We recently connected with Kerri Naslund-Monday and have shared our conversation below.
Kerri, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share an important lesson you learned in a prior job that’s helped you in your career afterwards?
My prior profession for 20 years was body piercer. Some important things learned in those years were to treat every client like they are your most favorite. Make them feel comfortable that many have gone through the same thing and most felt the same way. Reminding them that it’s scary but to focus on the goal. Finally that I am there on the journey with them so breath through it and trust that WE will be successful.
Kerri, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I came from nothing money wise. I was the daughter of a single mom of three. We were on welfare and “that family” that received the holiday present donations and thanksgiving turkey. I have had to be resourceful from an early age selling pet rock, art pieces, holiday caroling for tips until I was 12 when I began babysitting and then at 14 I got my first W2 job at a restaurant as a host. I knew that if I wanted anything that was not hand me down or used I would have to do it for myself. There is a lot of inbetween but let’s fast forward to a personal goal to own property at the age of 25. I saved saved and saved in order to buy and receive keys to my first property on the day of my 25th birthday. It was the cutest little crackhouse you ever did see and it was min. Yes I did say crackhouse. It had literally been that for a couple of years and needed a whole lot of everything. I got to work remodeling moved in as many roommates as possible (it was not called house hacking back then) and started saving again. Thats when I learned about leverage. I had no idea…. I took an equity line on my property now that the value had increased dramatically due to all the updates and repairs and I purchased my first investment property. At this point friends and family were asking me for advise on how they could do that for themselves and I decided to get licensed as a side hustle with no intentions on losing myself to the idea of what a real estate agent needed to look like. This turned out to be the secret to my success. Not losing authenticity and coming to people where they were at in an unjudgemental, peer based way!. Right about then the market started to crash 2007-2008. I decided to take on what other agents were unwilling to do and dove into shortsales with a passion for helping people find hope in a very scary time. It was the wild wild west of real estate with anarchy and a thousand different interpretations of what the rules were. It was very punk rock and I loved it. Fast forward to today… our women only team of 9 kicks alot of butt serving all clients equally without hesitation. This includes all demographics and marginalized communities. We also love out of the box situations or strategies. We are very much proactive agents rather than reactive agents always thinking two steps ahead. We also are pioneers (9 years) of having an online bidding option for our sellers which has given pretty dramatic results. We pride ourselves in not just doing real estate but rather serving and helping others create generational wealth through real estate. Real estate wealth advisors along with our partners in the top 1% across the US and Canada who come together with a servants hand and abundance mindset.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
In the beginning I believed that nobody could do it the way I do it and therefore I micromanaged alot and did not give up control or leverage. I have come to realize that when you empower people to believe in their own strengths they may do it a bit different than I would and that is beautiful because working with humans is not a one size fits all gig. Once I gave up the control and switched to a leadership roll rather then a order giver everything found a grove and became much bigger and incredible than I had ever imagined. We are so much better together. These ladies are my girl gang, my tribe, we anchor each other in a business that is cut throat and stressful.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
Back in the heyday of short sales and foreclosures we had a bunch of agents in our office who would get a stack of foreclosure assignments from the banks. The banks would not allow these agents to double end their deals and therefore any of the sign calls would come in and the front desk liaison with hand all them out. There were some of these properties that were listed at 30 or $40,000 which back then we called them “pizza money properties” because the amount of the commission after all splits are taken out, you have a bout enough left for a pizza party. There was one $40,000 property that needed an agent to write an offer for the buyer. I had nothing else going on that day so I raised my hand and took this on. The buyer was an investor who wanted me to meet him at a Starbucks to sign the purchase agreement. These were in the beginning days of DocuSign and many agents were rejecting using it because they did not see how it could not lead to fraud… Agents as a whole despise change. I explained to the investor about the online digital signing process, he said he was too old school for that and would not be able to figure it out. I explain to him that I had talked a 75-year-old lady through it just the day before and I promised him even with his AOL email account that he too could do it. He decided to give it a try and it worked! He then decided to use me exclusively after that because he was a stay at home dad for his autistic son and the less he needed to get in the car was a blessing to his world. I continued to help this gentleman with many purchases and sales over the years and he now acknowledges me as his real estate partner. You never know what might come out of being an early adopter of technology and a pizza money call… It could just lead to a years long relationship which benefits all parties and results in over $40 million worth of transactions!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theeastbayagent.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themondayteamagents/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themondayteamkw
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?heroEntityKey=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAAD_VdMBQF8LdoptMBu1KQkR9PGx-QwgMck&keywords=kerri%20naslund-monday&origin=RICH_QUERY_SUGGESTION&position=0&searchId=fc099dc0-cbff-48a8-9473-bcd9fb6def13&sid=zLk
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kerrinaslund1/featured
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/kerri-naslund-monday-the-monday-team-oakland
- Other: Tic toc https://www.tiktok.com/@themondayteam?ug_source=op.auth&ug_term=Linktr.ee&utm_source=awyc6vc625ejxp86&_r=1
Image Credits
Photographer is Kelly Sullivan