Podcast - Lisa Carroll, Spec Ed Teacher Turned Top 1% Realtor in Tampa Bay

Off Market Podcast: Lisa Carroll, Spec Ed Teacher Turned Top 1% Realtor in Tampa Bay

Lisa is a former special education teacher turned top 1% realtor. She has over 30 years of experience and has sold over $150M in real estate over her career. From beachside towns and retirement communities to downtown condos and master-planned communities, Lisa is an expert in the Tampa Bay area.

In this interview, Lisa shares her journey into real estate, starting from her early days influenced by her first husband's involvement in the industry. She describes her pivotal decision to switch careers after getting her real estate license, her initial challenges, and her swift success, including her first deal with a friend which set the stage for her future in the industry. She also emphasizes the importance of understanding client service and relationship management, offering insights into maintaining connections and adapting to technological changes over the decades.

Sit back, buckle up, and get ready to hear firsthand what happens when someone is bold and brave enough to pursue their personal legend.

Transcript of the Episode

Austin: Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market podcast, this week we have Lisa Carroll, a former special education teacher turned top 1% realtor. She has over 30 years of experience and has sold over $150M in real estate over her career. If you are in the market for real estate in/around the Tampa Bay area, Lisa is your gal. Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa: Thank you very much. Nice to see you today, Austin. Nice to see you.

Austin: So talk to us about how you got into real estate. I know you were a special ed teacher, you found real estate and then you scaled to being a team lead. So talk to us about that process.

Lisa: Yeah, it's crazy because when I became a special ed teacher, I never thought I would be a salesperson.

My first husband was a realtor. He never really sold much, but he took me on some showings and I would go look at houses. And I really enjoyed just looking at the properties. And so I said, let me just get my license too. So I graduated from college. And started teaching and got my license right then.

So I finished that school year out, but when the summer came, I didn't teach. So I sold real estate full time and I really never went back. To teach until the market crash. So in 2007, I did go back and teach for a little while, just because my husband and I, at that time, were both in the industry and it was really tough.

So that's kind of how I got into it.

Austin: Exciting. And what was the transition going from a spec ed teacher to a realtor? Like, what did that look like?

Lisa: Yeah, so that was interesting. I didn't really think of myself as a salesperson, but then when you really think about it, being in front of a classroom and teaching people, you really are selling yourself to the kids.

And I think that is one of the misconceptions about real estate is that you're selling the house. When really you can't sell the house to someone you're selling your services and you're the trust in you. So I think that kind of translated easily easier than I thought it would, you know, in that transition.

Um, of course, there were a lot of learning curves throughout that process, but it was easier than I anticipated.

Austin: Talk to us about that first deal. So you decide you're going to make or become a realtor, and you get licensed. I'm sure the first day on the job, you're now like, okay, now what do I do? And how do I find my first deal?

Lisa: So back then it was so different because we didn't have the internet to shop for homes. It's 30 years ago. So people would look in little books, you know, they weren't really able to search online so much, you know, and it was a different world, but this was a friend of mine at the time who wanted to purchase their first home.

So at the time, I would have to go present in person to the seller, which we don't really do anymore. So I remember being so nervous. Taking the contract, writing it all up, and having my broker look it over and make sure I was good. And then I had to go present it. This realtor wanted me to present it in front of her and the seller.

So talk about being nervous, you know, but I did it and they got the deal and they lived in that home and had their first child there and, you know, stayed there for many years. So that was my first sale. It was smooth because I had friends. So it was easier in that way, but it was still a little nerve-wracking.

I think that it always is. You know, I can imagine, especially if it's your friend, you don't want to mess that one up. Don't want to mess any of them up. That's for sure.

Austin: So you sell your first home. Do you remember how many deals you end up closing in your first year as a realtor?

Lisa: It's so hard for me to really remember, but the average sale price was like a hundred thousand. So I know I made the million dollar club and you know, sold $4 million one year. I had little plaques and statues they used to give out, which I don't have anymore. I finally got rid of them after moving them around.

Um, I, I don't remember, but I would say somewhere around 15 is probably my first year is my guess. First full year in the business. And then it kind of just went up from there.

Austin: So you absolutely crushed the first year. We were just chatting with somebody a couple of weeks ago who was talking about the NAR's latest data and 49 percent of realtors couldn't sell a single home in their first year last year. And you crushed it with more than 10, which is awesome. So obviously there was some strategy or some playbook or something you did that was unique. Talk to us about what you did back then and what are some of the things that you're doing now. Did you go for the niches, and try to find people in specific areas? Did you try to go abroad? Did you do advertising? Like what was, what was your secret sauce throughout your progression in your career?

Lisa: So I definitely reinvested back into advertising. I thought that was really important. And at the time, again, it was buying magazine pages and the little books people would pick up.

There wasn't all this, all the opportunity like you see now for advertising, but I think I really relied heavily on my broker at the time who became a friend of mine and is still a good friend of mine. She's in her eighties now. She's not a broker anymore, but she was so successful, and her husband, and then they had like a mentor in the office.

So I. Just pick their brain. I was always in there and I was always learning from the people who were more successful than me and just trying to follow in their footsteps. As far as a niche goes, I did try to concentrate on an area that I was closest to, just because we do cover a huge area, and driving for two hours from one end to the other can be difficult.

And back then we didn't have. either. So it was very challenging. We'd have to print out pages of directions to get to show 10 houses and figure out how to get, you know, have a real map in the car. So, um, yeah, I focused on areas that I knew best and, you know, took advantage of that. We also focused a lot at the time in those first few years on investment properties ourselves that we wanted to pick up and hold.

Or, and I did a few flips. So I kind of played in that field a little bit back then. I don't do that much anymore, but I did do that for the first 15 years or so of my career.

Austin: We've had people on the show who do the same thing. They'll start off selling properties to other people. And then they're like, wait a minute, I want a piece of this. I'm going to go with some investment properties. I'm going to do some fix and flips. Maybe I'll do some wholesale. Maybe I'll do some buy and holds. Maybe I'll do some short-term rentals. Once you're in the game, you can see like, okay, this is a great deal. This is not such a great deal. These are the areas you want.

These are the areas you don't want. Um, and none of that you'd have been able to do before.

Lisa: Right. I've done, I've done that before and I do have one short-term rental now. I'm also licensed in Georgia. I don't, I don't do a lot there. I do have a team there that I refer things to when I have a business, but I do have one cabin there.

That's a short-term rental. It does very well. But I, when the market crashed, I got really, you know, it was tough. So we sold a lot at the time and it was a tough time for us. So since then, I've had kids and I was raising my kids and focused just on building the business instead of that aspect. But now I'm kind of thinking it's time to get back into that at some point here soon and teach my kids how to do it.

Because they're both, one's almost an adult. And the other one's 20 and they're both in the business with me here. So I think, you know, it's time to give them that, you know, learning curve about how to do that and get back into that just a little bit.

Austin: Now, are you going to make it easy or are you going to make it hard, not surface any leads and make them go cold call 10,000 numbers to find the first deal?

Lisa: So Garrett is 20 and he's licensed since he's 18. He's worked as our TC, so he learned the back end there. Then he worked as an ISA, which was all the cold calling and calling our database of 13, 000 leads, and he was trained by an expert ISA lead in the industry, who had him mentor him for a month or two. And so that helped him.

So now Garrett's closing five deals this month. So I mean, so that's been a big focus is kind of teaching them. My other one's not really in it yet. He's still in high school, but he helps us with video and you know, doing different things in the industry, but I do have a team of, you know, 10 agents as well that are doing very well, but Garrett had his first big month this month.

Austin: That's exciting. Congratulations! Talk to us about what the process of becoming one of the top agents in your area looked like. You started the snowball, right? It started off with one deal and then 10 deals and then 50 deals and a hundred deals. And I'm sure in that process, you've learned a ton. What are some of the things you've learned? And what did that process look like?

Lisa: When I went back to teach when the market crashed, I continued selling real estate, but I didn't feel I could really service listings that I didn't know personally, so I didn't solicit a lot of business that didn't come to me naturally because my time was limited.

I worked more with teachers and kind of focused on people with the same schedule as me. But when I decided to come back into the industry, I went to my current broker because he had been so successful. And I met him when I sold him his first house back in those days long ago. And so we met, we were friends.

And when I went back, I said to him, I'm, I'm coming back with a different kind of. state of mind here. I'm going for it. Like, I'm not just going to sell this many houses. I'm going big. Like I want to go for it. You know, it's time. This is when teams were just starting to emerge, you know, about 10 years ago or so.

You didn't see a lot of teams before that. So when I came back in, I said to my husband who was in the mortgage industry at the time to get his real estate license, please, because I'm coming out of teaching and I was already overwhelmed trying to, you know, do everything. So he started learning and selling alongside me within six months.

We needed another agent. So I recruited someone that was at my, I had owned a brokerage for about 10 years prior to that, recruited her to come on. And then all of a sudden I said, okay, we need more. What are we going to do? So my broker has helped me with, um, he'll get someone in sometimes that would be a good fit for the team.

And then I've also recruited other agents to come and join us. But it's, it's a lot more than people think it is. I think is what, what you learn as you go through this, uh, transition and. A lot of time management and people management. And I spend a lot more time doing stuff like that right now because I have, you know, three staff members I have to keep on track that help our team.

And then I have the agents that are on the team that I have to help and I'm still selling, you know, right now. So it's just a lot of juggling. and time management skills. So I try to time block and use the skills that I've learned. I was in coaching for three years and that helped me too.

It helped me to see people that were really massively successful and how they did it and then go, wow, if they could do it, I think I could do it too. And we all do things a little differently. You know, everyone has a different strategy and different ways they work their team and different ways they generate leads and all that kind of stuff.

But I think dreaming big, like looking at it and going, I can do it. And then finding people, like I said, when I first started, that can kind of mentor you or that you can learn from is the best thing I think to do. And even if it costs you more money than you really want to spend, the payoff has been great for me and those kinds of investments.

Austin: It's basically going from the blind leading the blind to somebody who's already been there, done that has systems and processes that scale. And to your point, when you grow, there are lots of growing pains that you have to learn. We had a guy on the podcast that’s a team lead.

He thought about becoming a broker but decided not to because he didn't want to take on that additional responsibility. But he's got 150 agents on his team that he's, that were going up to him, but right, so now he's got an organization structure that's like him and then he's got individual team leads and then those individual team leads manage their teams. And then those people have their team leads.

Lisa: And so that's just the front office, right? Then he's got an entire back office for all the transaction coordination and all the escrow facilitate, like everything else that goes into it. You don't realize, I mean, it's really hard to do it on your own and be, I don't know how the agents that are single agents.

And I know I have friends that are some that are single agents with one assistant or two. That do massive numbers, but I just, I always wanted a little bit of balance in my life and to have, you know, not to, not to be, I feel like that's just so demanding, I don't know how they do it. Like, it's like, cause you're on call 24 seven almost, you know, and you set your boundaries and your rules as best you can, but when leads come in or things happen, you can't just let them sit till you're back on the clock.

And hope they're going to be waiting for you, you know, you have to have a system. So, so yeah, systems and all that kind of stuff that, that took a lot of learning curves, you know, to get through that and find things that the agents on the team would adopt and love too, because if they don't like your systems or follow your systems, then.

Everyone's doing it's wild, wild west and nothing's working, you know? So yeah, definitely systems and, you know, following the same procedures and how things are handled and the staff know. And my staff is amazing because I've had them for seven years or more each. The two that are in the office full time, uh, the virtual assistants haven't been as long, but, um, they're amazing.

So I can leave and they can run the marketing, the listing coordinating the transactions, and then my agents can take the leads. Yeah. You know, for me when I, when I can't. So it works well.

Austin: Interestingly, you brought up single-member agents. I've, uh, I've had the opportunity to speak with a couple of those people that I've done.

500, a thousand, even more than a thousand listings themselves. And they're like, I'm on the phone 24/7. People can call me at two o'clock in the morning or eight o'clock in the morning or five o'clock at night. And I'm always picking up the phone, but those are the same people that love it, right? Like that's, that's their life.

They decided they didn't want a family. They just want to do this and they love it. And that's what they do all day, every day.

Lisa: So yeah, they can talk. Hey, you have to answer the phone. There's no doubt, you know, you have to answer the phone and this is, you know, it's part of the job, but some people don't.

And that's a big reason. Some people don't succeed if they don't answer the phone. I'm like, you're a realtor. You have to answer the phone or have a system in place to answer the phone. Right. You know, so for sure that's number one, pick up the phone, pick up the phone.

Austin: For agents that are just starting, they're hungry. They want to become one of those top 1 percent realtors in their area. What are some of the tips you have for them?

Lisa: Number one is to pick up the phone. What are the things that they'd be doing? If you can find a mentor or a team to learn from, that's going to kind of take you under their wing and help you, um, It's worth it.

Too many agents worry about, Oh, what's my split? What's, what am I going to get? But if you get a hundred percent of the split and you get no business, if you're not learning anything. So, you know, it's good to be part of a team or pay someone to mentor you, invest in yourself, look at it as an investment. I think so many come in and think, Oh, I'm going to make money so easy.

But yet they're not, they don't have a plan to educate themselves or a plan to learn more. I mean, even just sitting down and studying the contract, a lot of them, a lot of agents don't take the time to do some of the basics at the beginning and you need to invest in yourself. And I think time blocking and making sure you do those prospecting activities.

Early in the day, even though they're hard everyone can prospect differently. If you're not the one who wants to pick up the phone and cold call, there are other ways you can prospect. You can find your niche. You can find, the thing that you feel good about doing, but you have to make it part of your daily routine at least Monday through Friday.

And if you're not treating your day as a schedule and a scheduled work week, you're not going to work 40 hours a week. I see so many agents who I work full-time, but they're probably just reacting to things as they come in, waiting for things to come to them instead of creating the momentum themselves, to make things happen.

So, I mean, those, those are some of the tips I would give to new agents and our team here and there. And of course, my son is new, so I've been working with him, but you know, it does, it takes a lot more, um, effort and, and, um, discipline than I think then they realize going in, it's not going to be easy, save some money, have some, you know, some money saved up so you can have six months to a year to start rocking it. Cause it's going to take a little bit of time.

Austin: The other two things that I've heard on top of that is. Number one, always putting the customer at the center of everything that you do and making sure that they have a positive experience. And then once the sale's done or the purchase is done, it's making sure that they're happy in the home.

They have all of the things that they need. They have connections to other ancillary services. I think the single most interesting thing was that the person that we had on was talking about how. No matter what the homeowner needs, they have somebody for it. So whether it's a cleaning service, they have it.

Whether it's somebody that is a plumber, they got it. If it's an electrician, they have it. If it's a home warranty company, they have it. They have every single thing that any homeowner might need at any given point in time because that homeowner will have questions. The number one person they're going to call is the realtor, especially if they're a home-time buyer for the first time.

Lisa: We have a vendor list as well, so we share that with them and our follow-up after the closing is probably more important than anything because we do client appreciation events, we send them different things, you know, in the mail, presents, gifts, reminders. Oh, it's your birthday. Here's a scratch-off card, just little things.

So they're thinking of us and I'm constantly staying in touch and seeing if they need anything. given them an annual update on their market. But that's maybe a little further than your first year. So that's, you know, as you go through your first year, make sure you're keeping track of all the people you have closed deals with and that you have them on at least a spreadsheet if you don't have a CRM.

But you know, and that you're gonna follow up with those people and keep your list. I lost my list. So after 15 years of my business when I went to teach, it was an act, it was called act. It was a CRM back then and we lost it. I lost everything. Then the MLS changed. Uh-huh. Yeah. The MLS changed. I see your face.

And I couldn't pull it. So I, and I, I go through my phone and try to get names and stuff and, you know, try to add, and I did find some of them, but I lost that list. So just make sure that you have that list and don't lose it like I did. And so I had to kind of restart at that point, even though I had. You know, people that still knew how to get a hold of me.

My cell phone's been the same for 30 years. So it, you know, they would still reach out. But that was, that was a big, big mess up when I lost that list. I was crying for days, but I'm like, where is it? And just everything we moved and I, I just lost it. So that was, that was a big mistake. That is a big mistake.

Austin: So maybe that will answer the next question, but let's say you have five minutes with your younger self. You're just starting in real estate. You can talk to yourself about anything that you want. What are some of the things that you would tell your younger self just starting?

Lisa: I would tell myself that I could do way more than I did. I didn't have any clue that the sky was the limit and that I could do it. To do what I've done. So at the time, I was just thinking, Oh, if I make 50,000 a year, that'll be good. Because it was double what a teacher made at the time. 22,000 was my first salary as a teacher. You know what I'm saying? So I didn't dream as big as I should have at the beginning.

So I would, I would have gone harder and quicker and more focused on my goals and believed that I could do it. I spent a lot of time thinking I was young. And, you know, was anyone going to trust me because I was new, you know, and having some doubts about that as a young person if you educate yourself and you have a mentor that's older than you, you just bring them in and they'll, they'll give you that, you know, a little bit of lift that you might mentally need, I think.

So for me, that was a big part was just not believing fully in my potential or knowing even what the potential was just because I didn't see anyone else doing those massive things.

Austin: I think that's the perfect note to end on. Dream big and then dream even bigger. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Lisa.

Lisa: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.