The Not So Black and White Real Estate Podcast

And the reality is, my

father passed away in 2004.

And I always said, you know,

your life on this earth is very finite.

And your role is to be

able to impact as many people,

either being able to

help them evolve and grow,

realize great things about themselves,

and take them from one

position to a better position.

(upbeat music)

You're listening to the

Not So Black And White

Real Estate Podcast with your hosts,

Sir Colin Campbell and Gary A. McGowan.

Good day, good day, good day.

It's your host, Sir Colin Campbell here

with Gary A. McGowan.

And you're tuned into

the Not So Black And White

Real Estate Podcast.

We have a guest on the show today,

one of the top producing agents

out of Mountain, New Brunswick, Mike.

Welcome to the podcast, Mike.

Thank you for having me.

Of course, of course.

So now tell us, who's Mike?

And why are you here with us?

You know what?

It's been a long journey coming.

I think I'd be a mis- if I didn't explain

how this all kind of started for me.

We just came from a

session for Phil Jones.

He said, I don't know any five-year-old

that ever wanted to

be a real estate agent.

But I, right hand to God,

wanted to be a real estate

agent since I was nine years old.

So he's right, he

hasn't been a five-year-old.

(laughing)

But a nine-year-old, that's amazing.

That's close, and I'll

really try to expedite

this story as fast as I can.

So this is when the interest

rates were very, very high.

And as you're growing up, you don't know

what's going on with

the real estate industry.

And when I was growing up in Calgary,

my father was a breadwinner.

My mother was, she stayed home.

And what happened was,

there was a time there

where he had to drop

the keys off at the bank

because they're gonna

be afford a home anymore.

I didn't know, you know, just going

through being a kid.

And we moved from apartment to

apartments, you know,

not so nice to more not so nice places.

And what ended up happening was,

is one day when I was nine years old,

I was sitting at the

breakfast table before school,

and I was doing the maze

on the back of a cereal box.

And I looked over to

my left on the fridge,

and I saw a magnet

that was on the fridge.

Just one, you know, a dry erase magnet.

And I asked my mom who

it was, and then she said,

that was the realtor that

helped us get to a house again.

And the crazy thing about

that is that my mother now,

she's 80 years old, still

has the magnets on the fridge

living with me in Moncton.

And the funny thing is she

changes the dry erase marker,

just so she can

continue to write groceries

and everything like that.

She comes back to me, she goes,

you're a realtor, you've been doing real

estate for how long?

You still haven't gotten

me a magnet from my fridge.

I said, mom, I don't

know, you don't need that.

But so that's what it was.

It was something very

special where you don't know

the ups and downs or

where you're gonna end up.

But you certainly remember where you were

and how a lot of those conditions were.

And I thought it was the

coolest thing in the world

to be able to be back in the home

ownership position again,

where I didn't have to move anymore.

It's such a powerful

story that you shared with us

because as real estate agents,

we think we're just

buying and selling homes.

But in actuality,

we're creating communities,

we're changing people's lives.

And that real estate

agent who helped you guys

get back into home, I

guess that is where you saw,

like, I wanna do this for people.

So tell us, what has your mission been

knowing that this is where I came from?

And what is your

mission now as it pertains

in the feel of real estate?

And how are you achieving that

while being a real estate agent?

You know, I have two young

girls and my beautiful wife.

And I always say all the time,

every says, you know,

who do you do it for?

What do you do it for?

And the reality is, is

my father passed away

in 2004.

And I always said, you know,

your life on this earth is very finite.

And your role is to be

able to impact as many people,

either being able to

help them evolve and grow,

realize great things about themselves,

and take them from one

position to a better position,

if at all possible.

And that's really your job.

If you make money along

the way, that's great.

But being able to teach my daughters,

and as they see that firsthand,

that is what I've always

based my business around.

That is how my heart

pours out to everybody

and everything that I do,

either through

online, through the teaching

that we're gonna get into here,

with my exposure to Phil

Jones and his methodology,

and being able to translate that

to the real estate

industry on the East Coast, right?

Which is, and I wasn't

a realtor in Calgary.

You know what I mean?

We got out that way.

We knew the type of

people, the conversations,

the beautiful

conversations out in Atlanta, Canada.

And I thought, you know what?

This is time to really dive into it.

I'm curious on a

couple of different levels,

is how often do you get

to share that origin story

with your clients, per se?

I don't have a time limit

whenever I meet with my clients.

I know there's a lot of people that say,

you know, a lot of people are training,

you know, you ask them,

how long are your listening appointments?

They say 45 minutes an

hour, or everything else.

Relationships to me matter more.

You know, this is the only real,

we were in a relationship-based industry.

We really are.

And that's why there

are so many gaps and holes

to how conversations should be had.

And we just came out of, you know,

COVID just ripped three

years out of everybody's world.

And it seems like over the three years,

everybody forgot how

to talk to one another.

Yeah.

They can't sit at a table and ask

without picking up their phone,

because for three years,

they're all conditioned now to do all

this doom scrolling.

It's crazy, right?

So kind of circling it

back, reeling it all back in,

you know, to these

conversations and relationships,

really getting to them on a

very, very emotional level.

And, you know, it's the

most authentic that you can be.

I try to be able to

explain that story of, you know,

where I came from and why I do what I do.

Well, I gotta imagine, I gotta think it.

That's a story that,

not to say everyone's gonna relate to it,

but everyone can see themselves

in that same situation

or position you were in.

They can play the same

role and grab onto that

and see their story within yours.

Is that how you kind

of see it playing out?

And I'll preface this.

We've only just met, but I

can tell your authenticity.

You don't tell it so you

can get that deal transaction

and that you tell it

to make a connection.

Absolutely.

I had a conversation with Phil earlier

and also my teammate, Erica,

who we have a real

estate team in New Brunswick,

but also do this training and

methodology from Phil Jones.

And I said, you know, social media

and everything out

there now is fantastic.

It really is to help build your brand.

But what it does is it

creates a lot of doubt

among a lot of these

clients who are trying to help.

And if we can't connect to

them on an emotional level,

from a very honest level, you

know, that is the true value.

Your social media will get us out there

because nobody's using newspaper anymore.

You know, people are driving too fast,

you know, focusing on heads up display

and missing all the billboards.

So they're gonna go

to something easy free.

And then, you know, it's just,

you can look at it all the time.

But now that it makes

it so easy for everybody

to do social media, it

creates a lot of doubt.

Like, I don't know who to trust anymore

because I could just go on AI now.

And then, you know,

this person's doing this,

but they have 30,000

followers on Instagram.

But this person's over

here doing a lot of things

over at the baseball

game or the basketball game.

And, you know,

they're doing this and this,

which is fantastic.

But, you know, when you're

sitting across from somebody

that you're having a conversation with,

people can get bored very easily.

It's almost like the attention span

has just gone and evaporated.

So, yeah.

And I feel as mentioned this as well,

but the word empathy has been a word

that has been used a lot

over the last couple of years.

What does empathy mean to you?

Empathy means to me that

you have really got to them

in such an emotional

level by asking the questions

that really matter to them most.

You know, you can't fake empathy.

You know, everybody

contains emotion inside them.

And if you ask the right questions

and allow them to respond

in a way that, you know,

they're pouring their heart out to you,

but you use your two

ears not to just hear them,

but to actually listen and feel

what they're actually talking about

and respond back to them,

not rush them off of that question.

You know, that's value

more than a stacked listing

presentation or the fact

that you sold a thousand homes

in one year, because all

that to me is just a flex.

It's all just a flex

because you know what?

If I sit there and be like,

"Spend 50 minutes on

my listing appointment,

put that down right in front of them."

Say, "I take drone photos,

okay, so does everybody else.

I do videos and all

these different things."

People say, "Well, that's fantastic,

but that's what you did before.

Like, how are you going to help me now?"

And the real value is why

not drop a listing appointment

or listing package off on a Monday,

say, "You know what?

You're going to go through this anyway,

but I want Wednesday to be about you."

Interesting.

You know, you come in and all

you do is you sit down there.

Let's talk about them,

unless they bring it up.

I want to come back to empathy,

because there's a few things

that I want to circle back to

with that, but you had

mentioned working with Phil

and there's a whole certification process

along with Phil M. Jones,

if you're just tuning in.

Tell us a little bit about that,

what that experience was like,

and how you're seeing an

opportunity to implement that

into your community back in

Demugton and the East Coast.

You know, it's pretty wild

how things come together,

you know, full circle.

If it wasn't for Jason

Abrams doing that podcast,

and Phil being the

first episode on there,

talking about the

inspections and, you know,

pointing out the elephant in the room

and dressing the

elephant, riding the elephant,

and all these different things,

so it's no longer an elephant.

I have a colleague in

my brokerage that said,

"Have you heard, you know, episode 27?"

I said, "I haven't even passed one."

Because I literally played it over and

over and over again.

And that Christmas, so a few

months after Mega Camp 2023,

I think it was, I knew

that they had a book,

exactly what to say

for real estate agents.

And I gifted that to my teammate, Erica.

And on the inside, I

said, "I know it's a book."

She hates reading,

audiobook and everything,

but I said, "I know it's a

book, but this book right here

will change the

trajectory of our career."

And she always

references and goes back to that.

But after that happened,

Vegas 2024 was family reunion.

The app wasn't really

working the way we wanted to.

She was on there as we

had a colleague of ours

from our brokerage that was on a panel.

She goes over to me,

she taps me and goes,

"Phil's in the big room."

And she goes, "I'm gonna

try to sneak out of here."

Right?

(laughs)

So she did.

And then when she ran,

I remember what that was like,

all the way down the

hallway up the escalators,

go to the great room.

And then Phil was there speaking.

And then she messaged me and said,

"Yep, he's here."

And I said, "It's not gonna run up."

But what ended up

happening was, is after that,

she found out that he

was doing a certification

in New York City.

And that was something

that we could not miss.

And having a three-day intensive with

just a brilliant mind,

that goes and understands language on

such a deeper level.

That's what the industry needs.

You know?

So, I mean, even after that, the

certification thing, right?

We get certified, we

go there for three days

and our minds are blown,

or you know, everything else like that.

And I tapped them during

the cocktail hour there.

And I was like,

how does one get to be

able to teach this stuff?

They said, "We'll jump on a Zoom."

(laughs)

It was essentially what it was.

And we talked about it.

And again, it was a

little bit of a pipe dream,

but you know, fast forward.

Our OP, Austin Drizdell,

we were having a

conversation with him one day

and he knew of Phil.

And he's seen him speak before.

And I said, "This is

something that we wanna do.

And I think that it's gonna be great

to help our agents in our brokerage grow

and understand what really matters now

and can help them win.

Because agents are getting frustrated.

They're getting beat up

everywhere, left and right.

Because they're doing a lot of stuff.

They're not doing the right things.

We're saying the right things."

He said, "I love it.

You know, send something over to me.

We'll make it happen and accelerate it."

I thought that it was

gonna be seven months

if we go into it.

But he said, "Nope, we

gotta do this right away."

That's excellent.

Austin is an amazing man.

Friend of the show, of course.

Phil has a unique way of,

he's, you know, we

were told about scripts.

You memorize them, you internalize them,

you personalize them.

He's got a unique way of just all of that

all wrapped up in a nice little package.

Now that you've gone through his program

and now you're teaching it,

I'd love to get your perspective on

what you're saying to your students,

your colleagues that are

in that same room with you

in your words.

Well, I think

especially with my own brokerage,

I'm very much to what

you see is what you get.

They know my personality.

Excellent.

And I love, I'm very much of a person

who uses a lot of examples and analogies.

Phil was like that too.

And I pointed that out

in the certification.

I said, "You know what

I love about it, Phil,

"is that you break it

down into different examples

"that everybody can

kind of grasp and learn."

You know, he's talking

about the wedding dress thing.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

You know, all these things.

Regardless if you've

ever sold wedding dresses

or anything like that, you

can relate to it right away.

Yes.

And I think that's so powerful,

being able to showcase that

and have everybody

understand what's going on.

So that's really what I do as well

and try to chime in whenever we're doing

little satellite trainings, 30 minutes,

15 minute power-ups here and there.

Is to be able to, you know,

to be able to translate this methodology,

you know, and use

these words in sequence.

And people really start

understanding how easy it is.

But again, it's like practice.

I always go back, you know,

you're not just putting up blind shots

and having a blindfold, right?

Kobe was there a

thousand shots before the game,

thousand shots after the

game to make the game winner.

Phil today talked about, you know,

like people who do the one,

run that one race in the Olympics

or are practicing and

training years before that one,

before that gun goes off.

So now with all of that,

you've learned from being certified,

working with Phil.

And obviously that has helped scale

your real estate business.

But as a father of, you know,

as a father and a husband,

how has that helped

in your personal life?

It's funny.

So just being able to

communicate with my daughters,

you know, and ask them what happened

instead of what's wrong.

Having them communicate back to me,

you know what I mean?

On that level is incredible.

Going back to, you know,

the beauty of the conversations that my

wife and I have always,

you know, has had

leading up to this point.

Once you have kids, it's

like everything, you know,

it's all about the kids all the time.

And going back to, you know,

just, you know, what do you understand

of what is your experience with, you

know, like, you know,

and you're asking things

or putting things in

the scale of one to 10.

I remember one long time

ago, Phil said in a big room,

the hardest, one of the

hardest questions to ask

is what do you want to do for dinner?

Yes.

You know, and then the

first question, you know,

that comes in, why don't you ask,

well, what do you have last

week that you don't want to have?

Yeah, well, that rules a whole bunch out.

What is another place that you, you know,

have really wanted to try, but couldn't,

and they'll give you that answer.

You say, well, do you want to eat in

or do you want to order out?

Yeah, so three questions.

You can find out what, you know,

your spouse really

wants to eat really quick.

So the funny thing about

this language is it's not,

you know, you don't master

these sequences of words.

You learn to embrace them

and incorporate them

back to your personality.

And that right there

just brings the magic

and the beauty of conversation.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

Beauty.

I said I wanted to

circle back to empathy.

So here we are.

We've circled that. Here we are.

Here we are.

There's that mindset out there that,

oh, I'm not empathetic.

Empathetic.

That's not me.

Talk to us how people

can learn to be empathetic.

Well, I think that when

you're helping somebody

in the highest, you

know, emotional transition

and decision process of their life,

you may not feel like you're empathetic,

but the questions that

you're gonna ask them

are gonna invoke an

answer from the heart.

I always used to say a

long time ago, you know,

just make it their idea.

Make it their idea, right?

Like it is just one of those things.

You ask questions and

when they make the decision

that they wanna move

or sign on a dotted line

or buy a house or sell to buy, you know,

it's because of the

questions that you've asked

that have got them to that point.

And I know a lot of people say,

oh, I'm not really, you

know, I'm not empathetic.

I think empathy can truly be, you know,

taught and enhanced as you go through,

but you have to focus

on who's sitting across

from you on that table and the end result

that you want out of your conversation.

And I think instead of, you know,

going through the pre-scripted stuff

that just sounds so robotic,

if you ask them, you know, questions

that really get you to the right,

you master the moments

of asking the questions

and you get to the right

answer and you dig deeper

and you go deeper into it,

then the person on the other side

or the people on the

other side of the table

will understand that

you're asking questions

that give you better answers than just

what you can check off,

you know, check off the box.

So, you know, they will know,

they'll be able to like you and trust you

because you actually

invested in asking them

the proper questions,

not just the same stuff

that four other real

estate agents came through.

You know, they actually

asked what matters the most.

I like it, I like it.

We could probably stop,

we could stop many times

but listen to my friends,

I got some questions I do wanna ask you,

more on a rapid fire scenario.

Yes, oh boy, okay.

All right, so it'll be,

these will be the serious questions

you've always wanted

to ask your East Coast

Moncton realtor type of questions.

Okay, so first thing that comes to mind

is usually the best answer.

All right, so I'm

gonna play a little music

just to get us in the mood.

And here's where we're gonna start.

Nice and easy,

favorite season of the year?

Summer. Summer, yeah,

you get long winters

so you get summer or--

It's golf season, golf season.

There you go, golf season.

I like it, I like it.

Favorite junk food?

We call fried chicken junk food.

Oh, you just did.

You just did.

Oh man, you know, I'll

eat that all day long.

Fried chicken, all right, okay.

Is it ever acceptable to double dip

that fried chicken at a party?

You know what, if nobody sees anyone,

this is really good.

Here we go, first of the day.

I'm gonna get that gravy.

The first honest answer, I love it.

That's it, that's it.

Okay, speaking of food,

is it wrong for a

vegetarian to eat animal crackers?

Oh, well, I guess no, I wouldn't say so.

Oh, yeah, you sounded hesitant,

but we're gonna go with the no.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Big dogs or small dogs?

Small dogs.

Small dogs, okay, I

didn't see that from you.

You got a little tender

heart in there, I know you do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've had both, small dogs, big, big dogs

feel like a deer sitting on the leg

when trying to lay on you.

Yeah, exactly.

Big, gray hound versus

like a little Aussie doodle.

There you have it, there you have it.

Okay, so this last

question has made, or broken,

future podcast callbacks, we'll call it.

Okay.

The movies, we're

going to the movie section.

Would you rather watch "The

Godfather" or "Star Wars"?

"Star Wars."

Oh, wow, okay.

May the force be with you

as you may not be

called back on the podcast.

(laughing)

Just kidding.

There's only a few sequels

on "Star Wars" on "Godfather."

There's a lot of sequels on there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The "Night" versus "3,"

that is a great, or

everything else in "Star Wars."

My man, this has been excellent.

We didn't know each other before today.

We knew of each other,

but this is what's amazing

about podcasts, kind

of like being a realtor.

Yes.

You skip all the niceties in a sense,

and the learning of each other,

and you kind of get deep quick.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it is.

And what an honor it was to

get deep with you quick today,

and there's just probably many more

deeper conversations we could ask.

As we sign off, I like this question.

What do you wish

people do more about you?

What do I wish people knew more about me?

Is that...

You know, I just...

I just love to be able to find out more

about everybody that I come across.

Everybody has a story,

and even though they feel

like a story is insignificant,

you know, because of the

questions that I may ask,

and the type of person that I am,

I want them to understand that

what they feel is small isn't small.

Their story is significant too,

and in one way, shape, or form.

So that's what I want

people to know about me,

is that when we get into a conversation,

there's multiple layers of how I like to,

you know, go deep in convo.

Excellent.

And how do people, how

would people get ahold of you?

Where do they find you?

So you can find us everywhere.

Yeah, you can find us on Instagram.

Actually, the website is the newest one,

theconduitculture.com is the best way.

You can find me, Mike

Espiritu, on Facebook,

the Conduit of Keller

Williams Capital Realty on Facebook.

YQM is kind of the place that we're at,

just like YYC and YYZ,

but you can find me, YQ Mike Espiritu.

Just try to get a little witty there.

Don't know if it

landed, but you know what?

I'm okay with the followers.

Excellent.

My friends, check them out online.

Amazing conversation today.

That's Mike, of course,

that's Colin Campbell.

I'm Gary McGowan, and we'll see you over

the next episode.

Goodbye for now.

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

See ya.

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