Podcast - Rick Fuller, #1 Real Estate Team In San Francisco Bay Area

Off Market Podcast: Rick Fuller, #1 Real Estate Team In San Francisco Bay Area

In this episode of the Off Market podcast, Austin sits down with Rick Fuller, Broker/Owner of the #1 Real Estate Team in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento County with over $100 million in annual sales and more than 1,000 five-star reviews. Rick shares his journey from working at Circuit City to becoming a real estate mogul, starting with his first home purchase, which sparked his passion for real estate.

Rick discusses the importance of building a team, leveraging customer experience, and taking calculated risks to grow in the real estate industry. He emphasizes focusing on customer generation, client conversion, and delivering a world-class customer experience as the key elements for success in real estate. Rick also shares his expansion strategy, inspired by Walmart's "black dot" approach, and his philosophy of targeting markets with high volume and low competition.

Toward the end of the episode, Rick offers invaluable advice for new and aspiring agents, encouraging them to dream big, take risks, and stay disciplined in their focus on what truly drives their business. This episode is packed with insights on team building, market strategy, and the entrepreneurial mindset needed to thrive in real estate. Ready? Let’s dive in!

Transcript of the Episode

Austin: Welcome back to another episode of the Off Market podcast, this week we have Rick Fuller,

A broker who’s in the top 1% of the 1% of brokers in the US. He oversees the #1 Real Estate Team in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento County, which produces over $100M in annual sales! And he has over 1000 five-star reviews.

When he’s not representing buyers or sellers, he’s serving the community, as a board member of several non-profit organizations, and raising support, awareness, and money for Foster and Homeless Kids.

Rick coaches other real estate coaches and teams across North America. If you are market for real estate in/around the Bay Area, Rick is your guy. Rick, welcome to the podcast.

Rick

Hey, Austin. Thanks for having me.

Austin

Rick, take us back to how you got into real estate. I know that there's a stint at Circuit City, and then it sounds like when you were buying your first home, you got into real estate.

Rick

Yeah, Austin, actually I bought my first home. I was a tenant. I was living in a property that we were renting and, the landlord called and said, Hey, would you like to buy the home that you're renting? Which made a lot of sense for my wife and I, because we could own the property without ever moving a single box.

We said, sure. We want to buy that property. Uh, we wrote him an offer. We didn't know what we were doing. We did not understand terms like escrow, title, even what a deposit would be. We had no idea about contingencies and all the things associated with real estate transactions. And so the decision to buy that property was incredible.

It was like the first home, which helped us buy the second home, which helped us buy the third home, which helped us buy the fourth and fifth and seventh and eighth and tenth, and on and on. But the experience was a disaster. And I thought more people needed to buy real estate. At a young age initially was our impression.

And yet they don't, they need to have a better experience than what I, what I did and what my wife and I did. And so we penned these words on a simple sheet of paper that we wanted to enter into the real estate so that people would have the kind of experience they're excited to tell a friend about. And Austin, that was before Google reviews, or Yelp reviews, or Zillow reviews, or Angie's, or any of those things.

And we penned those words, just knowing that we wanted people to have a better buy and selling experience, because we had a poor buying experience and we wanted more people to enter into real estate. Because really, I have discovered, don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait. And so that's kind of how we got started.

I started working in real estate, my goodness, in 2003. So what is that 20 years ago, 21 years ago. And, um, on my second transaction, I hired a transaction coordinator and I've been hiring ever since.

Austin

Wow. Wow. So how long did it take to get that first sale and talk to us about what that first sale looked like? If you remember all back 20 years ago.

Rick

So I've got a one year old at home, Austin, at that time. Okay. So this is 20 years ago. Now, my daughter literally this week graduates from a university in Tennessee, with her bachelor's degree, but at that time I had a one-year-old. And so making that stretch from getting a paycheck two weeks of my, every two weeks of my life, since I was 17 years old to the infamous commission only environment.

Was certainly a weighty decision. So it actually worked out in such a way that my parents said, Rick, we want to buy a house, we'd love for you to help us. And I said, I would love to help you too. I could certainly use the commission, but I have no idea what I'm doing. So I found a fellow agent in my office and he came along, he did all the work.

I sit simply kind of walked through the process and I got this little small referral check because I then at that point was licensed and I was able to receive my commission check and turn in my real estate license within the same week. And so we were able to receive a referral fee, which gave me just enough confidence to turn in my two weeks notice with my employer at Circuit City.

And that night, one of my good friends called me and said, Hey, would you sell my house? And so I had a listing, I had a real estate license, and I had my very first real estate referral fee commission all within the same week.

Austin

There's a book called The Alchemist, and they talk about how the universe is trying to help you pursue your personal legend, and it will give you your first at-bat, or your first sign of luck, uh, and the universe is trying to conspire in your favor, and that is exactly what sounds like transpired here.

So, you sell your first sale, well, first you got your commission from your parents, then you make the commission from one of our friends. Talk to us about the progression from that first sale to then, obviously you go on to sell more homes and ultimately you decide to start your own brokerage. What did that transition from going from a, an individual realtor to then a brokerage and running a team look like?

Rick

Well, you know, when I worked at Circuit City, We always worked in teams. It was never any people, there was never anybody working alone and we worked in departments and then there was a company and a store and all of this. And so when I got into real estate, it was just natural. That I would build a team.

Matter of fact, it seemed weird or awkward that everybody was trying to do it all by themselves. They were trying to be a transaction coordinator and administrative assistant. They were trying to sell commercial and show properties and take listings. And eventually they were trying to do commercial properties and sell businesses and financing and everything's trying to do.

And I thought my whole realist, my whole experience in business up to that point at Circuit City was about building teams. And working together and synergy that created multiplication, not just addition that, you know, you and I working together, Austin didn't produce, you know, one plus one wasn't too, but it became 5 and 10 and 20.

And there was a maximization of those return on our time and energy. So on my second real estate transaction, I said enough's enough. I'm never going to stuff another file again in my life. It is the, the worst use of a real estate agent's time to put a file together and to organize it. And this is before tools and resources like Skyslope and others, where it's all digital.

mean, this was back when it, Was like a literal folder that had multiple sections. It was like an industrial folder. And then you would stuff it with contracts and disclosures and booklets and, you know, your inspections and all those things. And so on my second transaction, I hired a transaction coordinator and said, Hey, you're going to do my files going forward.

And then within a year, I hired my first agent that began to work with me. And then an administrative assistant also happened in the first year. And that first agent began representing some of our buyers. And the idea for me was that the highest and best use of my time was taking listings, maximizing those listings, getting the most out of it.

I called it listing squeezation. Imagine a wet towel and you're trying to squeeze out all the water out of it. Well, when you have a listing, if you do it right, you squeeze out other buyers and sellers out of that listing. And so many agents are so anxious just to sell it in 24 hours or sell it over the course of a weekend.

And it's not in your client's best interest to sell it that quickly and not let the marketing and advertising take full effect. And it's also not in the business's best interest to sell it that quickly because what ends up happening is once it's off the market, we stopped getting the calls and emails.

So. You know, I began to kind of really pay attention to how I could get the most amount of money for my sellers and maximize this opportunity for my, for our company and for our team. And then it just began to grow and expand from there. And eventually we had multiple buyers agents and we, then we had listing agents.

We had a full concierge team that would answer all of our calls, a full marketing department that would market. We still have all that today. And eventually we went on to expand into mortgage, construction, insurance, licensing schools, uh, and even real estate coaching.

Austin

Talk about land and expand. I've heard a lot about people who will start and they'll try to follow the riches or in the niches strategy. So they'll focus on probate. So they'll focus on divorces or they'll focus on some specific sub-segment of the audience or population. What was the strategy you took? Was it trying to go after niches or did you try to go broad or like, how did you ultimately. Start to build that book of business.

Rick

Yeah. So yes and no. the yes part was we did focus, I believed in being a specialist. And so we then brought people into our company that would represent commercial and they, all they did was commercial and then they represented Mortgages and all they did was mortgages and we brought in people in our company that represented buyers and sellers and all they did was focus on our buyers or sellers.

Uh, and so we niched from that perspective. I think what was different is I just found it a value to stick with what I called our bread and butter. I didn't want to sell the luxury homes. I wasn't also about selling, you know, slumlord apartments or condos. I was looking for that. That median price point, and I always called it, Austin, I'm looking for a big pond with tiny fish and the big pond, tiny finch fish, analogy said, well, I'm looking for a place where there's a lot of sales that typically is your median price point in your community and where there's no big fish.

Meaning that there's not an agent that's been there for 50 years that dominates the market and has the massive lion's share of the market. And I found when I found a big pond, lots of sales occurring bread and butter type transactions and a small pond, there weren't major fish. I could move into that market and then I can begin to situate ourselves where we were viewed as the big fish.

In that big pond and those transactions went to our team and our team members. And so we began to look at how do we expand into we were number one in the city of Antioch when we became number one in the in the county that we were in at one point. We then started looking at how do we expand into new cities within that county.

And eventually we started saying how do we expand throughout the Bay Area and Sacramento County. And that big pond with tiny fish was the metaphor we used.

Austin

I love it! So you're looking for the median homes where there are markets where there was no clear winner and you could become that winner.

Rick

Yeah. And then we followed, we followed Walmart strategy. They called it the black dot strategy and the black dot strategy. It says when you expand, you know, don't expand on you know, the black dot strategy is if you drop a black or blue ink dot on a page, what you want to do is expand where the perimeter of that black ink dot touches your next black ink dot.

And the perimeter of that one touches your next one. What a lot of people do is they take a white sheet of paper and they drop an ink dot in the middle. And then there's one to the far left or the far right or the bottom left or the bottom right. I mean, there's just scattered. There's no rhyme or reason why they expanded.

And so the way we chose to expand was following this strategy, which Walmart used at the perimeter of every one of their locations, they built in a new location. So we dropped the new ink dot into the city of Concord cause we were already in Antioch. Okay. You're from San Francisco, so you know exactly what I'm talking about.

And then eventually we said, well, let's go into Richmond because that's on the other, you know, that continues on the perimeter of that market. And what we find is that each market has what I call a macro market, and then there's a micro market. So for example, in the city of Concord, California, and if you're familiar with it, you know, that's a, that's the biggest city in Contra Costa County.

Contra Costa County is a pretty large city, uh, county in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so that's the macro market. The micro market were the Pacheco's and Clayton and Martinez. They were very small cities. And we knew that if we could capture the macro market, the micro market would come. And that was our strategy.

We did the same thing in Richmond. We did the same thing. We moved out to Elk Grove. We did the same thing. We moved out to Sacramento. We use the ink dot strategy to plant our offices on the perimeter of the others. And then what we did is we made sure that we were maximizing our efforts in the macro market.

And what happened is the micro markets just followed suit.

Austin

So obviously there were people that came up during the same time that you did. and also tried to compete for those same markets. What do you think is the sole reason why you were able to succeed? I've heard a lot of about people who, you know, maybe they have this specific, a gun niche or. They went after this specific strategy.

The one thing that I've found that's pretty consistent across all of the people that have been successful is two things. Number one, they care. And number two, they put the customer first. So everything that they do in their business is about the customer and they will tell customers whether or not that home that they're trying to purchase is the right home for them. And if it's not, they'll tell them that's not the right home for them. So what do you think made you so successful in landing and expanding in those two markets?

Rick

Yeah. Austin. Three things come to mind. first one is what you mentioned. We've always been customer-centric. Our North star is the customer, whatever the, we realized to grow really big. You have to think very small, meaning you have to think about every client's experience and are you doing everything you can to produce the best experience, which goes back to when we wrote originally, you know, how to have the kind of experience people are excited to tell a friend about.

And it was following that through and so getting over a thousand five star reviews really, really helped us by being voted the best small business by the chamber of commerce really, really helped us in our given communities. But the second thing that helped helped us is that we brought great people along to think, you know, so much of the company or the brand or, you know, the billboard has my name, my picture, my logo on it.

it really, I'm just a representative. In some sense, I'm a mascot of our company. I represent the brand. I represent the standards that my clients and agents expect, but there are so many amazing people that have been along that, you know, for the ride. And we've got several people that have been with us for over 10 years. And every time you grow, it's painful. You have growing pains. And as you're growing an organization to have people stick around that long as you grow and as you expand and as you yourself learn. So I think customers were first. The second, what are the people that were attracted? The third thing I'd tell you, Austin, we don't often talk about this is that you got to be willing to take some risk.

And, you know, I think back to in the early days, I was willing to take a risk and pay a transaction coordinator a certain amount, every file. Now, a lot of people are listening would say that's a pretty small risk. If the file doesn't close. Uh, you don't have to pay him. That's correct. That's a pretty small risk.

But that small risk introduced me to the comf to have a confidence level and a comfort level to take on a bigger risk. Like, hey, I want you to work with my buyer clients. Or I want you to answer my phones for me. Or I want you to market on my behalf. Or You know, now I want you to run the team on my behalf or our mortgage, uh, expression or insurance.

Like you, what happens is you've got to be willing to take a certain amount of risks. And I'm not talking about foolish risk. I'm not talking about, you know, blind risk. It's calculated risks. People have gone ahead of you in this industry. And there's lessons that you and I can learn, but I find so many agents don't want to take any risk at all. They don't want to hire a transaction coordinator because. Well, they could just do it and it's all, you know, and they'd save themselves X amount of dollars. They don't want to hire an agent to represent some of their clients because they'll just keep doing, they don't want to hire somebody to perform their marketing because they'll just find a way to get it done.

And it's very hard to grow if you keep everything on your desk. But once you begin to expand and the work that you're doing is situated on multiple desks, You begin to grow far more rapidly and it's very rewarding to watch the people that you bring in and that work with you for them to win and succeed and accomplish some of their dreams and goals in the industry as well.

Yeah, I can imagine some of the people you've hired were fresh out of college, grad, didn't quite know what they wanted to do, became a realtor, and then ultimately I'm sure some of those same people are people that have bought homes and that progression of seeing people that have gone from nothing to now, something has got to be so rewarding.

You know, Austin, it's, it's interesting you mentioned that because I think. If you were to ask me, like, what's the pinnacle or the best part about this business, I'd say 10 years ago, I'd probably say something along the lines that you probably have heard a hundred times, and it's, well, giving keys to a first time homebuyer.

Like, that's so rewarding. And it is! But there's a, once you begin to bring people along with you, and you're helping them accomplish their goals, There's a deeper level of satisfaction or even I think excitement in the business or degree of fulfillment, if you will, and that's when you see your team members and then eventually the people that you coach and the people that you work with when they begin to buy homes and they begin to buy investment properties and they pay off those properties or they secure tenants for that property or they turn them into short term rentals or they buy commercial property or whatever.

But when you see people that believed in you, they believed in your vision, they didn't know how it was going to play out, and then they win and benefit from that as a result of the dreams and aspirations you have. I think that's a greater level of fulfillment, a deeper fulfillment than even passing the keys to a first-time homebuyer.

Austin

That's right. It's being able to see that transition and knowing that you made an impact in their career, right? There's a million different paths that they could pursue and ultimately you helped them become the person they are today. So that's, I guess, the next like ultimate transition, which is. You're in this space, you've sold all these homes, you've gotten all these five star reviews, you've had an incredible track record and an incredible success. What are some of the tips you would have for agents that are either just starting out or are well on their way and want to become part of the top 1%?

Rick

Yeah, so, you know, in real estate, we often talk about, you know, the Pareto Principle, Austin, I'm sure you're familiar with the 80-20 rule. And I've come to, to the conclusion that in real estate, the 80-20 rule is no longer effective. I now call it the 97-3 rule that 97 of things that are vying for a real estate agent's time and attention and focus and resources are a waste of time.

They're a distraction and there's only 3 of things that we do, especially as new agents. That really propel our business forward and the agent that is self disciplined enough to say, I'm not going to get distracted or caught up with the 97 and I'm going to focus on the 3 of stuff that matters and I'll tell you what I think they are for, especially for new real estate agents. Number one is we are in the customer generation business. You know, I came from Circuit City. You mentioned that earlier. I never had to generate a customer. I just had to convert them. You know, they walked into my department. They wanted an item that was on the showroom. You know, maybe my job was to help them find a better item or the right item or even a warranty on that item. But I never had to generate a customer. And the moment I step into real estate, I realize. This is a totally different world. I have to spend a lot of my time finding my next customer. And I think that that has to be the, you know, of the three, that's the most important of the three. Finding new customers in your time and in your schedule and with your availability. You have to prioritize that. And if you don't prioritize that, then you don't have enough customers to work with and eventually it makes it very challenging to excel and grow and hire and all the things that are, are coming up next. Here's number two, Austin. number two is once you have that customer, you gotta convert them into a client.

And this has never been more important than in 2024 when the NAR settlement proposal, which was preliminary approved, in the month of April, requires a written agreement. It means you can no longer have customers. You have to have clients. You and I might be a customer if we're shopping for a flat screen TV, but you're a client with your attorney.

You're a client with your CPA, that there's a different level of relationship with the client. And so for me, that's not you getting pulled over. Is it Austin?

No, not me.

And so, uh, there's a different level of relationship with a client and you got to convert that client to a contract and a contract to close. And the third thing you have to do is no matter how big you think you get or how much you think you have going on or how much business, you know, how many people you have working for you, the customer experience matters.

You still have to provide people a world class customer experience. If you don't. The world today is like having a whiteboard in front of your office. People can write whatever they want on this whiteboard, and it distracts people from coming in or discourage them from walking into your office. That whiteboard today is Google Reviews.

That whiteboard today is Yelp or Angie's List. Like, it literally is what they look at before they call you. And you and I can't control what people write, so I have to be very intentional in providing them the kind of experience they're excited to tell a friend about. And that's very, that's easier to do when it's all on me.

You know, when you're leading a team of 50, 60 people and they all have different levels of real estate experience and transactions have different levels of complexity or whatever, to continue to build that great experience when it's not you personally helping and serving the client. It really multiplies the complexity of that happening.

And so I think the three things that you got to do to win in real estate, and you never can drop these balls. Like there's so many balls that we're trying to juggle in the air and there's like three red ones. And I would say, Austin, of all the tent, of all the balls that you're juggling, don't let the three red ones.

Ever drop. And if you do that, you win and it's generate customers, convert those customers and provide the kind of experience those customers are excited to tell a friend about those are the three.

Austin

What you would tell your younger self. But the question I always like to end the interview with is let's say you have five minutes with a younger Rick and you're going in, you're going to be his first meeting of the day and you can tell him anything that you want him to know.

It could be about your experience. It could be things to look out for. It could be really anything. You have five minutes. What are the things you tell your younger self?

Rick

Austin, I tell them to dream bigger and risk more dream, bigger and risk more. To, to see this, you know, I'm talking to you after 20 years of being in this business, it has allowed us to, accomplish so many things that were just Way above and beyond whatever I had expected. And when we made great progress is when we saw opportunities and we took the risk to go after them.

Does that make sense?

Austin

It does

Rick

I would say dream bigger. And I don't, I always tell people is don't, don't look at me as the role model. You can aim higher than what I've accomplished or what I've done, but dream big. Because this is the best industry on the planet. There is no better business.

It's the truest form of entrepreneurship that is. What you put into it is what you and I get out of it. And then I would say, take greater risk Meaning when you feel like you need to hire, and I call it birthing pains, like you feel it, you're, you know, this is something that's, it's, it's going to happen whether you want it to or not.

Before those pains get so excruciating, go hire somebody and continue to take that necessary risk. Take it methodically, take it on the guidance and advice of somebody who's gone ahead of you. Dream bigger, risk more has served me well.

Austin

I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Rick. I really appreciate it.

Rick

You’re welcome!