Teamwork

Find Your Favorite Place Podcast Cover Art

Podcast Transcription: Teamwork

Speakers:
Billy McOwen

Andrew Walters

Billy McOwen
Hey everybody and welcome. This is episode number seven of find your favorite place. My name is Billy McOwen and I'm your host. I am joined today by our broker in charge out of the Greenville office, Mr. Andrew Walters. Andrew, how you doing?

Andrew Walters
I'm doing great. How are you?

Billy McOwen
It's good to see you, brother. So let me take care of some business right off the gate here. So we are remote today. We are not in our podcast studio back at the home office. Basically, we're doing this podcast from a giant steel drum, otherwise known as Andrew Walters office at his house. Andrew, he's a wolf pack alumni from North Carolina State University. And, Andrew, I'm a little overwhelmed by the amount of red that I'm looking at in this office. Maybe you can give us a quick run through with all this memorabilia you got up here. What's going on with all this stuff?

Andrew Walters
All right, well, right here in front of us first and foremost is my diploma with a picture of the bell tower.

Billy McOwen
Yeah, there's a stain on that, by the way.

Andrew Walters
And then, and I have a couple of photographs or portraits from games, basketball and football games, that I happen to be at. I'm a season ticket holder.

Billy McOwen
Well, of course. Absolutely. Yeah. So what's that thing going on down there in the bottom right?

Andrew Walters
All right. That's when NC State upset Louisville in 2017.

Billy McOwen
Because what happens during the full moon, things get wild and the wolf packs howl.

Andrew Walters
That's right. Almost 60,000 people sold out. Pretty wild place to be.

Billy McOwen
Okay, what about this one on the upper left up here?

Andrew Walters
Upper left is at the PNC arena from I believe 2012. When we upset Duke.

Billy McOwen
Oh, that's gonna leave a mark. And what's that next one down there?

Andrew Walters
All right, that was from 2012. That's when I was a student there, happenned to have tickets at the 50 yard line. And that's when we beat number three ranked Florida Seminoles. we threw an eight yard pass in the red zone with about two seconds left in the fourth. Beat him 17 to 16.

Billy McOwen
Say it isn't so, that's the old "even a blind squirrel."

Andrew Walters
Yeah, that's right. Absolute luck.

Billy McOwen
All right. And then bottom left looks... Ooh, that looks ugly.

Andrew Walters
Yeah. I've always joked that instead of wearing red, we should have worn black because that was pretty much a funeral. That's when we beat ECU 58 to 3 a couple years ago.

Billy McOwen
Oh my gosh. Well, we'll try not to let Neil Songer know about that one. We had Neil Songer around a couple of weeks ago. He's an ECU pirate. And yeah, so is this the one that they actually had up on the big screen jumbo TV directions on how to get back to Greenville.

Andrew Walters
That's right from Carter Finley back to Greenville and happen to be playing with Eastbound and Down the song in the background.

Billy McOwen
Oh man, that's good. All right. So you have a good little setup in here. So the deer up here, what's the story with the white deer, Andrew?

Andrew Walters
Alright, so admittedly he's just a four pointer - year and a half old. Shot him with archery equipment my senior year at State.

Billy McOwen
What is the story with it?

Andrew Walters
It is, it is not a piebald. It is a complete albino. Everything was white. Including his hooves, his tongue. Pretty much everything, even his nose is white. Yeah, they're actually not nearly as pretty as you think they would be up close. But anyway, I mean, he looks like a billy goat.

Billy McOwen
I think the turkey mount is very impressive. It takes up 65 square feet of wall space, but oh my god, what a giant bird. So what's the story with that kill?

Andrew Walters
Alright, so that was my first long beard, believe it or not. I shot him in Halifax County, with my good friend Andrew Arby's. He called in two toms that morning, and we doubled up on them in a hardwood bottom. We counted to three. I shot the one on the right, he shot the one on the left. That was just too good of a memory to not remember that somehow, of course I had to get that mounted.

Billy McOwen
I don't blame you. Well, good. So, what are we going to talk about today? I was thinking about this. We talk a lot about teamwork and what we do as a team, and certainly we do a lot together as agents and offices in the field, but there's a whole nother team back behind us that really is deserving of a lot more credit and certainly a lot more accolades, because honestly, truth be said we couldn't do what we do without them. So today we're going to talk about the team behind the team, which is our administrative staff. So, this is really important for those of you that are our clients, are our sellers, or buyers you're working with us. You need to know that it's not just the agent that you're dealing with the guy that's standing in front of you that you're talking with on the phone, you're doing emails with, and all that kind of good stuff. There's five or six ladies that work on these projects, from soup to nuts through the whole process. So, we're gonna roll down through them. Today's episode is going to be about the administrative staff with Mossy Oak Properties that makes it possible for us to do everything that we do. A big shout out to them, because they've been working their tails off all through this, COVID crisis, working from home, working remote, dealing with kids being home, dealing with all of this stuff. They really deserve a lot of credit. And tonight, we're gonna give it to them. So, number one on the list is Miss Megan Gray. Miss Megan is our office manager. Now, What does that mean? Well, she shows up early in the morning, she goes by the post office shows up early in the morning, and oh my gosh, you guys have no idea, the amount of mail that comes into our office every day. I mean, we're doing 350 to 400 transactions a year. So the amount of transactional information that comes in every single week is unbelievable. So you've got HUD statements, checks, you've got listings, you've got contracts, you've got all kinds of stuff. So she shows up early, she gets all of that stuff. Of course, we try not to work in paper files. Andrew, you know this, we try to work solely in a digital environment. So, Megan comes in every morning, she scans everything and she gets it ready for the day. When our guys are in the field and then somebody calls the office Andrew, what happens?

Andrew Walters
When they call the office, they're gonna talk to Megan. She's going be the one to pick up the phone. What she'll do is she'll get that information, whether that be a buyer or seller, what particular property they're interested in selling, or which one they may be interested in purchasing. Megan, will then cross reference that with whoever the listing agent is, or whoever may be handling the buyers for that listing. Then she'll either reach out to us via phone call, text message, email, sometimes all of the above.

Billy McOwen
You're right. And let's talk a minute about why that's important. Let's say they've seen a sign beside a property for sale and they call the office. The next thing you know is they're getting a call back from us. And they're like, "Wow, thank you for getting back to me so quickly." It's because Megan shoots a text to us right then. None of us work in the office and we were in the field every day. If I'm driving down the highway, and next thing I know I get a text from Megan all I got to do is press a button because she's already put in the telephone number the person's name in the text, I press a button on the phone and im connecting over to the potential buyer. Then I'm talking that person who five seconds ago was on the phone with Megan asking out information about a new listing that we haven't assigned. Or they got a postcard in the mail, or saw one of our digital ads then called the office because they want to sell land. Somebody calls them back right away. Not only does she do that, but she keeps a record of it. So all of those calls coming in, all of those leads coming in, all of that stuff is built into a spreadsheet that we can look at and make sure that our customers are followed up with to make sure every day, all of those calls are returned and that those connections are made. We are super, super grateful to have her she does a great great job as an office manager and we love her, so a big shout out to Megan Gray. So number two on the list is Miss Angie Day. Angie's been with us for over four years. Angie has a big job as well. Miss Angie keeps up with everything, every time something new gets listed, or gets a price reduction, or goes under contract or gets sold she updates the websites. Or if we go out and get new photos of a listing, or we finally finished the drone footage, and all of those types of things. I mean, that's a big deal. Andrew, why don't you walk us through you you worked in the office when you first started with us, and you loaded these listings. So take a second and kind of walk everybody through what that process is like.

Andrew Walters
Okay. It's not nearly as simple as you think it would be. I think websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram have kind of ruined the way that we think you can post online, you don't just open up the camera roll, write a short blurb and then just post it. When it comes to making sure that there's accurate information you have up to 50 photographs, sometimes they have to be resized, or have to be reorganized. The property descriptions have to be accurate, spelling errors happen, she reviews those and make sure everything's spaced out right. Then she posts it, but it's not just one website, it goes to it goes to a number of websites. Obviously the Land and Farms Realty website is one of them. The Mossy Oak Properties.com website is one of them. And then of course, there's the land.com network, which encompasses LandWatch, land and farms, land of America. And then there's land flip, ranch flip, and I think whatever else.

Billy McOwen
So even going out on all of those platforms, she also manages our Facebook,which is huge. How many followers do we have now on there?

Andrew Walters
Right at about 21,000.

Billy McOwen
You're in charge of all of our social media marketing. So how does Angie manage all of that stuff? How does she keep it all organized?

Andrew Walters
Well, she's got a pretty extensive spreadsheet. And I've taken a look at it a couple of times, it's like trying to figure out hieroglyphics it's color coded, by state, by Agent, acreage, price, you name it, but she's got a way to sort through it and read it all. And basically, she'll go through and figure out what needs to be posted. And it's not so much as new listings, because we can have a ton of new listings come in within a week. What's really amazing to me is keeping up with what has closed, what's gone under contract, what's been reduced. And she keeps up with all of that information. And she's able to post that. And of course, she posts that at strategic times throughout the day.

Billy McOwen
Our job is to go out and advertise these properties in the most productive way that we possibly can. So what's the point of going and posting something on Facebook or social media or anyplace else if it's not going to be at the right time, and get the maximum exposure? How does she handle that?

Andrew Walters
All right, so a business Facebook page varies greatly, as compared to, let's say, just a regular new personal Facebook page. So when it is a business page, you're able to go through and what I would call the backside and you can analyze the metrics, look at the analytics, as they call it, and see when posts get the most exposure. And by exposure, I mean, likes, comments, shares, all of that information.

Billy McOwen
It's strategic. It's designed for the maximum exposure 21,000 people on our Facebook page. Angie's figured it out. And she does a great job. So she also manages our weekly property update. So the weekly property update goes out twice a week via email, why don't you talk a little bit about that, Andrew, and how that works?

Andrew Walters
Sure. So initially, it was just on Saturday mornings. In the past couple of years, we've just added a an additional email that goes out on Wednesday afternoons. But basically what they consist of is, it used to be a blog. And as of recently, a podcast episode. So just something to engage with the audience, something that's not related to listings, whether it be food plots, a little bit about ourselves, etc.

Billy McOwen
What's the bulk of the information in the weekly property update?

Andrew Walters
So the bulk of it, if you were to scroll down, is going to be listings. Now, mostly new listings, but on Wednesdays, we do have what we call the status changes or the reductions, something along those lines.

Billy McOwen
All of that information on everything in all three states is going out twice a week. We used to send out one for Virginia, and one for North Carolina. Now that information has been combined into one so we're reaching 9,000 people a week with these things, and it's got to be organized and put together well. Last summer we had an intern, her name is Hannah Anglin. And Miss Hannah is super, super smart. And we've got her working with Angie as Angie's little elf, right now helping out with loading up some listings, weekly property updates, all of that kind of stuff. So welcome back, Hannah. We're glad to have you do a great job.

Billy McOwen
So now we're going to start getting into some of the more detailed things that that go on. We have a young lady that works for us by the name of Miss Courtney Bickers. Courtney is our transaction manager. So what does that mean? When you're using a very sophisticated transaction management software called Brokermint, that tracks everything. When a transaction goes under contract, all of the documentation that needs to go along with that is entered into the program that spits out. What Courtney does is she goes in, she looks at everything every day, and sends out little reminders to everybody. When the transaction is closed, she reviews the HUD, she makes sure all of that is correct, she looks a lot to make sure that the the check that we received is correct all of that stuff. She puts together the split sheet for the for the agents, she files a report with Mossy Oak Properties, it is a huge job. I mean, she does an unbelievable job, she is really super smart. We are really, really blessed to have her. I really admire her work ethic, I really admire what she does and how she's there to contribute on a daily basis, my hat goes off to her. Alright, so next on the list here, we've got Miss Laura Glatz. Now Laura came to work with us a little bit over a year ago. She is our IT project manager. Andrew, you were in the office when we were first starting to work on our new website and designing it. Laura did mostly all of that.

Andrew Walters
She's certainly sharp as a tack, especially when we were looking at the wireframe with the websites, I noticed that she was picking up on things that i missed. I would say to her attention to detail was tremendous. She does a great job with that stuff. Also with the new CRM package that we have, that thing's gonna be a game changer. And she's helped us out, a great deal with that as well.

Billy McOwen
Laura's single handedly figured all that stuff out. She's just really really smart. She comes to us from one of the biggest outfits here on the beach. She was looking to get out and have a little bit more of a contribution penetration into a company's infrastructure. And she's She's done an awesome job. So, Laura Glatz our IT project manager is absolutely wonderful. I couldn't operate, I could not operate with the level of bandwidth that I have without her. I just absolutely could not. She does a really, really great job. Lastly, we've got Miss Leslie Reed. Leslie is our new Chief Financial Officer. We hired her back in March, man oh, man, she's a CPA. Right behind her is Teresa Osborne, our accountant. But between Teresa and Leslie, all of our financials are managed. I'm a nutjob when it comes to financials, I mean, I'll admit it. I want stuff done a certain way. I want to make sure people are paid on time. The agents are paid on time, our bills are paid on time, nothing's late. Everything's accounted for. I want 100% accountability across the boards. We have four corporations, that owns seven franchises, that operates in three states, and a management company, and all of the financials that gotta go along with that all your tax filings are keeping up with all of this stuff, making sure that you know, proper credit is due. Without Leslie, none of that would be possible. It is really, really complicated. She's been my personal bookkeeper for the last 15 years, 16 years now. And it's taken me that long to get her to come and be part of our team. We couldn't do this without all of us. All of us are immensely grateful for everything that you do for us. So that's the story of the team behind the team. And Andrew, I think that's probably going to wrap us up for episode number seven, here to Find Your Favorite Place. My name is Billy McOwen. I'm your host. I was joined today by Mr. Andrew Walters, our broker in charge from Greenville. Andrew, thanks a lot for joining us today. We we appreciate you having us and it's really great to be in the field with you here and have a chance to come by your home office and knock this puppy out.

Andrew Walters
It's my pleasure, I enjoyed it.

Billy McOwen
Alright brother. Peace out everybody. We will see you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai