Scott Harris - Selling $1.5 Billion In Real Estate
Scott Harris is a dedicated real estate professional passionate about helping people find their purpose and passion through residential real estate. He is the founder of the Harris Residential Team, in which he has sold over $1.5 billion in residential real estate in New York City. Scott has developed a knack for sales, entrepreneurship and understanding people's stories. This has shaped his people-first approach to real estate, which inspired him to write the book The Pursuit of Home, and start a podcast with the same name.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the emotional journey of buying a home and how it impacts your clients.
- Explore how to leverage your personal network to succeed in real estate.
- Uncover the benefits of joining a real estate team and how it can accelerate your career.
- Learn how to build financial freedom through real estate and secure your future.
- Find out how to kickstart a successful career in real estate and stand out from the crowd.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Empowering People and Training
00:01:56 - Scott's Background and Journey to Real Estate
00:05:45 - Lead Generation Strategy in Real Estate
00:09:36 - Building a Real Estate Business as a New Agent
00:13:16 - Transition to Forming a Team
00:15:14 - Value of Real Estate Teams
00:21:40 - The Pursuit of Home Book and Podcast
00:25:33 - Self-Improvement for Agents
00:26:11 - Fulfillment in Helping Buyers
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Read the full transcript:
Scott Harris
The launch of the team that exists today, where I'm empowering people and doing more training, it grew out of a need. I've always loved being an entrepreneur and building businesses. However, it took on a different shift when I realized I had to get things off my plate and learn how to do that in a way that it's all about communication with clients. There's so much to it that you have to figure out over time what works for you.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion 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. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom, Real Estate Leverage Freedom, where we talk about building time and financial freedom and different things inside of the real estate space. I am your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on getting into real estate, learning about real estate, check out our website, Freedom freedom through real estate.com. we've got a lot of great podcasts to watch, articles to read, information to consume. Ultimately, we want you to take some action, take some steps towards achieving your goals inside of the real estate space. So for today's episode, I'm super excited. We've got Scott Harris here. Scott is a real estate agent, owner of a team in the New York City area. Also has a podcast, a book coming out called the Pursuit of Home. And you've got a lot of great stories to be able to share and kind of guiding people through all the drama, all the stuff that happens in a real estate transaction. As we know, it's a very stressful time for our buyers and sellers. So you've got a lot of great information to share. So, Scott, we're so excited to have you on the show.
Scott Harris
Really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mike Swenson
Why don't you just start by kind of sharing a little bit about your background? I think people always like to kind of hear how you got into real estate, why you got into real estate, and how that process worked. And we'll just take it from there.
Scott Harris
Sure. Well, I know you're in Minnesota. I grew up on the other end of the Mississippi in. In New Orleans, where it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico and moved to the Northeast for college and then stayed there, lived in Boston for a few years and really got my sales chops. I honed my sales chops there, which we can talk more about, but ultimately made my way to New York about 22 years ago. So kind of mid 2002 and started in real estate at the beginning of 2003. It was really at the, it was, it was my stepmom and people often know you better than you know yourself. She was the one who said, hey, I think you'd be really great at real estate. And lo and behold, she was, she was right. It was just like a perfect fit for all the things that I'd done before and been building my business ever since. It's a residential real estate practice right in the heart of New York City. You know, if you look at the Macy's Day parade, you know, I'm, I'm not too, I live too far from there. My office isn't far from there either. So. And that's kind of where, it's where I make my home. And professionally and personally, I believe that.
Mike Swenson
People that come from outside of real estate into real estate, kind of your niche really is taking the best advantages of the gifts that you have and the experience that you have. You know, for some people it's the people skills. For some people it's the, you know, being able to be a driver and continue to push forward and push forward. So everybody kind of comes into real estate with some gifts and abilities of what they've done in the past. What is it for you that you feel kind of led to your success in real estate early on just based on your past history before that?
Scott Harris
That's actually a really good way to frame it. Mike My gifts are largely around people and wanting to help people. So I've always been an entrepreneur. I've always been able to structure things. So like the business side, the entrepreneurship of real estate really attracts me. It's like it's a, it's an open playing field. You can do what you want. But in terms of what actually helped me grow my business, it's that I'm really interested in people. What is their story, what makes them interesting, what are they trying to do, what are they about? And then I've always been someone to make connections. I'm always, you know, and so early in my business, early in my career, I might listen to someone looking for. I learned about what they're doing and I just sort of, it's like an never ending interview process of all these people. Then I meet someone else and I was making matches. So I got a philanthropy. I connect like someone who could be one of their biggest donors or somebody is running another something else. And I connect a credit card vendor and that, that became their biggest client. And so over time it was like I was just adding value. Not really through real estate necessarily, but just making connection, connecting people. And then my real estate business sort of on the heels of that. I was someone who just wanted to be of service and I was learning the real estate, the nuts and bolts of real estate all along. And I'm so it's that matchmaking, getting to know people deeply and having like a. An intuitive sense of what might help them. And then definitely years and years of sales skills that I built over time. Knowing how to help, you know, knowing what to say, what not to say. You know, there was certainly a lot of sales training that kind of helped me in the background, but really it's just moving that, you know, that little incremental growth but out of the gate. I also worked seven days a week. You know, I took like three days off the entire of my first year in real estate. And New York is. Some people might think it's a super competitive place to try to do real estate, but it also, there's so much, there's so much transaction volume that if you just work hard, show up, say, and do, you know, do what you say you're going to do, you can't help but be successful. If you have some basic sales skills.
Mike Swenson
Now, what for you, I mean, obviously you had those people skills, you had the sales skills in terms of finding business. Like, I know getting into real estate is a challenge, especially right now. It's. It's a tough time for people to get in. Did you have kind of a plan of here's how I'm going to go get my business? Did you just kind of approach it of I'm just going to add value and kind of see what happens is that I'm going to kind of work my natural network. How much intentionality did you have or pursuit of more of a quote unquote lead generation strategy to get business in those early days? Or was it just work seven days a week and something's going to come. Come to fruition event?
Scott Harris
Those questions kind of fit together pretty nicely. I was working at a company that was ultimately acquired by Corcoran, Barbara Corcoran's old company that she had sold. And that company had a wonderful program to help you kind of how are you going to generate your own leads? And it was very much like here when you're in the rental. I started doing rentals. Here you can make a living doing rentals. It's a hustle. And it didn't feel like I wasn't a lot of integrity as a, you know, from A from a moral standpoint, I just didn't love the transactional nature of it. And sales becomes much more relationship, which is where what appeals to me. But they created a system where if you advertise here and advertise here and you take pictures of properties, you can generate your own leads. So I realized like just doing their system was going to generate a certain amount of leads. That showing up at 9 in the morning or 8:30 every day in the office to be the first person to sign up on the walk in sheet, that was another piece. And I went to college in Philadelphia, I went to Penn and there's this huge network of Penn people in New York City. And so I was really just working my network. And I'm sure people have heard your network is your net worth. So I mean I was not afraid to tell everyone, hey, I'm in real estate. You know me, I'm smart, I'm super resourceful, you know, and a lot of my friends at the time were renting. So it was like a natural progression that I grew with my clients and I was studying my business like nobody else. I really started to know what blocks, you know, all the different things that you need to know as a real estate agent, know your inventory. And then over time I learned my way. But you asked if it was strategic. I think it was like a really throw every single thing at the wall kind of a strategy, if that's a strategy. It was like do all the things, be out all the time, constantly be talking about what you do, listen a lot for what people are looking for and just, you know, show up and do all the things you can do to help people be, you know, to move forward, find, find a home or whatever.
Mike Swenson
It is essentially using your, your people skills and your hard work ethic, combining them together and eventually learning and growing over time. And I think that's the thing that I see is, is a lot of times people coming from another industry and maybe you have success in another industry and you come into real estate, like you have to remind yourself like, this is my year one in real estate, comparing myself with my year five and other industry or whatever it might be. And it takes time and you've got to build that because there's people that might be like, oh, Scott's in real estate now, like, great, let me see some. Let him, let him see. Get a few closings under his belt and then I'll work with him. And so you just have to remember that and give yourself a little bit of a Runway here and have some grace to, to give yourself a chance. But then when people start to see you're successful, you know what you're doing, you know what you're talking about, and you can help me. Well, then, yeah, your, your business can grow if, if you continue to put in that hard work like you did.
Scott Harris
I would just add one thing, Mike, is that I think early on in your career, because I, you know, part of the book that I, that I, that I've written that's coming out next year, I talk a lot about. It's not like you have to hire a real estate agent who's been doing this forever, and that's the only way as a buyer or a seller, you're going to be successful. Sometimes, you know, when you're hiring, if you're in a position to hire people, they say, like, I want to hire good athletes, hardworking people who are smart, who can really accelerate their learning and are just proactive. There's so many things that a brand new agent can have. It doesn't require lots of years of experience. So I think early on you want to know whatever industry you're coming from, who are the 25 to 50 people in my life who are like my raving fans? They love me. They know how hard I work. They know that I'm going to do whatever it takes to be successful that are going to believe in me before I have the quote unquote expertise. Right. And if you, that's like a good platform upon which you can build a real business, real estate or anything, you know, and sort of engage them and talk to them and just share your journey as you grow. And the more you're going to get confident over time. And to your point, I mean, yes, you have to have a lot of grace. You gotta cut yourself a little bit of slack. I often tell new agents it's gonna take you six months before you close your first deal. You know, you better have that sort of patience because otherwise you're gonna get sunk.
Mike Swenson
It's really looking at. Yeah. What's your best gift you have to offer if you're a new agent, you're hungry and you've got time, right. So if, if you've got a client, you've got time to be able to pour into that client. And it's the same thing, you know, when I, when I was training agents on our teams in the past, it's. Yeah. What is your leverage? What's your. To differentiate yourself from other people? And yeah, as a new agent, it's probably leveraging A good relationship with a friend or family member mixed with the time that I have. And then, you know, being a part of, of our team, we had good training, good resources, being able to help them so that even though they're new in real estate, they've got great people that they can go to for those answers. And so you're not having to figure it out on your own as a new agent, you're part of a team and you're kind of leveraging that value of the team. And so that was, you know, really the value proposition that our new agents had.
Scott Harris
Right. It's all the same thing that you, we tell our stories, you know, we're doing like 100 plus transactions this year. They get to tell all of those stories and all the ones that don't close. Right. But they get to learn from every single one of those. I say own those stories. We talk about them in our meetings so that you're able to, you're just absorbing so much more than the actual deals you're doing when you get on a team. And I mean, that's one of many, many things that I think helps a new agent if they decide to be on a team.
Mike Swenson
Have you ever heard the phrase you're the average of the top five people that you hang around? Well, real estate agents, I'm excited to increase your five with you. We're launching the Real Freedom investor agent tribe to help you get educated and connect with others to build your real estate investing journey and also to help you along the way as you're working with real estate investors. So come check it out on our website, realfreudom.com go to the store. We have a membership, we have a mastermind group and private coaching to help you stay accountable to your real estate investing goals and to make sure that you connect with like minded people to accelerate your progress and to cheer you on along the way. Check it out. RealFreedom.com click on the store. Now talk a little bit about your journey going from solo agent to forming a team. Because now you've got a team of agents, you've got leverage, you've got, you know, the ability to kind of train and hopefully pass on all that wisdom you've gained through over $1 billion worth of sales. So talk about what was it for you that made you decide, hey, let's do this team thing versus trying to run an operation on my own.
Scott Harris
Well, first it's, we're looking at this, oh, here's this guy who sold like a billion and a half dollars Real estate and, oh, you know, he thinks he knows everything. A lot of this is trial and error over and making so, so many mistakes. You know, it kind of. The team structure started pretty innocently. I just reached a point where I couldn't. There were not enough hours in the day and I was. My wife and I were having our second child and I was like, you know what, if I don't bring at least an assistant on, I'm never going to see my kids. So it was like a very, like a. Like a necessity. And I burned that assistant out in a year. Like, I totally managed her terribly. And she's a wonderful person. Emily, if you're listening out there, like, she's. She lives in Buffalo. She's awesome. And, you know, that was a tough learning. You know, I was really sad when she left. And then later on I'm like, I know exactly why she left. And so over time, it was like, you know, bringing on assistant, then bringing on people to help support showings. And then maybe I didn't really know how to delegate very well. I wasn't the best manager. And over time, you start to learn. Okay, for my. The way I do business, I need an operations person. I'm really like a visionary and I'm really good at business development. Some team leaders are much better at systems, really getting in the weeds and the operations. For me, it was like, right now I have the most amazing coo, Karen Leonardi, who is assisting and really, she is such a business partner. She's my work. There's that joke, people, oh, this is my work wife. I mean, at home, I'm the CEO of my life and my wife is my COO at work. It's the same exact dynamic. So it's like, there's a wonderful book that people want to read called 10x is easier than 2x. And the idea is like, you're looking for the who, not the how. You're looking for a person that fills a role of something that you don't do as well as they do. So it's like it was an ever. It was a constant process of finding people who were better doing certain things than I was doing and sort of building that out. Making mistakes. People leave, you realize, like, you get more and more refined. I know I'm talking for a little while, but I would say 10 years ago was like the really. The moment when I was burned out and realized, hey, I'm still taking on too much myself. And then that's when I was like, I really have to rejigger this, otherwise I'm going to burn out completely. And I think that was the 10 years. I really think of that as like the launch of the team that exists today where I'm empowering people and doing more training. It grew out of a need. I've always loved being an entrepreneur and building businesses. However, it took on a different shift when I realized I had to get things off my plate and learn how to do that in a way that it's all about communication with clients. There's so much to it that you have to figure out over time what works for you. So there's definitely no one way to do it.
Mike Swenson
I mean, I'm a huge believer in real estate teams because I think it's really that idea of you get to plug in and help each other and you utilize your best gifts, they get to utilize their best gifts. And even too, like, from a leverage standpoint, I love when I get something under contract and I turn it over to transaction coordinator. That's what they do best, is handle the transaction and help with closing. You know, hey, you missed this signature here. Hey, this form's got to get signed or, hey, we've got this sort of thing. And so teams really are where people can plug in and, and really experience what's going to be the most value to them, you know, other times too. Yeah. If you've got kids and your, your schedule doesn't allow necessarily all the availability as people that don't have kids. Well, there's a ton of value there because, hey, I can't make this showing. I've got an agent on my team that can help or I know when I'm showing up, I've got an admin team behind me. So I really love the value of a good real estate team. For the people that, you know, are on your team, what do you feel like is. Is that value to them? Like the people that have come and been successful on your team, like, where do you feel like they can kind of fit in and plug in and have success versus trying to do it on their own?
Scott Harris
Right. So the way we. There are a whole. It kind of stacks on one on top of the other in terms of what an agent would see in terms of value. But I realized the things that we want to do, the things that we feel like are the right things to do, not every team leader does. So first, there are meetings. We have two meetings per week. One is a zoom meeting, that it's a motivation. Monday, we're getting everybody fired up and we're sharing all of our wins from the weekend, then we have a lunch on Wednesdays where we talk about our week, what we learned, what went right. And then I try to do some actual. In each of those there's like a training component. So they're getting like constant positivity and training like all pushed in into one. And then every member of the team has time for one on one operations wise. So like keep them accountable to the goals they've set. Like we work really hard on helping them create a vision for what they want to do with their business, why they want to do that, like getting under, you know, under the hood so that they can tap into that every day and then holding them accountable. And then for me, my work with them is to brainstorm what's the challenge? Let's figure it out. Let's come up with some steps, some ideas on how to get you over, around through those challenges. It's like I want to build up. So what happens is we're like trying to like time travel to the end of the year, like where this person's being successful and they're so proud of all the things that they've been able to accomplish and like get them really fired up for all the things that they're doing. They're like, what can you do today? You know, go see some more properties. Like just make sure that they're constantly doing like taking action that they can control as opposed to like complaining about the things that aren't working or the market, you know, all of the things that are, you know, they can't control mortgage rates any more than I can, you know, so like, and it doesn't matter, like let's go like focus on the things we can control. So it's a, it's a constant accountability, it's a positivity. And then more than that, as they grow, they realize like all of the back of house, like you said, the transaction coordinator, the full time social media marketing person, the operations person, all the advertising, marketing, all the stuff that gets done. If they're a business development person, you know, if they're out there, you know, forming relationships that, and showing properties, they need to focus on that to make money to like grow their business. And they realize like the piece that they are giving to the team is like, it's a bargain for all of that they get because they get to learn, grow, accelerate their, accelerate everything. And you know, in terms of like a new agent, we just, we look back on a year like this, which has been arguably like the hardest year in Real estate for a lot of people. And every single person on my team has had their very best year. You know, I can very comfortably say like you are successful because of your, you've put yourself in this environment where the conditions were really good for you to be successful when you leaned in and worked hard and that's why you got here, you know, and look at all the stuff you learn and it's like a really, you know, we, we meet every, every week, every other week, we meet every quarter and do reviews. It's like constant refinement so that they get more, they get, they stay on path to their vision. Which by the way is like the same thing that I'm doing with my buyers and my sellers. I mean it's, what's the goal? Let's get it, you know, let's really get clear on what that goal is and that vision and then like reverse engineer it. How are we going to get there?
Mike Swenson
Yeah, it really is the idea of kind of this one plus one equals three mentality. I know that a lot of agents are like, oh, I'm, I'm giving the team my commission. And it's like no, no, no, no, no, no. That's probably in an unsuccessful state because you feel like you're doing the team a favor by giving some of your commission to them from a transaction. Wherein the reality is, is a well oiled team. You see the value of what you're paying into the team or what the team is getting out of that because yeah, you've got everybody in the right seat on the right bus and you can do far more business and net far more yourself than you could on your own because of the great people that you've hired. And there's an economies of scale there too where yeah, me as a solo agent, if I'm not paying per file for a transaction, I can't have a transaction coordinator. When you've got a high functioning team, you've also got better high performing people serving the team as well. So it really is an awesome environment. I love teams, have always been on teams because I feel like there's a ton of value. And then like you said, in a year like this year, you need some help, you need some support, you need some counseling to, to guide you through the challenges. And so teams are definitely where it's at. I love it.
Scott Harris
We're therapists for our buyers and sellers and then we need to be that for each other.
Mike Swenson
Now talk a little bit about. You'd mentioned you got a book coming out, the Pursuit of home. You also have your podcast, the Pursuit of Home. How did that come to be or kind of what' the message that you want to get across through that media?
Scott Harris
Well, the book and the podcast, they're, they're companions of one another. So the podcast is, I'm having conversations with real buyers buying real estate and the things that they're going through. And the, and the book, the message is there's this world, this emotional, psychological, spiritual world that everyone dives into when they go to buy a home that everyone goes through and no one talks about. It's not on social media, it's not on reality tv. Yet. If you just interviewed any buyer, anyone after they close are like, oh my God, let me tell you the stories. But like no one's having. So this is a conversation that needs to be brought out into the light. And after 20 years and thousands of transactions, I've seen all of the things that happen along this journey. So what I, this is an act of service. It came out because I'm like, you know, there's no book. There are all these transactional books and there are all these books and you know, you're having, we're having this conversation like helping agents become better. But there's no guide to the emotional journey that people take when they go to buy a home. So what are the roadblocks? What are the bumps in the road? How can you be prepared for them as a buyer, as a first time buyer? You know, how can you get to know yourself better? How can you choose an agent better? How can you, you know, when, how do you really. You make a big checklist and then you realize like, nothing. Even though you think you know what you want, you don't. So it's like the whole journey of ultimately finding a better home that supports you more is like a better life outcome. I mean, I think that there's, there's a conversation or how your home makes your life. It's a partner in your, it's a launching pad for your life. So the book grew out of that desire. And as I started to define how we work and how I think we work differently than a lot of other teams, it was like, you know what? This book really needs to happen. And, you know, I'm really grateful that we found a publisher that wanted to get on board. And, you know, we're, we're just kind of getting the final touches on it and it's going to, you know, be out next year. We're really excited about it.
Mike Swenson
My wife is a therapist and we talk about how really real estate is therapy because you're navigating, you know, whether it's multiple parties looking to purchase a property or sell a property. Right. Sometimes you gotta play middle person and mediator, you know, understanding that it might be due to a job change, a life change, move up, move down. My commute's changing as a result of this. I'm spending all my time after work now packing up and getting ready to move. And so there's so much stress. And so if a, if a buyer or a seller, you know, you're on the phone with them and they snap at you or they're short at you, you have to remember you're interacting with everybody during probably one of their most stressful times of their life. And that's your clients. It's, it's everybody's most stressful time is who you deal with every day. And you've got to remember that and understand that and help process through that. So I love that analogy. That's, that's exactly where people are at when they're buying and selling.
Scott Harris
Look, I'm in. I mean, look, all I can say is that the more as, the more like, I hope that we change the conversation for agents as well. Like, I'm very clear eyed about the experience that home buyers talk about with agents. I think there's a way to make the entire population of 2 million plus real estate agents out there like lift, lift up that professional level because the more they really fully understand what buyers are going through and sellers, you know, we're doing, our businesses 50, 50, the more they can really feel that and understand exactly what you said, that we're meeting people at their most stressed. Like, the more compassionate, the more compassion we have, the more effective we're going to be. I mean, I think every agent should buy a home, go through that yourself, right? Go get a mortgage and see how that makes you feel. Like all of those, all your issues are going to come out on full display. And then you realize, wait a minute, I got to, I got to be the most well adjusted person in this room if I'm going to be a good agent. You know, you got to work on yourself. So I think it's, it's, it's really exciting to me. I mean, getting to work on my team, getting to help buyers like go through this process. I know, it's so sad. It's very satisfying and like getting to do this and communicate this on a bigger, on a bigger scale to a big, you know, to more people is really fulfilling.
Mike Swenson
Scott, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story, the book Pursuit of Home. You've got your podcast, the Pursuit of Home. If you're listening to this and you're in the state of New York, reach out. And if it's not a territory you serve, you've got a great referral for somebody. Anything else that you want to add here before we end our time together?
Scott Harris
They can check me out on LinkedIn. I tell a lot of fun stories about what people do in New York. They're crazy, but I think in many ways they're applicable to wherever people are living and wherever agents are who listen to this are doing business too.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you, Scott, so much for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom, and best of luck to you as you guys continue in the future.
Scott Harris
Thanks, Mike. Really appreciate being here.
