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Wendy Papasan, co-founder Papasan Property GroupThere are many irons in the fire.
Papasan is a real estate investor, founder and CEO of a home maintenance company, in addition to running the Keller-Williams team she founded with her husband, Jay, in 2009. papasan home service Chaired a leadership organization for women, Her Best Life LLC.
For the past three years she has also been a co-host. Empire Building PodcastThe event promises “unapologetic, genuine, unfiltered conversations” hosted by Papasan and four other influential women in the real estate industry (Seychelles Van Poor, Sarah Reynolds, Kimber Lovett Menkitty and Tiffany Fikes) doing.
From the beginning, Papasan says he has used strategies to ensure he has enough time in his day. This term does not mean borrowing money and making acquisitions, as it is often used in business, but it means leveraging yourself by hiring other people and using your network to grow your business.
papasan is appear on stage At Inman Connect Las Vegas, August 8-10. She recently took the time to talk to Inman about the insights she’s gleaned from her own business and how she’s managing property shortages in many housing markets. Dialogue has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: You are involved in many businesses. how did you start?
Papasan: When I started my real estate career, my children were young, ages 3 and 5. And in the beginning, I wanted to remain the mother I am now and be a great wife. So I immediately took advantage of it.
I don’t think many realtors started their careers that way. When they started their careers, they had a lot of time, but I didn’t. I knew that the only way I could be successful and reach my goals as a wife and mother was to make the most of myself.
So I immediately hired a deal coordinator. I hired an assistant before anyone said I should. I have learned the gift of leverage. It was a great gift.
How are your businesses related to each other?
I believe that if I can make one business successful, I can make another successful. That’s what I did with this leverage idea. There are others in my world who have helped me run these businesses with my partners.
So my real estate team is right at the center of it all. And I think we can use our influence as a real estate agent and our past client list to create an area of opportunity. I run a contracting and handyman business, serving many clients and many others. We cooperate with commercial facilities in the city. But it was a great starting point. Because I was able to tap into a customer who needed a home fix, and that gave me a stepping stone to something bigger.
Then I run a Her Best Life business. This supports women and helps spread the lives and voices of women’s businesses, primarily real estate agents. There I was able to leverage my relationships around the world and expand my events and coaching company very quickly. In our first full year in this business, we made nearly $1 million in profits, which we would never have been able to achieve without leveraging our relationships with realtors across the country.
How did you get into podcasting, given that you already have so much going on? Is it helpful in your recruiting efforts or is it a way to make yourself known? Or do you enjoy sharing your expertise with others?
My podcast isn’t really a business, but it’s for realtors, so I leverage my relationships in the real estate industry here as well. We don’t profit from it, but we do profit from agent referrals. Therefore, a large part of my business is agent referrals. I made $860,000 last year in direct commission checks from agent referrals. that’s part of it.
It’s mostly realtors who listen to it, like in Inman, complete strangers come up to me and say, “Wow, I was listening to your podcast.” i feel like i know you ’ So whenever I’m looking for someone in Austin to help my friend buy or sell, he thinks of me. Because you feel like you know me. And I will definitely apply.
Papasan Property Group operates in multiple markets including Austin, Dallas, Houston and Minneapolis. how is your team doing? Do you have any advice for those trying to get through the period of this rare property?
The Austin market was particularly hard hit. His first six months of 2022 have been an amazing six months. In fact, his June of 2022 was his best month yet. And he fell off a cliff in his July of 2022, the worst year yet. It was 5 years. And we really struggled.
All you can do is control your daily actions. You can’t control anything else. You cannot control the market. You cannot control whether a buyer buys or a seller sells. So our team got down to business, abandoned the idea of setting goals around closing deals, and turned them around connections, commitments, and consultations. So we really beefed it up, and we got great results. We have 30 coming soon, which is great for Austin.
This is an interesting way to keep people motivated. Do you come up with new metrics to keep people focused when some of the usual ones are impossible to meet?
Everyone wants to win, especially sales people. When the business leaned, we also looked to our operations team and how they could contribute to the overall goals. That’s why we took getting reviews seriously. Now our operations team is crushing it. Because they want to win too.
No one wants to sit bored, so we build systems to keep everyone busy.
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