Steve Trang

Jos Aguiar
Hey guys. So in this episode, I’m interviewing Steve Trang. He’s one of the top 1% of brokers, real estate brokers in the United States. You know, I’m super excited to be speaking to him. So let’s bring him on to the show. Steve, my man, how are you today?

Steve Trang
I’m doing good. Good. As you know, I know had Sorry, I had to delay Lopez closing a deal, you know, for the on a Friday,

Jos Aguiar
so absolutely fine with you closing deals for our calls that’s show what you’re doing. So could you tell us a little bit more about your background, and I guess, what you’ve done in the past, and what’s taking you to where you are today,

Steve Trang
I will hop right back, you want to go you want to go before real estate or throughout real estate?

Jos Aguiar
Let’s go before real estate what’s what’s the earliest you can remember what’s had sales become a passion for you?

Steve Trang
Well, you know, it’s funny, I never really had a passion for sales until I got into this business. I was my background is actually in engineering. So I started was an electrical engineer back at Arizona State, went to get my master’s degree at UC San Diego, and worked at Intel for a few years. But you know, that life was not for me. Turns out, I am not employee material. So, you know, I always knew I was gonna start a business. I didn’t know what business I met a real estate broker. And you know, I said, Hey, you know, what you do? Sounds pretty cool. Let me let me see what that is. This is back in May of 2007. So I met him, while we were buying some properties, got my real estate licence in two weeks, two and a half weeks, submitted my two weeks notice and jumped in with both feet. And some argue the worst time again, real estate.

Jos Aguiar
So what’s this Ram 2000? That’s

Steve Trang
how I got into it. And after that, 2007

Jos Aguiar
Since it, yeah, okay. See what I said that?

Steve Trang
Yeah, so I got in. And, you know, once I got into it, I learned all this, all the skills you need, which you know, is entrepreneurship and sales and EQ, right? Emotional intelligence. So that’s how I got that passion, just learning and trying to be the best in the game as I can be.

Jos Aguiar
How did becoming into the real estate game at that time affect your business?

Steve Trang
Well, it was, it was terrible. I racked up a lot of credit card debt, you know, the tried anything and everything. But that’s kind of what you have to do. You have to find out what works and what doesn’t work. You’re going to play it safe, you know, why even get into business at all?

Jos Aguiar
Okay, so would you say that coming up through that Oh, eight period actually strengthen your business or hurt your business? In the long run?

Steve Trang
Well, I would say has been a great foundation for me, because I, I didn’t know what it was like to be for it to be easy. You know, as I got into the game, everyone else is leaving the business in droves, you know, because they didn’t know how to adjust to a more cold market where you actually had to work, you know, hustle and bleed. So I’ve gone through the pain, and the agents today don’t know that pain. It’s a lot easier now. You know, and so it’s good for them to get in the business now. But at the same time, they don’t have that grit that you needed to survive back in those days.

Jos Aguiar
Okay, can you talk a bit more about what’s previous to you? So what do you mean by the hustle the grid? What are you actually doing to achieve those results?

Steve Trang
Sorry, you skipped a little bit there. What was that?

Jos Aguiar
When you say the hustle, the grid, the doing the work? What is the work to you? What is it that you do on a daily basis that allows you to achieve those results? Is it networking? Is it walking the streets? What is it that you know, makes impact?

Steve Trang
For me, a lot of it, I put actually into personal development, you know, one of the books that changed my life was the Miracle Morning. So, you know, I get up at 5am Every single day to get started. As far as the grid, you know, it’s learning what we need to do. You know, I’ve got coaching, that’s actually how I met David. Was that Darren Hardy, high performance for me, you know, yeah. But it’s the learning what to do, going out to find that information and then executing it because knowledge, as you know, without action is pointless. Okay, so it’s learning and then putting it into place.

Jos Aguiar
Specifically, what is it that agents should be doing that they aren’t doing?

Steve Trang
Well, I would say, a lot of it is learning. So one of the things I tell people when you first get into the business is hire a coach, like day one. You know, don’t wait until you can afford it because you can’t afford not to. So, you know, go into coaching, and then learning from everyone above you. You know, I think Tony Robbins says you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So just hang out with the people that are more successful in you. And that’s what I do.

Jos Aguiar
And who do you look up to that really said, mortgage industry

Steve Trang
what I look up to? Yeah. So, one of the heaviest hitters in the country is Russell Shaw. So you know, I get to meet with him a few times a year, you know, buy him lunch. Um, there’s a lot, uh, you know, I got, I got a good friend, Jonathan Leahy back in DC, you know, he’s, he’s crushing it. And there’s actually another guy in town here, John galosh was another Darren Hardy, high performance forum guy. So these are the guys that you know, you learn from and grow with. That’s awesome.

Jos Aguiar
And okay, so the audience knows what is your actual key tell us a little about your sales volume that you’ve done in the last year or the previous year.

Steve Trang
So this year, we did 100 million, that’s, or this past year that just finished we did 100 units 105. So it was a slight decline, you know, there was a shift and adjustment in our business. But how many houses we sold last year, and that was, and you know, I missed my goal by half, which is crazy. So our goal was 200, we hit 100. And so we put it back up, our goal, again, is 200. And now we’re gonna all hustle a little bit harder. Because we know, oh, like that was our goal we missed. So you know, we gotta keep our eyes on the prize.

Jos Aguiar
So why did you miss the goal this year? was curious. Because that’s why is 100 is a great number. But why is it something you missed your goal by such a large margin?

Steve Trang
You know, I think part of it had to do with adjusting our compensation and the people that were on the team. And you know, having the right people on the team is crucial. And there were a couple people on the team that we let stick around a little bit longer than we should. So we’ve, we’ve raised the bar. And we’re going to, you know, say that these are the expectations. And if you don’t need to hit these expectations. That’s fine. You know, we still love you, you just can’t be on this team.

Jos Aguiar
And that’s a tough thing.

Steve Trang
Yeah, it’s it’s a it’s a shift, you know, the, we let people get by with certain things. And that’s this year, you know, that’s not happening anymore.

Jos Aguiar
That’s awesome. What kind of things are you changed that have lifted the expectations higher?

Steve Trang
So we’ve been doing the accountability is something that we’ve been doing. So it’s a daily tracker. And that’s, that’s something that we have been doing. But one more thing that we added to it in the last couple of weeks is dials. So I just finished a book, fanatical prospecting. It’s an amazing book by Jeb Blount good. It’s like the book. Yeah, so like, you know, I’ve never been fired up about prospecting before, but you know, now we are. So like, you can see here. This is our weekly activity record. And here’s all the dials you got to make. So everyone’s responsibility is making 25 dials every single day no matter what. So that’s part of the you know, we talk about the grid. That’s to pick up the phone call 25 people, it’s not fun. Now, as you probably imagine, so but that’s the expectation. That’s the that’s the bar we’ve set.

Jos Aguiar
Okay, and with those dials you making are they cold audiences? Are they people that have expressed some interest to you? Are these from the top of the list?

Steve Trang
We don’t cold call. Okay. No, a lot of these, I would say great majority of this are internet leads. But it’s it’s a lot of follow up as well. You know, these are people with interest. Now we’re following up with them and saying, hey, you know, we talked before, he’s still thinking about buying, selling whatever. And there’s also past clients, you know, hey, it’s, it’s Steve Trang. You know, we bought a house couple of months ago. Just want to make sure everything’s still going good. You’re still happy with the house? And they say yes. Okay, wonderful. You know, if you know anyone else that would appreciate great service. We do like to work by referral. So please let us know. Don’t keep us a secret.

Jos Aguiar
So awesome. Yeah, good. So that’s one thing that most people don’t do. They don’t they don’t follow up with your past clients, they don’t follow up with people who already bought from them that just someone’s done a service for you go back and speak to them.

Steve Trang
Yeah, and that was probably one of the biggest light bulbs I had in 2016. was, you know, I’ve been really good at lead gen. But I’ve been really shitty at lead. Staying connected with our leads. And so that was one of the focuses for 2016. And we can tell already, when we’re making these calls, the it’s the clients are much warmer. Now, you know, because now we’re treating them like, clients for life. So we all know it, we all say it, but to actually treat them, like clients for life. It’s been it’s been a major game changer for us.

Jos Aguiar
This is the big difference that you actually have when you say treating them like class wife. It’s a big difference from treating like a number in the phonebook. I think a lot of agents and salespeople in general they just look at their clients go not really client to me, you said a customer some of the need to sell. But I guess you caring for you guys, that’s why you’re able to do that volume because people want to come back to you.

Steve Trang
Yeah, so I mean, follow up with like, we have a birthday party now like so on their birthday as well, we’ll send them something, you know, ideally, it’s something that’s Facebook worthy, but we can’t control whether they posted on Facebook. But you know, something that impresses them was them, you know, they text us they Facebook messages. It’d be nice again, if they were Facebook fans, you know, post it, but it’s there, they feel touched, and they appreciate it. And that, is that creating that emotional connection that we weren’t doing before.

Jos Aguiar
Would you say you spent to acquire customer?

Steve Trang
Can you say that again?

Jos Aguiar
How much do you spend to acquire a customer? How much do you spend? Once they are customers to do that kind of stuff?

Steve Trang
Oh, well, to spend per customer Merilee acquisition cost is very high. I already know that our lead? Like our average internet lead is around 17 $18. Right? Which isn’t so bad if that every single one was lead closes. But we know we closed like 1% of them. Yeah. And we know we close like 1% of them, then that means that actual class 200 are closing is 1700. Yeah, 17 1800. So with that number, you know, that’s why we know we got to treat them well. And we’d pay, we don’t spend nearly that much to keep them happy. You know. So I would say for a client that we think will refer his business, we spend less than $100 per client. And we should spend more than that. But it’s hard to find even where to spend that money on them.

Jos Aguiar
Just funny touch points that really make sense. And it’s brilliant. What do you say internet leads? Do you mean Facebook leads AdWords mix of everything.

Steve Trang
Google Pay Per Click, we do Facebook too. But Facebook, the the cost per acquisition is much lower. But the engagement is, is also much lower. And they’re much further along in the sales cycle. Right? It’s disruptive marketing versus proactive, researching. Yeah. Yeah. So pay per clicks are our bread and butter.

Jos Aguiar
Brilliant. And what would you say you’ve learned from these masterminds you’ve been in? So you said you work with like, Darren Watson. I mean,

Steve Trang
they’re in our Hardy jehadi.

Jos Aguiar
What do you learn?

Steve Trang
Yeah, he’s a Well, the biggest thing I learned, that’s why I said earlier was that these guys are your are your clients, these guys are not just people to put in your database in forever, right? Like, they’re, their biggest value is once they’re in your database. And that was the biggest mindset shift for me. The other thing I say was people and again, you know, we’ve always known that people are your biggest assets, but really treating them like they’re your biggest assets, treating them right. And so we kind of shifted, or putting more focused on trying to be more like Sotheby’s, Costco, Nordstrom, where we’re treating the people that work for us. Like they’re the most important people in the world, you know, and treating them more having their back more than the customers not to say that we want to, you know, pick sides. But if customer complains about one of our agents, we’re going to talk to agents, uh, hey, what’s going on what happened? Versus just throwing them under the bus? You know? So just because it’s easy to just sacrifice one of your people, right? Like, that’s kind of we live in a cutthroat world, but really treating your people like, like, they’re your family. That’s right. And, and watching them treat your clients like that. What’s

Jos Aguiar
your personal life, like family life? Get much balance between work and his family? Or is it? Oh,

Steve Trang
absolutely. Oh, no, no, family is very important to me. So I love my parents. But I can also say that they were never there, you know? Yeah. And it’s not is that because they didn’t want to be there? Like they both work 7080 hours a week. So it’s a miracle that, you know, nothing bad happened with me, you know, but with that growing up, I’ve made a commitment to have work life balance, that’s something that’s very important to me. Okay. So, you know, I try to I try to come up every day. It does, it doesn’t happen. But I try

Jos Aguiar
a little bit about that poster behind you, because you don’t seem like an OG gangster to me. I try in the background for those listening on the audio only.

Steve Trang
Yeah, so that’s a 50 cent game. movie poster. You know, it’s something that I want to have something in there that says mean, that’s our motto. We don’t we’re trying to you know, go all the way and make it big it’s we’re trying to take over the next we’re not doing this for fun, you know, we’re not doing this to make a reasonable salary. Right. We’re trying to be the number one agent number one brokers in Phoenix and eventually you know, as point the highest in the country.

Jos Aguiar
If you’re doing any sort of venture you don’t want to be robbing yourself or not giving it your all. At all question to you is why so driven?

Steve Trang
You know, I’ve had people ask me that question. Simon cybernetics. Well, your big why? I gotta tell you. I’ve tried multiple times. I don’t know what my big why is, I don’t know what it is. I just know that I want to be a top

Jos Aguiar
fan growing up. Were you were your family business orientated? Or were they more employee fun have they worked out?

Steve Trang
There it was. They were both employees. My dad was a tech at a company mom was a supervisor. There so they worked menial jobs. I still remember when I was five, you know, looking at their paychecks amongst paycheck for two weeks was $325. It’s, so that’s why I grew up with you. Good point in my background, we came here as immigrants. I was born in a refugee camp in Italy. So we came here when I was seven months old, we got a picture of when we got the sky harbour airport, the airport in Phoenix with the red carpet, not like red carpet, bringing us in with Academy Award, like literally the whole place with a red carpet. And so we, we lived in a mobile home park. So we grew up poor, but I’m not sure that’s what drives me. I can’t point to it and say consciously That’s what drives me. But who knows?

Jos Aguiar
It’s one of the things it’s always interesting. When people talk about their backgrounds, it’s always some sort of something there that seems to drive entrepreneurs, they and it’s something that I’ve noticed, crosses calls, but it’s exciting and you’re doing great. So love it. If people want to connect with you or learn more from you, do you have the ways to do that? Or you train brokers or what’s the best way?

Steve Trang
Yeah, I mean, if someone wants to get a hold of me, you know, my it’s easy to find me, right? Being an entrepreneur, all your contact info is always out there. So you can go to train comm you can email me Steve at stunning homes, Realty comm or you can call me you know, my phone numbers on the website. So it’s that’s it that’s done. I’m fairly accessible. So

Jos Aguiar
if you want to buy a cell, definitely go to Steve train.com Especially in the Phoenix area or anywhere in the States. Just give him a call. He’ll hook you up.

Steve Trang
Absolutely, definitely. Well, we’ll take great care.

Jos Aguiar
Guys till next time. We’ll see you on the next episode.