We were lucky to catch up with Grace Folias recently and have shared our conversation below.

Grace, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear you experience with and lessons learned from recruiting and team building.

Real estate is known to be a lonely job. You get licensed and a lot of new agents assume that their brokerage is going to give them hands on support and hand them clients to start working with. That is the furthest from the truth. You are fully responsible for learning what you need to know, holding yourself accountable to join the trainings that you will find beneficial, time blocking, and finding your own clients. After my first six months in the business, I built a team which scaled to eight agents that year. My second year, I expanded my team to a second state. My third year, I really started to hire, outsource, and delegate tasks not only to my team members, but to a virtual assistant and transaction coordinator. This allowed me to triple my income from the prior year and I am currently in the process of creating a training program for Realtors looking to learn how to double their income and work half the hours by learning how to do these things that I have recently implemented into my own personal business. The one thing I wish I had done differently was removing my scarcity mindset sooner in regards to hiring and investing money back into my business. I quickly learned that you need to spend money to make more money and my course is to help agents learn where to delegate that investment in order to save them time and money.

Grace, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

While pursuing my degree in Public Relations at St. John’s University, I began working as a personal assistant for a real estate broker in Queens, NY. After proving my abilities, I was promoted to marketing manager for the agents in the brokerage. During that time, I gained hands-on experience in the inner workings of the industry, learning the essentials of real estate, marketing strategies, and lead generation that delivered the highest ROI for agents in the office.

By the time I earned my real estate license, I had already developed a solid foundation for success. In my first year alone, I sold close to $10 million, with the majority of my leads coming from social media (which was something most agents were not utilizing for lead generation at the time). My rapid success, fueled by innovative digital marketing strategies, attracted other agents, leading me to form a team of 10 agents in NY by my second year.

In my third year, I expanded into Florida’s dynamic real estate market, all while maintaining my sales business and team in NY.

Now in my fourth year, I’ve tripled my GCI while being a fully present mother by making hires and leveraging systems that automate and streamline my operations. This approach has increased sales for my team members and I effortlessly. I am so excited to launch my course within the next few months, teaching agents how they can double their businesses while working half the hours by implementing similar systems.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I actually had no intentions of getting my real estate license. When I worked as a personal assistant, I saw a ton of successful agents but every single one of them were overworked, stressed and spreading themselves thin. I had no aspirations of building that type of life for myself.

I was working as an interior designer at a firm in Manhattan when I got laid-off due to COVID. This was a time with a lot of uncertainty, especially financially and something I had no preparation for. Every company had a hiring freeze and was making cut-backs. I cried for a week, and then got up and got my real estate license. I decided to give it 110% and failure was not an option.

That year, my first year in the business, in the middle of a global pandemic, I sold just shy of $10,000,000 and that was just the beginning.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Social media is actually the only form of lead generation I do besides marketing my listings. I’ve gotten 80-90% of my clients each year through my Instagram and Facebook accounts alone.

Think about it this way… cold calling, you are speaking to one person at a time. Door knocking, same thing. One social media post? Now that can potentially reach MILLIONS of people with the click of one button, after creating just one piece of content one time, without it costing you a single penny. It has the highest ROI by far, and is the best use of your time (if done correctly).

I actually have a digital course called “30 days to 10K followers & dollars” that teaches business owners and entrepreneurs how to use their social media accounts to grow on social and attract and convert clients. This course teaches you what to post, when to post it, how to build lead magnets, and how to automate your systems to follow-up with potential leads in order to convert them to sales.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://modernapproachrealestate.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grace.folias/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grace.folias/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-folias-1b0799a8/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@modernapproachrealtors