hey welcome back to the podcast today i have a special treat uh some of my clients have been with me for decades it's absolutely nuts uh the legend carol garrinson janelle ceo of the company g-money also known as george um so for so for the people that you know maybe haven't met you guys you guys are southern california legends you're legends literally legends in the berkshire hathaway system right for length of time for transactions for experience um you know but this is clearly like just a promo for you guys you're also some of the nicest hard-working people in this business like no dude no douchebaggery you know what i mean like there's some people that are hardworking but like you guys are just nice so with that i'm not sure what we should even talk about i'm just kidding all right so so so carol tell tell the listeners we're going to go around the room how long you've been in the business right how long you've been in the business how and and what role are you in today because we're going to talk family business today so talk to us so for me it'll be almost 45 years long time my role is really any anymore supporting george and janelle and everybody going on going on listing appointments taking over uh i'm more of a relationship person i'm not a techy person by any stretch of the imagination no no no i'm not but uh i i quote myself as really a team member anymore as odd as it may be because i started this business yes they came in but they have taken over i've passed the baton and i could not be more thrilled about that i think for every mom listening to this right now or dad listening right now i think about it for myself like with my two boys like there's just going to be so many lessons to unpack here in that um george i'm going to go to you next so so george how long the business trump you two got to kind of bounce the microphone between you two take you to take control of it like think you're like you know on stage right the time i've been here was on a stage that's right i start singing come fly with me sorry we've been hanging out for a long time for the people that are listening so george how long how old are you and how long in the business so 42 i've been in the business 19 years so i started out in arizona love it so you started out in arizona when did you transition to california and did you immediately join the fan biz so one of the reasons why i started out in arizona this was in early 2003 is that i wanted to learn the business on my own and i thought that it was important in joining the family business and not being an anchor is kind of learning um some of the nuances of the business and failing so to speak on my own before coming in and maybe i could bring something that i wouldn't have already so so where did that thought come from because that's very um like i'm telling my boys don't come in the business go do something else on your own and then come back so you earn it you don't just you're not gonna be a professional son in my world you clearly had a similar value where did that come from well it definitely didn't come from in college um so i i had my first couple years of college were really rough i went to um the harvard of the west coast which was arizona state university the harvard of the west coast yes first of all arizona's not on the west coast let's just start right there it's in the west um but i learned how to um socialize more than yes i would say educational um standards but um i came up to a point in my junior year that i realized that i was on a six-year program and i needed to do something with my life and that's where everything changed i i honestly i realized that on my own i started um taking 22 and 23 hours in business school doing very very well graduated in four and a half years and then i realized on that point in what i accomplished in that that i needed to start on my own in real estate and figure out if this is something that i want to do before moving back to orange county california joined the family business did that drive you nuts not at all you weren't saying i was honest no absolutely not in fact i encouraged it okay and yeah switching to janelle what wait when did you join after how many years uh so i joined spring of o4 so about a year and a half okay all right so you so you cut your teeth you learned some experiences you knew what you were doing i wouldn't say i knew what i was doing okay for sure i faked the long answer yeah okay all right all right janelle you're up i'm up how old are you how long in the business do i really have to say my yes yes 300 yen uh i am 43 almost 44. okay um i have been in the business 20 years uh so i have just celebrated my second decade in congress and i actually also went to arizona state my brother decided to follow me there i got my degree in elementary education always thought that i would be a teacher never had any desire whatsoever to go into the family business of real estate right so you can say whether it was god's will or happenstance um i came back after i was teaching in arizona and found out that it wasn't all that i had hoped that it would be i came back and decided that i would help my mom out until i decided what i was going to do with the rest of my life and here i am 20 years later so me right for context for the listeners um transactions volume and gci last year uh so transactions last year i believe we closed 138 transactions and our gci just went over about 4.2 million for the first time in our career okay so by the way yeah like best year ever the best year ever and less transactions and the highest and highest unit count was down from 2020 yeah so it worked mom it did it did so so let me ask you this knowing what you know now for the there there's a woman listening right now or maybe a guy who's who's thinking about having their kids join the business what do you think is the the like looking backwards what would you have done differently the most important piece of advice you would share with that person to really do it right i can honestly say tom i would not have done one single thing differently the one thing that i did with george which he will tell you is when he came in as a parent and as a team person you have to be willing to allow yourself not to get a listing not to get a sale right and let them take over if that sale is so important to you that you will not let your son or your daughter go it on their own and take over they are never going to grow and get better and that's what i did with george we went on a couple of them i wouldn't talk and we didn't get them and go on the third one and mom you gotta you gotta jump in and say something here nope and then he got the listing and my gosh now you know george and janelle are two people that everybody calls to get advice from and everything because they're so knowledgeable and before you know i you know it was george was my son janelle was my daughter well now i'm george's mom and janelle's mom you know so it's completely changed and like i say i couldn't be happier so your mom lets you guys out on a leash you guys start making all these mistakes were you asking for help well so interesting my experience working with her was different than george's right okay you should talk because you went into administrative role first i would like to say i was the janitor right all the way up to the position that i am right now you did the same thing i did with my pops and it literally she put me in a position where i had to do every single aspect of that business right and i say to this day i was the most glorified underpaid assistant right right and but it it gives that fire you want to learn you want to get better um so for two years i worked with her i was not allowed to say a single thing on an appointment which is actually very interesting because totally different dynamic right yes um but i had to learn how to write contracts i had to edit the contracts i had to handle the marketing i had to be the transaction coordinator i had to do cold calling yeah i had to do open houses i was doing all of that and i was not getting a single commission check yep okay so kids or young adults i did not earn a single commission check until i was three years into the business did that piss you off a little bit slightly a little bit but only it made me though want to do it you know it like actually like when i'd see other people getting checks for deals that they were closing i would i would be like how come i like i was involved in that right right i was involved in that but then when i got involved in it yeah then it's like okay it's your baby you're taking this from start to finish right you are not having the transaction coordinator do the file for you you are not having anybody market it for you you are doing it from start to finish and so then when i started to get a commission check you're proud you know like you earned that yes and it's more kind of than has we kind of grew together as a team on how to incorporate that and i mean i think for george too like george has just always had an incredible innate ability innate ability with the numbers like that literally like out of the gate such a gift it really is truly such a gift yes that was never anything he had to learn yeah he's not if you like truly know him he's not a salesperson he is one of the most authentic individuals like just genuinely good-hearted guys and i think god george is like could you please share all this with my wife and all my friends from college okay we're gonna get into the different dynamics but i want to know this first before i go to george did it piss you off be honest when smartypants just came in and started slinging deals and getting commission checks while you were still right he didn't he didn't no but i think what's important to let the listeners know is that what were you actually paid salary wise and this is granted this is 2001 2002. so they have an understanding when you came in and what you were actually getting paid for the first two three years i made thirty six thousand dollars a year and that was a lot back then yeah it was a decent thirty yeah i made three thousand dollars a year yeah three thousand dollars a month a month sorry i mean three thousand dollars a month yes i don't even remember that well that was my raise actually sorry that was my raise once i could finally start doing everything i actually started out at 2200 yes yes yes yes i think we may have talked about that on a coaching session okay so so let's let's go a different direction just for a second and let's talk about um what have we learned in branding and marketing a family business to its advantage or disadvantage what's worked and what hasn't worked over the years from market like and what's so great for the person listening right now this also could be the same thing as marketing a team right you're marketing a team they're marketing a family team and a team blah blah blah right so so what's worked what hasn't worked lessons along the way well i think for us being a family and being able to market ourselves as a family it's relatable to the people that we represent a lot of the people that we represent right so i think that's the biggest positive if you do have a family business is that one the photo is everything we get so many comments on our postcards and our family picture because we are and it resonates on our photo that we're a happy loving family yeah i mean we've been doing this together thank god for photoshop we didn't have photoshop so we had to fake it let's all act like we like each other so go ahead so so do you think like you have data that says our clients appreciate it because we're family or is it we just believe that family people have commented about that i'm not challenging you i'm just curious we get a lot of people that literally called us because of our picture yeah our postcard with the family photo isn't isn't that amazing to think that people actually i mean we we all know this right like and and you guys unlike some actually have photos that look like you do you already made like there's still a lot of people out there that you're like really and then you look at the photo look at them you're like whoa all right okay so besides the photo what else has worked from a marketing standpoint how have you positioned the family to be the force in the marketplace well i think a lot of that has to do is know your audience right so if we're going if we know we're going into a listing appointment okay we'd like to try and get a little background on who we're going in to meet um you know and the great thing is we've got multi-generations within a family here and we also have the male female component within the family business as well right so depending on who your audience is we have the capability to work with who we think would be best suited personality-wise someone to take the lead someone to take the lead right and what's been most interesting is we're not 100 right all the time um we'll go into some appointments and then they'll just be a natural gravitation towards one person or another um but that is one thing that we've done from a marketing standpoint and just also from a business standpoint is typically we will if we can two of us will go yeah um one to present the fact that you're getting principles among multiple principles right um and then you also have the capability that you've got the different personalities yeah so instead of going in and you're flipping a coin hoping you get heads or tails depending on who's sitting across the table from you you get multiple options needless to say i go on the ones with the older sellers well she always thinks that that's important 148. bring in carol okay but let's talk about that what about the dynamic of so long before these two you have always been as tim grover would say a cleaner you are a killer on listing appointments yes always and forever so what was it like to suddenly have to change to a multi-person multi-voice like did you guys like say okay i'm going to say this and you say this and i'm going to say this and you say this because otherwise some people can stumble over each other so we how did you do it we didn't plan on what we would say it was definitely more of an organic conversation that happened once we were there but we definitely each have our fortes so we will kind of we know i mean definitely now but you learn as you go through who really has the passion and who has the knowledge base to go into kind of marketing more so than someone else sure past data experience more so than somebody else and not to say that we all can't do it because we're certainly all fully capable of being able to do that but when you have multiple people you kind of let the lead take the lead in that department how did you do it because it had to be more so your ego and i don't mean ego in a bad way but like you know you're carol garrinson right so like you're coming in and you're like george i got this right i don't know if you ever actually did that but like what like how did you how did you let go of some of that control because every team leader every every leader listening right now he or she knows one of the hardest parts is going like this here's the baton right the handing of the baton is so hard for people because nobody can do it better how did you do it well i think they'll both tell you that i have no ego when it comes to that i had no problem giving up control for a number of reasons one and the uppermost being is my incredible love for them and wanting them to do really well and to carry on this business for generations to come and i have never been one to purport to know it all and to be the very very best at everything so i'm thrilled at the fact that i have two wonderful incredible children that have these assets with them that they are able to present things in different ways than i would able to you know be able to do uh george and i just went on an appointment and this woman was completely blown away she says your son is so smart oh my gosh and and george is like tell me more tell me more welcome to the george show and she says and your personality and the way you present things and do things she says what a great team the two of you make and she had interviewed all these people and she called right away sign me up and i've pretty much taken over the whole lead on that because she and i super connected you know but have no problem i want them to excel do well and they don't need actually tom they don't need me anymore except i wouldn't go that far well i wouldn't go that far well i don't really need me but just to take over on certain things and that but i love it it's not true okay point counterpoint i guarantee there's been times that both of you have said something like mom don't say that or or a moment recently in the last like two years is that what you're talking about i've never smelled something like that smelled this bad before i did i said on the appointment yes in front of the clients after we got the list oh yeah that's stupid okay if you're that person watching right now and you complain because we're having fun why are you watching my show i literally will get people every now and then to say you have too much fun on these and i'm like i i'm sorry we're unpacking all this good stuff but occasionally real estate can be stressful and funny there had to be moments for for the two of you where you were like i got this like you know like listen man you're the young bull right you're like i'm gonna take control you are a control freak steroids so how did you two tame the ego or did you no george you're up no i think we totally tame the ego for sure oh well we just realized so the thing is that janelle pointed out and the great thing that we do before listing appointments is we do qualify the the clients and we ask a lot of questions why they're selling who they are so we know our audience what are you guys looking for yeah so we know who to bring there because normally we don't like to overwhelm them with three yeah and then when we're having conversations with them at the table about their house and you know what we do to sell their house we we truly read them we read their personality and and then janelle jump in or i'll jump in and we just we kind of know when it's the right time and it's we've been doing that now for years and it's working yeah it comes from experience really i was just going to say so so how okay the hard part of this is and i'm gonna i'm gonna push over to you because you know you got the lead now with new sales people joining the company enjoying the team the hard part is do you guys see the the new uh magic johnson documentary on apple tv brand did you see that it is extraordinary he was so battle tested the hardest part was the other players they weren't looking for the no-look pass that he was throwing behind his head in two seconds and thank goodness they were ready that chemistry takes time they got really lucky they won that first year it was almost a miracle that they did um there's not a lot of teams that can persevere and last 20 years to work it all out to get this chemistry how do you get the chemistry now with your new salespeople on the team so i think a lot of that has to do so we're doing now this thing called coffee clutch yeah so every wednesday morning um i'm taking the sales team to breakfast and we're trying different restaurants all around so it serves two purposes one we get to tag local businesses for marketing purposes um secondarily it takes everybody out of the office gets them in a casual easy atmosphere breakfast makes it far less informal and it gives us a really good chance to talk about difficulties they might be having in the marketplace what what has been working what hasn't been working doing some different role playing um and you know what's interesting is i think you forget when you've been in the business for so long you forget when you were newer to the business how much it's appreciated of people taking time to sit down and spend time and go over different things with you and have the time to ask questions and role play and do different things with regards to that and i i think it'd been such a long time since we have cultivated that environment and culture into our team so that was one of the things that you and i have really been working on this is like music to my ears right now now now i'm gushing yes well yes she's doing it you you should gush because i just have to interject this before i forget i truly believe we would not be here at the level that we are today without your coaching your sincere concern for how we're doing all the time and people just don't understand how important it is to have a coach in order for them to succeed because they look at us and say what do you need a coach for right you have no clue how we need a coach you know code slash therapist yeah for sure sorry george but i think it is important to know you go back to one of your questions you asked like how do we all work together right and i i will say this because there does need to be a point in time where she passes the baton you know that's going to be a question that's going to be asked well how did that get passed how does that now operate right and you have to have if you're running a family business you have to be very clear with who your spouse is who your kids are what their strengths are what their weaknesses are and what really truly their desires are right and the nice thing of how this kind of all worked out for us is george no more wants to have to hire fire have anything to do with managing payroll anything he's like i'm good yeah that's on you let me just sell houses right right he's and that's that's what he wants to do right that happens to be a skill set that i'm good at yeah and that comes back to i think a lot of the stuff what i loved about education i'm just doing it in a different capacity right today right and that's not to say i just i'm still obviously very involved in the business with selling and listing and everything but i think that's why that organically kind of came about yeah well when when we stopped talking regularly and it was just janelle and i because i was like okay she's the clear driver of the business right so all right we if we want to accelerate growth let's let's just get after it yeah and damn she's coachable okay i got two more questions and then we're gonna do something real fun okay big question for all of you we were just talking about it sort of off camera like um i pride myself on this i see it in you we see it in for me a lot of my musical muses like a david bowie or a madonna that just that can go for decades and maintain some level of relevancy it's not uncommon for a family business an individual succeeder you know who's out there crushing to have their moment in the sun and then fall out of relevancy because it's like the uh they call it the chuck berry syndrome like they get one song one move and they do it and after a while that song just isn't as hot anymore how have you guys maintained relevancy like in your business like how have you guys stayed hot well i think everybody has these years that you have a great year like we did last year every single year come january we're like how do we do this again starting at zero starting at zero yeah and yes every single year but i think the biggest thing for us is that you know we're so and and this goes back to my mom and that question is that she's built such confidence in us right to be to do what we do and feel great about what we do and know that we can excel in it that our conversations with with clients and marketing and talking to new prospective clients is that we're in a place luckily that we've we've been successful we don't need to sell a house which has driven us actually to go out and just have fun yeah like now it's just going out meeting people having conversations telling them about the market telling them about what we do and having fun with it and people love us right like we every i i would say 90 95 percent of our listing appointments if we get in the door and we sit down with somebody and have a conversation with them at the table we're gonna get the listing yeah you know and and that just came from 20 years together and building us up and figuring it out and being authentic and realizing that we just got to get in front of people you know so when you know the when when sales are slow it's us going out to open houses getting in front of people right you know fundamentals you know what i love to watching his energy right there he's like we just we just getting i'm like i'm like george slow down bro that's the most excited i've ever seen you but but that's that's the authentic side all right so same same question tactically as the ceo how are you maintaining relevancy it's willing to change yeah you know i mean i said this two years ago you know we had a choice two years ago when real estate shut down and it is either we were gonna completely reevaluate how we were gonna go about selling houses because you had to do that in that moment if you were not going to be able to fundamentally do it the way you were accustomed to doing it right and so we had to sit down and say okay what is that going to look like what are we willing to give up what do we need to change what do we need to do and we literally just started implementing right and um you know a lot of that and you've got to try a lot of different things and some are going to stick and some are not going to stick talk about that be willing to try yeah um so i mean years we've been telling to do video video video video video okay years years years yeah my personal clients no video our whole transition i have to say this our whole transition in the business two years ago was because of that woman right there and the way she thought about things right and and it has skyrocketed us yes now yeah yeah and you have to like you have to be willing to go out of a little bit of your comfort zone right so i'm i'm fully like i've been out there on a video with no makeup my hair up you know i've seen it literally in a robe at one o'clock in the morning and i was just like here we go right and i think wait aren't those like nudie things i'm sorry sorry i literally just had a client a a 50 year old client of mine not to be named said what is up with all these women like half naked on tick tock i'm like i'm like why are we discussing this on a coaching session right now like okay mine was barefoot yeah but in fairness you were unwilling to so i think part of being relevant is when you see the culture going left and you're going right you're becoming irrelevant yes right so the willingness to make that adjustment right and certainly during the pandemic it was basically adjust or don't sell houses right it was it was really simple you don't want to do it on zoom well then you're not going to root it all right like gloves mask the whole nine yards so so how do you stay in that that growth mindset you just have to i look at it almost like so i played sports yeah right so i kind of look at it and soccer was my big sport so you've got half times right you can break it down into quarters if you want to do a different sport so i look at it as okay look we know we've got a year so let's break it out and we're gonna assess ourselves how we did in the first quarter how we did in the second quarter how we did in third how we did in the fourth yeah what worked what changes do we need to make you know we stopped doing mailers for a little while i know and phone stopped ringing like it was surprise so we went down we went back to mailers right um we do a lot more on social media right uh we got involved in tick tock not half naked but yes yes we we did we did it's all about this yeah no nancy so this says one of our most popular views with the comment from a woman oh so a lot of people don't know this about me but one is one of my biggest fears is public speaking yeah okay and i hate doing video yeah absolutely hate it that's good there's two only two cameras on you right now it's perfect so what was interesting the only class that i literally barely passed in business school was public speaking because when it came to do my presentation i literally uh uh forgot everything i was supposed to say so i've always been a person that if i've had a challenge with something i made it head-on right and so i forced myself to get up and public speak when i didn't need to but i wanted to be uncomfortable feel uncomfortable and be able to get over it on my own and so when this whole thing with video came out and i know you've been telling us for years and years and years that you got to do video you've got to do that yeah like i've been forcing myself to go and do these videos and so i finally told our videographer on this last one because i just had an off day right and i'm like tom i am so sorry but i got to tell you this you might not know this but i literally i hate public speaking and i'm afraid of camera he's like really yeah i've been faking it this whole time right but um it's it's you know it's been a game changer for us and yeah you know sometimes in this business like janelle said is that you have to force yourself to make change to stay relevant and knowing that you know we represent the family business and obviously i'm an important aspect of that because i'm the uh i'm the testosterone in the group so i gotta make sure that my presence is is not on video yeah so we don't want to be dying just a couple more right now he is we're doing what tomorrow he and i are doing one tomorrow um so the other thing is we're bringing our kids in i was just going to ask you because the girls are 12.

how old is your oldest 11 wait what are they going to be isas no we just completely we completely just did a lifestyle video on a house and we've done this actually a couple of times right yeah and the kids love it for sure and definitely if you're selling a home and you think that your buyer your larger percentage of your buyer pool is going to be someone with kids right you know we've thrown them in videos of show them how kids run around a house how do they spend their time in their rooms running around yards right and everything and the kids love it because they go tell all their friends oh go look i'm on video so we don't care how many views the more views the better it gets right our parents are calling us like my kids from elementary uh i know in fact one of our one of our uh neighbors that's not views to likes and ultimate leads and listings but yes actually it is because the parents right it is because the parents okay we're gonna play a game called what's hot what's not you all three have to answer the same exact time so this can be super fun i'm just gonna say a phrase or a word and you're gonna tell me hot or not okay open houses hot hot hot and hot yup okay so hot uh farming hot hot yeah george hot okay and how big is the farm now be a general question yes farms because it's five thousand no we're about 8 900 right now okay 8 900 okay direct mail hot okay i love that emailing no i no i'm sorry i was going to say hot i thought you were asking her the question no i'm well direct mails okay so uh emailing your database hot i would say not for me because i don't really do that well that's because we but everyone else but i'm sure it's hot yeah hey let's get george's email contacts and put him into the system we have his email contacts everybody knows that about me i get calls all the time oh i saw your new listings off the email because we emailed them all the time instagram hot that'd be janelle hot i guess i'm not even on instagram okay okay the ceo says hi calling your database hot i'm not really good at that either george is just i am wow well hold on to answer that because this is this is a great segue she during the last three weeks has been making a lot of calls to her dad yet yeah six years six weeks what oh sorry six last six weeks you know when i had my hips i was not watching any television i do i was texting calling everybody and she's gotten a lot from it honestly for sure okay so texting your database so i'll answer hot for my mom all right so you ready asking for referrals hot okay door knocking hot hot george okay short form video hot i don't do short form video i do long form video tell me more about that well long form video it needs to be short long form video hot thank you uh running google ads hot how did you know yeah yeah hot i'm asking the boss over there uh work ethic hot it's hot super hot like on fire oh on fire that's what you have to do today look at i'm 45 years yes and i work as if i was in the business only five years yes it's true work ethic super hot okay mental toughness hot very hot off the charts off the charts right yep uh leadership skills hot so here's what's great at the summit this year i'm telling everybody it is all about mindset right mental toughness for sure it's all about work ethic it's all about enhancing your sales skills right knowing what to say confidence all the stuff that we just did the bravado right uh repeatable and reliable marketing lead generation period end of story brand referrals and demand and you've got to have leadership skills because everybody around you is trying to talk you out of the market and being successful yes for sure that's a hot do you very do you have one that's a not for them um doing videos in a robe come on i'm putting you on the spot doing videos in a row i was looking for a nut george i was looking for a knot i don't know some people's hot are different than other people's hots all right okay so as we as we wrap this up first of all thank you for being on the show it has been a long time coming um the camera does well for you you are such a rock star and you i couldn't be more proud as as a parent right watching what the two of these two have done and then with their kids and just and with your kids and well thank you very much yes yes we've all done okay we've all done okay yeah work ethic staying relevant being current marketing knowing the market inside now twice backwards getting out and talk that's that's why you guys are so darn successful so okay as we wrap where should they follow you on instagram or on tiktok it's all the same uh the garrinsons okay all right so at the garinsons on every possible channel north orange county but you guys are like all over orange county california so we are all right as we wrap it up thank you so much for watching if you have a friend who is running a family business is maybe struggling working with their kids or just with their team because so much what we're talking about it's the same the same rules apply to a new sales agent a new marketing director everybody just how do you manage it all how do you let go of the ego and let them let them grow so thank you so much for watching we look forward to seeing you guys soon we're out bye thank you you.