Welcome to the luxury code, where we decode the mindset, the marketing and the business approach of successful luxury brokers, hey welcome back to the luxury code. Today, i've got 58 transactions, 116 million dollars in volume in 2021 and in the house good to see you man great to be here thanks tom ian you've been a client for a long time. You kind of, i would argue that you kind of grew up in the industry with us. Is that a fair is that a fair statement, it's very fair.

So last year, 58 transactions you're in silicon valley all the way through the monterey peninsula. That's a pretty big market so today we're trying to unpack for people like what does it take to work in the luxury marketplace. So my first question for you is like: were you intentional about going in luxury, or did the silicon valley just become luxury uh? A little of column, a little column b, i mean i literally got in this business. My wife was pregnant.

It was ten years ago yeah, you know we we uh, we i i just had to you know, like everybody else in real estate. I just had to make something happen right, so that was kind of the first big. You know things just like every other struggle through it yeah. You know, i think my first transaction was 450 000 or something right right.

Just just get it just get a deal under your belt right, you know, put a buyer in contract yeah, so yeah. I think then we um, you know as time went on um. You know i met meeting you and i think 2013 was when i first met. You you were still traveling and doing regional events.

Oh yes! Oh yes, i'm still working man, i'm still working. You work, probably as much or more but but back. Then you were on the road, traveling and right um. You know lucky enough to to have lunch with um with you and your brother, and i remember that was my first sort of introduction to the ecosystem, where we got to to really like open my mind to what was possible yeah.

You know because when you go to your your daily real estate office, you know i was at a big company. Yeah and people are negative and they're. You know they're their debbie downers and you know oh yeah and i'm telling people like i'm gon na. Do this.

I'm gon na do that and they're like you can't do that, that's impossible and so like, but then i came to your ecosystem and everyone's like. Oh, no, you could you could do it. Let's go. You could sell 40 million.

You could have this big dream. For me, was you know, 40 million yeah. You know now, of course, we're doing more than that yeah. So so one of the questions that i know a lot of people are going to ask is, like you know, what are your main pillars of marketing and lead generation like? Where does your? Where does your business come from? Today i mean: do you have zillow? Do you work your database? Do you have a farm? Do you do open houses like help us understand where the business comes from? Absolutely so i mean i call it.

We really have five main pillars and i call them like the tried and true so number one. Every every agent out there you, you know your sphere, yeah call your sphere yeah, so um, you know, you know your main database and i call that, like my core database, you know it's about probably about 400 people that if i were to call them, they know Who i am, if i didn't, haven't already done business with them. They've, maybe thought about doing this with me or right, or i'm going to court them to try to get their business right um, but their people, their connections, yeah um, then the second one that's been kind of our main post, a pillar that really got my business Going um was online legion, so um i've done it all. You know zillow julia, realtor.com, um, all of them um today reflect you, know we're flex partners.

So we get the we get do those as well. So that's been a big, it's probably still for our team, especially i maybe closed. Like two zillow leads last year, yeah um, one of them was a big monster like eight and a half million, but congrats, but we did um, but we do. Uh flex is massive for my team, so it's it keeps my.

The zillow leads: keep my team busy um, while they're building up their databases and and working on all these other pillars. Nice then, of course, we've got uh geographic farming, um and then uh. It's um. You know your your uh kind of open house and farming around our listings would be the fourth yeah.

It's you know big. So we do um, we do the mega open houses, i mean obviously covered restrictions and stuff slowed down. Some of that sure um. You know in our we love to throw parties, especially with our luxury listings.

We like to um but marketing around holding open houses so leveraging our listings to get other listings and the last one which has been uh massive for us with the with the town. Fair ecosystem is agent agent referrals. I think we did yeah. I think we did about over 20 million was 20 20, something million in asian agent referrals last year.

That's incredible! That's like a sixth of your volume! Last year, yeah, oh it's massive and i i realized um we're trying to add up because this year's been strange. It's you know our unit count like a lot of agents. Our unit count is down yeah. Our volume is still, i mean we're at like we're we're just under 20 million closing pending this year already yeah but um.

You know like i was looking at my personal uh transactions just like man, what's going on with like looking at my own business, trying to unpack how how we're gon na get uh we're trying to do 200 million this year. So how are we going to get there and when i look to unpack it um, i'm like? Oh, i have a two million new construction that i sold about a year ago. I'm like well that helps add to the volume right and it was an egypt. It was tough love it.

I love it um. So one of the questions uh that i love to ask people is just talk about your your discipline or routine when it comes to marketing or prospecting or calling to your database, specifically like what's a typical day or week, look like for you how many people are Going to talk to, when do you do it? How does that work yeah so um to to unpack that i mean i, i honestly i i'm not the best at having this amazing schedule. Yeah, it's something i'm working on! I i i honestly i'll be real. You looked right at the camera, i'm just keeping it real i'll, keep it real.

I have a terrible schedule. Um, i always say i'm really good at a few things, yeah, and so my entire career has been just to do the things i'm really good at yeah, which is uh coaching and helping my team yeah. You know it's it's uh and it's uh presentation so listing presentations. Buyer presentations just be interfacing directly with the client, yeah and then networking and and just being out there with yeah.

You know you know and that's been kind of when we talk about luxury. That's kind of been my biggest biggest way of getting into the luxury market, so your coach told me that uh that your version of prospecting sometimes could be like wine and food exactly help us understand that, because someone's gon na be listening like what? What what? If i don't drink ian, how does it work? Well, then? You don't drink yes, but unpack that what does that actually mean so yeah? We we um wine is like i mean we, wine and food has been a big part of my wife and lauren. My lifestyle for a long time i got into it when i was one of my first one of my first jobs when i was still trying to finish college all that was bartending um. You know i remember um.

I was bartending to find a french restaurant in downtown saratoga and i'd have have customers come in order, bottles of wine, but hey try this with us yeah and i'm like yeah there's something to swine stuff, yeah, just a kid. You know 22 years old, sure and um. So at some point we started buying wine. We started wine tasting my wife, so i grew up in a multicultural household, so i was always introduced to a lot of my dad, i'm half indian, my mom's from belize yeah.

So i grew up with all kinds of food spicy food yeah, whatever fine dining, my dad would travel for business and he would be like he'd like i'd be like. I want to go to try this fancy. Restaurant he's like he didn't want to do it. He just does it for business, yeah and um, and so to this day he's still you know my dad likes.

He likes simpler foods, but he likes you know, but we still eat interesting food. So food became this kind of important um. It was always an important part of my life so well. My wife grew up in a family where her dad like on birthdays holidays.

He would take the family out to really nice restaurants right so when we got together that sort of her her take on that transitioned to me, and so i started getting into you know to this day we, when we're on vacation, we travel and go to michigan Star restaurants and we we seek stuff out, you know we probably i won't go to how many bottles, but our wine cellar is getting ridiculous to the point to where we've heard, that from a few clients, especially in the luxury uh, the luxury code, we're actually gon Na have to go, get an off-site room to start putting wine because we have nowhere to put it at the house anymore. So i mean even at tom, ferry events, i'll um. I have a shipper and i'll pack up like i'll pack up a case of wine. Yeah and i'll bring, and when we do a dinner, you know everyone, all.

The agents will throw in their car to pay for food, but i'll throw i'll bring all the wine yeah. I've brought magnums like big magnums of wine. Put them on the table invited everybody out um. So again, yeah i mean networking um drinking fine wine has introduced me to a lot of you know great clients, friends, people who have who people have recommended me to big big client, bigger clients than them right, um and that that connection, but for people you know For you guys out there, if you don't love wine, if you don't drink, so it could be anything that people in the luxury market or people in a higher price point what products they're into i mean.

I said i have a great agent friend who does who sells more real estate than me and does all kinds of development deals. He got initially into luxury by buying a ferrari and joining a car club yeah. You know he even said at the time he it was probably he probably shouldn't have afforded the ferrari sure, but he loved cars, and that gave him that connection yeah. It's always interesting um.

I think every every everybody listening is probably saying yeah like what is that niche for me like what is that thing? And, and you know people want to do business with people that are just like them right. It's like, like that's the way it works, so, whether it's cars or or hey, we went to the same elementary and saratoga. We went to the same high school right like like a lot of that sort of like familiarity, drives a level of trust um back on the marketing side. So if you're, if you're doing your sphere, you're doing some zillow flex, you're doing geofarming you're doing open houses, then hdh referrals and i appreciate the candor around your schedule.

But somehow you must be marketing talking to sending videos to something with your sphere. So if i'm in your sphere, what do i receive in a typical month? Um? So we you get a everybody in our spirit gets a postcard once a month. Okay and those um, our marketing team, gets those out. So again, that's my choice.

I am not a marketer, yes, i am terrible at marketing and i remember you joking. These are not good affirmations yet, but i know what you're saying no, no, no. My marketing team is wonderful at marketing and that's the affirmation yeah. I am wonderful at going on the listing appointment and closing the appointment.

Yes, yes, i love it okay, so i get a direct mail piece once a month. Do i get an email from you like? What else do i get direct mail piece? Uh email, uh, quarterly phone call um, and then we do twice yearly gifts and uh. Two twice yearly events love it love it, and i mean you look at like the the sort of core eight amongst our community, of what generates connection stickiness referrals opportunities. You're doing three or four of them um talk to me about in your experience, video as it relates to luxury marketing like have you taken on video.

Are you doing more video? What experience have you had? Do you recommend it talk to us yeah, so uh um, two two three years ago i was all in on video. You know selfie camera raw videos going live all the time right. Um and the funny thing is. It got me business and then about a year ago or a year and a half ago, business really took off and i was like man.

My videos are terrible and i should have kept doing them because people even say oh, what happened to your videos right um. So after uh elite retreat, we came back and i had already hired a videographer, but i sat there and you were you know you were putting out the road map. So now we change the way we're doing. I was shooting like a couple of videos a month with my videographer yeah um.

Now we're booking a full day shoot once a month yeah. We just did when we shot 13 videos, so yeah we're going all in on video um, and i i i came. I realized so i've i've sold houses to tech executives, who don't don't barely, don't even have social media accounts or right or they have them, but they they never post anything yeah um. But what i've learned with the luxury clientele? Is they research, you yeah? So it doesn't matter, i mean you can that's kind of where we talked about your connection to the market.

I mean you could mail these houses, you could do all this stuff um and if they don't have some sort of tie to you, yeah um. Well, one of the greatest ties to there is a video, because when they google, you they'll they'll put your name in and those videos pop up and then they they. You know that gives some legitimacy to who you are right: um, because they, you know, and i've found with they don't always want to work with the with the main whale in the market like in my market, i'm a player in the market, but there's there's players That are bigger but way bigger than me yeah, although we're definitely, if not you're, going the right direction. 116 million is a lot of volume, but i'm with you well and - and i noticed what what one of my goals in time like a big portion of my volume, is now specifically in the los gatos markets yeah, and it used to be that i would just Get one offs a d: you know a transaction or transaction there.

Now um, you know my. You know my i've. My couple my i haven't closed. My goal is always to close two deals a month, so the two that i've already closed this month were both.

So it's you know, my personal business has really moved towards where i wanted to be so. That has also moved towards people saying. Oh, i have a trade. He has a track record he's known in the market yeah, so it makes your other marketing more effective and videos tie in with that too yeah, because if i send a mailer to someone's house, you know i i've noticed sellers, they collect the marketing and they're starting To research, okay, who i'm going to interview this guy talk to this guy? But then, if they go look online and they look, i want them to watch my videos.

You know, then they feel like at least they have some some knowledge of me or know who i am besides. Having seen my signs now in yards and right, you know they look on zillow and see. Oh yeah he's closed multiple transactions in my town, 600 reviews and right, like all that all that good stuff. So so last question: if you were just sitting down with someone that said, it was kind of you in 2013 and you're, like here's, the three or four most important things you have to do if you're going to be in the luxury market yeah.

What would those three or four things be? Okay, first thing is you have to create systems that are? Are they better that that not only - and i would say when we, we started working on our systems and trying to give high level service when we were selling 500 000 houses yeah, you know the key here is: is people like your the luxury uh clientele will Judge they'll judge you more, and these people are typically, i mean generally speaking in our market, especially highly educated, right um. They they look at contracts for a living. A lot of the time. They're, negotiating big big deals: big transactions in their field, so you have to be that much better at those skills yeah.

So it's you! You really have, like you, have to step up that game, and so we started stepping up the game before we ever sold a luxury client, but then we found that it just translated. So, even though, like my intention was on, i wasn't going out saying: hey i'm a luxury agent um. In fact. Sometimes i think that can like some agents are too luxurious: hey i'm i'm so luxury yeah and it's like bougie yeah and people just like the luxury client wants.

They want the best person for the job right and that's not necessarily to them who sold. You know a thousand homes or that's not who's sold. You know, yeah, you know sometimes it that can help you get an intro but ultimately they're going to interview and pick the person that they think is going to help them achieve their goals. Right, you know, and and get to their their bottom line their goals.

You know whether it's selling a house or buying a house they want to. They want to meet those goals and that's super important to them, so the first one's like systems. When i hear that i think organization, but i mean, are we talking, you know like basic transaction management? Are we talking post? You know post close communication like give us an example. It's it's all of the above yeah um.

I mean i could tell you like an example: the guy sold that sold the eight and a half million dollar house to last year. He was uh tech executive, super busy guy um, you know, came in as an online lead, but ultimately i wouldn't have converted that if i was just a br, if i was me, you know 2012 2013. I think that client would have never called me back right because at the point he he got me and it was. It was interesting because i met him to show him a house.

It was like seven and a half million dollars and i had a listing. I was prepping for market one street over, so i told him, you know the one that i was prepping. One straight over was uh a three million dollar house, but it could have been scraped and built. It was an acre and a half a lot, so it could have been scraped and built into uh anything.

You want yeah um house, you know in that area and it was los gatos, saratoga schools right in my prime market. I graduated from saratoga high, so it was right in my primary market. That's right! So i sent him over. I said: well, you know, are you interested in even possibly building um and i didn't intentionally think he would buy my list sure i just said hey.

Can you go? Why don't you drive by my listing it's because it was one street over almost they see this opportunity. Yeah go look over at my other house. You can, you know, drive by it, um, and i said you know if you'll, if you're interested i'll i'll call the sellers - and i can get you in you know tomorrow or next week or whenever you want to go um, and i think those types of things Help seal that client yeah, you know it's, it was yeah, but then the again we were able to create the creating value for the client, because now the client's like, oh, he has opportunities for me that aren't just on the market. I've.

You know right that just that one little thing and we've done that many times i tell my team, we keep. You know we keep our off market lists and i'm like just always offer the offer right right, give them one or two off markets that are similar to what they to what they're. Looking for, because then now you have a value, that's not! They can't just get on zillow, you know right, everyone has zillow redfin, i mean any anybody can and then they they think they can go represent themselves. They can find the house.

But if you have some you have that secret list, then you can. You can win that client and bring them over to uh or bring them into your world and yeah. I mean our market's pretty efficient i'd, say 80, 90 of the time or more. They buy a house, that's on the market um, but if you've already brought them into your world, then they buy that house with you, so so the first one systems and getting organized.

The second is clearly market knowledge and the third one is like having the pocket listings and having the value right like being able to show them something that they couldn't readily see on their own. What would you say is that, like the fourth most important thing to really be successful in the in the quote? Unquote high end, i mean you have to be immersed into the community that you sell and you know in the high-end and they they read that because these people, you know when you sell and i've said this many times when you sell the luxury market and one Of my people have different definitions of luxury, but one of my definitions of luxury that i like is these people are buying a purchase of desire, not a purchase of necessity. Yeah, i would say you know every every, like luxury type home i've ever sold. They had another house, sometimes they rented that house and didn't sell the house.

They they. You know their financialness. Their financial needs were not that they had to have a house yeah. You know in my in our market.

Are anybody probably buying a house less than two million single-family homes less than two million they just they need a house yeah. You know it's there, it's a purchase of necessity, yeah and when you get to the luxury price points again, these people are are later in their careers. They, you know they're looking for something, so they tend to be a little pickier about what they're buying yeah. So um so feeling, like the agent, has a tie into the community and really understands what they're looking for is super important yeah.

I think that that's where and again you don't have to be from that's very common for agents to be from the community, the community. They sell but i've known agents that have become more successful than everybody else in the market um, but i think they always found a way to tie themselves into the community yeah. I think they've always found a way to really create an anchor and - and you know it could be some sometimes it's - they bought a house in that community and then started working the community. But if you're not there yet - and you can't go - buy a five six million dollar house in your luxury community, you could at least start by really getting to know the community making friends in the community knowing people in the community, because then they'll they'll recommend you Because they know you, like you and trust you right right and the one steady thing that you know you've said and everyone else has which is like you just got another market inside now from you know, who bought where what's selling? What's not selling? Why is it selling you know? What are the opportunities in the marketplace? What are the, what are the pieces of dirt that are valued at two million dollars? You can put a 10 million dollar house on and it's all that more, yes, yeah.

The stakes are, the stakes are that much higher you know in the luxury market and the higher you go in price point, the more subjective the pricing becomes right. So you know example because we serve. I serve silicon valley and i've talked about certainly scottish market, but um. We uh my wife and i bought a house on um in rio del mar right by the beach and we ended up making that our primary residence for personal reasons, one yeah.

I i like to start my mornings by walking down the beach every day yeah. So now this big transition has happened where people know us and they're starting to recommend us for uh beach, real estate. But on you know it's just like this. In la and in orange county too um the pricing changes every little bit you get closer to the beach for sure and the and beyond that, where you are on the beach, you know you go, there's there's parts of santa cruz that where you know i i, When i first started learning the market, i you know under under 2 000 square feet.

You know 1700 uh square feet on, like a los, alas, drive 8 million. You know versus other versus other areas where you could get 1700 square feet right by the beach could be three million dollars yeah. So so understanding that pricing and being able to articulate to that client could be the difference between the client buying an eight million dollar property or a three million dollar property with you or finding another agent who can articulate that properly right? It's the it's like the correlation right, the correlation between streets, pricing, location, proximity. All of that all of that ian.

This has been super fun man it's about time. I finally get you on the show yeah. Well, thanks for having me yeah yeah man, a lot of fun yeah. Thank you so much for just you know you uh, you know you're just a bright star amongst all of our community.

You know i just i watch you connect at all the events, and it just makes me happy. Thank you tom appreciate this proud of you brother, all right man all right. Thank you very much. So guys hey make sure you like subscribe, share and hey ian.

What's the best place to follow you instagram facebook youtube all of the above or brought your team on youtube. Uh ian underscore botra on instagram. You could uh connect with me on facebook, would love to love, to connect on social and at an event, yeah, and maybe have a glass of wine soon all right. Thanks! So much guys we're out you.