How To Scale Past 100 Deals Per Year With Systems And Care | Jordan Smith

We sit down with Jordan Smith of Local Utah Realty to unpack how he goes from strong negotiation to high-touch service without rushing clients or cutting corners. He shares the systems, team habits, and gifting ideas behind 100+ transactions a year and a wall of five-star reviews. 

• Jordan’s path from early hustles to real estate leadership 
• Why he walks away from bad terms to protect clients 
• Listing prep that prevents inspection and appraisal headaches 
• Negotiation tactics that use leverage and smart tradeoffs 
• Building a team that stays available without service dropping 
• CRM, call recording, and documentation that reduce risk 
• AI lead scoring and why emotional intelligence still wins 
• Referral growth through client events and unexpected gifts 
• Practical gifting plays like cookies at contract and custom art at closing 
Visit bizboxinc.com, click free setup, and own the move minutes.

Level Up Your Client Experience with BizBox 📦

Want to stand out and stay top of mind with your clients? BizBox makes it easy. Our branded moving boxes aren’t just practical – they’re a marketing tool that keeps your name in front of past clients, referral sources, and future deals.

Order your first Branded BizBox pack today and see why top agents across the country LOVE them!

👉 https://www.bizboxinc.com/

Stay Connected on Instagram 📲

Follow BizBox Inc. for behind-the-scenes content, guest insights, and actionable tips to grow your real estate business! Plus, drop us a DM and let us know what topics you want to hear next.

🔗 https://www.instagram.com/bizboxinc/

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Jordan Smith

Justin Armbruster 0:32

Welcome to another episode of Outside the Box. My name is Justin Armbruster, John Leary, account executive at VizBox. Today we have Jordan Smith with local Utah Realty joining us all the way from northern Utah. Jordan and his team did over a hundred transactions in 2024 and 2025. Jordan, thanks for being here.

Jordan Smith 0:52

Yeah, thank you guys for having me. This is really exciting and it's always a fun time of year to be on during the spring.

Justin Armbruster 0:58

Yeah, and heck yeah. Well, we

Early Hustles And Competitive Roots

Justin Armbruster 1:00

appreciate you making some time for us in the spring. I know you're super busy. Walkaster, how'd you what's your background? How'd you get into real estate?

Jordan Smith 1:05

Yeah, so the elevator pitch is Weaver State, Penn State, real estate. So that's the thing way of of the journey. So those those three things there. So and uh, you know, I didn't ever think I was gonna go into real estate. I'd always uh run businesses. Uh when I was young, the brothers and I, we would go around selling snow cones. We did the lemonade stand, but we saw that the money was in the snow cones because the other kids in the neighborhood they didn't have the snow cones.

Speaker 1 1:38

Yeah.

Jordan Smith 1:38

And we had the connection. We knew a place called Far Ice Cream, which you're ever in Ogden, Utah, which is where I'm from. Far ice cream is it. It's it's super lit, as Gen Z was saying. I guess you could say. We would go down to Far Ice Cream, we would buy the shave ice, like a 50-pound bag of shave ice. We would buy the syrups, so you had, you know, your tiger's blood, all those really nice syrups, grape, all those. And we would sell out in front of the house. And then we got this idea too, because we played a lot of soccer growing up. We said, man, there's all these AYSO tournaments at the park around the house from us. We could probably make a killing if we went over there, hauled the Red Rider wagon over there, loaded up the snow cone, the shave ice, and we could sell those snow cones for you know two bucks a snow cone. And we capitalized. There was those parents over there watching the game, just dying of thirst, and it was super hot. So we'd roll that wagon around, we would sell out and make a couple hundred bucks. And this was in you know the early 90s, 1995, 86, sometime around that time. And we're out there hustling every Saturday making a couple hundred bucks. So that entrepreneurial spirit always kind of lived within me, and it was a competition. The brother was always like, I bet you can't sell to that lady. And I'm like, watch, watch. And you get, you know, you'd get rejected a lot, but learning these lessons at such a young age of how entrepreneurship worked, realizing that it wasn't all just profit, like the first of the day, we'd be like, okay, we made our $22, now we've paid off our ice and our you know, our syrup, and then we'd look at that bottle of syrup, we're like, wow, you know, we got half a bottle left. Now we can we can make this happen, and everything else is just gravy. It's all profit for us.

Speaker 1 3:19

Yeah.

Jordan Smith 3:20

So we would do that, and we made a ton of money doing that. And so I did that with snow cones, and then it transitioned into doing that for lawn care, and so this entrepreneurial spirit and this business-minded uh uh upbringing, I guess you could say, and then we'll we'll get to this part about sprinkling in the competition. If you can't already sense it, it's there. Uh the brothers and I grew up with four other brothers, so it was always, you know, driveway basketball. We're during March Madness here, so we'll hit on that. And if it didn't end, you know, with somebody having their teeth knocked out or somebody getting a muddy whip, or you know, going inside crying because tried to go for, you know, tried to go for a slam dunk on the eight-foot hoop and ended up laid out on the concrete. Yeah, it just wasn't happening. So that that's that's the upbringing. Yeah. Whether it was doing that or playing, we did uh neighborhood Olympics. So we had like 15 kids in the neighborhood growing up, and it was still the age where you stayed outside after you got home from school, and you didn't come home until somebody yelled at you to come home for dinner, and you know, you always wondered like when was the last time that you you you went outside for the last time with that group? Yeah, that was us. It was uh, you know, we made medals, Olympic medals. We took care jar lids and we went down to like Michael's or Joanne's, one of those places, and we made ribbons around these medals, and uh we would spray paint them gold, silver, bronze, and we held the Olympics, and it was just wild time. It's also the first time that I can say that I beat my bro older brother in anything, but you got older brothers. Everybody remembers the first time that they beat their older sibling. It just sticks in you for me. It was uh racing around uh the block, it was um biking Olympics, and so you had to go as fast as you could all the way around the block, and then the first person across the finish line was the one that won. And he'll tell you if you ask him, he he'll say, Oh, I was in the lead, but I'm pretty sure I was in the lead. And I only looked back to see him cruising down the gutter, the street gutter, and somebody was watering their sprinklers that day, and he caught a little bit of water and he slipped and he cut open his chin. Well, I looked back because I was first place, so I looked back to see him slip, and then you know, I was like, Yep, gold medal for me. Then went back to check on him, make sure he was okay. So that's a little bit about my upbringing, how I am, the person I am, and then maybe that'll give you kind of an idea of how I went from you know, Weber State, Penn State, real estate, is I got back to what I'd always been passionate about, what life had told me that I I was meant to do, which is to help people realize something much bigger than themselves, which is homeownership.

Why He Left Med School

Justin Armbruster 6:07

Super cool.

Sean Leary 6:08

Yeah, I was kind of thinking about that Penn State action to where you went to Penn State School of Medicine, if I if I did my research right onto that. And so where was that transition from like I guess med schools not where I'm where I'm passionate at to flip to real estate? Did you um dabble in a medical career at all or when when did that switch happen?

Jordan Smith 6:27

No, I I served in uh a church service mission, so Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I served in Brazil on a church service mission, and so I had some opportunity down there to kind of see how the healthcare was, you know, a little bit different than maybe here in the United States, and it kind of made me passionate too down there because I had to go to the hospital a few times, got really sick. I don't know if it was dengue fever or what, but you go to the hospital down there and you see some of the things and you see how maybe somebody who's business-minded could come in and maybe change some of those things. So I kind of developed, you know, maybe a desire to jump into that. I also played a lot of sports in high school, so I fractured my um my ankle uh and had a plate and five screws placed. It was carted off with an ambulance, attempting a game-winning field goal against Clairefield. So uh having an interaction there with an orthopedist who came in and fixed that up and got me back on the field for the next year, and then you know, having torn ACLs and things like that, I kind of had a passion for seeing how important it was to have somebody who took that extra time to care more about you as a person than just coming in and doing the surgery. So that was one aspect of medicine that I really liked. But I also came to see that the medical system was shifting where there wasn't the opportunity to really run your own practice. Most of the big players were buying up the small practice, and so while I was in uh Penn State doing medical school, it was apparent that that shift was definitely happening and there wouldn't maybe be an opportunity. And I realized I wasn't as passionate about medicine as maybe I thought, and it it seemed like there could be a much better opportunity in being in business for myself, which is what real estate is.

From Part Time Agent To 100+ Deals

Justin Armbruster 8:12

Talk to us a little bit about your career so far. I think you told me off-air that you've been in the business for eight years now. What has that looked like? Uh is it just you? Are you a solo agent? Do you have a team, or what does your operation look like right now?

Jordan Smith 8:24

Yeah, so when I uh first got going, it was just me. I was doing it part-time. So I worked for an online crowdfunding company called Funded Today. We raised about a half a billion dollars doing online sales, so sales calls with people all over the world. You'd reach out to them cold, and you would you would basically, you know, jump on Zoom and Skype calls and be able to, you know, call them up. So I was still working that job uh part-time when I first got a real estate license. And really it came from the fact that my wife and I wanted to buy our first home, and so I was still doing that funded today job because I you got to have two years of income to buy a home, so you can't just immediately transition into real estate. But at the time, the agents that I was engaging with in that home search process, there was just something missing missing. They the process wasn't great, it just seemed like, man, I'm doing a lot of this myself. There's got to be better systems in place, uh, there's got to be somebody who's just an expert at the agreements and knows how to negotiate like a pro and be able to get us a good deal rather than just you know settle for whatever price or whatever closing costs. And so that got me passionate where I was still working full-time, and then in the evenings I was taking the real estate courses, and so I would say for the first two or three years, I was still working that other job full-time. I was doing real estate kind of part-time, and I think I sold still like 24 homes in the first year, yeah, working, you know, just as finish up my other job and then go work real estate. And so then I, you know, said, wow, I'm really, really passionate about this. I'm just gonna go full-time doing this. And so then I made that jump to full-time. I would say in the last three years, we've really exploded. So years, you know, four through I guess this is the eighth year, so four through six, I was still doing 40 to 60 deals a year, but uh the last two years I did a hundred and a hundred and two deals in 2024, 104 deals in 2025, and 2026 setting up to be another great year. Now I have, yeah, big numbers, right? And uh a couple of those years when I was doing 50, 60 deals, that was all on my own. And then I realized, wow, if I, you know, the the thing that separates, in my opinion, a true professional from somebody who, you know, is you know, still solid as a real estate agent, but the level of leader you can leave behind you. So if you can train somebody else to be better than you are yourself, and this stuck out with me from my mission because the mission president where I served in Brazil, he pulled me aside when I was called to be a leader early on in the mission, and I served in Brazil, so I had to go and learn Portuguese. But at eight months in, there said, Oh, you're gonna be training other missionaries. I was like, I don't even speak the language all that great. And you got the qualities of a leader, you'll figure the language out, and you you're gonna be great at this. And it was a daunting task, and without Heavenly Father's help, I wouldn't have been able to learn the language or do any of that. But what I'm getting at is he also told me that the the type of person you are, or the type of leader you are, it's going to be largely with the impact you leave behind you and the missionaries that you can train to be better than you are. And so that stuck with me my whole life is you know how I how I can help somebody be better than I am and maybe teach them lessons that I had to pay a huge price for. And I've been able to do that with my team, where I can convey some of the mistakes I've made as an agent and pass along that wisdom early on in their real estate careers to really accelerate them so they don't have this steep of a learning curve. And so that's really my hope now with my team is the agents that come and they work on my team that they learn something from me that just helps them get even further ahead and be better for their clients.

Sean Leary 12:12

Love it. So, how big is your team? How many agents you got with uh at local Utah?

Jordan Smith 12:17

Yeah, I think we have about 10 now on the team. I'd have to check. We just hired a few more, so now also we have a team running within a team. So a couple of the the agents I've trained, they're now hiring agents under them to to kind of maximize their impact as well. Because uh, you know this too, uh um Justin. When you get out there and you're working a whole bunch of buyers, sometimes you just don't have capacity when somebody else comes on and says, Hey, I need you to help me, and when can we go look at homes? And when can you list my home? Yeah. And having an extension of yourself is just so vital. Yep. That's one of the biggest complaints that buyers often have is my agent's not available. And I I totally get that. We work very long hours, and sometimes it feels like there's no downtime when you get a call at you know nine, ten o'clock, and one of your sellers is like, Hey, we got a problem, my toilet's leaking and it flooded my basement. And you're the one they trust, and you're the one they call. And so when you have somebody else who you can sometimes pass things off to to be an extension of you, and that level of service doesn't drop, then things tend to flow really well, and you you can do more business, and you can do more business in a quality manner, too. Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

Sean Leary 13:30

I was thinking

Pro Negotiation And Pre Listing Prep

Sean Leary 13:31

about uh you said something uh when you're just speaking about kind of negotiating like a pro. Uh, and I was just thinking how that how do you negotiate like an amateur and what's what's that difference in between you know pro and amateur and and and what mistakes do you see non-pros doing in this industry that that really set you apart?

Jordan Smith 13:48

There's just uh a nuanced way of doing things, and that it's funny you bring that up. We had this happen probably about a month, two months ago with a seller, and so they they came to me and they said, Hey, we're ready to list the house, and we got it on the market and stuff, and we had it well presented. So amateurs don't take the time to do the work in advance and to educate their sellers because there's really you know three ways to list. You can list below the market and create kind of urgency to bid the house up. You can list above the market and you can chase the rates and you can chase the buyers down, and you know, that's how an amateur does it. They they chase the buyers down and finally settle on a price, and it's usually not the best experience. Or you can, you know, do it perfect where you price it just right, you have the right staging, you make sure the things are taken care of in advance that can be flagged on on inspections, on you know, uh appraisals. So if you have missing smoke detectors, you have peeling paint, you have seismic straps missing from the water heater. Uh a pro doesn't have to chase those things, they get ahead of those things. And I will just tell sellers straight up that if, hey, look, if you're not willing to to do this the way it's supposed to be done, maybe we're not a good fit, and I can give you a number of somebody else who's willing to list this home. And thankfully I'm in a position with my business that I can afford to do things that way. Yep. And it's it's better for everybody because I'm not having to, you know, constantly say to the seller, oh, why is my house not selling? We can we can go into it with confidence and you know get more homes sold because we've had those tough conversations up front. So I'd say the amateurs just get really excited and they're just like, oh, let's just sign the agreement and everything else will just sort itself out. I'm very much a systems and uh a preparer, if you will. I like to have things neatly laid out. So to kind of explain more about the situation, here's a nuanced way to negotiate. When this seller who happens to be my neighbor three doors down came to me and said, Hey, ready to sell the house. We found the house uh that we want to buy, we went out, got that house under contract, and the builder said, No, we cannot have you know earnest money be refundable. It's non-refundable, and you know, these are the dates. Any other agent desperate to do business would have just said, Oh, okay, Mr. Builder, that's fine, that's how it goes, but I can use leverage because I sell so many homes, and I just said, Hey, look, that's not gonna work for us, and there's plenty of other homes out on the market. Uh, you know, if you're not willing to work with us on this, like I can take all the buyers I work with, and we can look towards other builders who are gonna be more flexible on this. They like you guys, they want to work with you, but that's just not gonna work. Because what if something happens with their home falling out? And I know you guys are giving us your word that that's not gonna be the case. But sometimes you have to be firm. When you're too willing to say yes and just get a deal done at all costs, it really can impact your sellers. So by taking a step back sometimes on a deal and saying, hey, look, we need to put a pause on this, time definitely can create better outcomes for both parties. Because by stepping away and saying, hey, we need to pause on this for a few days, they came back and they said, you know what, we talked to the our our supervisor, our superintendent here, they're willing to work with you guys on that. And so we put that piece together where they didn't feel super, super locked in where they're gonna lose five, ten grand of their earnest money so they could breathe a little bit easier and make a better decision. Then, fast forward to when we listed their home, the seller told me, you know, in confidence, because you have loyalty and confidentiality of your client, they said, we really don't want this $3,000 sofa we have downstairs that we just bought. It's gonna be really hard to get that out of the basement. We just don't really want it. Let's just put that as it's included in the listing. I said, Hey, that's great that you're telling me this. I got a better idea. Let's let's not necessarily put it out on the MLS that it's included in the listing, but I'm gonna keep that in the back of my pocket here because what if an inspection related item comes up and the buyer tries to hit you for something? We can use that as a bargaining chip. Yep. And I looked at the back deck and I said, This was a pre-visit prior to listing, and I said, Look, your back, your back deck, it needs some reinforcement. I guarantee you an inspector's gonna come out here, they're gonna say, hey, that's a couple thousand dollars to get that repaired, and it really needs to be done, it's gonna maybe even come up as a safety issue. And he said, Well, we don't really want to fix that. We just put a new carpet, we did a new roof, we had a new AC, the house is really clean. I said, Okay, that's fine, but when the time comes, I guarantee you they're gonna ask for that. And rather than go and give them yourself in advance, let's use the sofa as a negotiating chip. Yep. And so, sure enough, fast forward two weeks, the appraisal or the inspection happened, the buyer came back. Hey, we need $3,500 to you know replace the deck. And you know, we also have a little bit of intel. This is the other way that buyers often go wrong, buyer agents. They had sat there discussed on the porch how much they love the sofa in the basement. And so their agent, rather than pulling them away from the ring camera that's sitting there, and my sellers are listening in and watching the showing take place, they sit on the porch for 10 minutes, tell us how much they love the house, and how much they also need to buy a sofa, but the one downstairs is perfect. Yep. So when that repair came in of $3,500, I said, you know, you guys probably don't want this sofa, but we were thinking maybe rather than do the repair, the seller might be willing, if you guys are open to it, to trade the sofa in the basement. And they said, No way, you guys would do that. I said, Yeah, they really don't want to part with that sofa, but you know, it seems like a fair trade. What do you guys think? He said, For you, we will, though. Yeah, exactly. So these are these are ways that agents who are experts know how to negotiate. Whether it's a seller who wants to leave behind a washer and dryer, and you leave those as excluded. So when something comes up, now you have a little bit more bargaining power. There's all kinds of ways to do it. Oftentimes agents get, you know, oh no, what are we gonna do? They I gotta go call a handyman immediately, and they create all this extra work for themselves when the problem's right in front of them, or the solution to the problem is absolutely right in front of them, and they just didn't think a little bit outside the box. There's a a nod to Bizbox there for you. There you go.

Justin Armbruster 20:27

We didn't even have to pay them for that. Yeah, not yet.

Jordan Smith 20:31

Free advertising.

Justin Armbruster 20:32

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's great. I it's that's funny you say that. I I use the exact same line with my clients for kitchen appliances. You know, I'll ask them ahead of time, are we wanting to leave the the fridge and stove? Yes, absolutely, no way I'm taking that. Like, okay, let's take that information and put it in our back pocket and let's see if they ask for them. Let's see if that's something they want, and we can, you know, find a way to negotiate that in and uh make it work to our advantage instead of just putting it up there up front. Absolutely.

Jordan Smith 21:01

That's why we're selling 50 plus homes and you know the the average agent sells, you know, a couple homes a year, but ones who can you know see what the solutions could be before they before it's needed, those are the ones that continually seem to win and win and win.

Justin Armbruster 21:16

Yeah, and I think the most important thing when it comes to negotiating as an agent is understanding being a good negotiator means you're going to miss out on some deals. Sometimes it doesn't work out. You know, sometimes the deal falls apart because we had to be too f we were a little firm. And understanding that that's a risk, but understanding that's okay. You know, sometimes what's best for your clients is for the deal not to work out. And yeah, and instead of caving and whether it's uh you know on the buyer side, maybe giving them the seller a price that you shouldn't have, or on the seller side, it's agreeing to fix too many things that you don't think are necessary, sometimes deals fall apart, and that doesn't necessarily mean you didn't do your job as an agent. Sometimes it means You did what's best for your client, even if it means you need to start the process over. And having enough business as an agent for that to be an okay outcome, you know, the best negotiators, in my opinion, are the ones that are doing a lot of business because they don't have to stress about a deal falling apart. Falls apart, it falls apart. You're gonna have several deals fall apart a year, but understanding that's just part of the business.

Jordan Smith 22:22

And the clients don't feel rushed either. That's repeatedly mentioned in reviews of them working with us. At 30 years of age, I had my house paid off, I had my cars paid off, now I have multiple homes paid off, all the vehicles are paid off. And so when clients meet with me, it's not life or death if I don't sell them the home in the next 30 days or 60 days. We can afford to meet them where they are. And so many agents want to just, you know, rush people when that business might not be business for 30 to 60 days, maybe that's business for a year. Maybe that's business that if you treat them right and they put a pause on the search and how you interact with them and respond to their concerns, whether it's rates, whether it's payment, whether it's you know, oh, it's just not right because the kids are in school, whatever it is, how you address those things, you're either building the business right for or for the future, or you're you're driving them towards someone else, depending on how you engage with them. So

Systems That Protect Clients And Agents

Jordan Smith 23:23

that's one other thing I'd mentioned that we're way different than every other agent. We have a very powerful CRM that we've spent probably $50,000, $60,000 uh creating. So we used podio and then we loop in an AI phone through Quo used to be Open Phone. So we have amazing tracking on our clients where the text messages and the emails they feed right into our podio on the client. We can go in at any point and we can see, you know, when was the last time we talked with that client? We can see, you know, based on AI, who's most likely to buy. We can see what they're searching. We can if we've set up an MLS search, that feeds into our CRM as well. So the whiteboard behind me is a little bit deceptive. It hasn't been used in three, four years because now everything is on my CRM on my phone, on my computer, and it's really, really helpful. An agent on my team actually had a division complaint uh you know filed against them, and some people might be like, oh, that's the worst thing ever. We were actually glad when it came up. It was like, yeah, we're happy to defend this because guess what? We had the recorded call with that client, we had multiple text messages, and it painted a very different story than what they had filled out and said in a complaint. You know, oftentimes agents and brokers are like, oh no, what if the division says something or does something? Great. We're very, very transparent, we're very, very thorough, we keep great systems, and so when those came those those things come up, we gave the investigator everything they needed, and the complaint disappeared. They wrote back a couple days ago and they said, Hey, we reviewed everything, you guys are absolutely in the right, the complaint's dissolved and it's done. And so I I think, you know, whenever you're a high-producing agent, you're not going to be perfect. There's there's going to be friction out there. People aren't going to like you just because you're doing a ton of business, they might accuse you of doing certain things. But I I really do think having the right systems, having the right uh communication, and having the right team in place, it does make all the difference. And some agents, you know, they just try and go out and they're gonna go spend a ton of money on leads because that's what they've heard works. That wasn't the case for me. When we started spending some money on leads initially, we made sure we have the systems in place and the infrastructure that could handle it. We had, you know, a dedicated TC, I had a virtual assistant, I had a photography team that was just for me. I had a team that would come in and do handyman repairs. And once you have that system in place, then you can scale. So many people are just trying to scale, scale, scale, and they get in a situation where then they are you know pressuring clients to get a close because they got to get to the next appointment or they got to do something else, and the client experience suffers, and they feel that, and it's very real. So it is this balance and business of working the people who are in front of you, uh nurturing those who aren't, having good systems and teams in place to basically minimize some of your involvement in the paperwork. So I think that's one thing that's really separated us.

AI Tools And The Future Of Real Estate

Sean Leary 26:35

Yeah, do you feel like there's some other like uh you mentioned AI, there's some areas of AI that you feel like have helped kind of uh streamline processes and systems that uh other than that CRM kind of thing that you had mentioned right there? Are there some other uh tools with AI that you feel like have helped kind of scale you uh a little bit over these past two years?

Jordan Smith 26:53

Yeah, this is a shout out to the web developer on our team who's come up with a tool called Calabi. He has basically been using AI to create a system to search across his database and tell them which leads are the hottest based on their search. And so at any given point, he can use AI to scan all of the data points in our CRM. So he can see how many houses they've shown, he can see how many times they've been on Zillow, how many times they've been on Utah Real Estate looking at homes, and it it'll just present to him and say, hey, here's this person's, you know, ranked a five, this person's a three. And so I think that's it's tremendous. I think the real estate profession is very much gonna be uh a game of, hey, these people integrated AI or these people left the profession. And I I think we're three to five years out from truly seeing that happen. I I think that we're closer than people think of being able to jump online and you're going to have an AI agent talking to you. You're gonna say, hey, I want a home that's three to five um bedrooms, two baths, in this price range, in this area, and the AI agent's gonna go and scan all across the internet and it's gonna say, hey, here's these homes that meet your criteria. And uh then you know you'd schedule your tour or whatever at that point. But uh I do think that agents need to be more honed in on this because the space is changing. AI is changing everything, and within a year it's gonna be very, very, you know, apparent who has put in some of the work on doing this, and I don't have a background in it at all. I'm trying to align myself with people who understand AI and who understand those things. I think there will always be a place for those who can uh treat people with emotion because that's one thing that AI is it can't read, it can't do. I got an AI call the other day and they could not sense in my voice that I was kind of irritated to be interrupted. And you know, a human can still do that, and you can still spot those differences from an emotional standpoint. And I think that's where agents really need to focus is on their emotional intelligence. You don't have to be the smartest person ever to win at this game. I'm definitely not. I'm you know pretty average, I would say. But where I do a little bit better, I think, is just understanding the emotions of people and the interactions and how to build friendship and how to establish trust really quick with clients. And I think that's something that agents really got to take serious, and I certainly take seriously. I try and read a book a week, and a lot of it is on personal development and relationship development, on how to win friends and influence people. Things like that are gonna be the ingredients to stay winning in a profession that honestly it hasn't adapted much over the last hundred years. AI is going to force it to adapt a ton.

Justin Armbruster 29:45

Yeah. So switching gears may be a little bit too uh probably I imagine is a relevant part of your business. But what about your uh repeat business and referrals? What kind of uh impact does that have on you? Are you you work primarily by referral? Is there a lot of repeat clients? What do you do to ensure that you're getting those repeat customers? Yeah, so that's a very good question. Before

BizBox Sponsor Break

Justin Armbruster 30:07

we dive into that, the outside the box podcast is all about serving your clients well. And great realtors know the move is when that service matters most.

Sean Leary 30:16

At this box, we believe this thing. This box is how realtors support their clients through the move, delivered directly to your client when they need it most.

Justin Armbruster 30:23

Printed on both sides, packed with everything they need to pack and organize and deliver straight to their door. Your client is taken care of and your brand stays present long after the move.

Sean Leary 30:33

With packages starting at just five boxes and free design setup, there's a solution for every budget.

Justin Armbruster 30:38

Visit bizboxinc.com, click free setup, and own the move minutes.

Sean Leary 30:44

And now, back to the show.

Jordan Smith 30:45

Thanks for asking

Referrals Through Events And Gift Strategy

Jordan Smith 30:46

that. And the way that we approach this is in some ways unique, in other ways, you know, just similar to what maybe other teams and agents do. So we do four client events a year. Those client events happen at the same places. We love local, we support local. So we always do an event at the local bowling alley where we invite everybody out for pizza, bowling, prizes. People love that. We have a team of digital assistants who actually call our entire database. So that's been happening these last few days because we have a client event on Monday coming up. Oh, fun. And so that actually leads to repeat business. So my AI system will also send out texts and invites, and then we include little calendar invites so people can add it to their calendar. So we utilize what's called add cal. And so it sent out a thing, and if people click on it, whether you're Android, iOS, you just click on it and it adds it to your calendar so they get a reminder because a lot of people will be like, yeah, we were totally going to come, then we forgot. So we added that as a feature when we send out the text. But this also leads to business because when the team calls, uh, the team that we use, they they're not native English speakers often, and that's okay. Uh we don't, you know, we don't have often the time to call 3,000, 4,000 people in a matter of a week. So we utilize um digital assistants who do that. But uh today, after my digital assistants were calling, one of the clients reached out and they're like, hey, we got a call from somebody who had a weird accent, we just want to make sure this is you. And I said it is, you know, we can't be in every place at once, and we had a good joke about it. And I said, we just want more important than you know, somebody, somebody's inability to speak in the perfect dialect is that you guys are always welcome to come to our events. Until you divorce us and say you want nothing to do with us, you are always welcome, and we're always gonna call, we're always gonna invite you, and I would love to see you guys there. And I want to personally give you a big hug when you do come. So that's that means a ton if you guys could be there. And then it led to a conversation of hey, we've been in this home, you know, three, four years. We always have such fond memories of you. Um, you send your quarterly gifts, we're always so excited to get those. We're like, oh my heavens, there's another quarterly gift from Jordan in the mailbox, and this go around, we sent these heat resistant gloves because summer is coming up, and these people and everybody goes out and wants to grill, and nobody wants to go spend 30, 40 bucks on a really nice pair of heat-resistant gloves, so you don't burn yourself when you're trying to do Dutch oven or barbecue or whatever. So that gift, that invite to the event, led to hey, um, we're looking at downsizing our house, and also we have some adult children who are finding it a little bit challenging to get into the market. So we're thinking maybe we sell our house, we downsize into something, we also will help them with a down payment on a home.

Speaker 1 33:34

Yeah.

Jordan Smith 33:34

So this interaction with the clients, even though it was a virtual assistant calling them, led them to call my phone personally, led us to reminisce, led us to talk about the client gifting cycle we have every one of our clients on, where we gift them every quarter something very special and unique. And the very best book to read on that's giftology, uh, because that's how we select our gifts. We don't go and send them, you know, a branded hat from local Utah Realty, and nothing against people who want to brand everything and do everything. But it's also why BizBox here that we're doing this podcast on is so unique because they allow us to do something that's unique for the client that's also branded towards us. It's a tremendous gift that keeps on giving. And so that was one thing that stood out about BizBox is it fits in our model of how we should gift people and how you create memorable moments. We don't gift people on Christmas, we don't do the pies on Thanksgiving. We give people in spontaneous times where it's not necessarily expected, but it's very much appreciated. And so with our business, that's how we continue to stay top of mind with our clients is our gifting schedule, inviting them out to the client events. And now with uh, you know, BizBox, we can also deliver an exceptional client experience with them uh by sending these when they really are in need of them. Because you see folks post, hey, does anybody got any moving boxes? Oh, why don't you check U-Haul? They shouldn't have to do that. Click a button and we can send them a whole bunch of branded boxes that are a blessing for them when they're in a very stressful time, moving and preparing to you know go to the new house. So I think this fits in right in with the culture that we're trying to do, and we're trying to we're trying to build a better client experience than anyone else has. And so Bizbox has been seamless for that. One other way that we uh create really good loyalty and really good trust, whenever a client goes under contract, we will send them a box of crumble cookies. So they go under contract, one of my digital assistants jumps on, we make sure we have their current address, and usually within a couple hours after we told them the good news that they went under contract, they're chomping away at a four-box of crumble cookies. That's cool. Nobody can, you know, not like somebody when they just send them you know 20 bucks worth of really, really deluxe nice cookies. Um everything we do too is very custom. So when we when we um are at the closing table, we have a custom cutting board made with their family crest on it. And they can either choose mountains or a home as the background, but we gift them this custom cutting uh custom cutting board, and it's really cool. We also have a local artist who paints a watercolor of the house, and I think I actually may have one right behind me. So I got some of these just delivered for some food. But here's a little custom watercolor that our watercolor artists made. So they're very unique, and these are gifts that most likely somebody's not gonna go do themselves. Somebody's probably not gonna go commission a watercolor for a couple hundred bucks just because it's kind of seen as you know one of those expenses where hey, it'd be nice to have, but I don't know if I'm gonna go spend a couple hundred bucks on a watercolor or a cutting board. But these are gifts that we give the clients that every time they can they can they can look at them, then they remember, man, that's who helped me do this. And so it's a gift that continues to give because people put that in their house and they're like, wow, that's really cool. Some people who have helped now four or five times, their living room has four or five watercolors, and they can see, hey, this is where we first bought, this is where he stepped in and helped us again, then we decided to downsize. So I think that's really cool.

Justin Armbruster 37:27

That's super cool. Okay, I want to go back to the cookies. Yeah, because of course you would. Yeah, absolutely. So I love crumble. But that's super cool. Walk me through the as a realtor, walk me through the logistics. How is it within a couple hours you have crumble at their door? What's your digital assistant doing? Is it are you door dashing it, or you know, what does that look like?

Jordan Smith 37:51

Uh we started with DoorDash. Uh now we just order direct through Crumble. There's crumble locations all across Utah here. So it doesn't necessarily even have to be cookies. I mean, it could be whatever somebody decides. But for us, their online process was really easy. And maybe the selfish part is I really like crumbles, and so I'm building it to go. If we send 15, 20 boxes of crumbles every month to the the the deals we're closing, I get a free box. Yeah. So a little bit selfish, but the clients seem to really like it and they respond well to it. It's just not something that most agents are doing. The problem is with agents is they've always been told through various courses, oh, do pop bytes, do this, do that. It's hard. You have a family, you have clients, you're showing homes, you have to go and make the trip to go down to Target and get a candle or do this or do that. We have you know really good services that they do it for us. Does it cost a little bit more? Sure. Uh one of the things I always look to do is try to buy back some of my time. So if something comes with a little bit of a cost, I'll say, well, here's what I view my time at, and is that above or below that cost? And if, you know, unless it's something I really want to do, as long as it's below that cost, I'll say, okay, let's go ahead and let's have somebody else do it. But uh they do it in a way that it's still branded towards me. Well, you can write the message, and the digital assistant does, and she, you know, I tell her what to write. It's like, hey, you know, congrats on going under contract, we're so excited, excited for you guys. Uh, we can't wait for you guys to have your new baby in the home. And then signed off Jordan, local Utah Realty. So even though, you know, somebody else is helping do these things, the credit's still coming back to the agent, either myself or whoever on the team. And it's the same with our gifting cycle. The agents on our team are like, yeah, this is awesome. I got a text from so-and-so that they got these new heat gloves, and that's really great. We've even set our team members up on this too, so they're not surprised when they get a text and like, hey, I got those heat-resistant gloves, that's so awesome. We send them to the agents on our team as well. Number one, so they know that they're appreciated by by us and we love having them here. But number two, so when the clients uh message them, they're not surprised about the gift that was given, and they can acknowledge that and say, Yeah, they they are awesome. I've been using some as well. I thought you would love them.

Sean Leary 40:19

My

Hiring, Coaching, And Team Standards

Sean Leary 40:20

thoughts are with uh like when you're bringing on an agent onto your team, um, do you kind of have to sell them a little bit on, hey, you've got to you've got to spend money to make money into this, or these are the systems that I have going on already set up that are successful. Um, do you feel like there's ever any pushback with like new agents that are that are coming on that are, hey, we're that's you know, cutting too much into my commission, you know, and or deal with those issues?

Jordan Smith 40:42

Yeah, that's a really good question. We have to add more value than what we are charging them. And so to do all these things, it takes a tremendous system and takes a tremendous value to do these things. Most agents are you know struggling to do consistently two deals a month. So when we can share with them leads and we can share a value proposition of, hey, you're gonna go from doing 10 deals a year to doing 30, 40 deals a year, they can usually see that big picture. We're very selective, though, in who we have come onto our team. There's many agents who would probably love to join a team like ours. They're just not the right fit. We very much need people who have a very high emotional capacity to be there for clients and to to navigate clients and and also just an attitude of of learning. Some agents are just not very coachable and they have a hard time seeing that maybe there is a better way to do real estate, that it doesn't have to be a way they always thought it needed to be. And perhaps that the the very best way to sell real estate is just to be a good friend. Yeah, so many times that just being somebody's friend, being available, taking that extra time to listen, to to be there for them, and to try to understand them, that will sell more homes than you know, saying, well, this fits your criteria three, three bed, two-bath, whatever. So that's what we really try and preach to the agents is to slow down and to get back to the things that really, really matter, and that's the clients, and that's what they're going through, and trying to figure out what challenges they have, because if we help them win, we will automatically win ourselves. Love it.

Sean Leary 42:33

What else

Memorable Service Ideas That Spread

Sean Leary 42:34

you uh well I was thinking about that watercolor thing, and was that do you get a lot of your ideas from that giftology book itself? Does that what is that where the watercolors idea come from? Because I I haven't seen anybody do that. Uh and obviously you said, you know, them hanging that on their wall as a a memorabilia of the how you know you helped them out in that time. So just kind of curious if if that came from giftology or that was a different type of idea that that came about.

Jordan Smith 42:59

Um, not all the ideas come from that book. That book just talks about the components of good gifts. One of the striking examples is this guy, he he really liked um custom suits, and so they were gonna go to like a Nick's game or something, and the guy was coming into town, and he was very late, and he wasn't gonna be able to make the Nick game, and the the guy scrambled to basically turn the hotel room into this guy's favorite, you know, luxury tuxedo and and and gift shop. And then, you know, the the the client who was trying to win over and get business from, he was like, This is the coolest gift anybody could have ever given me. Like he went to the research to find out what was important to me. You decked out the whole t whole hotel in this, and then he told him to pick a suit. At the end, the guy paid for the suit himself or whatever he picked, but it's creating memorable moments. And so oftentimes companies are like, oh, let's throw our logo on a hat and give that to somebody. Let's give them a pen with our name on it. We give them a watercolor with their house on it. There's no mention of local Utah Realty. We give them a cutting board with their family crust on it. There's nothing there, there's nothing on that that's local Utah Realty. We don't go and give them like a nice high-end blanket and then throw our logo on it. We're giving them something that's personalized to them and people like that.

Justin Armbruster 44:23

You're you're kind of cracking me up as you're uh you're walking us through all these things. I can kind of tell. So I I love reading, and so I'm I'm a big reader. I can kind of tell as you're bringing up things what books you have read. And as you're bringing them up, my guess is is uh you've read uh uh Unreasonable Hospitality. You've probably read The Power of Moments, you mentioned uh oh, what was it? Um there's one other you mentioned, but we usually save this question for the end, but because you're a big reader, um give us your top three books that you would tell realtors, hey, you want to provide a better level of service, these are the three you should go read or listen to, and these will elevate your game.

Jordan Smith 45:05

Um I think Grant Cardone has some really good ones. Um Giftology, certainly that's a really awesome book to read. I I tell everybody to read that one. Atomic Habits is good. Those are just some that come to mind. People will always say to go and read how to win how to win friends and influence people, Dell Carnegie. There's just so many really tremendous books. I think rather than going out and just saying, hey, read these three, I think you have to just go out and say, hey, what ideas can I implement? And so whenever I read a book, I I try and look and say, okay, what idea is a five, ten thousand dollar idea in this book that if I take and put that into my business, it can give me massive returns. And it's not always just in books, it's it's copying other great ideas from people who have things that are working. We saw somebody on Instagram that they were going in and having a card that said, Welcome to the neighborhood, and so it's circle prospecting. Now, what I do is we we went and made a card that said welcome to the neighborhood, and then inside there was like a quote from Mr. Rogers. It was like the thing that makes a great neighborhood is great neighbors. We would go around when a client bought a home and we would go next door to the neighbors with a business magnet, and we would say, Hey, we help so-and-so buy this home right here. Britton and Brady or whatever their names are. We helped them buy this home. We were just coming around to see if you'd like to write a little welcome message to your new neighbor. Would that be okay if you took a second and wrote a welcome message? Now all of a sudden, they got a real estate agent who's doing something way different than they've ever seen. They expected to have some sort of soliciting call that's like, hey, I sold this home. Can I sell your home? Are you curious about your value? No mention of value, no mention of that, but a mention of, hey, we just want this to be a good neighborhood. We brought you a really good family that's going to be living next door. Do you think you could be their friend? Do you think this could give you the initiative to maybe stop in and introduce yourselves? And that's resonated really, really well with people. With our with our buyer that bought the home, it's something that's definitely unique. They had an agent who cared enough to go and find out who their neighbors are. Because whenever you see a home, people are like, huh, are there kids in the neighborhood? Is you know, are there older people in the neighborhood? What type of neighborhood is it? Is it safe? We're finding out for them that there's some very welcoming people in the neighborhood who took a few minutes to write a card and say, hey, would it be okay if I put my number on this and if they ever need anything, they called. That is the level of care that is going to be the winning formula as society advances more and more into this AI age. We're going to want to have emotional connection. And you either figure out a way to do that in your business, or people will pick an easy option where it's disconnected. I think there can still be both where you utilize these new age tools, but also keep it in a way that it's still about emotional connection and relationship-based.

Sean Leary 48:18

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Uh and just to, you know, fact check, I did a little bit of research on you, and you have 255 Google reviews on your local Utah Realty, and you have 255 five-star Google reviews. You guys are betting a hundred percent on on Google reviews, five stars. And so one of my questions was, hey, what kind of you know, level what are you doing different? What type of level of service are you providing? But if someone just listens to, you know, the past 45 minutes, hour, um, they're gonna see what things you're doing to to to separate yourself and really uh be different than than everybody else. So uh just kudos on uh on that and what you've built. It's really impressive and uh you don't see that.

Jordan Smith 49:00

Hopefully you won't jinx us there.

Sean Leary 49:04

But yeah, that's on me.

Justin Armbruster 49:05

Well, do we

Rapid Fire Realtor Questions

Justin Armbruster 49:06

want to end with some rapid fires? Yeah, go ahead.

Sean Leary 49:08

You got home.

Justin Armbruster 49:08

Uh Jordan, we like to end our time on outside the box with some rapid fire questions, uh, some either-ores, this or that's that we'll hit you with. Real estate related. Let us know when you're ready. Go for it. Clients are looking for homes. You recommend Zillow, Realtor.com, homes.com, or neither?

Jordan Smith 49:26

I I recommend wherever they feel most comfortable. And so if they're on realtor.com, I'll send them over a link to my profile there. So there's usually a button to connect. If they're doing Zillow, I'll say, hey, here's my agent connection. And so the confusion is oftentimes buyers don't know what's going to happen. Like on Zillow, if you click contact agent, they think they're getting the listing agent and they're getting somebody that's paying for Zillow leads. So I'll always just send them my link. I recommend the local MLS probably the most because sometimes Zillow is just in the business of selling the lead. Yeah. And I can say that because I work with Zillow.

Speaker 1 50:01

Yeah.

Jordan Smith 50:01

But sometimes they're in the business of just selling the lead. And so I say, hey, check on the MLS because if it's you know already under contract, the local MLS is going to say that. Whereas Zillow, if it's active under contract, meaning it's with a contingency, they're still just trying to sell the lead.

Sean Leary 50:17

Yeah, love it. Well, we talked a lot about books. What about um audiobook versus actual paperback, hardback? What what's your preference there?

Jordan Smith 50:24

Medical school killed paperback for me when I when I dropped out of medical school after year one. I said, I don't know if I'm ever gonna pick a book up again. So I'm a big listener. I can be at the gym listening to a book and you know, crushing a squad at the same time. So I'm gonna go audio.

Justin Armbruster 50:39

Audio book or podcast?

Jordan Smith 50:42

Uh that one's tough. I like podcasts because I I like uh you know seeing human engagement, involvement, and in real time. So I think I'm more of a people person than anything, so I'll go podcast.

Sean Leary 50:54

You got a podcast that uh is business related that you feel like you you go to?

Jordan Smith 50:58

No, not necessarily. If people recommend something, I'll check it out, but I don't have anything that I tune into on the daily. My day mainly consists of you know waking up early, 5 a.m. hitting yoga, jumping in the river and cold plunging, and dropping the kid off to school, and then it's like taking calls right after I drop him off, coordinating, you know, some of the contractors I work with and client calls and then showing homes. There's not like a whole ton of time. Most of the time I'm on I'm on the phone calling, trying to put together another deal or keep a deal going.

Justin Armbruster 51:31

Cool. Uh home office or office?

Jordan Smith 51:34

I am anti-office. I am big on home office. Nice think they need that fancy office, that they need a place that they can, you know, go and and I don't know, I just don't see I don't necessarily see the value in spending a whole bunch of money on on having a you know dedicated office. I'm here in my home office and kids know when the door's locked, I'm busy, if they knock and you know, hey, it's okay, yeah, you can come in. But I I I do think that the home office has been right for me. Maybe it's not for somebody else, and that's okay.

Service Area, Social Links, Closing

Sean Leary 52:07

Hey, so I we really appreciate you you coming on, man. How can uh listeners connect with what you got going on at local Utah Realty?

Justin Armbruster 52:14

Yeah, if a realtor wanted to refer a client over to an area, what area do you serve to?

Jordan Smith 52:18

Yeah, so I'm in northern Utah. We'll go as far as maybe South Jordan, which is just a little bit south of Salt Lake. We go as far north as Logan, Utah. But right here around kind of a Hill Air Force Base area is kind of our bread and butter. So that's Ogden, Utah. Um, as far as connecting with me, I'm kind of on this influencer thing lately. So I've been posting a ton on on Facebook just trying that out. And they can they can uh you know connect with me on Facebook. I think it's at RealJordan Smith, also on Instagram at RealJordanSmith. So come on, check it out. That's something new that we're trying lately, is we're just posting a ton of really interesting content to get people to engage. And we went from zero to like two hundred and thirty thousand views in 28 days. So there you go.

Justin Armbruster 53:03

We just you know wing it and love it, love it. Jordan, thanks for your time, man. Appreciate you joining us. This has been awesome.

Jordan Smith 53:11

Yeah, thank you guys. Have a good one. Have a good one.