Podcast - Mark Pattison, Leader of #1 RE Group in San Diego With 100+ Agents

Off Market Podcast: Mark Pattison, Leader of #1 RE Group in San Diego With 100+ Agents

Mark is ranked in the top .01% of realtors nationwide. He’s sold thousands of homes worth over $1 billion, with over $100M in 2023 alone. He also manages a team of over 100 agents and has represented some incredible clients. Today, we peel back the layers of his record-setting trajectory on the Off Market Podcast by Goliath Data.

In this episode, Mark takes us through his unique journey from Seattle to San Diego, detailing his early career in sales and his adventurous move to California with no real estate license, car, or connections. Despite these challenges, he quickly became a top-performing agent, selling 24 homes in his first few months. Mark shares invaluable insights on the importance of resilience, the power of social media, and the significance of tracking metrics for business growth. Whether you're a new agent or a seasoned pro, Mark's story and tips are sure to inspire and guide you on your journey.

Transcript of the Episode

Austin: Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market podcast, this week we have Mark Pattison, the Founder of Porchlight Realty, the #1 Real Estate Team in San Diego. Mark has nearly is in the top 1% of the top 1% of realtors nationwide, having sold over 2500 homes worth well over $1B, and managing a team of over 100 agents! If you’re in the market for real estate in/around San Diego, Mark is your guy. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark: Thanks for having me.

Austin: So Mark, tell me a little bit about your story, how you got into real estate. I know you were at Microsoft, then you went to Nordstrom and Groupon. Then you became a Realtor. Talk to us about how you got to where you are today.

Mark: I was living in Seattle, born and raised in Seattle. I went to the University graduate business school, worked at Nordstrom in college, a typical sales commission job. So that's kind of my first taste of, of real legit sales. And, you know, being 19 and making $5,000 a week, that was pretty insane at Nordstrom back in the good old heydays.

And just selling high end designer shoes, living in the Seattle lifestyle of pouring rain. And I decided, man, I'm really sick of Seattle. I think I'm going to move to Chicago. Cause I'm, you know, born and raised in a town. You kind of want to spice things up, change it up. I didn't know anyone in Chicago. So I moved, went there and I decided, oh, this is amazing life.

But then the winter hit. Now, if you've ever been to Chicago during the winter, uh it is the worst cold you've ever felt in your entire life. And so, the second winter was approaching. And I said that's kind of my like, tipping factor. And I said, man, I don't want to live in Seattle. I don't want to live in the Midwest anymore. I think I want to be back on the West coast and I'm going to move to San Diego. And I think I'm going to be a real estate agent. I think I'd be really good at it. So 12 years ago, I was like, I'm just going to up and move to San Diego, which didn't know anyone here.

Again, a new city didn't have a car, didn't have a real estate license. I had 70, 000 in debt because one thing about me is I will always put travel over income. I'm always like, oh, and this is why I can't last in the corporate world is that they only give you X number of weeks of vacation. And I said, man, real estate, I could have all this, you know unlimited vacation travel wherever I want, whenever I want and don't have a boss.

And so I didn't really ever move for the money. I didn't move because of a mentor. It was just on a whim and that's how I got into real estate. So I introduced myself. I didn't have anyone being like, you'd be a good agent. I thought I would be good. So I did it and I'm decent. I think I'm a better business operator and more of an ideas guy, um, than anything, but the real estate is kind of what got me here.

Austin: I love it. Maybe you can take us back to that first deal. I know that the first deal I've heard is, is one of the hardest. Talk to us about the first deal you worked, uh, and how that ended up transpiring.

Mark: I'm still friends with the people. So I'm brand new to San Diego and I didn't have a car. Like I had a moped and they were like, Hey, do you sell real estate in Temecula? And I was like, yeah, of course. And so San Diego is here. Temecula is a suburb about an hour away. I didn't know where it was. I'd even never heard of Temecula. And I was like, yeah, I saw in Temecula. And they know the story now that I had never sold anything.

And so I'm like, sure. So I, I go and I get them under contract. I get them into escrow. And when in, I was in escrow, I literally was like, okay, you know, I sold them the house. Cause I did not get trained properly. I just didn't know anything. I didn't know the next steps. And I, when I went to go write the offer, I didn't even know which website I went to, to go write it.

I was like, what do I do? And I didn't know what the word escrow meant. While in my first escrow. And then I ended up selling the second house, like the second week, I was licensed third house, third week. And I was just absolutely cranking it between August and December of my first year. Cause I got licensed in the summer. I had sold 24 homes.

So without sphere of influence, nothing. It was just like, I'm good with connecting with people and I can find out their needs. And honestly, I just. I feel that I'm a pretty trustworthy person. So it's, it's a good connection and it comes from the heart, but it was very easy for me to, uh, to just constantly just crank them out.

And I, and I got myself a car, so that helped.

Austin: I can imagine the transition going from moped to car and showing up at one of these listings with the moped and they're like, who's this guy? A little Vespa or something.

Mark: Oh, I would park on the corner and then like fix my hair. So take off the helmet, fix my hair, and then go on the listing appointment.

Austin: And 24 listings in three months. That's pretty impressive. Last week we had Neema, he was the youngest broker in California history. He sold 32 homes after graduating from college in three months and then became a broker and less than three months.

So he wrote to the brokerage board, had said, Hey, look, I just graduated. Here's my transcripts. I closed these 31 deals. Like, can you give me the brokerage exam? And sure enough, they said, yeah, we'll make a one time exception, took it past. And 22 became the youngest broker in California history. So yeah.

Mark: The broker doesn't make any more money and it's broker for a reason, but I don't want to be a broker. I just want to be the lead or the, you know, but when you do run a huge brokerage, cause my team is essentially like a brokerage, you know, it's, there's, there's things to consider. You got to look in P and L and there's a lot of expenses and it's not always as good as it looks.

Austin: So you, you've been in the game for almost a decade. You've sold 2, 500 homes. You have this team. Talk to us about how you made the distinction or the choice not to become a brokerage. I would assume it's because you like to go hunt and fish. Yeah. Which is what I've heard some people say. They're like, Hey, I don't want to do a brokerage cause I want to go hunt.

Mark: The biggest thing is, is that you got to look at the pros and cons of running your own ship and with just the legalities and the changes that you constantly have within, you know, California real estate, new laws. I mean, NAR is rolling out new laws, July 1st.

And so that's just, you got to be on top of your shit nonstop if you are the broker. And not saying that I don't constantly inform myself, but I love having someone I can rely on. And at my brokerage, so my team name is called Porchlight Realty and we're brokered by EXP Realty. So if you talk to my clients and we market everything with compliance, it has our, you know, logos and EXP logos.

But if my clients talk to us, they think, you know, hey, you work at Porchlight. So they don't really, You know, it's got its own brand. So already I'm winning there with creating my own brand. I have, you know, my team's branded, et cetera, but I don't have all the responsibilities of keeping up to date on the every little teeny change that happens.

Also, if we ever had, you know, a lawsuit, I wouldn't be the one that would have to be going into court. The brokerage kind of helps out with that. Good news is, is we've sold that many homes and I've actually sold, I think we're around like 3000 something. Maybe around 3,200. So I need to update my LinkedIn, uh, but on that aspect, if we ever did get sued, which we have not been, it wouldn't be all on my shoulders.

You know, I would take responsibility for it, of course, as the team leader, but I get to have some support with the brokerage. With eXp I actually not only don't pay anything, they pay me to be there. So it's, it's, I wouldn't, I would have all these additional expenses. Plus we get their tech stack, you know, their sky slope, there's, you know, their digital signs.

And we get that all part of the brokerage fees. And then because we are such a big team, we're number five with them in the country. They then pay us to be there.

Austin: Wow. That's incredible. Obviously you didn't start at team number five. So I've heard about people that will specialize in a niche. So maybe they'll specialize in divorce or they'll specialize in probates or they'll specialize in specific subsegments of the market. Did you go for the niches or the riches in the niches approach, or did you try to go broad with the people you were trying to reach to get to the scale you are today?

Mark: So I understand, you know, having that specific avatar, but also when you're newer or starting something out, you can't be too picky. So I love when agents, if they join, they're like, you know, I just really want to focus on multi units or I just really want to focus on that luxury client.

And I'm like, good luck. So if I have a 600,000 buyer, pre approved, ready to go, are you only going to take this? Oh, no, no, no, no. I'll take it. I'm like, yeah. So don't focus on something. Just do what you can do when you're new as you, uh, you know, get more experience and get that kind of clientele into your base.

You do realize like, who do you enjoy working with? And for me, which is so funny is like, our main connection is, uh, military clients. So military clients, one, you're helping them understand their VA benefits. You're helping someone who's protected your country, but they've, you know, got their, you know, just out there working every day to make America better, more or less.

And, and they're just, life is on the line for us. And it's so awesome to be able to help them understand and help them invest. Cause I feel like there's so much misinformation out there to the military families and also just, you know, You know, there's those predators that don't necessarily give them the best service.

They're just interested in getting the dollars out of them. I mean, there's lenders out of them that max out the amount of fees that they can possibly get just to help that VA client because they weren't informed any better. So I love that clientele. That's been kind of our niche market of, of what we focused on.

But we, of course, you know, of all the sales that we've had, you know, about 500 to 800 a year. I would say it's probably like, you know, 300 military, 200 military, the rest, you know, maybe Zillow Flex, which is our Zillow account that we partner with, relator. com, any online lead sources. So we're all about just that, you know, getting the client from the internet, because that's where people shop, servicing them to the best ability, getting the referrals from them and then getting that repeat client.

Austin: You're in the perfect place, especially for the military, because you have all of the bootcamp training and then you have everybody that's deploying out of there.

Mark: I bet you he's in my CRM. The, uh, the biggest thing is that. I mean, yeah. Could you imagine getting, uh, you know, stationed and you get San Diego. My dad was stationed in San Diego in the sixties. So come full circle. He, he does him and my, my mom, they come down quite often, but they love to visit. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a beautiful place.

Austin: That's for sure. So you've had this incredible run. You've had this incredible track record. You've grown a team and obviously it didn't start at this massive team that you have today. So talk to us about some of the learnings that you had. Growing as a team of one, to a team of two, to a team of five, to a team of twenty, like, what are some of those things that you've learned? Throughout your historic career.

Mark: So one of the things I was around 15 agents when we were at our previous brokerage, and then I went to an event in Arizona and I'd already known we were moving. I believe we had just moved to EXP. So it was a chain made the change. And this guy that, you know, he was, it was his home, beautiful house in Phoenix and he was like, Hey, I know who you are.

I follow you on social media. And he was an older guy. And I was like, Oh, what did I post? I'm pretty, I'm pretty vanilla, but I'm like, what did I post on a online shit? Did I piss someone off? I joke a lot, you know, and if you don't know my personality, they may get offended. So, but the guy said, you're not thinking big enough.

And I was like, Oh really? And he's like, how many agents are on your team? And I said 15 and he goes, you should have 200. And I'm like, one, I don't want 200. And like two, how would I even get to 200 or like, it just seems like a huge headache because 15 agents, the difference is, and this is what I learned, is that when you have 15 agents, they come to you for the, the questions.

When you have a hundred agents, or in my case, you know what I mean? I don't have 200 yet, but that is our goal. There's different layers to our organization. To where the people can go to for the right answer. So that just changed my mind drastically is that more agents does not mean more headaches. You know, you can have the things and the things set in place for every 15 agents.

We have a squad leader. So that squad leader then is incentivized to get their squad to be performing. Um, we do contests. We just do constant different things to bring value to the team. And the best thing that you can ever think of is like, don't. Think about a referral fee as being an expense, but being maybe just a marketing cost.

You know, if Zillow charges you X amount because they gave you a lead, well, you didn't have the damn lead in the first place. And Zillow didn't get the lead for free. They had to build a marketing freaking machine that literally is a, you know, it's a noun you Zillow it, or, you know what I mean? It's just like Google.

So they deserve the 40%. Like it costs them a lot of money to run this company and they're a company. They're not a nonprofit. They're here to make money. So. I love those partnerships. I would rather partner with those big companies, get the leads that are quality versus trying to create a marketing company in house and create the leads that they have.

And you just never get that same quality. So that's my, my lessons that I've learned from going from 15 to a hundred and that you can, you know, but shit, I do want to get to 200, but it's not easy. Like you recruit a little, people leave the team, you recruit people, people get good, they leave. There's agents that don't sell. You're just like, oh shit. But we're, we're constantly measuring that metric.

Austin: I love it. And you touched on that social media. I know it's a big part of what you do. You have a YouTube channel, you've got an Instagram channel. You've been on a lot of podcasts. You've been with a whole ton of different people, some of the biggest names in real estate. So talk to us about your thoughts on why you spend so much time on social media, what it's done for your business, and maybe just like a tip or two for people that are just starting out.

Mark: The funny thing is, is that content like absorption, I do very, very little to none. So I don't watch podcasts. I don't necessarily subscribe to certain people, or they'll be like, Oh, did you see my post on this? I'm like, I don't go to your page. Like, I mean, when would I have seen it? So I'm so busy in my day to day stuff, but the value of what social media can do for your business. I mean, just driving that buzz, it's, it's literally your magazine and it's free.

So just think of it that way. And honestly, I'm not the social media expert. My small following on Instagram, LinkedIn and everything else like that does provide me a lot of business. And it's based off the fact that it's just like, just post consistently. You don't have to post anything magic. You don't spend a ton of money podcast.

I do. I actually enjoy it because I feel like I probably learn more in the podcast. I always get something and whether I'm in interviewing someone or. Getting interviewed, I would say is that if you want to have a meeting with someone, best way to do it, schedule a podcast. Like that's the way that's going to get you someone on their show because you'll be able to talk to them and ask them the questions that you want to know.

So if you're a new agent or a new team leader, and you're like, I want to learn the best ways to run a team, go out there and find every team leader and just schedule podcast after podcast, and then create your whole show around that. It doesn't matter who watches it because literally you're just getting free education.

Austin:I think that's part of the reason why we launched this. We just stumbled into real estate and we've just started chatting with people and learning their playbooks and how they've grown. And, and as somebody that comes from software, you come with these bright eyed, bushy tails, and now you get to meet people that have incredible stories and like how it's been successful for you.

And it's interesting to see how there's so many different strategies and tactics and ways to grow. But the one thing that's consistent that I've seen across, uh, All the top performers is that they care, they care about their client and they ultimately care about the result that they can drive for their client.

And like, that's the consistent thing across the board.

Mark: Yeah. If you, if you actually care about people and tell them not to buy a house or tell them, Hey, this is what I'm looking out for when you're buying this place. Like, I know you know, it's fantastic and I don't want to be a Debbie downer or, you know, I want to make sure you know what's going on.

That's where the person's going to come back to you tenfold. I mean, I have a client right now texting me. He moved to Texas six months ago. I've sold them eight homes. They're lasting six months in Texas, by the way, California is much better. FYI to all those haters out there. It's because you can't afford it.

No People hate on California so much. I have to like i'm finally fed up But my clients moved to texas to be closer to family. They text me six months after moving. Hey, we hate it we're coming back and he's texting me three and a half million dollar listings right now. I don't personally sell very much I only help my like friends close family Clients that I just like absolutely love and these guys are like they bought so many houses for me and they're so dang easy going But I also i've told them houses not to buy And one of them they still bought.

I was like, all right. All right. Got to do what you got to do.

Austin: Maybe, maybe you can talk to us about some of the coolest clients you've worked with. I've talked to people that have like represented celebrities or they've represented small business owners, or they've represented, like sometimes it's like the smallest houses are actually the most fun to represent.

Mark: I've got two of them. One was a referral from Ryan Searhant and I was showing these assistants and these employees houses for one of their clients or their boss. Uh, and then I just, you know, it was for a rental, but it was for the month of December.

Rancho Santa Fe is a very high end area around here. It's kind of like a Beverly Hills. And the budget I believe for the month was something, In the hundreds of thousands for the month. Um, and I want to say it was like, this is maybe seven, eight years. It was a long time ago. And then I ran in like I had been at Ryan's office again.

And he said, Hey, how was, and mind you, I never did the rental. The person didn't go for it. I only met the assistants and the employees. And so I didn't know who the person was. And then I go and I say, I go to Ryan's office just in New York city. When I was there randomly met up with a friend, he goes, Hey man, how, how was that referral with the Biebs?

And I was like, the Biebs, I was like, Justin Bieber. And I was like, what referral? And he was like, the rental referral. And I was like, Oh, I met the, his assistants, but I didn't know that that's who was buying. So that was the client, but I never ended up doing any transaction or anything. But one of the homes we were in, We were in this house for over an hour and then the owner comes out.

And I was like, Oh, this owner must be like a huge James Patterson fan. He had a whole wall of like James Patterson books. It was James Patterson. Uh, like from the author, like not, not the twilight guy, but the author. And he was in his home the whole time we were there and he didn't know we were there. And we were walking around the house with his real estate agent.

And he was like, Oh, I didn't know anyone was here. And I was like, How long have you been here? And he's like, Oh, we've been here an hour. And he's like, Oh, I've been here the whole time. That's how big this house was. Oh my goodness. So that was, and this is years ago, but I still think about that. And then another one of this buyer didn't speak.

And his niece was our translator. And at closing, I showed him the house for the final walkthrough and he gave me a plastic bag, you know, and I looked at it and it was all the money to buy the house. You got to take this to escrow. So I'm like, I got to call it. These trying to get me. The funny thing is it was like 218, 000.

That was the whole cost of the condo. This is 10 years ago. Um, it was a really small, tiny condo, but he was buying it in cash and he had it in a plastic bag and just handed it to me. Like an Ikea shopping bag. I was like, wait, hold on. Cause I was so new to the business. I was like, I gotta get him in touch with escrow.

Austin: I love it. That's funny. So maybe you can talk to us about like Some of the tips that you have for people that want to become where you are today, right? Somebody that wants to become one of the top percent or the top 1 percent of the 1%. Like what are some tips or strategies that you could share for some of the people that are either just starting out or on the cusp of, of kind of breaking into that next phase?

Mark: Be careful what you wish for. No. The, uh, the biggest thing is, is that I would say look up to, you know, whoever you look up to put that information in front of you. So up in visual vision boards, tracking metrics, you know, if your number one competitor has X number of sales and X number of reviews that needs to be on your, on your sheet right in front of you.

For example, I'm opening up a coffee shop this summer and so I own Portrait Realty and we're opening up Porksite Coffee. It'll be our first location and we plan on going and expanding it all over the county. And so I've been putting all of the Google reviews, Yelp reviews, everything from each competitor.

So I'm bringing all my real estate methods to coffee. And it's, I mean, I'm going to dominate, like, I'm like, I'm going after these other competition things. Like we're going to review contests with the employees, bringing all that kind of stuff. Cause that's, that's what builds you and whatever you track and measure, you can improve.

So at any given type or any given point for my real estate business or any business that I own, I can pull up different data sheets that I've built out and I can reference where we're at, how much money we need for investments. Like we have eight flips, I think under contract, my operations manager just came over and he said, Hey, we need 400 000 by this week, you know, 600 by this week.

And I'm like, All right. So you just told me you need a million dollars like in the next 30 days. All right. We'll figure this out. Uh, but it's all because of track and measure and it's a very streamlined process. And everyone on the team is all filled in on that. I would also have like a set cadence of meetings where you set your goals for your five year goal, where you want to be.

Okay. Shop it up, you know, five years, three years, one year, and then do 90 days. So every quarter sprints, if it's not on your 90 day goal sheet or what you want to accomplish, it needs to put on the back burner for the next meeting. Like, because we get the shiny, uh, shiny penny syndrome, especially when we're new, so many things come to us and people are like, Oh, do you want this CRM?

Do you want this? Like you think that's the reason why your business notes just cause you didn't call your leads. Like focus on what's in front of you, because if you just go after all the new stuff, it's busy work and it doesn't give you money. But if you push it off to the next quarter meeting, it might be a better CRM out there for you.

But it's just not the time don't switch. If it wasn't on your agenda to do, don't do it. And we do that every single week. And then with those numbers that we track, like my ops manager telling me he needs a million bucks today, we go in and we'll go and actually figure out, okay, at our Tuesday meeting, when we go through everything, I knew that was coming up.

Like, cause I saw the contract coming in. It just happened to be that they signed so many contracts at once. And I don't want our sales team slowing down. So you need to have something versus like, what if I didn't know about that until a week out? Big difference. So it's all about track and measure, you know, go after your competition, Google on, see where they're doing, see where their leads are coming from.

That's the best thing is every single week I Google my competition.

Austin: I love it. So last question, I'd love to end on this one. If you could go back to when you were just starting out as an agent and you're walking in fresh, bushy tail, bright eyed, it's your first day on the job and you have five minutes with yourself, what would be the things that you would tell yourself?

Mark: Get ready. There's no consistency. Change is constant. And just embrace the chaos of real estate because it's a lot harder than it looks. There's a million times in the beginning when I wanted to quit. I'm super grateful I didn't, but surrounding yourself with the people that either really doubt you and you want to prove them wrong.

Um, my older brother told me I'd never make it. That's a huge motivator for me. But if you have people that are supporting you, that also helps as well. So if people that believe in you and you don't want to let them down, so maybe your kids or someone in your family, your spouse, surround yourself with good people and it'll, it'll definitely work out.

Austin: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Mark.

Mark: Yeah, for sure, man. Thanks for having me.