How To Successfully Build A Top Producing Real Estate Team: Megan Jernigan

REE #313 Transcript

[00:00:00] Megan Jernigan: I know I'm a great problem solver, and I just thought, if I can just work eight days a week for 26 hours a day for long enough. And that's exactly what I did. And it just does take a minute to keep the ball rolling and to get your snowball formed when, you know, you're packing the ice on and it's falling off the sides. But that's the wonderful thing, I think, about this career is you can—the sky truly is the limit. So I think I just knew enough about the career and about myself to know, if I can just grind hard enough—

[00:01:00] Tracy Hayes: Hey, welcome back to the Real Estate Excellence Podcast. Today we're heading to Nashville, Tennessee, because I'm bringing you a five-time Diamond Elite-level producer who leads a high-performing team at Compass and serves buyers and sellers across Williamson, Davidson, Sumner, and Wilson counties.

[00:01:21] Tracy Hayes: She's built a reputation on aggressive marketing, a high-touch, highly personal process, and making sure clients are informed and confident every step of the way. No guessing, no confusion, just results. She's also deeply plugged into the Nashville community with leadership experience inside the Realtor Association, and she's raising her family right there in Brentwood. If you want to hear a real pro who builds lasting relationships while running a serious real estate operation, you're in the right place. Let's welcome to the show, Megan Jernigan.

[00:01:53] Megan Jernigan: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:54] Tracy Hayes: Thank you. I will disclose everything, just so we—because this is a natural conversation, we're just talking here. We are re-recording, so I will, of course—it’s been a couple weeks since we recorded, so it's not like I remembered everything, but we might bring up some new things and might go deeper on some of the things that you talked about.

But we were just doing a pre-show. Obviously, I'm in the mortgage business. Megan's been in real estate for a long time, and we were talking about relationships with your support vendors, whether it's a flooring operation, whether it's a mortgage company, whether it's a title company, and how important it can be for your team, for the leader, to build some of these relationships.

But then, what are the requirements? What do you expect? What's the expectation in the give-and-take thing? Because we know, obviously, we can't just give money or referrals out. RESPA is involved there. So what are some of the things that you do, Megan? Or do you have a couple right now that you've been working with, say, for years? And how did that relationship come about? And then, what are some of the expectations that are built over time?

[00:02:57] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. As far as all vendors, right?

[00:03:00] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:01] Megan Jernigan: All—

[00:03:01] Tracy Hayes: All these vendors that you've been working with. I mean, obviously, as time's gone on, you're like, “Hey, I'm getting regular business from Megan, and I can help her out over here.” What are some of the things they're doing for you and your team?

[00:03:12] Megan Jernigan: So I'm gonna be honest with you. I have always leaned on the side of, like—like, if there's a discount to be given or something to take off the price that you think that you want to give to me in a gift card or something like that, or a W-4, I just say, “No, thank you.” And I just say, “Pass along whatever discount to my client and my customer.”

I think that's an easier line to draw in the sand than have my clients ever question, “Oh, did she get something for that?” or “Does she refer this person because they do this for her?” And I never want that to be like, “I'm not gonna use your condo down in Florida. Like, I'm not going to. I'm not gonna use—I'm just not going to. Whatever you offer me, I'm not going to.”

I think it's just an easier line in the sand. And I think that it's just an easier way for me to also know that I'm choosing vendors because they give the same service, and they give the same rates, and they're competitive, and they respond quickly, and they have a great product, versus someone that I feel tied to, either financially or, you know, whatever else they give—big birthday gifts, whatever it is, right? Because that's just easier.

So vendor-wise, I'm like, if you answer, you are responsive to my clients, you are respectful to my clients. Lender-wise, same with home inspectors and things like that. If you have the products we need—Nashville's a big healthcare town, so we have a lot of healthcare here—if you can do a lot of physician loans and nurse loans and doctor loans and all of that. We do a lot with C-suites of media companies and CEOs and stuff like that. And if you have professional products that can help them get a lower rate for having a certain income, just—I need people that can get creative.

And like I was telling you pre-show, all a lender will—because we do a lot of volume. We do probably 120 transactions a year, and that's a lot. So I get calls all the time from home inspectors, painters, title companies, you know, because we're a big account to people. Mm-hmm.

But if I call you—like if I call my title attorney at 9:30 p.m.—he knows I'm on fire. Like, he knows there is a fire. He grabs his computer, he puts his kids to bed, and he calls me back. So I'm not calling because I have an easy day. I called a close lender we work with at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Again, I had a fire, right? Like, I'm not calling you with these odd hours to chit-chat. I'm calling you because we have a fire. And that's where I need immediate action and immediate answers, and you'll be gone. You'll be gone if you can't perform, just because it's just what's best for my clients. And that's my job, is to steer them, you know—

[00:05:52] Tracy Hayes: What—what are—

[00:05:53] Megan Jernigan: Is not steer them. We don't steer. Those are bad words, right? To guide them in a way—to guide them in a way that gets them the result they want.

[00:06:00] Tracy Hayes: Well, you have this fine line of—you want to guide them to people who you know are going to get results, because you want the transaction to go smoothly. It makes you look better. That makes them feel better. The whole kind of thing.

And I agree with you. Instead of—which I see out here in our space a lot—it is, “How much are you gonna pay me? How much—you know—you’re signing a marketing agreement before they even sent you a deal.” It's like, no, send me—let's do some deals together. Make sure we work together well.

There are some agents that I know, you know, I tolerate a lot because, I mean, I have thick skin. There are some people that don't want to deal with some agents throwing in business because it's just miserable for 30 days, you know, because the agent is miserable.

But I agree with you. Instead of giving me a hundred-dollar gift card or buying me a Christmas gift, tell the client, “Hey, here is Megan's discount. You're buying this flooring, and we're gonna include this because you're a customer of Megan.” And that just goes a lot further than that hundred-dollar gift card.

[00:07:04] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. Like our mover that we've used for—he's moved me personally three times. But he gives our clients 10% off. And I'm like, “Great. Pass that along to them.” That's great. That makes them feel good. I feel good. Everyone feels good, you know?

[00:07:15] Tracy Hayes: Yep. Because the bottom line is, that little gesture could be another deal, could be 10 more deals, who knows, over the next couple years. Well, you don't know. We're just—yeah. For them just saying, “Hey, we're giving you 10% off because you're one of Megan's customers.”

[00:07:32] Megan Jernigan: Right, right. And I always say, say you're with us, because they'll answer you first. You know, like my painter. I'm like, “Tell Jose you're with us, and he will get to you. He will put you at the front of the line.” And that's what I need, is to get to the front of the line. I don't need your discount, you know, or your birthday gift.

[00:07:48] Tracy Hayes: Oh, a hundred—yeah, a hundred percent. That's more important, you know, especially when we're trying to close deals and they need a fast closing and we need—yeah, we need someone who's gonna move us up. I know Two Men and a Truck here in town do exactly that. When they have their regular referral partners, they immediately have their best people on it. They're immediately prioritizing that move, because everybody wants to move on a Saturday or whatever it is. Yeah.

[00:08:21] Megan Jernigan: SEC girl.

[00:08:22] Tracy Hayes: Yep. What were you doing prior to real estate? What led you to real estate? Just so the agents that are listening here can resonate, because everyone's pretty much come from somewhere.

[00:08:30] Megan Jernigan: Absolutely. You know, I think it's so silly that we ask an 18-year-old to, like, make their life choices, right? Like, and if you—or if you're in your late thirties, early forties—your parents probably told you to be a doctor, an attorney, something, something like that, right? It's like we all had to fit into these buckets because that's the way that generation—

So, you know, when I went to college, it took me five years to get out because I just switched it up. I kept switching it up, and then I kept having to extend school. But eventually I was like, okay, I want to do something in communications, public relations, marketing. And I wanted to be like the Devil Wears Prada public relations agency, right? Like, fancy, let's work for the fancy big clients.

And that was how the PR school went, was we did all these campaigns, and our PR part of Tennessee was like one of the top in the state. It's a wonderful PR school. But then you get out, and I got out during the recession. I got out in 2008, and it was tough, right? Because everybody was cutting marketing first. They were cutting PR first. They were cutting everything because it was the recession.

And so I worked at a wedding dress shop and got paid commission, and worked weekends, and I worked nights and I worked all the hours that nobody wants to work. And I had no life as a 21-year-old. But it was fun. I lived in St. Louis, Missouri. I had girlfriends there and we just hung out.

But then it was time to come back and it was time to get a corporate job. So I worked for two really big corporations. I worked for Tennessee Valley Authority. Tennessee Valley Authority is kind of—it’s actually a federal agency. It's one of the largest power distributors in the country. And then I worked for Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. And both of those gave me great access almost immediately to the higher-up.

So I did strategy at TVA for energy efficiency, and then I went to Vanderbilt and worked with, again, federal agencies, the CDC and the NIH, doing vaccine research findings for children. So immediately I just knew I wanted to, like, do big things and have a big presence.

What you hit with those institutions is you hit glass ceilings. You hit—and not because I'm a woman—because you just hit, you gotta ask HR, you gotta ask the program head, you gotta ask the CEO. And so to get funding or a raise or vacation days or, you know, efficiencies, you just hit—you have to have a lot of permissions. And I was like, this is a little bit silly to have to just ask to be more efficient, right?

And so I was just kind of looking around, and I had this mentor, and he's a realtor. He owns his own real estate company to this day. He was great. And he was like, you should get into real estate. And I just thought, I'm not risky enough for that. I was not married. It was just me. I was like, if I fail, I have no one to pay my rent. I have no one to pay anything.

And so I kind of entered it with like a you-can't-fail mentality. And if I was to fail, then I would be homeless, right? I couldn't pay any bills. I couldn't do anything.

[00:11:00] Tracy Hayes: So no anything at this time though? It is just you. No kids.

[00:11:05] Megan Jernigan: No kids. So that was a little bit less, right? Like, if I failed, I didn't have kids in the background starving. I didn't have a husband that was starving, you know? So it was just me. But if I failed, I was like, okay, that's fine. But I just was kind of like, okay, I'm just not going to fail. I'll just work hard enough to not fail, right?

I did stay at Vanderbilt for a while while I did real estate and just kind of built up enough transactions and enough closings that I felt good about making the jump. And then 18 months later I just went full into real estate and just said, we're on the train, let's go.

[00:12:05] Tracy Hayes: This hasn't come up, actually, in a while. You made me just think about that in your last statement. What—your family’s—were they supportive? Were they like, “Oh, you know, Megan, you got that good corporate job, you know, you got your benefits”? I mean, what was their attitude towards this migration?

[00:12:20] Megan Jernigan: Very great question. My dad is a lieutenant colonel in the Army. He's a tough man.

[00:12:25] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:26] Megan Jernigan: And he has this view—

[00:12:28] Tracy Hayes: I bet it's your wife. She's the only one that you can get through, right? No, that's—I forgot to put it on.

[00:12:35] Megan Jernigan: But I remember that from—

[00:12:35] Tracy Hayes: That's alright. Only your wife gets through. So he has this vision for his children—

[00:12:43] Megan Jernigan: To be certain things and do certain things. So he was like, you're insane. Vanderbilt's the gold star because it was back in the early 2000s. My aunt worked at Vanderbilt too. Both of my aunts worked at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt was the gold star. So he was like, you're insane. You need to stay at Vanderbilt. And he was very—not into the idea.

My mom is very much like me. She's a big dreamer. She's a business manager here in town. She has been for 30 years. And so she was like, I see the risk, but I also think you can do this, and I support you. And she was the first call when I passed my test, and she sent me wine when I had my first closing, and she's still one of my biggest cheerleaders.

And then my dad's flipped the script too, right? Like, he's like, okay, you're successful. It's been 13—

[00:13:28] Tracy Hayes: He's gonna see if you're gonna stick with it or not.

[00:13:29] Megan Jernigan: Yeah, exactly. Or just—yeah. He's like, okay, you got it figured out, like, you know, you're good. But at first it is funny how your parents, you know—

[00:13:38] Tracy Hayes: Well, they want to protect you. But how old were you at this time?

[00:13:42] Megan Jernigan: Almost 30 years old, Tracy. Okay? Like I wasn't young.

[00:13:46] Tracy Hayes: Well—but I hear—but I think that’s—well, I, you know, if you're 23, that's real easy. 30, they're like, “Hey, are you gonna get married?”

[00:13:55] Megan Jernigan: I know, I know, right? I know. But I'm a middle child, Tracy. That's a whole other therapy session.

[00:14:00] Tracy Hayes: That's the therapy session.

[00:14:02] Megan Jernigan: I'm a middle child, and I just don't follow the—I don't follow the train track like you should, you know?

[00:14:09] Tracy Hayes: You know, let's go—because this is something I'm working on. As I told you, I'm writing—I actually have my open house book, but I was chatting my grit book about—

[00:14:16] Tracy Hayes: The agents of actually talking—the agents with true grit. Which a lot—it’s not hard really, after talking to so many of the top agents. There is a level of grit that, you know, all of us have.

And you said something that I think is very important, even though, you know, it's not like you were still single. Mom and dad probably still had a room for you to go lay your head down if you didn't have anywhere else to go. They probably had your back from that standpoint. But you said, I was going with failure was not an option. Is what—if I didn't quote you directly there—failure was not an option. You were gonna do this and you were gonna do everything you could to be successful.

Were you—did you—what did you know about real estate? Obviously, you know, you're highly experienced now, a dozen years in plus, and have a team and everything else. You've seen a lot of things. Now it's like riding a bike. But back then, to be able to make that command, like failure is not an option, you must have saw far enough ahead to say, I can get there. Did you have someone? Did you talk to—

[00:15:22] Megan Jernigan: You know, kind of—give some? I didn't honestly have that vision, Tracy. Like, I was talking to a women's group last week with one of my good girlfriends that she does have that vision, and she does see—she routinely sees 30,000 feet down. I get stuck in the fishbowl a lot.

I didn't. I just think with real estate, and just in general owning your own company—same with lending—I saw it as an opportunity to work as hard as you want to work or not as hard as you want to work. Like some agents just want to do three to four deals a year, and that's absolutely okay, and see the result of that.

And so for me, I saw it just more as an opportunity. I knew I was a hard worker. I knew I don't take no for an answer. I know I'm great with critical conversations. I know I'm a great problem solver. And I just thought, if I can just work eight days a week for 26 hours a day for long enough—and that's exactly what I did.

And it just does take a minute to keep the ball rolling and to get your snowball formed when, you know, you're packing the ice on and it's falling off the sides. But that's the wonderful thing, I think, about this career, is you can—the sky truly is the limit. So I think I just knew enough about the career and about myself to know, if I can just grind hard enough—

[00:16:41] Tracy Hayes: Well, did there—did you feel that up to this point in your life, everything you put your heart in—and a lot of times just showing up is a big part of that—yeah—that you were somewhat successful? You're like, well, I've had success. I haven't, you know, hit the gold mine yet, but I've had success in—I've been really good at everything else I've done. I've learned how to do it and do it really well, taking on tasks. You know, I'm three for three now. Why can't I go four for four and go after real estate?

[00:17:12] Megan Jernigan: Right. Kind—yeah. I think that, and a lot of real estate and just owning a company in general, is who you're surrounded with and who you've already impressed upon, right? And so I went back and the first thing I did was just start building my database.

And if I called you and I was like, “Hey, it's Megan,” and you didn't say, “Who?” then you went into my database.

[00:17:36] Tracy Hayes: You had too much for that.

[00:17:37] Megan Jernigan: The “who’s” went over here, right? Yeah. The “who’s” was like, oh, okay, I should reconnect in a thoughtful way before I put them on my database. But they went onto my sprint, and we all worked in Excel back in 2014.

But if you—I went back to every job I had ever had. I didn't care what city you lived in. I am blessed that I'm from Nashville. I went to Tennessee, like you said. A lot of my girlfriends came back with me. I was in a sorority. I was at Kappa Delta, so a lot of Kappa Deltas live here. A lot of Kappa Deltas are still in Knoxville that moved back here.

And then I had those couple of corporate jobs before I was in real estate. So I did have a foundation that I knew was fairly solid of people that knew me, liked me, trusted me. I just had to expand upon that, right?

But I at least put my database together of people. I had their phone numbers, I had their home addresses, I had their emails, I had their birthdays, I had their wedding anniversaries. If they already owned a home, then I could find out their closing anniversary online. I could find out their address online because I have the database to do so, right?

If they didn't own a home, I would just text them and say, “Hey, I just got into real estate. I would love to put you on my list.” And all of my friends were 28 at the time as well, and they were like, “Great. We don't know what that means. Sounds good to us.” And they would just give me their address. And so I just built out this Excel sheet, right, you know, and then just—I just hammered everybody in a good way.

[00:19:04] Tracy Hayes: Did you find there still were some people kind of like your dad, like, “Show me,” you know, maybe didn't do business with you right away, but as the years went on, like, “Oh, Megan's doing it. She knows what she's doing. Maybe I'll now do business with you.”

[00:19:18] Megan Jernigan: Yes. And I felt—so I have something, speaking of my dad. He didn't let me sell his house when he sold it, and I was so terribly upset about it. But looking back, a critical conversation with him of like, “Hey, Dad, what the heck?” right?—was like, “I just don't want you in my finances.”

And I was like, okay, that's fair. I wouldn't be in your finances. Sellers don't get in your finances, right? Like, go make your money and move on. But he doesn't know what he doesn't know. But that opened my eyes a little bit now that I look back and I say, if I—that's my job, to make people comfortable with me in their personal business, right?

Like this, I am in your—just like you as a lender, like getting through to someone's personal information—you have to have this primary level of trust with them that you're like, I'm going to hold this close. Especially when you're working with your friends and their families and their friends, and they want to make sure like, okay, I'm not telling Ellen that you guys have—you’re up to your ears in debt, or like, I'm not gonna tell Ellen that your dad's giving you 200 grand for a down payment. Like they need you—they need that trust to know that they can give you this information.

And so I kind of took that learning experience as like, okay, he didn't question my abilities. He didn't trust me with the baseline of financial information.

[00:20:50] Tracy Hayes: It wasn't really trust. That's more just your family relationship. You know, he could have told you what—you know, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you don't know your parents' financials and they're north of 60 years old, you need to get in there. And I'm seeing it left and right now at my age where, of course, my parents are in their eighties, and then I got my in-laws—for, you know, fortunately we have all four of them still with us. And, you know, their health is starting to decline, this and that, memory, all this kind of other stuff. Who's gonna pass first? And you do need to know that.

[00:21:26] Megan Jernigan: Pulling that position was very common. Oh yeah, pulling that out of people, though, especially that generation of parent, right? Like, their parents didn't talk about money. They didn't talk about money. We are now—I think this generation, you know, I'm 40, but I have small kids. I have a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old—like, I—three and five, I get their ages wrong all the time. They grow so fast.

But now I talk to them about money all the time. And me and my husband are very intentional to say, this costs this and that costs that. And okay, you lost your thumb guard. That was $50. We have to replace it. That's two Lego sets, or we have to—you know what I mean? Like, they can understand the value of money. They have to understand. And so—and they have to understand that we don't just swipe our card and get—

So that's a very—that generation thing, right? Like, no one discussed money. And now I think our generation is coming through and trying to break as many of that as possible.

But again, I think it's a baseline. And that's my—like I was talking to somebody doing my makeup—she was doing my makeup the other day—about something, and she works with a company that I work with. She does the makeup for this media company. And we were talking about different clients. And I've got clients that I'm like begging for them to let me in, because I'm like, I can help you. Just let me in. Let me know your issues and let me know your hangups and let me know your anxieties, and I will point you in this direction that will take care of this issue. This won't even be an issue, right?

But then I have clients that are like—it’s like pulling teeth, right? And I'm like, how much do we have down? And they're like, “We don't know.” And I'm like, okay. How much do you think you'll have? You know, what's our budget? What are your anxieties on the monthly payment? Like—and they just—it’s like pulling teeth.

[00:23:11] Tracy Hayes: Uh, yeah.

[00:23:12] Megan Jernigan: And I can't help you—

[00:23:12] Tracy Hayes: —where they just tell you up front. And it is very important for people who are listening right now, and agents that are listening right now, you've got to have these conversations.

I've got customers right now that told me they had all this money in a Bank of America checking account, while all of a sudden we're closing next week, and my processor's like, hold a second, where did this money come from? Oh, where did that money come from? Yeah. So now we're having to chase around when they told us up front they had plenty enough money down and, you know, their cash to close in a Bank of America checking account. Well, they dragged their feet kind of giving us that account. Yeah. Now we got it. Now we see all this money coming from different directions.

[00:23:46] Megan Jernigan: Right.

[00:23:47] Tracy Hayes: Oh, right? Oh, now—

[00:23:55] Megan Jernigan: Or we had a seller last week that—the buyer, everything was smooth, smooth, smooth. Everything was going great. Every whatever. And all of a sudden it’s two days before closing, and the buyer's like, “Hey, I didn't get my gift funds letter to the lender in time.” And we were like, we weren't told about any gift funds. Like, what do you mean?

And so then it was like, oh, and then I had to get my taxes submitted. I need the transcript from the IRS. So it delayed us two weeks. And when my seller was on a reverse 1031 exchange that has federal guideline limitations to timeframes that could be detrimental and cost my seller hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. And it’s like, let's not surprise—

So Chase Bank sat on this loan for 30 days, and two days before they were like, “Oh, wait, we need transcripts, we need this, we need that.” And we were like, well, what have you been doing? So that's where it's like, let us in, let me prep, let me go ahead and try to put the fires out. But yes.

[00:24:51] Tracy Hayes: Well, you threw a red flag, and I'm gonna throw it out there since you put it out there.

[00:24:55] Megan Jernigan: There. We’re getting deep quick.

[00:24:56] Tracy Hayes: Deep quick, Tracy. If they start with Chase, they start with Bank of America, Wells Fargo—

[00:25:02] Megan Jernigan: Rocket Mortgage.

[00:25:03] Tracy Hayes: They cannot—well, having formerly worked for Quicken, I know a lot of the people that are still there. So it's now Quicken became Rocket. I won't totally knock them. However, they have hired people in the last couple years that are now sitting at home, around the country, thousands of people sitting at home, versus when I got hired, we were in the call center and we had a training room and that kind of thing.

You know, so now you might have a loan officer who doesn't see any other loan officers, who might not only have been in the business six months for all you know, right? But Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo—agents have to understand those companies have been scrutinized by the CFPB, lawsuits and everything. That's why when you go to closing, it’s like signing a book, because they got all these extra legal documents.

[00:25:47] Megan Jernigan: And all the disclaimers.

[00:25:48] Tracy Hayes: Take Megan's recommendation for a lender, or call me.

[00:25:52] Megan Jernigan: And also I need to be—luckily this lender, the bank was local. The branch was local. Mm-hmm. So I sent my co-agent down there. I said, “You go find him.” And he is sitting in a desk in Franklin, Tennessee, and you get in your vehicle and you go sit in his office and you ask him what's going on. Because we didn't know about the transcripts, didn't know all this that came out. Yeah. But I will find you. We will find you because we need this. We need this to close for our seller, you know?

[00:26:17] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. Yeah. There's processing centers for those big things. That guy's just originating, and the processing is in something, and they just don't have the sense of urgency. They don't, you know, as you know, as a real estate agent—or just a local lender's going to have. I don't know if it was—I think it was—you've mentioned the local lender the last time. I know—

[00:26:35] Megan Jernigan: Well, they're also just so numb, right? Yeah, Tracy. Like, when you don't see the person, you don't see the seller, you don't—and you do so many transactions a year, because I mean, they close hundreds of thousands of loans a year. They're just kind of numb. Yeah.

And so when you're like, “Hey, this is really gonna impact my seller in a negative way if we don't have this closed by this date,” they hear that and they're like, don’t care. Like, I hear it 25 times a day. Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s so—they're just numb. They don't have a person attached to it. They don't care.

And so you just have to find a team and a tribe that cares. Like, your inspector has to care. Your flooring person has to care. Your mover has to care. Your lender has to care. Everybody has to care.

[00:27:18] Tracy Hayes: A hundred percent.

[00:27:19] Megan Jernigan: Everybody has to care.

[00:27:21] Tracy Hayes: When did you feel you hit the groove? How long were you in the business where all of a sudden you're like, you know, “Hey, I've got this”? You know, we all—because we're month to month on our commissions. You know how far— I don't know what your furthest closing out—you know, you might have a closing in April right now, being the first week of March, you know, here, if anybody's listening. You know, maybe you have a closing 30, 45, maybe 60 days out, and most people don't go that long, but maybe you do.

But you're—but every—you know, whether it's me or you, we both work 100% on commissions. And, you know, we only have so many deals in the pipeline at any one time. Obviously, we might be working with people, but you're like, “Hey, when that deal closes on April 25th, I don't have anything going on in May yet.”

And to where you started to get comfortable, to realize how your cycle, your systems—you were on top of it, you had the confidence that, hey, I can make a living, and well at it now. It started to probably open up your vision on the business.

[00:28:20] Megan Jernigan: Right.

[00:28:21] Tracy Hayes: Yeah.

[00:28:21] Megan Jernigan: And I tell Compass this for the recruiting too. I think year three is the year you are either—A lot of realtors don't even make it past year one. I think—what's the pullout rate? It's—

[00:28:34] Tracy Hayes: I know it’s always about 80% don’t ever—

[00:28:36] Megan Jernigan: You never know the whole time. It’s like percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like 87% of realtors don't make it past year one. I think that number is really impactful and enlightening.

But for me, I think what I see over and over again—it was mine, but also a lot of agents—if you can get to year three, you will quickly see if you are going to launch or you need to go find another job. Because year three, you have your groove, you've hopefully done enough deals that you know how to start navigating. You've met enough agents where you're impactful with off-markets and that whole side of the business, right? Or knowing this agent knows land, I've got a land deal, who can I call for some insight?

So that's where year three is kind of the year that you're like, okay, I'm in or I'm out. And that's how it kind of was for us. So year three, I was on a team for a year and a half, and the team just wasn't for me for several reasons. And so I hired an assistant right out of the gate. And so it—and I was like, I'll just figure out how to pay her. I just—you know, she trusted me and knew that I would put her before my family. I pay her, I pay all my staff before I pay myself.

But she trusted me, and we just went out and we joined a firm and we sold 68 houses that year. Wow. And just the two of us. And she didn't have a license, so she didn't do—she did like listing paperwork prep, and she would list it on the MLS. Like, she would do our monthly mailers, but she also was my mirror.

[00:30:00] Megan Jernigan: Does that make sense? Like she wouldn't let me just walk away from a task and walk away from a day. She'd be like, “I need that list from you. Like it's Doctors’ Day. Half of our clients are doctors. We have this mailer, or we have this thing going out to them. I need this list from you.”

And so she was my mirror, right? That I never forgot to do anything. She never let me put anything down. And so I think she's a big reason why our—

[00:30:25] Tracy Hayes: Partner sounds like she’s 100% not only your system, she was an accountability partner.

[00:30:30] Megan Jernigan: Yes. Yeah. And she's still my accountability partner. Like she's still—and she manages up every single day, and I let her manage up. I'm like, girl, you tell me what we're failing on. What? She'll tell me all the time. She's like, “You're too forgiving, you're too this, you're too that.”

And she's really critical of me, and I appreciate that because I think a lot of people just see the pretty side of Instagram and they see—I got a text at 7:30 this morning from another agent. She was like, “I just want to tell you, I'm super impressed by you.” But we hear that all the time, right? Like, “I saw your numbers last year and I just want to tell you, like, that's goals,” right? Mm-hmm.

But she's critical of me. She's like, “You're too this. You're too that. Like, this is what I would change.” And I lean on her for that.

But year three was kind of the year we did 20 million, which back in the day when Nashville was $200,000, that's a lot.

[00:31:18] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. 2016, 17, something like that?

[00:31:21] Megan Jernigan: Yes. Yeah, yes. And now, like, the average price point's a million, so that's not as impressive, but yeah. So year three was kind of our year that I was like, okay, if we can keep our systems up, if we can keep our processes up, if we can keep ourselves accountable, and we cannot—like you said—I call it the realtor roller coaster. And same thing for lenders, anybody that owns a small company. It’s like, I never want to get where I don't have a closing next week.

Like if we have 100 closings a year, like that's two closings a week. I need two to three closings a week, right? And that's where we are. But to do that, you have to stay in front of people. You have to continue to market. So if it’s just you, that's fine, but you have to be very disciplined.

And you're up here on the roller coaster and you have a couple closings, but you have to make it through inspections, you have to make it through the appraisal, you have to get the lending stuff, you have to get their closing gift, and all of a sudden you haven't done your marketing. So the next month you're down, right? You're in the bottom of the curve.

So then you're like, oh shoot, I've got to do all this. I don't have any closings on the books. I don't have any clients in the pipeline. So you start to do your marketing or reach out, then you get your closings because you've been doing what you're supposed to be doing.

And then that's what I say. Day one of my career, I was like, that roller coaster makes my anxiety shoot through the roof. I can't think. I'll not live like that.

[00:32:46] Tracy Hayes: You made me think there, and I don't know if I've ever thought about this—or if I have, only one time. And I'm thinking, I just don't think people realize how the agent, which is the pinnacle of the transaction, right? I'm reporting to you, you know, or any other vendor, inspectors are all reporting through you. You're running the show, you're making things happen. You're running out there and showing the house, or running an open house, or all—there's a lot of things going on even before, and then after obviously the contract is done, and then you're carrying it to the goal line.

You've got all this stuff going on, and you can get caught up in that process and not be doing, like you said, the things to get the next deal done. And you go, you know, “Hey, I got a couple deals. I'm running all over the place, chicken with my head cut off.” And then—

Yep. And I don't know of any other sales position where the sales person is so involved in the actual process start to finish. To start to finish. And that you are doing all these other things, because you gotta get the one you got in hand closed, but you also gotta be working on the next fish to catch.

And that process—which brought me to a thought. It sounds like it from what you're describing. I don't think we talked about this when we initially talked. This assistant person, you know, that you guys obviously have a rapport. She can tell you like it is, and you're not getting your feelings about it. Direct criticism and analyzing that it's probably true, and you know that, because some people—there's a lot of egos involved, right?

[00:34:28] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. I tell people all the time, I'm like, I have no ego. You will not hurt my feelings. Like, hand it to me, you know?

[00:34:35] Tracy Hayes: Well, I saw something online. They said something about the friends who, like, I guess, you know, razz each other, that, you know, could say certain things to each other, are the best friends. You know, that can really just throw it out there. “Hey, you're being a jerk today,” or whatever, you know? Sure. Those are the best friends.

And to get your team to where it is, you had to start building that with a foundation. And it sounds like you and your assistant here are the foundation, and she's still with you today. And how you guys were working with each other, and the others come into that culture and they see how the two of you are calling each other out when you need to be called out, or making sure, reminding each other, “Hey, don't fumble the ball. We gotta do this today. We gotta get that done today. Don't forget we got this.”

It's very important in starting to build a strong—in this case—a real estate team.

[00:35:25] Megan Jernigan: Yep. Any kind of strong company, you know.

[00:35:28] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:29] Megan Jernigan: To have the people—the right people on the bus—is what we say. The Energy Bus book, I don't know if you've read that, but we—I had the whole team read it a couple weeks ago, and it just is talking about getting the right people on the bus. And if they're not willing to get on the bus and they're not willing to function how you need them to function and they're not willing to rise up, then that's okay. They just don't belong on your bus.

And I know it sounds really corny and cheesy, but it's true. A couple of years ago, like my first agent I hired, she got the best training of everybody because I had no kids, I was newly married, I had nothing but time. She sat in the car with me for a full year and heard every conversation. She was with every buyer, every seller. She got the best training.

Well, she was with me for six years. And, you know, through those six years we brought on more agents. We let go of those agents. Those agents moved on to other stuff and weren't a right fit, whatever it was. But, you know, eventually it came to kind of the smaller group of agents, and it just wasn't working anymore.

You know, like I had a bigger, different vision for the team, and I was pulling people up out of the ocean onto the sand. And I was like, I don't want to keep pulling people up onto the sand. I want you to walk out of the ocean onto the sand because you know you have the right tools and you have the right team. And if I'm continuing to pull people up, I can't go do the rest of my jobs.

[00:36:46] Tracy Hayes: That's a lot of energy. It drains you.

[00:36:48] Megan Jernigan: It's a lot of energy, and it's a lot of energy to go back and forth and be like, okay, you're on a PIP now, or I—like this, why didn't you answer this client for two days? And, you know what I mean? It's just a lot.

And so we got rid of everybody. We cleaned house and started over, and now we have a very high standard of who is on—who's invited to be on the bus. And then you gotta stay on the bus, right?

[00:37:15] Tracy Hayes: Expand a little bit about that, because I think a lot of agents—and maybe they've reached this third year, they're going—and I see some people team up and I'm like, ooh, let's see. Yeah. Are they good on the bus together? Right?

So truly, you had to go through some trial and error. You had some sort of bad apples, if you want to call them that, or some two rowdy people on the bus that disturbed the bus that you kind of had to ask to leave.

Talk about your experience there, and what are some of the things that someone who may be thinking about, “Hey, I want a team,” or maybe just two or three agents type of thing—just some of the thoughts, some of the things you need to go through the thought process before, you know, choosing who those people might be.

[00:37:57] Megan Jernigan: Right. The first thing I do when people come and they say, “I want to start a team”—and this is really, this was really big at Compass. Compass came to Nashville, they expanded to Nashville in 2018, so I was a really early adopter. I was the 17th agent at Compass Nashville.

And so Compass allowed—the reason I joined this firm was because I was with a small, small-town brokerage, and I was like, okay, if I'm looking at what people are doing in town and I'm trying to mimic that, I'm already behind, right? Like, they've already figured it out. I'm behind on the bus. I don't want to be behind on the bus.

So I want to be—I want the opportunity to call Colorado and say, “Y'all are really great in the luxury market. What are you doing for marketing? How are you standing out?” Right? Like, I want to call the West Coast and say—you have a lot of people—Seattle, for instance. I had a development, and we had Amazon moving their headquarters to Tennessee, and I wanted to call our Seattle office and say, “You have people moving here. How can we connect these dots?” Like, so that's what I wanted, was to dream bigger and have a firm that I could dream bigger with and that would dream bigger with me. And that has been the Compass way.

Well, Compass also is really big on growth and team. And because you grow, you do form these teams. So just inadvertently, that's why I had it, right? Like I could have lived with me and my assistant for the rest of my life. Like, we function well together. We do well together. But eventually I can only physically close so many homes a year, right? Like, I can only spend so much time.

[00:39:26] Tracy Hayes: 68 was a lot.

[00:39:28] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. And then by the time you get home from traveling to all these showings and listing appointments and all that, I gotta come home and I gotta do my admin. I gotta follow up to all that. I gotta write the offers. I gotta submit the stuff. You know what I mean? Like, there's so much more than just opening a door or going to see a client. There's so much more that happens after that.

So I was working till 11 o'clock at night. I was working every single weekend. I just was like, this is not sustainable. Let me bring on an agent. So that's kind of how we grew. And then when that agent got overloaded, we grew again. I added more. When that agent got so—and I looked ahead to our pipeline and what I thought we could do, and then I would add agents accordingly, right?

And so when an agent wants to start a team, I always ask them why. If it is to get time back—hmm, you might or might not. Let's decide how that's gonna go, right? If it's because you have these dreams of grandeur, but you don't have any processes in place, you don't have a vision board, you don't have a track for them, everyone's gonna flop, you're gonna be frustrated, you're gonna feel like a failure, and it's not gonna work, right?

There was an agent in Nashville and for years, I think she forced a team, and she would call me every time somebody would leave and she would be so upset with herself and just, why can't I make this work? And then finally I was like, okay, tell me the goal. Tell me the goal of the team.

Like, my goal is I'm really good at getting business. Mm-hmm. I also have two small children, like I said, so I want to see them on the nights and the weekends because life is too short, right? They grow too fast. And so I need people—I need bodies to help me facilitate my nights-and-weekends work. And that is my goal of the team.

So I put in the extra time every day, every week, because I have four agents that call me all day, and that's wonderful. I love them. I have two staff that call me, and I have to put in that work so that I can get my nights and weekends with my babies. But if that's not your goal and your goal is just to have people and have this team, then I think we're reaching towards the wrong goal.

But you have to have that foundation. They have to come in and say like, this is our process. We have checklists for everything. We have 20-plus checklists. Like, from the moment you are assigned a buyer to the moment that buyer closes, you have a checklist. If a seller—from the moment we get the call from the seller that they're thinking about listing, you have a checklist until they close.

So there's a checklist for everything, and it's uploaded into their database, it's uploaded into their tracker. And if you don't start with a foundation of that and expectations of like, okay, these are your weekly tasks, there's just no way. There's just no way because you don't have—you have a train that's going like this, right? There's no tracks. Mm-hmm. It's just going haywire.

So that's where I would say is like, get organized, find your why, and then decide if this is your—if this is your track.

[00:42:32] Tracy Hayes: There was a couple things—and there was one thing I, just to kind of go on. Compass doesn't bring on green agents unless they're entering your team. Am I right?

[00:42:43] Megan Jernigan: They're entering a team team, yes.

[00:42:44] Tracy Hayes: Yes. They're entering a team, so they're not hiring green agents. So if you want to work with the quality of Compass—and obviously my wife's with Compass, so I know a little bit of what she enjoys about it, and she's only been with them, I don't know, six or eight months, something like that. She's going out to 30A here in the panhandle. Are you—

[00:43:00] Megan Jernigan: We might do that. We might do that too. Tickets are sold out, but we're on the wait list. But we might see her there.

[00:43:05] Tracy Hayes: Yeah, she's all excited, because some of the other girls in the office, they actually got a house, I guess Airbnb or something.

[00:43:12] Megan Jernigan: That'll be great.

[00:43:14] Tracy Hayes: But to work with that level of—

[00:43:14] Megan Jernigan: Yes.

[00:43:14] Tracy Hayes: So if you're out there right now as an agent and you really don't feel you've got a grasp on the business, you need to be surrounded by some other people and you're willing to obviously listen to them and then execute and relieve them, obviously, because they're getting busy. The only reason they're talking to you is hopefully, you know, you could show some houses or whatever.

But if you want to mix and mingle with those people around you and go to a level of Compass, what should be their expectations? What are you looking for in that agent that comes to you today now with 12 years’ experience? You had some, let's just say, some growing pains as any team does, but now your team's grooving. As someone comes to you, what are some of the things you're asking them or looking for in them to determine whether or not they're going to be a good fit to your team?

[00:44:15] Megan Jernigan: Yeah, and that's where—to say yes to growing pains—but also I don't even categorize them as growing pains. I just say we are allowed to grow. You're allowed to grow and pivot the way that your business functions, the way that the—and you do that with the market, you do that with your life, you do that with, okay, this isn't working, can we do this instead?

So I don't even see them as growing pains. I just need people that can pivot with me. And to be the point of The Energy Bus, like, you want the right people on your bus, but I also look in the mirror a lot and I say, I want to be the driver that people want to get on my bus.

Mm-hmm. So I'll never ask you to do something that I have either not done, I'm still doing, and I would never ask you to—like, that's it. That's it. Like, if I haven't done it or I'm not still doing it, I always lead by example. I will always outwork everyone on my team. If you are working harder than me, I don't like that. And I've never met someone on my team that has worked harder. And that's fine. That's my job. That's my job as the CEO, right, and as the team lead.

And so that's where now I need people that can pivot because if you can't pivot, you're obviously not gonna do well in this career anyway. So, like, for instance, back when I started a team, it was kind of the trend to have separate agents for each transaction. So you would have listing agents—you would either handle sellers or you would handle buyers. It's not always feasible. That's not always a feasible way to go.

And so if I would—you know, my best girlfriend's in town, maybe they don't want to be passed off to one of my agents. Maybe they just want to work with me, and that's okay. And then maybe a listing is better for you to manage that listing because maybe it's in your neighborhood and maybe you're the one that's gonna be best for that listing.

So that's where we pivoted from having these agents that were in these certain buckets to everybody kind of does everything. And I now find the best agent for that specific person, that specific house. It doesn't matter if it's a seller. So when I have agents in the past that have not been willing to pivot with me, that is when it's like, okay, I can't—I can't have you drag me into the ocean.

[00:46:39] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[00:46:40] Megan Jernigan: I have to be able to grow this team that I see the future of this industry or the future of the next couple years. Because I'm always talking to lenders and title companies and what's going down the pipeline and what's the federal government doing and how is that gonna impact our career? So I need that trust from my team members to say, “Okay, you've got your finger on the pulse. We trust you. Thank you for the guidance. Thank you for the insight. Let's go.” Like, we're buckling our seatbelt.

So agents now, I need them to be very process-oriented. I think we said this last time, right? Mm-hmm. Like, I need you to be incredibly organized. I want to see your calendar. I want to sit in that interview and I want you to pull up your phone and I want you to show me how you organize your day. And if you can't show me a well-organized calendar of where you are, where your spouse is, what's next, my babies—then you're probably not going to be a good fit for our team because we are incredibly organized. We are highly process-driven, and that doesn't work for everybody, right? Mm-hmm. So that's a really big thing for me.

And then the team-clearness of it. Like there was a huge snowstorm a couple of months ago here, and it knocked out power for weeks for people, for over a half a million people. Tracy, it was devastating. My agents that did not have power were driving around to our clients' houses that were gone, that were vacant listings or whatever they were, and they were checking on their pipes. They were checking on their air. They were making sure they didn't have—like, they were turning the water off or whatever it was. They were doing the thermostats, and they didn't have power, Tracy. Mm-hmm. That's the level of service heart that I need on this team because we're gonna do the same thing at the same time. Like, I'm gonna drop what I'm doing because you're having a fire. I need you to do the same thing for our clients.

So those are kind of our non-negotiables now. And I can quickly tell if someone's going to bring chaos or if they're going to follow the processes and the systems. And if they can't, then we just can't let them stay on the bus.

[00:48:45] Tracy Hayes: It sounds like, obviously, you want other like-minded people. That's the way you think. And that's really the way that you—again, if talking—I've interviewed hundreds of top real estate agents. That's the mindset. You're gonna do whatever—you've signed, you've got an agreement, you're gonna work with this buyer, you're gonna work with this seller. Well, they're relying—they're putting it all in on you, and you gotta give them all in. And if you don't have that mentality, you're gonna find yourself battling internally.

Talk about—let's talk about the—you mentioned just you talk to someone and you look at their phone. What should an agent—you know, maybe they're not extremely busy, maybe they got one deal in process right now. Obviously, you know, they should be prospecting every day and everybody does that a little bit different, but then there's some other times. What are some of the other things that they should be filling that with to become a better real estate agent?

[00:49:40] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. What my agents do on a weekly basis is they go to what's called a broker open. So in Nashville, that's an open house just for realtors for us to preview. Sometimes they're asking for pricing. Sometimes it's just to meet other agents because there are so many deals that we get because the other side knows we are competent, we can do our job, we have great buyers, we have great sellers, we have a great team, and so they'd much rather work with us than work with this other agent that submitted an offer.

[00:50:12] Tracy Hayes: Right. So very important. And yeah, when I first started, obviously it was during—well, post-COVID slightly—where people were getting multiple offers. And the agents that are listening right now, you need—this is really good advice. You gotta get out and meet some of the other agents. So when they see your deal come across, versus someone they don't know or maybe someone they don't like, they're like, “Oh, you know what? I've met Sally. She's a really great person. Hey, let's take that offer.” Yeah.

[00:50:36] Megan Jernigan: Exactly, exactly. I mean, I got an offer—I got four offers on a property last week, and it was a relocation. And for anybody online, y'all know how big of a pain relocations are. They are mounds of paperwork. It's not gonna go exactly how a traditional sale is gonna go. So I needed an agent on the other side that I knew was seasoned with relocation or this was going to be a massive pain for me.

And so I got four offers, and the agents that called me and said, “What's the title company and where's the paperwork?” and I'm like, “Please refer to the MLS. It's all online.” They immediately went to the bottom. I didn't care how good their offer was. I told my sellers, “This is going to be painful. I don't recommend us working with them.” And my sellers trust me, and they took it to heart. And so we chose a seasoned agent that knew how relocation worked.

And so my agents are—they go to a broker open every week, and they're encouraged to go to the broker open in a market that they want to be in, not that they're in, that they want to be in. If you want to be in the luxury market, I need you to go to a luxury broker open, meet those agents, see that inventory. So that's what we do a week.

We go to one of those open houses.

[00:51:45] Tracy Hayes: New construction—you want to go to the new construction neighborhoods.

[00:51:47] Megan Jernigan: You want to go to the new construction neighborhoods, see what's going on, meet the site agents. That's easy for those. Yeah, that's easy. Like, just drive, like, just go see homes. Because what happens is you're sitting at the table and you have this opportunity and someone's like, “Oh, I really want to move to this school district, but I want to be in this price point.” And if you can immediately speak to, in that price point, it's going to be a fixer-upper. Are you okay with that? They're like, “Oh, she knows her stuff,” right? Like she's been to this.

Or, “Hey, that's a really lofty budget here. Are you looking for a huge house or just a really nicely done quality home? And what amenities do you want? Oh, you want a tennis court? There's only two neighborhoods in Brentwood that have tennis courts in their neighborhoods. We're gonna have to focus on those two if that's a deal breaker to you.” Right? To know those things off the cuff shows that person, oh, this person is really qualified.

Credibility, right away. I should give them at least a shot. Even if they hire their old agent, at least you got the interview. You can't get the job without getting the interview.

So we go see a ton of homes. We go to broker opens, open houses. Again, do the open houses in the areas you want to be in. Don't like—I know a lot of agents just want to pick them up where they can and they think all open houses are the same. They're not. So pick them in the areas you want because that's where you're gonna find the buyers that you want. You're gonna know your data that you can bring.

Maybe you are not there to sell the home. That's not what open houses are for. Very rarely do you get a buyer from an open house that is gonna buy that home. Mostly it's to get buyers, and you want those buyers that are looking in that neighborhood that you're doing your open house in. So it's all of that strategy.

It's prospecting in a thoughtful way, Tracy, right? Like, don't go have coffee with your best friend. That's not the coffee for the week, right? Unless your best friend is the head of a neurology clinic, like one of my best friends, and I call her all the time and I say, “Hey, I'm calling you on business, not friendship.” And she's like, “Got it. Putting that hat away. Putting this hat on.” And I'm like, “How can my team collaborate with your clinic as you hire new neurologists to be the team that welcomes them to town? You know our processes on relocation. You know our processes on this.” And that is—so making these intentional prospecting moments instead of just saying, like, I checked the box.

And that's where I think a lot of agents just check the box. And I can tell if you're checking the box, right? Like, I can tell if you went to coffee with your best friend or you wrote a note to your mom and your grandma instead of writing it to a prospect, because we write several notes every week, right? That's the impactful stuff, that you really do. Just dig down and you just ask people to help you.

[00:54:43] Tracy Hayes: Well, you were involved with the local board, or I imagine you probably are still at some level. Yeah. I don't think people who—I don't know what percentage of agents get involved with their boards. There's probably some statistic on that. Small, I'm sure.

Yeah. You're—you’re a little bit—because you chose to go down there. We have one of the greatest—I call her, you know, Miss Real Estate—Patty Ketchum here in Florida. She's worked with NAR. She’s appointed by the governor for the Florida Real Estate Commission and so forth. And she said her biggest regret was not—she went years without ever going to the board as a new agent. And I think she started off in mortgages originally.

The people she met by going down there—for agents getting in the business, how important it is to go take classes, go take that contract class several times by several different people, but participate in the importance of being part of the association, or at least being present in the—you don't necessarily jump on a board or whatever, which I'm sure you'll be recruited eventually if you show up enough times.

[00:55:49] Megan Jernigan: Always, always.

[00:55:50] Tracy Hayes: The importance of that for agents. Yeah.

[00:55:51] Megan Jernigan: We love our association. I'm just kidding with the eye roll. But you will be asked to be on the board several times. There's just so much that goes into this job that I think the consumers don't realize, and how many ways we stop legislation that could hurt them and hurt their home ownership.

[00:56:00] Megan Jernigan: How much we lobby to push legislation through that helps their property values or gets their flood insurance down lower or, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. And so, like, I love our legislative board because I want to know what's happening in the government. I love government. That's what I would do if I didn't have this job, even though my skin is not thick enough. You said you have thick skin. I don't have thick enough skin for government.

But I love the legislation piece of it. Like, what is the state of Tennessee doing? What is the federal government doing? What is Nashville doing? What is Williamson—we have really small counties here. Mm-hmm. So Nashville is like Davidson County. What's Davidson County doing? Well, last year they doubled property taxes. That was huge for affordability when rates were already at an eight, and now you raise property taxes, you are lowering that buying power and lowering that buying power, and then people can't buy houses anymore. Yeah, right?

And I think the statistic years ago was, for every house transaction there is $60,000 of money pumped into the economy. And that's not in realtor commissions. That's in the title company, the movers, the painters, the stagers, the landscapers, everybody involved—the realtors, of course—but everybody involved. So if you have a housing market that slows, that's $60,000 per transaction that is not getting pumped back into the economy. It does make a difference for the everyday family.

So I love to know that stuff on the front end and know like what I need to go to and go ahead and call my sellers and my buyers and my clients and say like, “Hey, this is coming down the pipeline. Is this going to impact your timeline? Is this going to impact that? You want to retire in two years and not have a mortgage, but you're gonna have this huge property tax? Do you want to go buy in a different county with lower property?” So I like to be involved in that stuff. Yeah.

And then to your point, the education—you just can't get enough. Like, go get your staging accreditation so that you, as a starting-out listing agent that can't afford staging for a seller, at least you have your staging accreditation that you can put on your business card, and you can go in with a two-day trained eye and you can move some furniture pieces around to where the photos are gonna look better. Like, what can you go do, right? Right. To build up your resume while you're also simultaneously getting new clients? Like, the world is your oyster.

When my agents come to me and they're like, “We have nothing to do,” I'm like, then that's what you're putting out into the world. But I promise you, the more you do and the busier you are, the more it—like the universe gives it to you.

[00:58:50] Megan Jernigan: Mm-hmm. Right. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true.

[00:58:52] Tracy Hayes: Well, I mean, going down to the board and going to a class, you're going to meet other agents too, as we said earlier. Yeah. That's important, to know who you're working with around. And that is a place to—hey, let me go down and meet some agents and I'm gonna get an education and maybe even a free lunch. Someone's gonna come in and, you know, sponsor lunch or something like that. Right. So those things are there.

And keep it—you mentioned in all the information I got, you're known for aggressive marketing. Mm-hmm. What does that actually mean? And if you could expand that across—because like I said, I'm working on touching up my open house playbook, the Real Estate Excellence Open House Playbook—some things that you do in the marketing for open house. But what is the marketing that you speak of?

[00:59:37] Megan Jernigan: So I think there are two types of people, and the world needs different types of people. I always say this too, like, everybody doesn't have to be this—like, I'm not aggressive—but this, you know, like hands-on, go on into the world. Like, you need people that sit at sales centers for new construction. You need people that are great at the follow-up of the development, right?

My take is always, I never want to sit back and expect people to come to me. So I never want to wait for my phone to ring for my next sale. I will be making 10 calls outbound, right? Like, my outbound always far exceeds my inbound. I never want to have a listing that I prep, I just sit it on the MLS and I wait for buyers to come to us. Like, I'm not the person that just sits and waits for good things to happen.

We are fairly aggressive and thoughtful by design, that we get out there and we will find your buyers. We will find the people that are looking at your listings. We host open houses, but we do them in a thoughtful way. We don't just hold it open on a Sunday. And so that, I think, is where—especially this market—to go out and call the agents that sell a lot in that area. “Do you have any buyers for this? How do you think it's priced? Let me get some feedback from you. Are you willing to walk through it?” Like, if our listing isn't getting any foot traffic, I'll call my favorite agents in that area and I'll say, “Can you walk through it and give me some direct feedback?” Because that's at least feedback—not from buyers—but from seasoned agents I can give to my sellers. They know I'm doing something, right?

[01:01:08] Tracy Hayes: That's a great point. I think, you know—and I'm already this because I listen to my wife talking—but you just mentioned something. There are people that really do well in certain subdivisions, and maybe it's just someone who referred you into that subdivision. You're like, okay, I'm gonna go over and sell that house. To call the person who has sold the most units in there in the last year and say, “Hey, what's going on?” Because I guarantee you, they may have a buyer already waiting if it's a great subdivision—to go in there—and maybe the house you're gonna list is the model they've been hoping would come up, or be on the right street, or whatever it is.

And don't be intimidated because you're just going in and selling that one house, and Sally over here sold a dozen in that neighborhood in the last year. Sally understands that. You obviously, as you mature in this business, you know, it is what it is. Someone's referred for whatever reason—the friend, I don't know, for all they know it's your sister selling the house in that neighborhood, and she's only gonna call you. And that's gonna happen. To make that phone call, because those stats are out, it's very easy. It's right at your fingertips, right?

[01:02:12] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. It's right—you just have to go get it and you have to look through it. I was talking to an agent that's been doing it as long as I have, and he was like, “Do you have a buyer for this neighborhood?” And I was like, “No, but what I would do is I would go pull everybody that has sold in that neighborhood in the last two years, and I would find the buyer's agents that had had repeat sales, and I would call them and see who they have.” And he was like, “Really great idea.” And I was like, “Mm-hmm. That's day two for me. Like, what do you mean, great idea?” Like, that's just the innate easy—

You know, our buyer wants to be in a certain subdivision, we're gonna go look at the expired and withdrawn listings day two, right? Like, has something been taken off the market and they're still willing to sell? We're gonna start calling the agent. “Hey, Susie Smith, our buyer is looking for exactly what your seller had. Are they still interested in listing?” “Oh my gosh, yes. Can you come see it?” So that's where we are, just boots on the ground.

[01:03:02] Tracy Hayes: Proactive. Out of the box. Not—I mean, not that that's like, no one should be going, “Oh my God, that's so unique.” It's just actually implementing it and—

[01:03:11] Megan Jernigan: Actually doing it. But it's unique, and every agent isn't right for every product. And for me, I will say, “No, thank you. This is not for us, and we are not the best person for this listing.” And if you want to price it really high, if you don't want to spend money getting it ready for the market, like if there are certain steps I need you to take and you're not willing to do that, then you're probably not for us.

There's also just a type of housing—like we, I don't know, country living, I don't know, things north towards Kentucky. Like, I don't know that land. I don't know that soil. I know the soil around here. Mm-hmm. I know it's heavy in bedrock. I know the perk. I know the people that do the percolation test. Like, I know all that. So that may not be the client for us, right?

But if you are hungry for business, I was up in Robertson County five years ago, right, for $200,000. Like, I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna make enough calls. But everybody doesn't have to be for you. And sometimes, like I tell my agents all the time, they'll say, “Hey, I just had this call with this seller, X, Y, and Z.” And I'm like, okay, I’m getting the vibe that they're going to take more time than it might be worth. Could you go get three more clients and serve three more clients really well in the time that you think this person's gonna take up of yours, because they're not willing to get on board with our recommendations? And they're like, every time, yes.

And I'm like, okay, I will never tell you not to take a client. You're your own boss. But they're time wasters. They're time wasters. They want all of you all the time. They want your marketing, they want your money, they want to have hour-long phone calls, and they don't want to listen to feedback.

[01:04:55] Tracy Hayes: You've—however you phrased it a few moments ago, this thought's coming to my mind. You want to be really efficient, or I think everyone would love that client to call up and say, “Hey, I see these two houses in this subdivision. I want to move over there. My kids are going to that school. We want to move in that neighborhood.” Boom, boom. You show them the two houses and you have an offer. So in 24 hours, you know, they're making an offer on a house and then accepted, and now in process. I think every agent would just love that, right?

[01:05:26] Megan Jernigan: Hundred percent. Yeah. Let's go.

[01:05:27] Tracy Hayes: Let’s go. To take a few moments and obviously you're having that buyer consultation already, finding out what they really want. Maybe they don't get that first house, but to find out what they really like and like you said, go to the expired, find those houses—whether it's in a neighborhood or just general area, or maybe it's the size, whatever the uniqueness is—start to narrow that list down and make the protocol: are you still interested in selling? Or maybe it's just someone that has this unique house and you're like, “Hey, I noticed you guys have been in there for 10 years. Understand the kids have moved out. You guys ever thought about selling? I got someone who'd be interested in the house.”

Sure, if you listen to Ricky Carruth, I mean, he talks about when I had him on—and obviously in his books—making all these phone calls to people going, “Hey,” he’s just calling people, right? And now you're calling people saying, “Hey, I got a buyer. I got someone who wants to spend money.”

[01:06:20] Megan Jernigan: Exactly. Yeah.

[01:06:21] Tracy Hayes: Like what you have. Are you willing to sell it?

[01:06:24] Megan Jernigan: Sure.

[01:06:24] Tracy Hayes: And if you can, that's obviously—you know, you're matchmakers, right? You match the buyer with their home. You're a matchmaker. And if you could speed up the matchmaking process, get them in process, and then move on to the next person for the next deal and the next deal and the next deal—what a proactive way and great advice.

We'd like to think—just like I said, there's not enough—if we talked to Ricky Carruth about this, he's like, “I've been doing this for years,” but—

[01:06:50] Megan Jernigan: Right.

[01:06:50] Tracy Hayes: —like I said, the typical agent is—he's an—

[01:06:52] Megan Jernigan: Outlier making those—

[01:06:53] Tracy Hayes: —those phone calls. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:06:55] Megan Jernigan: He's an outlier for a reason.

[01:06:56] Tracy Hayes: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. That.

[01:07:00] Megan Jernigan: And I think always just having your strategy and your why—and I've become really honed in on that—and our team keeps everybody accountable. So that's the value add as the team, is like yes, we have clients for you to service where you wouldn't have those buyers or sellers, but also you have multiple people brainstorming all the time.

And I've wasted a lot of money in this career, right? We've wasted a lot of money on marketing or this or that. And so now it's like, okay, let me show you what didn't work for me and what typically doesn't work statistically, and let's save you that money.

But also, like one of my agents was putting together a card to send to a neighborhood. We had been the second agent on it. The first agent, for seven months, didn't sell it. And we got in there, we staged it, we priced it appropriately. The first buyer that came wrote an offer, and we were under contract, and we closed in less than 30 days because it was cash. So we look like a hero. Yes. Right?

So she was brilliant. She was like, “I have this other buyer that would've loved this neighborhood. I'm gonna send out cards to this neighborhood and see if anybody is willing to sell.” And I'm like, that's great. Like, go do that. Farm that neighborhood, see who wants to sell.

But then she showed me the card that she had done, and it looked like the strategy was to go get listings. And I was like, okay, what's our goal? Right? Like, let's bring it back to the goal. Is it to get the listings of the neighborhood, so you tell them you sold it in one day after it was on the market for seven months? Or is it, we have a buyer, would you be interested in selling? That's a different—that's a different talking point. That's a different strategy.

So instead of her going to spend $300 on cards that had mixed messaging, we sat there for five minutes and really honed it in. And I was like, what's your eventual goal of this? And let's come up with messaging. And we had our marketing director sitting there at the same time. So that's, I think, where having—

[01:08:58] Tracy Hayes: A specific call to action—

[01:08:58] Megan Jernigan: Yes.

[01:08:59] Tracy Hayes: —is what you wanted at.

[01:09:00] Megan Jernigan: That's what they would call that, right. Because it's very confusing. Yeah. Were you looking for listings, or were you looking for a townhouse for a buyer to buy? What were you looking for? You know? Mm-hmm. That's where I think all—like having a bunch of people at all times on the team that can, you know, cross-collaborate—it just ends up better for our buyers, better for our sellers. We don't waste resources we don't need to. And it's just an overall win.

[01:09:28] Tracy Hayes: The specific—because I think we'd all agree, most people get those postcards and they may glance at it. Maybe enough to see your picture if you got a great headshot, and it goes in the trash. Somebody's gonna see that. It's gonna say, in so many words, “I've got a buyer for a house like yours,” and they're gonna be like, oh, hold a second. Maybe I'm gonna call John to list my house, but you know what? Megan's got a buyer already.

[01:09:54] Megan Jernigan: Right, right, right. Or the house that we sold, that I had four offers on, was in a neighborhood that kind of has stale inventory. Mm-hmm. And I had two calls after putting that under contract after one day. I had two calls of people that were like, “Hey, we've been watching this neighborhood, nothing's really moving. You sold in one day?” And I'm like, yes, I have four buyers waiting. If I had four more houses, I would have matched everybody with one. I would love to talk about listing your house. And it's just as easy to continue the conversation.

[01:10:25] Tracy Hayes: Right.

[01:10:25] Megan Jernigan: You know?

[01:10:26] Tracy Hayes: Right. No, it's just—it's proactive, out of the box. I want everyone listening here, because obviously all of Megan's information is gonna be in the show notes so you can reach out to her. You know, not me—Megan Jernigan in Nashville. She's all on those social medias too. But you can reach out there because we're only touching the ice, you know, skipping across a lot of things that we could go deep on. We could probably get one subject—

I do want to throw out there before—because I don't know, you sort of gestured, I know you have some other great agents on. I would, you know, obviously I don't want to build a whole month of the Jernigan team, but if you have someone else you want me—we'll get them on, you know, late April or something and spotlight them on, because you guys are doing it.

You're in an area I think is a lot like Jacksonville here, so from a standpoint of people are moving in from all over because of lower taxes, cost of living, that sort of thing, and the benefits they see in those areas. Well, you're landlocked, I'm not, but—

[01:11:25] Megan Jernigan: That's our downside.

[01:11:26] Tracy Hayes: That's our—I’ve always been on the water pretty much for the majority of my life.

[01:11:29] Megan Jernigan: We have some good lakes, but that's all we got, Tracy. That's all we got.

[01:11:32] Tracy Hayes: I mean, the lakes are fun. Lakes can be fun.

[01:11:35] Megan Jernigan: Yeah. That's all we got.

[01:11:36] Tracy Hayes: I mean, you don't have to worry about, you know, sharks and gators in Nashville, you know.

[01:11:40] Megan Jernigan: But we're also only six hours to 30A. Like, we're a quick drive down 65.

[01:11:47] Tracy Hayes: You know, I want you to finish this. This is my last question for you. What do you love about real estate?

[01:11:54] Megan Jernigan: Oh, what do I love about it? I love fixing problems before they're problems and having the right people and solutions and making this really stressful time—looking ahead six steps—to where it is no longer stressful, you know, or as least amount stressful as possible.

I think for me, I see it as this big jigsaw puzzle, and there's all these different pieces that we get to put together and say, this is not hard, and this doesn't have to be a lot on your plate. And that, I think, is my favorite part.

[01:12:36] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. I think we're similar in our ways, especially lenders.

[01:12:40] Megan Jernigan: Yes.

[01:12:40] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. And we’re guiding them through, and people don't—you know, like you said, your dad only knows what he knows or doesn't know what he doesn't know. That's everybody. Everybody's in that category, and they're not doing this every day. They don't know.

You know, I'm about to have a conversation here in a few minutes about a gentleman—you know, not a difficult transaction—but educate him on the interest rates. Right now, for some reason, the 10- and 15-year’s not much better than the 30-year. You know, isn't that wild?

[01:13:07] Megan Jernigan: It's actually worse.

[01:13:08] Tracy Hayes: Right? It's actually—but how do you explain that to someone? I know, isn't that crazy? Crazy. But we survive on the process and obviously at the end, them saying, “Thank you, you were awesome.” And obviously, hopefully a referral comes from that. That's the ultimate blessing from it. And that's our high. The fact that money falls into our bank account after is just totally awesome, right?

[01:13:30] Megan Jernigan: Well, that's just—I always tell people, if you serve—I tell my agents, and that's another thing, I don't hire agents looking at the end, right? Like, if you ask me what your paycheck is or you ask me what the split is or what this—like yes, everybody needs to know, but I’m very transparent on all that. But that's telling me you're here for the wrong reason.

Mm-hmm. I want somebody that just gets up every day, starts work at 8:30, and they go do the best they can for everyone out there. And then the paycheck is just what happens at the end, right? Like, if you're doing a great job and you're providing value and you are servicing your people well, yes, of course—you, there's no way to not be successful, right?

I want you to call me for your gate code. Oh, your people can't get in the neighborhood—what's the gate code? I've got you, and I'm gonna respond in 30 seconds. Like, okay, your house is frozen and you are out of town for a week. I'm gonna call you and say, I need you to come back in town, or I need you to get a plumber over there because when this unfreezes and your pipes have burst, you are going to have a house flood.

Like, that's where I need—like, that's where I love to serve. And I think if you just serve people well, they will love you back and they will see that you served them well, and success will absolutely just naturally happen.

[01:14:50] Tracy Hayes: Megan, I appreciate you coming on today.

[01:14:52] Megan Jernigan: I always love seeing you, Tracy.

[01:14:53] Tracy Hayes: I think the video was great, and if anything comes up, you want to, you know, get online, get on and do a show—something that can be impactful. But again, like I said, I’ll put the offer out. I know you probably have a couple agents that could probably put on a good show, and maybe we get them scheduled in the coming months.

[01:15:09] Megan Jernigan: You rock, you rock. Well, maybe I’ll see your wife in 30A. Like I said, we’re trying to get tickets. They sell out fast every year. I knew I should have gotten them quick. I paused, and then yesterday we were on the waitlist.

[01:15:19] Tracy Hayes: Yeah. All right. Appreciate you. You have a super day. I’m gonna get this out as quickly as possible. Today’s Friday. I’m gonna hopefully get my guy to turn it around and get it out on air on Monday. All right.

[01:15:29] Megan Jernigan: I always love seeing you. Have a great weekend.

[01:15:31] Tracy Hayes: All right. Thank you. You have a great day.

[01:15:32] Megan Jernigan: Get on the boat. Bye, Tracy.

[01:15:34] Tracy Hayes: Bye.

[01:15:34] Megan Jernigan: Bye, Tracy. Bye.