Podcast - Rebecca Hidalgo, The #1 Latina Agent in Arizona & The 1st Fully Crypto & Metaverse Certified Team

Off Market Podcast: Rebecca Hidalgo, The #1 Latina Agent in Arizona Beginning her real estate career in 1993, Rebecca initially served the Hispanic community by helping them purchase HUD and VA Repo homes. In 1996 she went off to Arizona State University where she earned a Bachelor's degree in Spanish from the College of Liberal Arts. Shortly thereafter, she ventured into residential new construction sales, working directly for local builders from 1997 onwards. By 1998, Rebecca had acquired her Broker’s license and became the Designated Broker for Sequoia Homes and later a Sales Associate for Trend Homes of Arizona.

In the late 2000s, Rebecca returned to the foreclosure market, founding the Integrity All-Star Team which focused on preventing foreclosures and aiding over 400 families with Short Sales between 2008 and 2013. The team also represented Bellago Homes. Since then, Rebecca has appeared on Channel 3 News, HGTV's House Hunters.

Rebecca is the #1 Latina Agent in Arizona, the #29 Latino realtor in all of the United States, and #1 BREA Agent in the Southeast Valley. She’s sold thousands of homes and has been ranked in the top half of the Top 1% of REALTORS® in Arizona for several years running. 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 Off Market Podcast. This week we have Rebecca Hidalgo. She's the number one Latina agent in Arizona. She's the number 29 Latino realtor in the United States and the number one agent in the Southeast Valley. She sold thousands of homes and has been ranked in the top one-half percent of realtors in Arizona for several years running. If you're looking to buy or sell properties in the Valley of the Sun, Rebecca is your gal. Rebecca, welcome to the show.

Rebecca: Thank you, Austin, for the warm welcome. I appreciate it. And I'm not sure about all those awards when they happened, but I've been around for a long time. I can absolutely tell you and I love selling real estate.

Austin: That shows you, you've had an incredible career starting off by earning a brokerage license in the late nineties. And you went into new home sales and became a sales manager and then you got into the foreclosure market a little bit And today you you run a successful brokerage. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that transition going from an individual realtor to a broker and how you hit your stride today and became a top agent in your area.

Rebecca: Wow. Okay. So buckle up buttercup. Um, it's been quite a ride. I'm not going to lie. You 1993, I first got my real estate license and I was in fact, old enough in Arizona, you only need to be 18. I was 20 when I got my license and I actually went to go work for my dad. I, um, worked in my, with my whole family. , I'm the youngest of six and my dad started in on me when I turned 18, I was going to ASU and I thought I'd maybe be an attorney. So I did go to paralegal school at one point in my career, which actually only helped me with real estate. Uh, it was hard working with family. I did it. And I needed to because quite honestly, real estate's not the easiest to get into. So if you don't go in, maybe working for someone as an assistant, uh, it can be really hard to be successful your first year. From there, I, during, I think about four years or so, I lasted working with my family members. And then in, when I graduated college, I went ahead and worked directly for builders here in the Phoenix market. And I've been working for builders, direct, direct. 25 of my 30-year career and it started back then when I got my broker's license. I worked for Trend Homes. I worked for US Development Center and Sequoia Homes, which are under US Development, And currently, Belago Homes, which is the son of one of the founders of Trend Home So I've been around and I know a lot of guys in the industry in the construction world and which is only bettered My abilities to sell on the resale market because I've always also had a team and I've had agents who have worked for me and I've mentored it's been fun. It's been a lot of fun and that's just like my first breath. Now, if I look back on the career and I look at what the market's done in those 30 years, Austin, that's really where my ride has gone up and down because. I'm pretty nerdy. I like to think I'm nerdy. I love my spreadsheets. I love researching. That's partially why I started my podcast. We'll get there in a moment. But during my younger years, I worked directly for builders. I became a sales manager, developed sales teams, and hired, and fired. Oh gosh. At one point in time, I was known as the black widow because I drove a little black convertible and if my car was coming into the subdivision around 2007, that meant I was coming in to fire them. It was a terrible time in the industry. Really hard time in my career when I look back at it. And then, um, at that point in time, I owned a lot of properties because, um, you know, I could, I didn't have to go on a waiting list. My builder, I worked for just let me buy as many as I wanted. And then the market crashed. I went through a divorce. I had two little girls and I had to figure out how and what to do with all these properties. So I learned how to do short sales before a lot of my competitors did, which really led me to a lot of success from 2008 through 2013. And then the market recovered and I went back into the new home arena. Representing Belaga homes this last decade, selling several communities for them here in the Valley. Meanwhile, running my own real estate company and, my own real estate ving at one point, I've always had anywhere from 10 to 30 agents underneath me. Currently, we have around 15 agents underneath us, but I also recently moved from Berkshire Hathaway and that's a whole nother story. You know, like I just keep rambling and I could keep going, Austin. I'm not sure at what point you want me to stop, but I can tell that getting to where I am today has taken. A lot of effort and the biggest effort really is by finding the right people who have worked for me I can share with you my thoughts on how to develop your team and the structure You should have going from a single agent to maybe a team lead to maybe A business owner or a designated broker like I am.

Austin: I think that's the perfect natural transition to the next question, which is, you had this incredible run-up in your career. You built all of these teams, and you attracted top talent in your area, which enabled you to be so successful. I think a lot of the people that are watching the show, they're relatively new in their brokerage career, or maybe they have a few people underneath them. Normally we don't cover and get into the weeds of like, how do you find those teammates and how do you scale your operation? But I think you're uniquely positioned to share that. So maybe you can talk about what the process looked like for building your team, what you looked for, and ultimately how you were so successful.

Rebecca: When you grow and you go from being one agent to maybe two agents, a very natural, easy thing to do. You see a lot of agents partner up with somebody and they become partners. I've done that. I've been there. It's not fun because you know what happens in that situation, there's always one person who sells more and there's also one person who thinks that they do more, and rarely do you see partnerships really work well. What I've seen in my career is I've seen, and I'll speak for my own, I had Back in 2008, I went and joined for a year, Keller Williams, which is another big company. I did that because I felt a really good training program for newer agents. And, uh, when we went over there, I brought a lot of my new home agents with me because they'd only sold new homes. I didn't have the resale experience. We went there, you know, really wanting to learn, really wanting to be part of a brand. And one thing I will tell you is, I have learned that it doesn't really matter the brand that you work for. I've worked at Keller. I've worked at Berkshire Hathaway. I've worked for my own independent small brokerage. I don't think that really matters, but where I'm going to with that is they do have a beautiful book called The Red Book that Gary Keller wrote. And he talks about being the rainmaker of your team. And I did follow that in the time period, I was over at Keller Williams. And what I found is It didn't work for me and the reason being is what you really need to do is you need to do your disc profile. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go on the Tony Robbins website and check it out. You will only do well what your personality allows you to do. Well, you know, if you're engineer-minded, you're going to like details and data. If you're more, you know, let's say emotionally minded, maybe you're going to fare better with some teachers or some professionals that are more like psychiatrists that like to communicate. So. One thing I will tell you when you start is if somebody who brings you on doesn't mentor you and have you take a disc exam, you should do it because you're going to see where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are and what you want to do as you grow. If you don't hire your strengths, you hire your weaknesses, and you don't also immediately hire agents. In my opinion, I think you should hire staff at the busiest that we've been back in 2020, which was the highlight of my career. One of many highlights we actually had in our team, and it was a small team at the time we had 250 units for over a hundred million in production. You can't do that. That means. Honestly, when we were closing five deals a week, and my small little baby team, we were cranking it out. And that was the year of COVID where the first half of the year we weren't even closing anything because everybody was quarantined and it just went bonkers. So if you follow the red book, the red book talks about how as a team lead, you don't actually work with clientele, but you train and work with your agents and then let them work with the clientele. My personality, I actually do better with the clientele. So as much as I've pushed and bucked trying not to lead and train agents and bring on new agents, when you're successful, they just seem to find you and they come on anyway. My opinion is you hire somebody who can help you with all the things that you're not good at. And that usually means. A full-time assistant. And then when you get busy like I did in 2020, we actually had three full-time licensed assistants. They weren't agents looking for portions or cuts of my commissions. They were looking for a steady paycheck, which we were able to give them. And then they allowed me to do my job that much better because of everything that I'm not good at. They're really good at it. And I will tell you that has been truly the secret sauce. Yeah. It's building systems and processes and teams of people that can help you scale up your operations and the things that you're not so worried about their own operations. You bring on agents underneath you. You train them. Most of the time they're going to leave.

Austin: And so in that pro,gression you've learned a ton and you launched your own podcast Tell us a little bit more about the Grateful Heart show.

Rebecca: I’m actually in between recording two episodes right now This was the perfect segue to do your podcast grateful Heart TV started for me back in 2019 pre-COVID. It was, we started at 11:11 on the radio station, 11:00 am. So I'll never forget when we started it. The reason why I started it at the time I was working at Berkshire Hathaway and one of my colleagues up in Vegas. We were connected because our owner owned Vegas. The whole Phoenix area in half of Southern California, we were masterminding and he was sharing about how he got so much credibility with his spear, you know, from his radio show.

And, you know, he really got a strong following. He was known as the radio guy. And I'm like, heck, I like to talk. I can do that. So his name is Harvey Blankenfeld out of Vegas. Love the man. He's still at Berkshire Hathaway. He. Really took me under his wing. And quite honestly, he gave me a lot of suggestions and help on how to build it. And he envisioned all these Berkshire agents throughout the country, kind of being part of his network, if you will. And we could, you know, talk about the market in different arenas. But you know, what happened is COVID happened and I was paying for this expensive radio time. And I couldn't get people to show up to the studio because they were too sketched out to go into a radio studio. So, um, yeah. I didn't last long there. I was all about real estate market-related topics. I was bringing in inspectors, appraisers, designers, and anything having to do with the home buying and selling experience. And then I found I even kind of got bored with it. So I started, you know, Opening up the topics to things that I'm more interested in and curious about. So I'm very health-minded. I like the health of the real estate market. I like the health of your body. So I started doing episodes on things that I'm curious about. One of which is actually, um, affordable housing and alternative construction methods. And what's really cool is this podcast of mine, Grateful Heart TV actually led to some really wonderful opportunities for me. And I'm currently building homes out in Arkansas with a colleague out there trying to chase down sustainable, eco-friendly, affordable homes that we can bring, not just to Arkansas and Arizona, but potentially all over the country. And it was all because he saw one of my episodes I'd done two years ago on a company named Strata. That I don't even talk to anymore. It's insane, but I love the podcast. I love doing it. I love interviewing people. I always have so much fun. And then one thing you guys are going to learn as you guys are building your podcast is people will share anything with you when you interview them. So I have learned a ton and it's been fun making these great connections and people I've made friends with that I'm sure I'll be friends with for life.

Austin: That's part of the value of the podcast. It's being able to get the nuggets and the insights from people who have spent an entire career becoming an expert in that space. And that's why we're chatting today because you've had this tremendous career and path and you've learned so much. It's interesting because I was taking a look at your background. And it looks like you were actually the first fully crypto and metacertified team in real estate. So I got to hear the story behind that, how you decided to go about doing that, and what that's done for your trajectory.

Rebecca: Well, I gotta tell you, it's been amazing. That was also happened on the podcast. So I was, it was. February of, I think 2000, what are we 24 right now? 2000. It was February of 2022. I was playing hooky a day with a girlfriend and we were, you know, actually, we went and got massages of all things. And this random weirdo started talking to me about the metaverse. And I had no idea what the heck he was talking about. Now. He made me, I'm no, I'm going to take it back. He didn't make me feel stupid. I felt stupid because he was saying things to me. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Right. So I went home the next day. Cause I'm again, I'm geeky. I want to know, I want to understand like, what do you mean you're in fashion week in the metaverse and there's NFTs and all this stuff I had no idea about. So I went down a rabbit hole on the internet. I found propping. It's actually funny as I'm interviewing them next, the CEO after we're done with this interview. My podcast wasn't big enough at the time. She wouldn't come on my show back then, but one of her folks who worked for her came on my show and educated me about NFTs, crypto, real estate, and all things. And I was so excited that I was like, look, I want to get certified, but I don't want my whole team to get certified. And so I, they normally only did their courses online. So I got enough people here in Phoenix excited about it that a little bit over a year ago, we had them come to town and I was toted as the first real estate broker to have her entire team certified, which I did in both crypto and NFTs and the metaverse. And then we'll talk about what all that means for real estate next. But what was interesting, check this out. It happened the week of the FTX collapse. And so I got interviewed for live news, and script news on a streaming news channel. I was even called by the New York Times because they were like, why is this real estate broker in Arizona investing in getting her old team crypto-certified when FTX is collapsing, you know? And it was just, again, the way the media works, but it was like the perfect timing for us because we got all this media exposure for it. And ultimately, and I still think it's coming. I think that property is ahead of their time. They do things on the blockchain. They, do amazing stuff in the tech world with AI. And I love their platform and I love to use it in my real estate business. They're just a little ahead of mainstream, but, I like being first anywhere. I believe that the real estate market is going. And I absolutely believe in the digital twins and the metaverse. They're already selling homes online that are also existing in real life. It's really cool, trippy stuff, but it's another language that a real estate professional needs to learn in order to speak the language of those folks who have investments in crypto and want to buy real estate. And all you have to do is just take some classes and learn the language that when those clients are, and again, I'm getting ready to interview her. Coinbase and crypto and Bitcoin. All things have been blowing up recently. And as a result, people are interested. They're looking at how to navigate using their crypto to purchase real estate. And if you don't know what you're talking about, they're not going to talk to you about it. So you better get out there and get educated is how I feel about it. Because the first to get educated, it's going to be the first ones who do those transactions. And just like my short-sell business, everybody else will be trailing behind me. So When I'm already doing the work when it's yeah, I think that is the exact mentality. Most people in this space should have is be a person for advantage in whatever market you're in.

Austin: So you now are playing in the metaverse. You're playing with crypto. Talk to us a little bit about how those transactions differ from a historic transaction that would have taken place normally.

Rebecca: The first thing I'm going to say is honestly, a lot of people are intimidated by the words that people use with it. It's really just commerce. It's e-commerce guys. We're already playing with crypto. If you're using Venmo and Zelle, I will tell you all day long. I actually taught a class last year at the board of realtors and, It's all the vocabulary that scares people. It's really not different. The DAO that they use is just cash, but because they call it DAO, it trips everybody up and freaks them out. Quite honestly, it's not different than regular real estate, other than the recording on the blockchain, which is a whole episode in itself that I don't want to get into the minutiae and the weeds with you guys on, but it's very transparent. It can happen a lot faster, the transactions, and Proppy is the main company in the country that is doing it right now. They're currently advertising, uh, advertising on Coinbase. So I think you're only going to see more and more of them as you see crypto continue to go to record numbers, which it has hit this last month. Um, but really it's no different. You just basically convert your crypto into cash and then you close on the transaction. If you use a company like Propi, it's getting recorded on the blockchain. I, with their help last year, gave one of my clients who's heavy into crypto, an NFT of his property that he bought through me, which is essentially just an image of their home that was recorded on the blockchain that got dumped into their crypto wallet. But anybody listening to me right now, if they don't know anything about crypto, they already think I sound crazy because of just the few terms I've used that they're not. Savvy to yet, but I do believe it's going to be mainstream before we know it. And transactions are happening with NFTs in the metaverse today on digital twins. And again, that's a whole nother episode in itself. But the reason why I did it was because I want to be there as people want to use their crypto to purchase. They're going to hopefully find my team first because of the experience that we have gotten with the education that most realtors out there haven't gotten yet. I actually got to speak in Miami on their stage for Poppy back in November, and it was a really cool experience. And there's a ton of people, especially out in the Florida region that are currently transacting in business right now with crypto. You aren't seeing it in a lot of other places, but it's coming. Pay attention and get if you're a realtor out there, check out their website and go get certified. So you know about it when the time comes. So it sounds like your career is a series of placing really big bets and being ahead of the trends. Obviously, it's, it's easier to look back on trends and say, Hey, I rode that wave, but I'm sure that there were other waves that maybe didn't go as well as we thought they were.

Austin: Talk to us about what that process actually looked like. What are some of those mistakes you made and the things that you learned along the way?

Rebecca: Wow. Um, mistakes I've made in 30 years, boy, I think we need like a five-hour session for that. I mean, seriously, I think one of the things I look back on is now when I get an opportunity to talk on a stage or talk to people. It really does go back to basics. There's no mousetrap. There's no secret sauce necessarily. It's work guys, and if you show up to work every day, you're going to get business. One of the number one things that agents don't do that they should do, and I do really well, is I have a database and if every opportunity you're out there venturing in this world, you're not adding people to your database and you're doing things to touch your database on a regular basis. It's your job as a real estate professional, to stay in touch with your clientele. It's not their job to stay in touch with you. That is truly my secret sauce. If I had anything to say, I stay in touch with people and I do care about them. And a lot of agents can't say that. And in fact, there's like some saying, like you close, as soon as you close and we forget, I'm like, that's the best clients are your repeat clients and the clients that are going to give you referrals. You've got to take really good care of them. And if you do that well and you have the right team supporting you, There's nowhere other than to succeed than when we talk about failures. Oh, heck yeah. I've tried all kinds of stuff. One fact I'd ended up leading to a success, but started off as a miserable failure that I invested a ton of money and time in is I had a website called investoroffers.com. Investor's office, phoenix. com. And what I wanted to do was branch it out everywhere. And this was back in like 2018 when offer open door and offer pad, we're just kind of hitting the scene and they were playing with Zillow and I'm working at Berkshire Hathaway and I've got a lot of investors that I'm talking to that are wanting to buy people's homes and do flips. And I wanted to do my own platform and, oh my gosh. So much frustration, like a year later, I just basically gave up and I don't give up often. It's, it takes a lot to get me to give up, but those guys are getting traction. Our business was busy enough and I just kind of threw it to the wind and gave up on investor offers that platform and everything that I did. But one thing I did learn of it, is that my CEO at the time, no longer owns Berkshire Hathaway. What he said to me goes, Rebecca, people are lazy. If you use it well for your, for your business, keep it to just you. And when I went around selling the platform that we had created, Oh my gosh, he was so right. We spent more time trying to answer questions and help the people who were never going to actually use our platform on how to navigate it. And it was just a giant waste of time and a giant waste of money. And I wish I had listened to him, but. He saw it so clearly from the outside, but while I was on the inside, I was like, no, no, no, this is going to work. This is a great idea. Right. And so I just kept pushing forward, pushing forward. But I guess probably the mistake I made was that I didn't listen to my mentor who knew me and knew the business really well. And I pushed through when he cautioned me not to. And, you know, the best thing that did come out of it is he ended up giving me a wonderful opportunity to work with Zillow Fleck or I'm sorry, Zillow, Zillow Fleck. Oh, Zillow offers. That little window of time where Zillow actually was buying homes and getting into the flip. He did that because of my experience with the investors and the selling I did with the investor platform. And I, today, five years later, still have a thriving business thanks to the relationship that I had because of Zillow. That wouldn't have happened had I not done the investor offers. That seemed like a failure at the time. But it ended up being, um, really great for my business still today, five years later. That's an incredible story of how you transitioned or parlayed one maybe negative experience on the surface into a successful experience on the back end. I think the biggest learning there is when you take an experience that somebody could have said, Hey, this was a complete and utter failure and you turned it into, you turned it into gold, which is incredible.

Austin: If you were to go back and start it all over again, and you had five minutes with yourself, and you could sit down and say anything that you wanted, and tell yourself tips or strategies or things you learned, or things you do avoid, or maybe give yourself tips on things. What would that conversation look like and what would be some of those things that you'd share with your younger self?

Rebecca: Ooh, that's so good. Cause you know, I'm 50 and my younger self started in this business at the age of 20. So my talking to 20-year-old Rebecca, like just getting licensed and little green as can be. That's right. That's right. All right. So this is the same conversation I have with agents on a regular basis. In fact, I had one of my nephews come to me recently that wanted to join on and I have another nephew who works for me currently and he's in his late 20s now. He's been with me a little bit over five years and I did this with both of them. So I'm going to tell you that, which is basically 20-year-old Rebecca to do today too. They came to both of them to me wanting to work for me. I'm auntie, you know, I've seen these babies, you know, grow up and I just didn't want them, I knew I would treat them differently than my other agent's cause of their family, right? And they're the boys I've watched grow up. So I did this with both of them and I would tell the 20-year-old Rebecca to do the same thing. I said, sorry guys, you know, you can't come to work for me just yet. I need you to go out there and prove yourself and see what it's like out there. So I did offer to both of the boys that they could talk about it. Tons of my friends that are team leads, company owners, you know, managers that they could go and interview with them because in the interview process, Oh my gosh, you learned so much because there are a gazillion ways to be successful in real estate. Different companies are going to promote different cultures and different ways to do things. And so, um, the one nephew, I had him, you know, interview with probably like a dozen of my friends, and then he actually went to go work for one of them and they put him on the mojo dialer's calling and he was getting so frustrated. He finally converted a call. He went for his first listing appointment with his mentor, with those guys and the mentor had only been in the business for two years, you know, not his aunties, 20-plus years at the time. And, um, they didn't get the listing and he was so mad. Oh my gosh. So then he calls me, he's like, please let me come work for you. And I'm like, okay, well, I think you paid your dues. I'll let you come work for me. And what I got was somebody who was super humble and never, he wasn't afraid to do anything I asked him to do. And he followed me around and he really did execute everything I told him because what he experienced out there, he saw that it wasn't the kindest world out there. And it's hard to get started if you don't have somebody who really cares about you to help you get started. So this is my advice to 20-year-olds. Okay. Rebecca my nephews or anybody else who comes to interview with me right now you need to interview the person interviewing you Because you are a commodity. You just came out of real estate school. Odds are you probably have a handful of people who know and love you and would love to support you. Most, it's a numbers game. Most realtors that come out of real estate school can usually get one or two deals done before they throw in the towel and they give up. So these mega companies are running big huge teams. It's numbers for them too. They don't mind having the revolving door because they're constantly interviewing, constantly hiring, constantly training and they put people in place to do such a thing. I'm wired a little bit differently. I still like to work with clients. So I don't base my book of business on the production my agents do. And that's how I get fed. I get fed from my own business that I do. So I don't have to rely on what my agents do, but that's also a little bit different because of my personality. Um, but then I digress. So let's go back to advice when you go and interview with, say a dozen different companies and a dozen different people, you're going to learn real quick. There are a dozen different personalities involved, and they all do different things well, and they all do different things bad, and they will all tell you how to do things, and then after you meet with all of them, you have to decide yourself what tools in your toolbox you're going to put into your toolbox, and which ones you're actually going to use on a regular basis. I'm really good at video. I'm not good at door-knocking. I'm not good at cold calling, but I'll get on my social media. So there's a gazillion different things. You have to figure out with your personality type, what are you going to excel at and do that well. And then you find somebody to help you with the stuff you don't do well, like maybe your CRM. That is the advice I would give to 20-year-old Rebecca and my nephews and anybody else who comes to interview with me, because I may not hire them, but the interview process is just so telling and you will learn so much. So don't be afraid to interview them. And go out on a ton of interviews and learn about the business just from other people like me, who've been doing it a really long time. It's that opportunity that they're going to share with you. Just like somebody would share with you guys, Austin, on your podcast. Ask all the questions. Don't be intimidated. You're there to help them and you want to make money. Number one question. They ask you why you're doing this. It's not to be helpful. It's not to help humanity because you want to earn a living because I want to hire people who want to earn a living because they'll help me earn a living.

Austin: That is the perfect way to end this podcast. Thank you so much, Rebecca. I hope you have a great day.

Rebecca: You too. Take care!