Scott Dillingham: 00:21

Thanks for tuning in today. Today, I have a really special guest for you. His name is Joe Conlin. Joe is gonna tell you how he started from being a cell phone sales agent and a wedding DJ to a chairman's club or sorry, to winning the chairman's club award, which is the top 1% of all of Royal LePage in Canada for 4 years in a row and also winning the top 35 under 35, also part of Royal LePage for 4 years in a row. So here's Joe.

Joe Conlon: 00:49

How you doing, Scott? I'm great.

Scott Dillingham: 00:51

How are you doing, Joe? Good. Really good. Yeah.

Joe Conlon: 00:53

Yeah. Awesome. Appreciate that introduction. It's awesome. It's my first time on this show.

Joe Conlon: 00:57

I Yeah. You're just getting us started. This is awesome. Yeah. So I I got started at the age of 22.

Joe Conlon: 01:03

K. At that time, maybe we'll rewind a little bit back, to how how it came to be and why I got into real estate. Originally, I started, I grew up in a family of 7 brothers and sisters, and my mom and dad were self employed entrepreneurs. My mom's an artist, and my dad ran an art gallery with them with her. And I'd have friends and family and people say, how can your parents raise 7 kids on art?

Joe Conlon: 01:29

Yeah. That's a great question. And watching how my mom was able to manage and my dad, they were doing art shows on weekends and going and selling her art, and she had art classes and a bunch of students where they would be teaching art classes inside building down the street or building across the street. And they're always leasing space to to house, you know, their art classes. And watching them move through different times, whether it was after 9:11 or after different shifts and changes in the market.

Joe Conlon: 01:55

It got to a point where people stopped buying that type of artwork and started going to wayfares and HomeSense and places where it was just cheaper artwork that's trendier, and people started steering away from the the frames and the and the traditional fine paint fine artwork and paintings. Watching them transition through different markets on their own, I don't even think I realized it. But, obviously, there's a big struggle for artists out there, and growing up in a family of entrepreneurs that went in that direction. It was interesting to watch and I think it embedded in me without even realizing it. Always had my fair share of jobs, whether it was from Tim Hortons to Starbucks, Best Buy, selling cell phones.

Joe Conlon: 02:38

But there was one point where I got a job doing inbound calls from teller, AT and T at Sutherland. It was just a call center, but for some reason, I did really well. And everybody's all of the turnover rate there is, like, 2 weeks, you're gonna be in and out of there. You're gonna hate it. And I stayed there for about 5 months until I unfortunately got let go for

Scott Dillingham: 02:58

Oh, man. Yeah. They let you go. I used to work there too Yeah. On college.

Scott Dillingham: 03:02

Yeah. It was on college. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Dillingham: 03:04

I worked for AMT. I quit Sears, and then I started working there. And that's so funny. Yeah. Selling DSL and

Joe Conlon: 03:10

That's exactly people to yeah. Exactly what I was doing. And I think we were goofing off on a separate line with a couple of the people, and they audited the call. And AT and T came in and mass fired everybody. And at the time, I was actually their top salesperson on the floor, and I started to fall in love with sales.

Joe Conlon: 03:25

So after I left there, I was unemployed for about 2 or 3 months and didn't know what I wanted to do. So I went and took the money I had and purchased a bunch of DJ equipment and started a little DJ company on the sides where I was doing for about 3 or 4 years DJing weddings on Friday, Saturday, Sundays. And I was maybe doing 20, 25 a year at weddings. So it wasn't, like, the biggest thing, but it was good a good little side hustle. I did end up picking up a job at Best Buy selling cell phones.

Joe Conlon: 03:51

And there as well, I did really well. I was one of their top salespeople on the floor, and I just started loving sales. So I figured if I could sell a cell phone, maybe I could sell a house. It's just a bigger product. I was still doing the DJing and Best Buy for the 1st year or so while I got into real estate, but it got to be a point where I was selling I think there was 1 month where I sold more houses than I did cell phones, and half the time I was on the floor at Best Buy.

Joe Conlon: 04:17

I was sneaking away to take phone calls for real estate, so I figured it might be a good time to transition out and make the leap into a full time agent, which I eventually did. Yeah. I came from beyond loose end jobs, found myself into sales, got let go, found myself back in sales, took the courses. I think it was 22 years old when I got my license, but it was a roller coaster once I got in. It took me 6 months to get my first sale, and I was writing offers left and right.

Joe Conlon: 04:45

Nothing was clicking. I didn't know if the business was for me. And then for some reason, something clicked after a couple sales, 6 months in, and then I hit the ground running. In the second half of that first year. I ended up doing quite well.

Joe Conlon: 04:59

And then I found my love in my little niche in the market, which was, at the time, first time homebuyers. And I found open houses were a big place for me to find those people.

Scott Dillingham: 05:08

Nice. Is that how because I know you said it took 6 months to get your first sale. Was that how you did it? Was just going to open houses? Or

Joe Conlon: 05:16

Yeah. So I was sending out messages to all the agents at the brokerage because at that time, there were more houses than buyers. So everyone was trying to get rid of open houses. So I was just anybody want an open house, I'd get 3 or 4 phone calls. I'd pick the area that I thought I might have the best action in.

Joe Conlon: 05:30

Yep. And then I would go to those open houses, try and meet first time buyers, and then I would take them out and educate them. Because first time buyers were really the only people that would listen to a 20 year old kid, 22 year old kid selling houses. And at the time, though, the average age in the industry was still in the fifties. And I I would do these open houses because a lot of these agents just didn't wanna do them anymore.

Joe Conlon: 05:52

And I also found I was one of the youngest in the industry at the time. It's a much younger industry now than it was. Most people getting in are in their twenties now, where I would think I was one of maybe 5 that I knew of in all of the city that were in their twenties. And I had social media on my side because a lot of the older generation agents weren't using social media. And at that time in 2012, Facebook was still just getting its space as far as marketing for businesses.

Joe Conlon: 06:17

At the time, it wasn't used for marketing for businesses. It was used for sharing photos of you and friends drinking on the weekends. And then I started tapping into something that wasn't being used at that time, and I was able to build a following to help catapult me into future years. So if you see younger agents getting in now, they post something on social media. They're competing against 20 to a 100 other people their age doing the exact same thing, where at the time, I was the only one besides maybe a handful of other agents who were actually effectively advertising in the social media space.

Joe Conlon: 06:50

Instagram wasn't around, so everybody was on one platform. Yep.

Scott Dillingham: 06:55

And do you find you still do it today and it's still really effective for you?

Joe Conlon: 06:58

It is still really effective because we were able to build a following that has stuck. There's a lot of agents who get in now, and they have to compete against all the same methods and same things that are being used. We're always trying to innovate and stay ahead of the curve. But, yeah, I would say it's still just as effective, but it is more competitive now. And people are using the same things and same methods and same tricks of the trade.

Joe Conlon: 07:18

So I'm very thankful I got in when I did, and I I did what I did. I think timing and a luck was a lot of it, but it's it seems to have been one of the main reasons I was able to get where I was at.

Scott Dillingham: 07:29

No. That's awesome. And we gotta stop for a quick break here. But when we come back, Joe's gonna go over how when he was 27, he was fully burnt out. He threw his cell phone in a drawer, and he came back literally a month later.

Scott Dillingham: 07:42

And he'll tell you how he started the Joe Collin Real Estate Estate Team. Alright. Welcome back. Joe is now gonna continue his story on how he got to where he is and some of the life lessons that you can listen to and take with you to help you to grow.

Joe Conlon: 07:56

Yeah. Thanks, Scott. So before we last left off was going into me starting as a solo agent in the business. When I, like I said, it took about 6 months to get my feet wet. Second half of that first year, I started something started to click and I got got a little bit, the first half.

Joe Conlon: 08:11

By my second year, I started understanding what I needed to do to build the business in a way that I believe that I could. It took it still took time because as a young agent in the business, you still had to put plan act a plan of action in place, and it took a little bit of a lag curve to get to that point. So, basically, what had happened was for about 2 or 3 years, I was slowly growing year after year till it got to a point where I was out on appointments on a regular basis and not able to keep up with the administrative side of things. So I finally did hire an administrative assistant. I got my own office space in a loft it was actually a shared space in a loft with a graphic designer.

Joe Conlon: 08:50

I think there was an artist, a photographer up there, and a small magazine. And we just shared a loft in Walkerville, and I had my assistant kind of working out of the corner of that space. And her job was just to make sure that the paperwork was up to date, taking in phone calls while I was out on appointments. So that was all working fine for a good while. But then there got to be a point where my business started to degrade in a bit as far as, like, I was getting too busy, and I wasn't able to service clients to the same level of service I was giving them prior to.

Joe Conlon: 09:22

And I started to struggle with being able to keep up with the demand, which is a good problem to have, but at the same time, I didn't want my re reputation to suffer. The assistant was great. I tried to keep up with the demand. It turned into very early mornings into late nights. I think in 2017, I did a 107 deals in that year.

Joe Conlon: 09:43

And at about August, I started to burn out pretty hard. I couldn't sleep at night. Issue I started having issues with staying focused. I was always very tired, and I just couldn't focus the way I would before to the point where I was getting chest pains, bad anxiety, things like that. I finally took my phone and threw it into a drawer, shut the drawer, went to my cottage, and and just checked out.

Joe Conlon: 10:05

And talk about losing business, try throwing your phone into a drawer for a few weeks. You lose people pretty quick. And at that point, I just didn't care. I needed to focus on my health and myself, and I didn't know what to do. I finally came back, and there was an agent named Stev Popovich, who's now an agent on my team.

Joe Conlon: 10:26

And he was new in the business, and Fred and Frank Binder, who are the manager and the broker record of my brokerage, saw that I was struggling and I needed help. And they saw a young agent that was also getting into the business that needed business. So they introduced me to Steve and said, why don't you mentor him? He can help you with some of this overload that you have. So I brought Stev on, and it started working really well.

Joe Conlon: 10:48

And I started to realize that the best way to to help myself grow was to bring on more agents to help me and to service my clients at a better rate. At that time, I also knew Jill Winglar, who was on my team, was getting her license and was getting into the business. And it was going so well with Steb, I figured I'd bring somebody else on and maybe start a small team. I didn't wanna call it a small team until I had at least 3 agents and my assistant. But when Jill got licensed, I showed her what I had to offer her and why I think it would have been best beneficial to her.

Joe Conlon: 11:19

At that time, at the end of 2017, we did form what is now the Joe Conner Real Estate Team. We brought another marketing assistant on at that time, and everything was going well again. But we started to grow to the point where all 3 of us couldn't keep up. And I didn't realize, by bringing on all this help, how many people I actually was letting slip through the cracks. I didn't realize how much business was actually coming in.

Joe Conlon: 11:41

I was so busy and caught up with the clients I was working with. I didn't realize how much I had lost. We ended up bringing on more agents. Steve Wild then took on to the team. Krista Smith became my assistant, who, after 2 years of doing an awesome job as my assistant, ended up getting licensed, and she got married and is now Krista Kingston.

Joe Conlon: 12:00

And then she in a is also a member of the team, and then we ended up bringing on Zach Janice. So where we stand today, we have 6 agents, 3 assistants, and we have what would be a larger team now in the city, and we're doing very well in servicing the clients to our fullest capabilities. Now if we obviously ever got to a point where we can't service them like we were before, we would just then expand and grow, but we at least now have the systems and the proper structure and infrastructure in place to be able to make that happen.

Scott Dillingham: 12:30

That's incredible. That's a really cool story. I like how you just started from cell phone sales, and now you have a a large team, probably one of the largest in Windsor and Essex County.

Joe Conlon: 12:40

Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny. I didn't go to school for business. I I didn't and I didn't learn a lot of these things in courses.

Joe Conlon: 12:48

And, unfortunately, a lot of it's through trial and error, and I probably coulda learned things a lot quicker had I just went and took a simple course, but I've taken the long and hard road of just trial and error and learning these things. But by by doing that, I've been able to fine tune our marketing to where it is today. And our administrative assistant, our systems today, and our lead gen, and the agents, and the things that we have now were all through trial and error, and it wasn't an easy road to get where we're at. But I'm proud to say we have a a very good group, and we're very well organized to be able to service these clients the way we are. I don't stress as much.

Joe Conlon: 13:21

I now have 2 children that I can go home to and enjoy, spending time with without being out till 10 o'clock every night.

Scott Dillingham: 13:28

That's awesome. No, that's incredible. So for everyone that's listening here, if you had to say one super important thing or the most important piece of advice that you could give to somebody who's looking to either doesn't have to be getting into real estate, but starting their own business or growing personally, what would that advice to them be?

Joe Conlon: 13:46

Yeah. I wish from the beginning, I would have focused on the infrastructure first. It's always great. Everybody wants to hit the ground running, get out, get a client, but I'm starting to learn that if you're gonna build a business, it's better to start by focusing on the systems first. Make sure your systems are in place.

Joe Conlon: 14:03

The last thing you wanna do is 2 years down the road, realize that you didn't have systems in place to keep track of your clients and service your clients and follow-up with your clients. And then you're gonna be scrambling to find their phone numbers and emails and get back to them. By having these systems and structures in place, it makes it easy to pull the trigger on bringing in an assistant or going home in the evenings and spending time with your family. If you don't have the organization, you're just making life harder for yourself, and it's going to end up costing you a lot of mental energy. It's gonna end up costing you money, and it's going to end up costing you a good work life balance.

Scott Dillingham: 14:40

No. It's true. They say you cannot build a house unless you have a strong foundation.

Joe Conlon: 14:44

And I learned that the hard way.

Scott Dillingham: 14:46

So your systems is your foundation, which is so true. I think

Joe Conlon: 14:49

We're still building on that.

Scott Dillingham: 14:51

Yep. Which is incredible.

Joe Conlon: 14:53

Always room for improvement. But if I were to do it all again, I would have sucked it up and lost a little bit of money and built the systems first rather than hitting the ground running.

Scott Dillingham: 15:01

Yep. No. That's awesome. So do you anticipate winning the, chairman's award this year again? I do.

Scott Dillingham: 15:06

Gonna be 5 years in a row?

Joe Conlon: 15:07

It will be 5 years in

Scott Dillingham: 15:08

a row. Good for you. That's incredible. The really cool thing I like, Joe, about your story is it so much matches up with mine. For an example, I decided that I wanted to do something new, and I didn't know what it was, but I knew that I wanted to do something new.

Scott Dillingham: 15:23

So I applied for jobs all across Canada, and then I found one which was at future shop, and I moved, and it wasn't too far away. It was in Sarnia, but I knew that I wanted change, and I did whatever I needed to make sure that change would happen, and you did the same thing. You took a month off, put your phone in your dresser and you just moved on, rested and you came back rejuvenated and had more strength and power than you did before. So I think that's a great lesson for anyone who's listening as well is think of what you wanna do, even if it means taking a break, taking a hiatus from life and work, whatever it is, Take a break, sit down, figure out what you wanna do and get it done. You just have to do it.

Scott Dillingham: 16:06

I just did it. Joe just did it. And we're both running 2 separate but fully successful businesses, and you can do it too. I just wanna thank you for taking the time today to listen to the show. I hope it inspired you, and you learned something.

Scott Dillingham: 16:20

And I look forward to meeting up with you next week, where we dive into more great topics and feature more great guests to help you learn, grow and develop personally and financially. Have a great day.