Maria Quattrone - The Journey Of Building Generational Wealth
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE ON:
Maria Quattrone is a sales, marketing, and negotiating expert that has built multiple businesses over her years and is striving to help others build generational wealth - particularly for women and minorities. She is the Founder and CEO of the Maria Quattrone and Associates of Remax @ Home and Motto Mortgage Expert Solutions. She's worked in the Philadelphia area, and closed over 2,700 transactions for over $700 Million in sales. She's also the host of the "Be The Solution" Podcast and was the creator of the PA Real Estate Scholarship Program to provide scholarships for women and minorities to go through her Rise In Real Estate Academy. Maria shares how she built her business, what she's doing to succeed in today's real estate market, and how she's helping others to build generational wealth.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- In a brokerage firm, we run as a team organization to utilize the power of the brand by means of working and building together.
- The people on your team can grow their brand within your brand.
- Retaining a person to build and grow their wealth in real estate inside your business is a good recipe for success.
- Bring a lot more value in building teams.
- Five key fundamentals in Real Estate Academy
- Go through all the basic training
- Learn how to do real estate
- Learn the scripts and dialogues
- How to do a buyer consult
- Setting appointments for buyers
- When you do the right things, everybody in the market can be successful.
- Real Estate Tips:
- Slow and steady wins the race
- Get up every day being consistent and persistent
- Be fearless - take the action
- Follow your passion
- Figure out what you want to do
- Lay out the vision
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro to Maria’s Career
1:40 - Journey in Real Estate
3:15 - Overcoming Rejections and Adversity
4:27 - Building a Team
5:24 - Maria’s Transactions in her First Year
7:10 - Growing Business Inside the Business
8:59 - Process of Getting Own Office
15:30 - Building Generational Wealth
22:23 - Building Business Tips
25:55- How to Find Maria
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL Freedom Podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
Hello, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we talk about building wealth, gaining time and financial freedom through various opportunities in real estate. And so today, very excited to share. We've got Maria Quattrone on here, and she has her hands in a lot of different businesses. And you've been in business for a long time in the real estate industry. So a little bit about her founder and CEO of Maria Quattrone and associates with REMAX also motto Mortgage Expert solutions, and you have 20 years sales and marketing experience leading one of the most successful real estate groups in the Philadelphia metro area with 2700 properties and over $700 million in sales.
Mike Swenson
So with a passion to help create generational wealth, which I'd love to talk about, you work tirelessly as an investor, public speaker, visionary podcast host of be the solution, and also creator of the Pennsylvania real estate scholarship program where you provide scholarships for women and minorities, and take them through your rise in Real Estate Academy. So you've got your hands on a lot of stuff. I know that all just didn't happen overnight. But welcome to the show. We're so excited to have you.
Maria Quattrone
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk to you today Mike.
Maria Quattrone
Well why don't you just start, you know, everybody kind of wants to know usually how you how you get into real estate how that journey started. So share with us how that began for you.
Maria Quattrone
So my journey in real estate started when I was about 10 years old, I went door knocking and I was selling Christmas or Hanukkah greeting cards and wrapping paper. And I had found a little for sure my house. It said for every item you sold me the dollar and my inspiration to do that. And motivation was because I wanted to buy my family Christmas presents from the church bizarre we have every year. And so there I go. And I sold 120 items that year. So I made $120 And I bought on my family presents. Well, fast forward. After college, I actually during college, I did an internship at what WTV which is a time in NBC affiliate. And I was able to land my first job, my career selling TV airtime for another NBC affiliate, very small one in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And from there went to work in Philadelphia radio for the next decade selling airtime and marketing programs to local businesses, regional towns and national counts as well doing sales and marketing programs for them to drive sales. After all that lots of door knocking lots of cold calls, very few people can buy radio advertising, how to do a lot of groundwork, which paved the way for my real estate career, which started 18 and a half years ago.
Maria Quattrone
And I know for a lot of people, you know, getting into real estate, it's it's the handling the rejection, overcoming adversity, those are the things that tend to trip people up. And so having already had that experience, kind of going through that cutting your teeth doing those hard things. How was it transitioning to real estate Then did you find like, Okay, I don't have to overcome the same challenges that people have, because you've already been you've already overcome that mentally. The 10 years prior,
Maria Quattrone
I thought it was super easing. And I was afraid to tell anybody else about the business.
Mike Swenson
And everybody else struggles so much to get into real estate.
Maria Quattrone
Yeah. And so I literally worked seven days a week, I didn't care, I didn't even feel like it was worth. I loved working with the buyers and sellers. I had a team within less than a year of being in the business. And so that's gonna go over very well, a lot of people because it was about 2005. And if teams weren't very popular, let alone somebody not even in the industry for a year starting a team and doing all this business. And so it was like her does she think she is or the heck did I come from? So there was that?
Maria Quattrone
So how did that team start for you then did you start with admin support? Or did you you know, kind of naturally attract agents right out of the gate.
Maria Quattrone
So I had to get an admin after I went full time because I literally could not handle the paperwork. I am not a people or I'm not an administrator. I struggle right now. Just trying to get anything that's administrative done done, because it is not my suit. I don't like it. So I either had to do one or two things, get an admin or quit. I wasn't going to quit. So I hired an admin within two months. Being in the industry. And then I was doing all this business and I'm like, I need help. So I like talking to my sister and getting my real estate license. And she came over. And then another guy that was in the radio industry, he came over then another lady, a girl, young woman, she came and worked with us. So then we got another assistant, and then kind of grew from there.
Mike Swenson
Just kind of curious from from like a transaction standpoint, or volume standpoint, what were those first couple years like for you?
Maria Quattrone
So my first year I started in March, and I closed 17 transactions, I just did about 5 million. And that was part time, I had a full time career in the radio business. And then in year two, I closed about, I think it was 8,000,038 transactions. But that was in 2005. That was a lot of business back then. And then it just went from there 50 To 75 to 100. And over that. And I, you know, I've worked just to do brokerages basically before opening my own, eight and a half years ago. So I actually have my own company now longer than I was at last place. So that's pretty good.
Maria Quattrone
What does your team look like today?
Maria Quattrone
So we have a brokerage firm. And in our brokerage firm, we run as a team organization. So everybody works on the Maria questran and Associates. Group. And we're there's lots of reasons why for that. So they can utilize the power of that brand. But we want each agent to work to, to also build their brand within our brains. We have about 20 licensees at the moment and field services marketing, some three BAs in the Philippines and then about four on site staff. So there's that our mortgage. So there's about 30 people in the organization right now, and grow and we're growing. I mean, our goal, by the end of next year is to be at 100 licensees in our company.
Mike Swenson
I know you'd mentioned about helping the people on your team grow their brand within your brand. That's something that I feel like has been really important as well being in real estate for eight years. When people join teams, they'd like to leverage that a team supplies. And then sometimes they feel like, hey, rightfully so I want to get some credit here, I want to be known as a person, you know, that's successful in real estate.
Mike Swenson
And so finding a way where you can do that underneath a figurehead or a larger team, I think is a good recipe for success for those teams to grow. Because if you can retain that person to build their wealth and grow their real estate business inside of your business, it's a win win versus feeling like oh, I've got to leave and go somewhere else to do my
Maria Quattrone
100%. We have a lot of new agents that come into our organization. And we make it clear upfront that we're not a word destination and of a stepping stone. Yeah, so we want people to be here for a very long time, and we want to grow with them. In fact, if they want to start their own team within the organization, that they can go ahead and do that.
Maria Quattrone
I mean, at the end of the day, you know, someday we may just be Maria Quattrone, and associates or some other name, you know, we joined the REMAX brand, and I believe it to be a really strong powerful brand. Because of the time it didn't make sense to. I didn't want to I didn't want to struggle with who's and QA or MQRA. At the time we were when we're doing business in the suburbs. So you know, it made sense to me to affiliate with a strong book brand like REMAX
Mike Swenson
How does that work? For those people that are maybe considering doing something like that? How do you go through that process of getting your own office?
Maria Quattrone
Well, us first have to see if the you know, you can get a franchise purchase a franchise and figure out where's the location to be? I mean, it is it's a lot in hindsight, I don't know if I would have done it had I known what I had to do. I mean, I went through a lot because I'm not I'm not an operator by nature. So I had to learn to be an operator, which annoys me because I'm more of a sales and marketing kind of gal. And so when I had to step into things that you like to do and learn how to do how to learn by that or I was gonna like drown so I didn't want to drown by you know, it's definitely a long term, thing, plan vision. And the vision is through RP real estate scholarship.
Maria Quattrone
We also have New Jersey real estate scholarship on We are licensed in New Jersey and we'll be expanding that that The PA ROTC scholarship, we plan to bring 100 It's primarily women and minorities through the scholarship program, which starts with not just being licensed, we get them license, we mentor them during that time, we indoctrinate them into our system immediately. So even though they're in real estate school, they've been here like yesterday, we had a luncheon for them, they come for lunch, and they come for a sales meeting. And we want them to see our culture and to deliver what the expectations are immediately.
Maria Quattrone
And so they're able to be some of the other colleagues. And through that program, though, my goal over the next several years, because gonna take several years to do this is to have changed 100 people's lives, within 24 months of being in the industry to have them earning a six figure income, getting them set up if they don't own a home to buy a home. And then teaching them real estate, how to invest in real estate, because we make our money in real estate, we earn money in real estate to live and we make good long term work, wealthy owning homes, our own first and then, you know, owning homes for investment.
Maria Quattrone
That's awesome. And I mean, the game, the game has changed when in building teams like you have to bring a lot more value now. Because there's a lot more teams out there before when you said how you, you know, there weren't really many teams when he first started, it was kind of like, okay, great. Like just here, you've got a license and in a pulse. So now come join my team. And, and it's great, but now people are seeing, you know, the competitive advantages of teams has raised the bar is raised quite a bit. And so you do have to bring a lot of value. And like you said, it's more than just get the license. It's the mentorship, it's kind of helping them get those first few successes and wins along the way. Because real estate's a tough industry to see success in, in over 80% of people are gone in two years. And so just get your license, it's show them what to do.
Maria Quattrone
Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that, too. So one of the things that we do is, once they are actually here at our company, we have a two week, what's called rise in Real Estate Academy where they go through all the basic training, how to do real estate, so learning the scripts and dialogues of LP Mama, how to do a buyer consults, and how to set how to set appointments for the buyer to do the buyer console, showing property doing open houses writing contracts, those three, those five basic fundamentals are what they need to be able to build up some confidence to go ahead and do it. Because the worst thing that can happen is an agent doesn't want to set an appointment, because they don't even know what to do to show a house, let alone write the contract.
Maria Quattrone
So there's like a lot of time people just spend going on the hamster wheel in circles. We're not getting anywhere. And one of the other things that I noticed in the industry and this has gone on for a long time is that always people show me your daily schedule, what are you doing daily? How many conversations are you having? Most of the time, there's no schedule, and there's no conversations being asked. So people fill out a real estate because not because of real estate, because they're not taking the action. So this is an action oriented industry. And regardless of whatever the economy's doing, it really doesn't matter. Because there's ways to buy and sell real estate. And even though the economy's going sideways, interest rates are going up, sales are down 30% in Philadelphia County this year, year to date, there was 20,000 transactions done, which means there were 40,000 opportunities, so 40,000 opportunities,
Maria Quattrone
how many of them do you want the businesses there, you got to find you got again, and in our organization, they can call into our database, which have over 25,000 people in our database. So there are people in there, they already know who we are, and market to them every single week, they get news from me about market update, what's going on in investing in new listings that we have for investing, and I do these Facebook Live videos. And also I do videos called REITs, and real estate, about real estate tips, real estate agents. So I'm doing a lot of content and just trying to give back and being a contributor to our community and teaching others.
Maria Quattrone
One of the best things that I heard when I first got into real estate was you know, talking about the abundance mentality of real estate, right. And somebody had told me, you know, there's an ocean of opportunity. And whether you back up to the ocean with a shovel in a bucket and fill your bucket full of water or whether you have a dump truck, the ocean doesn't care, the ocean, the level of the oceans, not going to care if you back a dump truck into the ocean. So you could do five transactions, you could do 100 transactions, and there's still plenty of business out there to be done. And the other beauty is is that another agent or another large team in the market doesn't have to fail. In order for you to succeed you both can be wildly successful. And so, you know, depending on your, your team, your brand, whatever that looks like everybody can be successful in the market when you do the right things.
Mike Swenson
And so for new people, yeah, it's like you said, how many transactions do you want, you can go get them, you have to know how to go get them, but but on the downside, it's, if you didn't backup to the ocean with anything, the ocean still doesn't care. And so I think that's why people aren't successful, because like you said, they're not having the conversations, they're not doing the things they need to do, to get themselves out there to be successful. I love that analogy. One of the things that I want to talk about is building generational wealth. And you've kind of touched on that a little bit with your scholarship of helping them in 24 months, get to making six figures having their own house, but talk about the pursuit of, of generational wealth for people, because sometimes we hear that term, and we don't really talk about it. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Maria Quattrone
Most people that own homes have been able to house their home on to a relative. And so generational wealth is built through homeownership into owning property. You know, one of the problems was that a period of time, you know, African Americans weren't allowed to buy homes, right. And there were, they weren't afforded that opportunity. So there is, you know, this imbalance of wealth in our community going back for 70 years, 80 years or whatever, you know, I believe that everybody should have the opportunity to be a home owner, if they're financially solvent, and responsible. In fact, we're going to be working with a company on doing like, contracts for deeds, where we can take people that are in renting, and going directly to homeownership doing large scale conversions.
Maria Quattrone
So that'd be something because the rates are in shape, you know, up 7% will probably go up to 8% have to be diverse in what we do. And it's always about being able to zig and zag, what does that look like, and you have to quit new, I've been a greeting to my team. In our meetings, we have meetings twice a week, two hours a day, so four hours a week, and daily huddle, every day, the 30 My people are engaged. If you set an appointment, you ring a bell and you have a closing, you ring the bell and get a listing or listing appointment or a new pending, you ring the bell, the bell got wrong already, like seven times this morning, we have been talking about it for months, six months how the market is shifted in the market changing, we have to get ahead of it, we have to do more.
Maria Quattrone
So this type of market requires an enormous amount of action. And it just requires doing more. So I decided several months ago to do these Facebook Lives three for this week, I did five lives and 8:05am that means I haven't been to the gym, walk to the gym, walk home shower, walk back to the office by 805. To be to be doing more. So it requires more not just of us as a leader. It requires more, it requires more of working with the sellers educating them about what's going on. And what's happening. You can't run calm suffer with soap in less six months. Right? You have to go back or a year ago and look at what So Ben, because there was a part of this bidding war that people just bid over 10% or 5% over as just because yeah, that's not real. Just desire is not real doesn't mean it's work that
Maria Quattrone
Well the challenging thing for agents is the rates are out of their control. And yet, they still have to have sales to earn money to put food on the table and pay their mortgages. And so like you said, you have to do more work to probably get the same results, it might take two times or three times more work to get the same results that you got a month ago, or I should say, like a year ago. And so as agents, that's how you have to adapt.
Maria Quattrone
I think that will that will send some people packing their bags. Yes. It always does. It always does. I mean, I've been in since OBOR, I entered and I've seen you know, people exit there was the exit in 09 10 people just couldn't do it. I mean, I was really doing really well. And people were not doing anything. And it was almost I was I was embarrassed for doing well.
Mike Swenson
I remember the the team that I was on previously had had been in existence in the last downturn. And they said, you know, at that time people just wanted to know like, can you actually sell my house? You know, commission you didn't have to necessarily argue about what's your commission it's can you sell my house was really important. And, you know, we're certainly not there yet. But you don't know where the market is gonna go. I mean, it's it's certainly changed a lot and it's changed a lot here just in the last couple of weeks. And I know there's other markets that are are seen a lot more change than we are here in Minneapolis, St. Paul, but yeah, as agents you have to adapt and you've seen a lot over the years. You've seen the ups you've seen the downs.
Maria Quattrone
I've pulled the numbers yesterday for the market update and inventories increasing, but it's down. So that means that the pending sales are down. There's not more listings because those sellers are also buyers. And they can't buy because the mortgage that they wanted to have is doubled. Say was seven 7000. There, they get they're upgrading upgrading people, right? Is seven grand now it's 12. They're like not doing that. So they're not, they're saying, they have that, then you have. So we're the year three overall is about 4.6 months for under 1,000,001 million to 2 million, that's 11 months and 2 million and up, it's 30 months. This does not include any shadow inventory that's not currently on active on the market. So we have a lot of new development that's not listed.
Maria Quattrone
So I'd say the high end is probably like seven years of inventory, the one to two is probably more like two. And the under 1 million is probably more like six or seven. It doesn't really sound reflects it just yet, though. And you have to be able to know all that other data and be able to figure that out. Because you really need as a broker agent, whatever you need to really understand what the absorption rates are. So that you can explain to your seller, listen, do you have 11 months to wait? Because that's how long you get take not one of their own game one market? Yep. And if they say no, then you it's the response is, then we have to figure out how to be the number one best price and value home to be the next one sold. Or we're going to be waiting a year.
Maria Quattrone
Having those hard conversations with sellers is really important. Like you have to be honest with them, because what they hear might be what they want to hear, which is still six months ago, 12 months ago of I put my home on the market and I get 15 offers in the weekend and it's gone. And so you have to cast a realistic expert explanation to them of here's where we're at today that market is gone that market, it's not there anymore. You could have sold them. We're not there. But honesty is is important to them. Because yeah, if you don't want to have them coming to you, and it doesn't sell the first weekend saying What did you do wrong, it's your fault.
Mike Swenson
You have to educate them. This is the market that we're in anything more that you want to share here, as we talked about, you know, you you building your team, you know, we didn't get really to talk about you know, having a mortgage company as a part of what you're doing from from a business building entrepreneurship standpoint, anything that you want to share for other entrepreneurs listening out there, you know, building their business tips that you've learned along the way?
Maria Quattrone
One of the things is, you know, slow and steady wins the race, right, get up every day be consistent, persistent. Rome wasn't built in a day takes way longer than you think. And be patient. I mean, we just opened the mortgage company this year, and it's coming along. It's you know, it's a process. Like anything else. We're doing a JV with a title company, hopefully a goal by urines have that, you know, together and up and running. And some other things along the way that we have going on along the way. I'm doing the book, fearless female leaders are untold stories revealed. And that's not just that's not about being fearless, it's about being fearful, and being fearless anyway, by doing it. So we all have that fear. And the fearless part is about the fact that we take the action. And we go ahead and we do what we're afraid of and, and then, you know, telling your story.
Maria Quattrone
So I'm doing a collaboration book. So we're still looking for some women to collaborate on that. And also was turned in to a year long mastermind. And the opportunity to be on some other folks some other women's podcast. So lots of good stuff. What I say is follow your passion and figure out what you want, you know, and lay out the vision. And why are you doing it all and it doesn't have to be a big lie. You know, it could just be an annulment. It doesn't have to be a big vision. It can be whatever it is that you want, but figure out what it is that you want. And then just take consistent action on it every day.
Maria Quattrone
I love what you said about being fearless and fearful. I had a I have a new agent joining our team. And she's like, you know, we were talking about some of the challenges that come up the deals that fall through the adversity that happens. And she's like, Mike, how do you how do you respond to those things, and I was like, you just have to move forward. You know, like, if a deal falls through, it falls through you do all that you can in that moment to save the dealer you do all that you can to hold it together. Sometimes it makes sense to sometimes it doesn't. But when it's done, yeah, you might have a five second pity party but then you have to move on to the next one because the income that you thought you're going to have you don't have and so that's where the beauty is you can get as many closings as you want.
Mike Swenson
So if you needed to have that one close to make your mortgage payment, well then you got to go find another one and you just have to keep stepping forward and I was telling her that most days There's every day where there's a moment where you feel like a failure. You know, there's some thing that happened, some adversity that happened, some complexity that happened. And so, yeah, you could you could just curl up in a ball in my corner of my office here and say, Well, I'm just going to take the rest of the day off, you know, like that one bad thing happened. Or you go find a good thing that happens. You know, it's
Maria Quattrone
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. It's all about you know, we say start every day at zero pretend like you have no money in the bank, you have no deals and what are you going to do and how much action are you going to take today? Yeah, not being attached to the outcome of the deal. Focusing on the relationship, not the deal. And not being emotional. Need to be unemotional to have no emotion to be the facilitator in the transaction. So that the clients are not emotional. They're paying us to be a professional. So show up like one
Mike Swenson
Well for anybody that you know is as loved hearing you and wants to learn more about you or reach out to you how can they do so?
Maria Quattrone
They can check me out on the website and cue realestate.com I'm on Instagram with by sold by MQ, Facebook, just my name Maria Quattrone, you can always reach me at any of those things. They can direct message me or reach me at Maria column. q.com.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Maria, for coming on and sharing your inspiring story of not only being successful, but helping others. I think that's the key you know, you have a responsibility to help others along the way and I love the vision that you have of, of bringing people into real estate, showing them success, helping them be successful and build generational wealth. So thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it
Maria Quattrone
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
