine. Open book right here.

Awesome. Let's first, let's start, though, at the beginning.

I know that you, you've been in Florida for a while, if I'm going to guess, since college, which is, you know, for a while now. But I think you're not originally from here. And I think looking around, I found something about the Chicago land area. Am I on. Am I on track there?

Yeah. So I grew up in north of the city. So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and I got out of there when I was 17. So after high school, I left.

Sound like it might have been in a hurry.

Yeah.

Well, first of all, you know, growing up in Chicago, it's an. It's an amazing city. I love talking sports with people. So I'll have To ask you this just because it's got to be one or the other.

Were you Cubs or White Sox?

I'll be honest with you, I wasn't really either.

You didn't care?

Yeah, yeah. My parents weren't originally from Chicago, so it wasn't like we were these like die hard fans. My dad watched NASCAR growing up, you.

Know, so was he from. Tell me. He's from the South.

Yeah, he grew up in Florida, so. And they moved around, but generally Florida. He went to high school in Seminole, so.

Oh, okay, awesome. So, yeah, that makes sense. NASCAR is big down here. That's. That's kind of cool.

Talk about like a childhood in Chicago is much different than a childhood where I grew up, which was San Diego. Just because. Yeah, just because of the weather and stuff. But tell me what it was like. I mean, you're in a suburb.

Did you regularly travel down to the city? What were winners? Like? Just kind of gimme your take on growing up there.

Yeah, so we were like an hour north of the city, kind of closer to Wisconsin than the city. A lot of corn fields, very suburban. Very boring is what I would describe it. Maybe that's why I left and went to Miami quickly.

But it was, you know, very. We didn't lock our doors, you know, there was not a lot of crime in our neighborhood there. We had great schools.

I swam, so I was in, you know, varsity swimming all four years. We rarely went downtown. My dad worked downtown, so he commuted in every day. But we probably went downtown maybe two or three times a year.

So that was about. It wasn't super exciting. So I was excited to. To go somewhere different, you know.

Yeah, let's talk about that. I mean, talk about. I don't think there's any place you could have gone that's more different than Chicago, but Miami, right?

Yeah.

So what. What was the driving force there? Did you.

Did you look at some other schools or were you kind of from early on thinking, I really like Florida, let's get to Florida.

Somehow I hated the cold. So I think the farthest north school I applied to was North Carolina. That was the farthest north. So I applied to smu. I applied to Miami.

I think I applied to South Carolina. North Carolina, you know, so definitely all in the South. I didn't want the cold. I knew that. And my grandmother. I told you.

My dad lived in Seminole, so we would go to the Tampa Bay area every year, once or twice growing up. So I was very familiar with Florida. That's where we spent a lot of our Vacations.

I didn't know I'd go to Miami, per se, but then they gave me a huge scholarship, so I was like, all right, we're going to Miami.

Miami's a private school that only has. Is this still around 5,000 undergrads?

I think it's a little more than that, but it wasn't. When I was there, it was less than 10,000. So a lot of people think it's this huge school. They're like, why can't they fill up the football stadium?

Well, because we're not a huge school, and a lot of people are from out of state. They're not local, so.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's. It's South Miami. It's a cool little campus. It's actually. My son's fiance actually grew up there. Maybe two miles, three miles from campus.

Yeah, right in the South Miami area. So I've been down there a few times. It's really. It's really a pretty campus.

But, you know, you were playing either at the Orange bowl, and now they're playing at Hard Rock. And you're right, it looks weird. You know, when you see a Miami game, the crowd.

It's not an overwhelming crowd of a hundred thousand people like you might get at a Tennessee game.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't. But, yeah, it was hard. I was there. We did two years at the Orange bowl and then two years at the new stadium.

So I got to experience both, which is pretty cool because they're very different. But to get to either, you know, it was a journey. You know, you had to get on.

To get to the Orange bowl, you had to get on a bus and then a tram and then walk a bit. And the Hard Rock, you had to find a ride somehow. It was about 45 minutes away, so it was a little bit of an adventure, but it was fun.

That's cool. You have to be giddy with Miami's football team this. This season.

I don't know who saw this coming, but as we record this on November 4th, they're undefeated and killing everyone. They. They approach. Well, I mean, there's a couple of close games, but that's gotta be a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's fun. I. You know, I wasn't a fan prior to going to college there, so I became a fan once I was a student.

So we haven't really had a ton of great seasons since I've been in. Miam. Miami fan. So I'm pumped about it.

Yeah. So you were a meteorologist. You worked for a couple different News organizations around the country. Obviously Miami must have had a program for that.

I'm just guessing.

Yes. Yeah, they did.

Did you know before? Like, were you. When did you think? I. I want to. I want to talk about the weather. Was it something that came after you went to school or was it before?

It was probably during school.

Okay.

Um, I always liked the weather, but I wasn't one of those, I guess, you know, your classic weather man. That was a five year old saying they wanted to be a meteorologist. I didn't.

I always thought the weather was cool, but I didn't think of it as a job per se. But Miami had a very cool program.

So they had broadcast journalism program, you know, where you'd go if you wanted to do reporting, anything like that. But you also had to have a second. A second major. So they had a meteorology major and they allowed you to do both.

Was kind of intensive because there's not a whole lot of overlapping credits between the two fields. But I was able to get a double major in meteorology and broadcast journalism. And then when I was interning, I interned at a couple stations in Miami.

When I was at school, that's when I really decided that I really enjoyed doing the weather.

Did you get to deal with any hurricanes? I'm just curious.

No, no.

You got lucky.

We had a really quiet. I was there 06 to 2010 and it was quiet, so.

Wow, you just missed them. There's a bunch of stuff like in 04 I keep hearing since 2017, but.

Okay, yeah, 04 was terrible for Bay.

Yeah. Wow. Okay, so that, that works out well when you're right out of school and you're new to the industry. You know, you have to kind of prove yourself.

You got to kind of. You're generally not going to a big market. How did you do? Where was your first market? Where'd you have your first job?

So my first job was Abilene, Texas, which was a total culture shock coming from, you know, Miami. The clubs were open until like 5am and you get to Abilene, they're like, we close at 11pm we're like, okay. You know, it was a big difference.

A big difference. But it was a great learning experience. I met a lot of amazing people. It was, you know, small town, three hours west of the Dallas Fort Worth area.

And that's where I paid my dues for three years. I met my husband there. So.

Awesome. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. That's perfect. And then was, was, was the NBC affiliate in Tampa. Your next Stop.

Or did you have to do something else along the way?

No, I was very fortunate that I kind of went from a really small market to a pretty big market. A lot of people have to do a couple of stops in between, but I was able to land at NBC. I think I was 24 then, so still pretty young and.

Wow. Yeah, that's really good, right? Yeah. And so we mentioned this. We were talking a little bit before we went, we started recording.

But when I first got here in 2017, Steve Jervy was the man. I mean, when there was a hurricane, I was just. It's him and Lee. It was great.

So these are all the people that you got to work with and learn from, I would imagine, as mentors. Is that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I worked with Steve the whole time I was there at the station. Lee was in the morning.

So depending on the shift I worked at the time, sometimes I would see her as well. So she was there the whole time I was there. And yeah, I think. Thought we had a pretty kick butt weather team.

That was cool. Yeah. So there's my. For those that are local here in the Florida area, that's a little. That's for you. Everybody else, well, don't worry.

Who are these people?

I. I do have this qu. Just a weird question. When you're doing the weather, sometimes you go out and do the live shots and. And not fun stuff.

What was your toughest live shot that you did when you were a double fla.

So I was never the lucky one chosen to go out in any rough weather. So, yeah, so I. I didn't really have any. You know, I was never. It was usually the reporters that were out in the. In the elements. I was stuck in the.

We always just say the weather center was an interesting spot. You know, we're talking about the weather and there's not even a window. So for us to really look to see what's happening, we had to.

To leave the weather center. But I did do some live shots that weren't weather related. The coolest one was when the Bolts were in the Stanley cup finals.

Yes.

Yeah, we're in the Stanley Cup. I can't remember where, but we were outside Amelie arena and I was doing the weather forecast outside there in June.

It was hot as anything, but, you know, we got to sneak in to see the game, you know, so it was cool.

Press credential comes in handy sometimes. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. So. So now. But you know, you're not doing that anymore.

I want to find out more about that decision and why real estate? Maybe there was something that usually there's either family or there's a friend or someone who says, I think you'd be good at this.

Is that sort of your path? How did you decide to become a realtor?

That's funny you said that, because it was actually my husband, he said, what about real estate? You know, you'd like that. You'd be good at that. So I looked into it, and a couple of things just lend me to. To leave news. Multiple reasons.

And I, you know, took the test and thought I'd give it a try and then ended up really, really liking it.

So the path is usually a brokerage that has a lot of training involved with it. Right. Like I'll just throw a couple. Keller Williams or a Caldwell banker. They're real in C21. They're known for their training of new agents.

But that's not the path you took. You decided you went right to Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And we actually do have a ton of training. Okay. Yeah. Surprisingly, we. I would say we've got just as much as some of the ones you mentioned.

They have like, a BHU program where it's all day, two days a week for a month. If you're a new agent, it's just training all day long. So they have. They've got a lot. And at different levels, too.

So, yeah, I went straight to Berkshire Hathaway, and I'm still there now.

Yeah. And any mentors along the way for you there? Because that's. I think that's always important for new agents, is to connect with somebody.

I don't know if there is, like, one particular mentor. My broker. Guy is amazing. I think that's why our office. Most of his agents are here, because guy's great, and then we're really collaborative. Really.

Anyone in the office will help you. So if you're a newer agent, there's tons of experience agents you can ask questions, collaborate with, you know, co list.

I listed my first house with Dana, so I brought her to the listing appointment. We listed it together. And so we all kind of, I feel like, help each other out.

You'll be doing that shortly. Or maybe you already are with some of the new agents coming in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of cool. I haven't been there that long, but to still be able to. People ask you for advice and, you know, things like that, that's cool.

Your favorite part of your new career?

Oh, favorite part. This is a hard one. I think it's pretty cool helping people and then also kind of getting to see that come into fruition.

You know, someone that, you know can't wait to move down to Tampa, get out of the cold up north, and you get to help them through the process and then see them here and love it, or vice versa. You know, they have to sell their house and it's not a great situation. You get to help them through it. In the news, you.

I guess you're helping people, but you don't actually get to. You don't really get to see from. See that happen. Right. You're kind of detached from anyone that you're helping to restore or anything like that.

So it's been cool to. I'm a people person, so get to help people and work with them.

Toughest part. What's the toughest part for you?

Toughest part is there are certain things you just cannot control, Right?

Yeah.

No matter how hard you try, you can't control certain things. So.

So true.

Yeah, Go with it.

Julie, I thought you were going to say the toughest part of being a realtor is when you run into somebody, you know, from Tampa and. And you have to drink a bunch of bourbon. That's probably the toughest part.

So what?

That was a Berkshire Hathaway. I can't remember the name of the event. The annual.

Yeah, our convention.

Yeah, yeah, the EHHS convention. We were in Louisville, Kentucky, and just happened to. Yeah, I met you and Dana on the plane. It was funny. And. Yeah.

So we had a little event and you showed up with some people and. Anyways, that wasn't that tough.

I guess that was tough for me, if you don't remember. It was tough for me. I was pregnant at the time. I couldn't have any organs.

That's right. So it was the toughest part.

Yes, it was. I was at a burp tasting and all that.

Dana just took your glasses. Is that okay?

Good.

Sorry, Dana. All right, let's. Let's talk about some of the things you're doing now. First of all, it seems to be doing a lot of stuff in South Tampa.

If you had to pick and choose, like, where you would love to work in the city. Is South Tampa kind of your favorite spot?

Yeah, I mean, I love in South Tampa. It's close. That's where I live. I end up doing work all over the place. But yeah, I'd say my home is South Tampa. So.

Yeah, it's very cool down there. It's kind of scary during hurricanes, I would imagine.

Yeah. We had a lot of. This was the first year, I think South Tampa was really impacted greatly, mostly by Helene, right? Yeah.

Well, you know, bow storms really. Helene brought a lot of surge flooding into some neighborhoods, you know, especially off West Shore area that hadn't seen it before.

So that was significant impacts. And then Milton brought a lot of rainwater flooding. So we had a few spots that are flood zone X that flooded in South Tampa from Milton.

So it's kind of weird.

I imagine that's going to create a whole new series of questions for you, especially if you're talking to, you know, some people out of Chicago that are thinking about coming down here. Does that change the conversation a little bit after what we went through?

Yeah. At least right now. I mean, one thing I've learned from being in news is people's memory and is short. Right.

So I don't know what it'll look like six months from now. Will people start to forget or not?

But few out of state people that I'm working with right now, one of which originally wanted to be as close to the water as possible because he wanted a boat. Now said, I think, I think we're going a little inland, you know, think we're going to be out of the flood zone.

So that is the sentiment with some people right now is they. They don't want to take that risk. They don't want to deal with any potential flooding. We'll. We'll see how long that lasts.

But that's certainly a conversation that's happening more than last year.

Yeah, I would imagine so. And there's always going to be those people that just want to be on the water no matter what. That's never. It won't go away.

They'll take their chances and maybe have Nothing happen for 20 years again or 100 in this case. Yeah, it was a long time. Okay.

Yeah.

Cool. You have launched a new series. This has been a lot of fun. I've been watching this. It's called Journey to Sold. Right.

And it's where you're talking about. It looks like it's a different transaction. The things you experienced. Most recent I think was one of about.

It was 100 year old house and the challenges and the cool stuff. There's both. Right. Talk about where that came from, how you're doing it. I mean, how much fun is that?

So I try to do, you know, a lot on social media as part of my business and I work with a production company that actually shoots for me and edits those videos and we were talking about like doing a series, right. So one day a week we post this series. So I thought, hey, it'd be cool. Instead of posting like a just soul picture, like, let's tell the story.

Every house is a story. So I think actually I came up with Journey to Soul.

I think that was with the help of AI, you know, like, give me a name for this and gave me 15 names to choose from so I can be helpful. But that's how I came up with the series and it's fun.

So I figure we'll do it for a couple months and tell some stories of different house sales and different challenges or successes that came along with it.

Yeah.

And content's content because now you can not only use it in different social networks, but you can take sound bites out little pieces and do all kinds of cool stuff with it. And yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, I like that. If, if you had to, if you're. Are you thinking ahead yet? Like, what's the next one?

Are you just kind of really focusing hard on this? Like, or are they just kind of hitting you like another one says, oh, I think I could do this. This would be a cool little series.

I have not thought about any other series, so.

Yeah, not yet.

We'll see. Maybe I'll just do this one for a couple of months and then move on to the next one and try to think of something, something different to do.

You know, social media and is always changing, so.

Absolutely true.

You know, the trends and what everyone's doing. I feel like every six months it's onto something different. So.

Cool.

I once again, I, you know, look around on the Internet when I'm before I interview a guest and I found out that you really, really like English bulldogs.

I do, yes.

I'm assuming you have an English bulldog at home.

Yeah, we have two right now. We have Romeo and we have one Eyed Freddie. We just adopted Freddie a couple weeks ago.

Really? And what happened to his other eye? Do we know? Or is it.

He actually was a stud. So he is one of those crappy backyard breeders. He lived in a dirt pit for the first six years of his life. It was terrible.

So the rescue got him when the breeders finally got rid of their dogs. And I don't know exactly what was wrong with him at the time, but his eye basically needed to be removed. It wasn't working, so they removed it.

He still gets along fine with just one eye and he got adopted and then sadly his owner passed away about a year and a half later. So he was about to get into a shelter, but thankfully the rescue could bring him back in if there was a spot.

We had just lost two dogs this year, so we said, hey, you know, we can take him for a little bit. And we kept him.

That's great. And you, it's not just that you have bulldogs, but you're part of the Florida English Bulldog Rescue. Right. This company where you.

Where you actually found Freddie, Right?

Yeah.

Talk about that.

Yeah. So the Florida English Bulldog Rescue was. Oh, gosh, I think Jen started it 15 years ago. They've helped thousands of dogs.

And I actually helped run the rescue for her when she had moved and had some other life stuff going on. And. And then I had my son. You know, I wasn't running it anymore. I was still helping involve with events, things like that.

But she actually stepped away and retired earlier this year. So the Florida English Bulldog Rescue closed this year, which was sad.

But a whole group of the volunteers started another rescue called the Florida Bulldog Rescue.

They help Frenchies, English Bulldogs, you know, still a similar mission, helping these dogs stay out of shelters and getting fixed up because they've got so many health issues. So. Yeah. So that's where we got Freddie from. And yeah, big supporter of animal rescue.

I know that you mentioned they're very. They need a lot of care, whether it's the grooming for one. Right.

They've got some maintenance. Yeah. With the. Yeah. With the wrinkles getting that clean. And they're just genetically disposed to like everything, like skin allergies, eye stuff.

You spend a lot of money. If you want to.

I, I want to know if this is true. They can't swim, Correct? Yeah, they can't swim. Is that the only dog that we know of that can't swim?

I don't know. I've only had English Bulldogs.

Really. But they will think they'll just go to the bottom. You got to jump in and get them out right away.

Yeah. I think occasionally you can get one that's maybe their body type works a little better.

But knew a lot of people who unfortunately didn't necessarily take that seriously and their dogs would fall in the pool and had drowned. So. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. All right. So there you go. That's true. I thought it might have been people just pulling my leg.

No.

Are you a fan of Frenchies? I'll be. I gotta ask that last question. Are you a fan of the Frenchies because they're. They're a different looking little dog.

I'm not. Not a fan. We actually almost got a Frenchie this go around. My husband wanted one, then we ended up with Freddie.

They're a little bit higher energy, so we like the bulldogs because they're nice and lazy, you know, So I don't dislike Frenchies, but we've never owned one before. Okay, so we'll see.

All right, well, like I'm, I'm going to running up against your clock and, and so I'm. What I'm going to do is ask you the same final question I've asked every guest on the podcast. So. Okay, you get.

If you had one piece of advice you'd give a new agent just getting started, what would it be?

I would say, give it time, don't give up. The success does not come overnight. You might see someone that has success early on, but that's not the norm.

So you have to work really hard for at least like a year to start to see stuff happen. And so that means working hard and not seeing results at the beginning. You gotta start to, you know, fill your pipeline and say yes to everything.

Say yes to everything and give it some time.

Yeah. Somebody says, can someone sit in open house? You better have your hands the first one up. Right?

Right. Yeah. You may not meet a single buyer or have a single client the first 20 you hold, but then maybe on day 21 you do and that leads to who knows what.

So.

And would you say for you, the, when you had those first initial successes, does it just kind of change the way you think and feel and, you know, it just kind of leads you to the next conversation with a whole lot more confidence and it just seems like it grows on that.

Yeah, I feel like it definitely grows exponentially. I think especially two people's confidence in you grows.

You know, they're, they're, you know, once you've sold a few houses, they, you've, you've gone through the process. Right. Because there's a lot of questions the first couple transactions that you have. So it does grow exponentially, for sure. I'd say, Yeah.

I remember back in the day, I've seen a lot of first time agents come in with, with their buyers and if I knew they were a first time agent, this was their first closing, I would always say to them as they sat down, we had a chat real quick before they brought people into sign. I'd say, I'm going to ask you three questions. The answer is yes to all three. And they're like, okay.

And it was things like, you know, oh, I see here the home warranty is being paid by the seller. You got is that, right? And they go, yep, yep, that's right.

So I was trying to, you know, make, make them feel a little more powerful, you know, and so I love that, I love that, you know, because we all know it's, there's a big drop off in the first five years of people who just can't, you know, follow through and can't get there. And so it's great to see you're having this success and it's not going anywhere and it's going to be a wonderful career. I love it.

So if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

And I tell you what, if you would send me some information, if there is any on the, on the rescue, I'd be happy to put that in the show notes as well.

Sure. Okay. Yeah. So the best way to reach out to me, whichever way you're comfortable with, you can call or text me. 847-736-2587. That's fine.

Or email if you prefer. Email as well.

We'll have that in the show notes.

Yeah. So honestly, yeah, call, text, email, all of the above work fine with me. And I'll send you a link to the Florida Bulldog Rescue. So you have it.

Awesome. Awesome. Julie, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for letting me be that weirdo weather. Weather wonk or whatever you want to call it.

It's super fun, especially in places where, you know, I've lived in Phoenix where we got to talk about being 118 and here we get to talk about incredible weather as well. So thanks so much. Congratulations on your, on your transition to real estate. It's great to see the success you're having. So thank you.

Great talking. Thanks for inviting me on the podcast.

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