From Teen Mom to Million-Dollar Mogul Who Rewrote the Rules of Success with Erica Wolfe

Transcript

[Mattias]
Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.

[Erica]
And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.

[Mattias]
Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.

[Erica]
Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.

[Mattias]
Ready to level up?

[Erica]
Let’s do it.

[Mattias]
Welcome back to the REI Agent. Today, we have Erica Wolf on the show, which is an agent that has gone through a lot and come very far and done very well, formed a successful team, et cetera, in the Florida area, Jupiter, Florida. But before we get into that, I wanted to talk a little bit about what happened last weekend.

So one of the goals I have this year is to have… So last year, I had a goal of having a good relationship with you. And I’ve been like, you know, screw that.

I’m good. No, but so the way I broke down my goals is to have three kind of action items to track each week. And it just kind of, we never really found meaningful ones.

Like some of them were really good and important and we’ve carried those over, but there was some that just kind of like didn’t ever kind of take off. Is that fair? I mean, I think overall the focus on it was really great.

And I think we had some really good stuff come out of it. More intentionality with dates, which is still there. We try to kind of have like a hangout date every week.

It hasn’t done, I haven’t done great on that.

[Erica]
But, you know, just- I feel like our communication has gotten better because we’ve scheduled like times to talk.

[Mattias]
That’s very true. I mean, honestly, that should be something we track because like that’s probably more important than anything else. And we have been doing that.

So that’s great. But what I wanted to say is this year, I was kind of trying to include the kids a little bit more as well into the goal and kind of make it more like a family, you know, goal to make sure that it’s the areas that you could easily slide on and just kind of raising the awareness where it raising the attention on them. I think it’s just important and to try to keep like a pulse of how things are going and a measurable result.

Like you can say, okay, I’ve tried to spend, you know, this time with you. Let’s see, do what we feel like our relationship’s better, that blah, blah, blah. So it’s been a good thing overall.

And this year, one of the things I’ve tried to do is to do some kind of special outing with the kids once a quarter. And it’s hopefully gonna be an overnight thing. Our little dude is still pretty young.

And so it kind of limits the things we can do with him. So this quarter, there was a Taylor Swift cover concert at a brewery that seemed like the perfect thing to do for the girls at least. So I took them out last Saturday.

Erica stayed back with little dude. They got to dress up. You did their makeup.

You did Isla’s hair. She got her in some curls. What, you did the curling iron, right?

[Erica]
Their red lipstick and their, what is that, the liner? The Taylor Swift eyeliner.

[Mattias]
And Azra wore an outfit from the Reputation. What she wore for the concert in the Reputation era. Is that accurate?

I’m basically a Swifty now.

[Erica]
You wore a Kelsey.

[Mattias]
I wore a Travis Kelsey jersey. I borrowed one from a friend. And then Isla, she was gonna also have a Taylor Swift outfit.

One came in the mail and then it was too big. And then there wasn’t time and there wasn’t availability to get one her size. So we just said, hey, we’re gonna take you to Target and do a special, you can get a special outfit for the concert.

And so she got this really cute bluey dress that has a hood that has ears on it. And I think she calls it her Taylor Swift outfit now.

[Erica]
It’s so cute.

[Mattias]
But it just, you know, there was times throughout the night where I would just look over at Isla, who’s five, and just be like wanting to bawl my eyes out because it’s like this, she’s still my little girl and like she’s got makeup on and stuff. Like Azra’s kind of graduated to almost a teenager now in my view. So it didn’t quite like hit me the same.

And there was this one point and later on in the concert, Isla’s getting tired. And so what she does when she sleeps or when it’s getting cozy, is she rubs her hands on her sleeve. And so she always wants long sleeves and then she sucks her thumb.

But the bluey was a short sleeve dress. So it was a short sleeve shirt. So she had her arm in it and she was like doing this with her short sleeve and sucking her thumb with her hair and curls and makeup.

And I just like, oh my gosh, it’s too much. But anyway, we had a lot of fun. There was, you know, at first the girls were a little bit not eager to get up close, but then once we did, they had ear protection that made them feel a little better.

They absolutely loved being up close. There’s, you know, the exchanging of the wrist bands or what are they called?

[Erica]
Friendship bracelets.

[Mattias]
Friendship bracelets. Yeah, anyway, and then all the, there’s a bunch of little kids. I mean, little girls up front doing like the heart thing with their hands and like trying to get the singer to come and give them a heart.

And so I at one point got Isla and I held her up to try to get her attention and all the girls around because she’s small compared to everybody else. Small to maybe other five-year-olds as well, but she looks, you know, small. And so they were all like, Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, look over here.

And so finally she got noticed and got a heart, got a friendship bracelet. And it was just fun. Oh, I have to say anecdotally when they started and we walked up to the near the front of the stage, the singer Taylor was like eyeing me.

And I was like, oh, hey, what’s up? I, you know, thanks for noticing. And I was like, not sure what to take of it.

She moved on. She was performing, but then a little bit later in the set, she asked, she announced that, you know, her husband was playing guitar, the in real life husband was playing guitar. And she said, aren’t you getting a little hot?

And he, and he took off his shirt and there was a Travis Kelce jersey on underneath. It was like, oh, okay. You weren’t just eyeing me up because I’m beautiful.

[Erica]
You know, at some point, at some level, you can just, oh my gosh, you know, still got it.

[Mattias]
Nope, I don’t. Moving on. But I did get a nice picture of me holding up Isla to get the heart from some mothers behind me.

They thought it was so sweet. So I got that going for me at least.

[Erica]
Yeah, yeah. What a good night for you.

[Mattias]
I want to go to more Taylor Swift cover shows. It’s really great for my ego. But anyway, that’s just kind of an update on, you know, kind of how some of those goals we’ve mentioned it before on the show are going.

I wanna do, what do you think like a, maybe like a, one of those, is it Yogi Bear camps? We have one that’s not too close. Oh, sorry, not too far away.

That wouldn’t be so disappointing maybe for you to miss out on. Part of the whole point is that it’s just me because that’ll just latch on to Erica and be good to bond with me a little bit as well. But yeah, maybe that would be a good next one.

We can do an overnight camp.

[Erica]
Yeah, that’d be great. Be warmer for sure.

[Mattias]
Yeah, and you can maybe go do girl party things.

[Erica]
I will gladly do that. I think they would enjoy it and I would love the free time.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah. So it’s just fun. A fun thing to kind of bring in to focus on and I probably wouldn’t do this otherwise.

And it’d be really cool to see where it leads. So we’ll keep you posted. Anyway, today we have Erica Wolf.

Like I said earlier, Erica is a realtor out of Jupiter, Florida. And she is a digital marketing expert, a luxury real estate agent, kind of niched into that space, a team lead. Started off as a single mom raising two kids, right?

And yeah, so she’s got a great story. She’s kind of learned how to create a business that allows for balance and not working all hours 24 seven weekends, et cetera. So yeah, I think it’s a great conversation.

So without further ado, here’s Erica Wolf. Welcome back to the REI agent. I am here with Erica Wolf.

Erica, thanks so much for joining us.

[Erica Wolfe]
Thank you for having me.

[Mattias]
We’ve got two Ericas in the house.

[Erica]
I was actually a little surprised you didn’t say Erica Clymer because you’re just so used to that.

[Mattias]
My brain is working at least 13% today. So I’m glad I didn’t screw that up. I love the play on your last name.

That’s a fun, it’s gotta be fun for marketing.

[Erica Wolfe]
It really is. I mean, well, @wolfofrealestate on all social platforms. Look, I already plugged myself.

Yeah, it trademarked it too. So that was fun because we had a lot of copycats after it. But it’s made for fun branding, fun swag and has made it a little more memorable.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I know, totally, absolutely. So you’re an agent, you have a fun story. We got into it a little bit before we got on air.

But why don’t you walk us through how you got started in real estate?

[Erica Wolfe]
Okay, well, so that was 16, almost 17 years ago. I keep saying 15 years and then I log into Zillow to check on something and it said 16 years ago. Maybe it has been 16, I started counting and then I’m like, I’m about to turn 38.

So it’s almost 17 years. So I got my license when I was 21. I was working insurance full time.

Weirdly got good at that. Started as somebody’s assistant in insurance. And previously before that, I was in banking.

Not your normal teenage jobs, right? Somehow I was 17 years old and they had me managing a bank. Wild, if you ask me.

[Erica]
Incredible, right? Yeah.

[Erica Wolfe]
Wild. I’m like, wow, what was wrong with their staffing? But then got into insurance assisting and then actually got into sales because I needed to make more money.

Exceeded really well in that, like excelled. And started looking at the commission statements. At the time I had two children and I was like, I need more money.

And you look at the settlement statements that come in for closings because I made relationships with mortgage brokers. And I’m like, I need that kind of money. Not when I’m making an insurance.

So decided to get my real estate license. Did both for quite a bit. So I got licensed in 2008.

Market crashed. Only ever knew the crashed real estate life. But partnered with an attorney who handled short sales and foreclosures.

50% of every transaction we split. But I marketed them on Craigslist as well. So I picked up the buy side a lot of times as well.

Met some investor clients who we started buying deals that weren’t just the listings I was selling for this attorney. And formed a relationship where I was maybe selling them 15 to 20 homes a month. Canadian investor became kind of my mentor.

I didn’t know at the time he was my mentor. And I was like, I’m gonna go off on my own. Quit the insurance job.

The guy who owned the insurance agency said you’ll never make it. And it’s too hard and cutthroat. And actually just full circle yesterday we closed on a $3 million house for that same Canadian investor who was my mentor.

So yeah, took it from there. And I would say around 2012 is really 2011, 2012 when I started utilizing social media but didn’t realize I was utilizing social media and tapped into my sphere. Aside from just doing deals for this investor.

The rest is history basically.

[Mattias]
Yeah, that’s awesome. Do you think that, do you almost thank your former boss for saying that? Like did that fuel your fire?

[Erica Wolfe]
At the time I didn’t think of it. Now in hindsight I look back I was like that was kind of rude. I don’t necessarily think it fueled my fire just because I had to exceed.

I had two children. I had nobody paying my bills. There wasn’t an option of failure.

And I will say I was raised, and I would say a well-to-do family. We spent our Christmases skiing, summers in the Bahamas. The Bahamas is really close to where I live.

So it’s not where you think. But when I got cut off for getting pregnant as a teenager I knew I liked nice things. So I think it genuinely helped me to be like well I can’t be a loser.

I need to make money. And so I can give my kids that same lifestyle. So it was weirdly, that’s where my motivation came from.

But also didn’t realize that until maybe about five years ago that that was my true why. Wow.

[Erica]
Did you, when they cut you off, did they cut you off financially and emotionally? Did they just…

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, well they were never emotionally available. So that wasn’t different. But the financial part of it was pretty hard.

I grew up, had a credit card as a teenager that they paid. They never told me not to spend on it. So when they took that away that was really hard.

[Erica]
Yeah, I bet. And you had to, I’m just thinking, you know, even down to your jobs as a 17 year old you really had to grow up fast.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yes.

[Erica]
You were kind of forced out there, just pushed out the window in a sense.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, it was disappointing and embarrassing to my family. But I stand firmly and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

[Mattias]
I was gonna say, are you, I’m sure when that happened, when you got cut off, that was probably really a heart blow to take, but is that something that you were thankful for then now, looking back?

[Erica Wolfe]
I mean, it was hard, but I don’t think I even got like, I just knew like that’s what it was. It wasn’t truly like I was crying and like, what am I gonna do? Like, it wasn’t like that.

I was like, well, screw them, I’ll figure it out. I don’t need them anyways. Like, I think that was my attitude at that time.

[Erica]
Anger can be a really nice fuel for change and action for sure.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, so, I mean, it’s pretty crazy. Like when you think of it now, I’ve really accomplished a lot in my career. And I still can tell you, like, I’m pretty sure my mom still isn’t proud because I didn’t do it the right way.

And it’s just, you know, at this point, I’m like, there isn’t anything I could do to make it. It’s about me being proud, right? My team being proud, my kids being proud.

Like, are we happy with where we are? So, that’s what I always tell people is like, be proud of yourself. You’ve come a long way.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s a really awesome story. So tell me a little bit more about the social media you got into, just happened to your sphere.

And I imagine you then grew it a little bit further.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, well, really, I think because I was young, it was, Jupiter’s a small community. And the agents that are known have been here for a while, right? They didn’t really take kindly to this young agent being in there.

And I will say they weren’t too nice. So, started on Snapchat, because it’s only your friends that see it. And they have all the filters back then.

I think they were the only platform that allowed you to use all these filters. And I was just making fun of the agents that were mean to me, or making fun of the dinosaur things they said to me. I know this isn’t nice, but this is the reality of it.

I have grown since. But I remember one in particular, it was like a carousel of homes, right? Like a broker’s open.

I’m sitting on the stairs in between. People are there. And I’m like, these five agents just came in and I used a different filter for each of them.

Like some a guy, some an old lady, whatever filters. Changed my tone and said the rude things, or the weird things, or the spacey things they each said to me. And everybody died laughing on Snapchat.

They’re like, this is hilarious. You need to post this on Facebook. I’m like, post it on Facebook?

No, like my family’s there. Like there are other people on Facebook. Snapchat’s safe.

And then I would do more of those. And finally, I got a lead on Snapchat through it. And I was like, maybe I should start posting these on Facebook.

Maybe I should. And so I started taking them and posting them to Facebook. And they were getting shared around the community.

And I started getting more leads. I’m like, what the heck is going on? And then I started community groups locally, posting them there.

And it all really organically happened. But when I started getting the leads from it, I went down the educational tunnel. So I’ve pretty much taken any digital sales funnels course that’s out there.

Every real estate course or coach I’ve been through at that point, just to build the knowledge. But I started not in the real estate sector, but in the digital sales funnel sector with trying to figure out how to get clients. Because I looked young, I sounded young.

I was young. How do I get them to trust me? And through digital ads, you can run some funnels and be everywhere.

And they’re like, all right, maybe we should trust her. Maybe we should give her a shot. There’s nobody else out there running ads on these homes.

[Mattias]
Right. What’s an example of one of the things they said to you that you mimicked with filters?

[Erica Wolfe]
I was like, oh, is your mother the agent of this? And she’s like, no, it’s me. And you’re like, how old are you?

It’s like that or, I wish I remembered all of them. One was a lockbox. She stole a lockbox off the door and said she didn’t, but I knew she stole it.

And so she’s like, are you really calling the cops? I was like, yeah, I want my lockbox back. And it was like a combo one, but like 20 bucks is 20 bucks, okay?

This is what I’m like, need this money. The officer came, so I impersonated the old lady and the officer, because they conveniently had this filter and this really did happen. She took the lockbox off three hours before we funded.

And I was like, we haven’t even funded yet. Like, you can’t do this. He can’t move in yet.

I need my lockbox. Officer comes and she’s swearing she doesn’t have my lockbox. It’s literally in her backseat.

And the officer’s like, ma’am, is that her lockbox? I was like, that’s my lockbox. Give me my lockbox.

So I got to recreate that in post, but I never tell their names. But it’s funny when other agents will recognize like the home behind me or a setting, and they’re like, wait, was it this person or was it so-and-so? And I’m like, yeah, it was.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I was gonna say, that’s gonna be my next question. Did people start finding out that they were on social media or that you were imitating them?

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, probably. Yeah, yeah. But you know what’s weird is they started being nicer to me because I would make a story about it.

[Mattias]
I mean, yeah, it’s kind of showing the egg on their face. Like, they did that rude thing, so.

[Erica Wolfe]
I got my first contractor, developer using, well, I pitched to him. I was like, I can sell your homes for $50,000 more. He’s like, you can?

I’m like, yeah, you’re using this agent that’s not using digital marketing. Let me try. We did a package deal, five homes.

He let me start out with 1% on list side. And I was like, all right, I’ll take it. I used a Snapchat filter when I was checking on them, dressed as a man, so I had a beard and everything, and dressed as a construction worker in boots and stuff.

And I was like, you always have to wear a proper attire. And I’m going through it. I sold, off of that video, five homes in a week.

And he’s like, you’re gonna have all the rest of my listings. And that was before I’m spending money on a videographer or anything like that.

[Erica]
Yeah, it’s like stand-up comedy meets real estate.

[Erica Wolfe]
I swear.

[Mattias]
That’s amazing. I gotta know, though, how has that evolved and how has that evolved to what you do now?

Like, do you do similar things still?

[Erica Wolfe]
Not at all. Not at all. Like, locally, the community is like, can we have another funny video?

Like, I wish I was still funny. I really do. No, you can’t have another one of those because I have to elevate myself to the luxury market now.

So, through coaching, I don’t think I’ve put out a funny video in the past three years, I would say, four years. We were trying to get my price point up was a big thing. So, we got rid of the funny videos.

We hid some of the funny videos. And it’s worked. I mean, we increased my average price point to 1.6. I have homes ranging nine million to three million is a good amount on my luxury, luxury side that I get to take now. Just a different type of video. We spend a lot on videography, you know, and we run the ads on them now. It’s just, what worked for me back then, I don’t think would work for me now.

[Mattias]
So, essentially, you’re raising the bar on like professionalism in the production and everything, even though you had a vein, you’re niching down a different way.

[Erica Wolfe]
Well, and like, even my friends in Sphere like are older now, right? Like, all of us, I guess, mature. We all had to mature and grow up a little bit.

So, I just think being that funny person would probably keep me at a lower price point. Or lower clientele. I may get some one-offs, but at a higher price point, they want an elevated look and feel in marketing package, so.

[Erica]
I’m curious what else you needed to change about yourself or how you speak or how you dress. What else were you needing to shift for that higher price point?

[Erica Wolfe]
Well, South Florida is hard to get like super professional, like fancy, I like to think. When I go to conferences up North, I can wear my suits and things like that. You would sweat really bad here.

So, attire, I don’t think as much. I definitely have more clothes now in general, but I don’t think it shifted that much. Confidence in the way I speak, more about market knowledge.

Like, I know a lot about the data on the market side, but I never spoke on it as much. I thought people would think it was like boring, because they are kind of boring conversations, right? But the more I publicly spoke about those, I did get a higher end of clientele also, right?

Like, they do want an advisor. Not somebody that can make funny videos.

[Mattias]
Yeah, it makes you be taken a little bit more seriously. Makes sense, yeah, totally.

[Erica Wolfe]
And I’ve been around long enough that I’ve watched a lot of agents now who do start on the funny chain, like train of it all, and they all adapt to eventually. It’s hard, it’s a pressure to try to stay in that on role.

[Mattias]
Yeah, yeah, I can only imagine. I haven’t really gone down too many rabbit holes with social media marketing for the sales side. And I do see a lot of attempts at marketing, and I think marketing, honestly, as an agent is really interesting.

How do you put yourself out there? And if you, us as agents are really forced to wear all the hats, unless you’re starting to hire and get to a level where you’re hiring out different things, getting a team together, et cetera. But we are forced to do everything at the beginning at least.

And I think we are trying to sell houses, but then we’re told to be marketers as well. And we see what everybody else does often. And I think a lot of, it’s just different than a lot of other industries, right?

So I mean, there’s not many other industries that have our faces on our business cards, for example. None of the other industries really are talking about sales volume or things that we just closed on. Other industries are thinking about what the person is wanting and kind of tailoring the marketing to that.

We don’t have very much, we don’t have the capacity maybe, or we just don’t have the education, et cetera, to really think through that as much as I think other industries do. Like, I mean, if you have like an insurance company, they’re gonna have a whole marketing division that’s really gonna figure out what their clienteles are thinking, what they want, and then market to that directly.

[Erica Wolfe]
Well, I think agents have a unique opportunity in that because they can become marketing experts, right? There’s so many courses and everything out there. And you can figure buyer avatars, seller avatars out and what things do they watch.

And that came to me after learning digital ads when you’re typing in how to target them and things they like. It’s like, well, wait, what does somebody who wants to buy a $2 million house, what do they like to do? Okay, somebody who’s selling a $2 million house, what do they like to look at online?

Is it business reports? Is it finance reports? Is it stock market?

Is it boats in our area? Is it, what is it, right? So you have to figure out that aspect of it.

And then it’s like, okay, you have your avatar. How do you market to them? I still run all my ads myself.

The marketing aspect is basically me. I have a marketing and operations manager. She has two jobs for the price of one.

And she takes my vision and makes it pretty in print and font and all of that. But it is all from basically my brain of here’s what I want, make it look pretty. But that’s a huge part, that is a huge part in being successful as a real estate agent is figuring out the marketing.

Because you’re supposed to be responsible for marketing the homes.

[Mattias]
Right, right, and so I think that we probably have, I wouldn’t say most people understand how to target ads to other people on Facebook, Google, whatever, for a house. But I think on top of that, just marketing yourself as general, I think that’s, most people are starting basically from square one.

[Erica Wolfe]
100%.

[Mattias]
And yeah, so I mean, would you have any tips for people that maybe light bulbs might be going off in their head because they’ve just been sharing their under contract and just closed and that’s basically all they’ve been doing?

[Erica Wolfe]
Well, that’s proof of concept, right? Proof of success work, that you can do it. But nobody’s entertained by that, nobody, you’re not stopping the scroll.

I always say to stop the scroll, and it can be a photo, right? It doesn’t have to be video. Carousel posts right now, social media is loving, is what invokes emotion, happiness, sadness, wow, like anything that invokes a different emotion, share it, is typically how I go through it.

Whether it’s in my stories or a post, you’re gonna get a lot farther that way. But the problem is when you do get a real estate license, I don’t think they tell you marketing is a huge component of it. And no matter what sector you wanna go to, investing, luxury, first time home buyers, only listings, being a buyer’s agent, you have to learn how to market.

And I always tell new agents, your first three years, you’re paying for your education, alongside that while you’re broke, you might as well watch YouTube and subscribe to all the blogs on marketing. And you can take really any, you don’t have to do real estate marketing, you can look into real estate marketing, but really learn about marketing.

[Mattias]
Great advice, great advice.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, I mean, Facebook, here’s what’s crazy. I have a digital ads course because everybody wants to know the systematic way that I do it. And it’s inexpensive, it’s $299, just to show you just because it’s my number one question asked, people wanna know how you do it.

But what’s wild to me is Facebook has a help section that 100% shows you how to run ads. I mean, but the thing is I paid somebody, I paid somebody, gosh, back in 2011, I think I paid them 10 grand to teach me the digital funnel process, right? Because you wanna know the way they do it, right?

But so much of this stuff is free. You just have to invest your time. And you either have more time or you either have more money.

It’s one or the other. You’re either, when you have more money, you’re paying for your time back. So you just have to lean into what you have more of.

And it’s pretty amazing if you educate yourself what can happen.

[Mattias]
Yeah.

[Erica]
I wanted to ask you kind of going back to having young kids. Excuse me. I would imagine, we have three young kids.

Okay. Our life is very chaotic and fast paced and sometimes a lot of times feels really hard. Yeah.

And there’s two of us. And so I’m just curious if there was a point in time where you felt like you finally got into a rhythm with your career, your kids, your life. Was there a time where you finally felt like you hit your stride?

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, probably two years ago when I got divorced and my oldest is about to move out. My son’s at UF now in college. I really feel like I have things under control now.

I know that’s not the answer, but like, I mean, Lord, I used to work 90, 110 hour weeks. Like that’s just the reality of it. Like I was a one man show until six, now almost seven years ago.

I was doing it all, all the hats, right? Now, I was also the sole provider of my family. So that comes in with it.

But if you’re not the sole provider and you can afford an assistant, I highly recommend getting an assistant as soon as you can afford it. Like don’t go and increase your lifestyle, right? Give that money because it’ll be amazing to have a work balance life.

And in my team, that’s what I strive hard to do. All of my girls are mothers and have younger ones. And I really do pride myself on the fact that most evenings they don’t work and most weekends they don’t work.

It’s now not every, right? But we’re 85% listings on our team. So that helps us on the weekend thing.

And we’ll take shifts. We put it and we have a team calendar who has off this weekend, and it’s multiple times. And everyone, because we work so well and cohesively together, if somebody’s like, well, screw it, I have a showing Saturday and Sunday, I’ll work all weekend.

That’s typically the attitude they have. And then the next weekend, they’re like, I’m definitely taking next weekend off, right? So what I have now, I wish I would have had for myself.

And I think that’s why I focused on running the team in the way that I do. But yeah, no, I don’t think there’s anything called true balance with that, where you guys are out with the young kids. Like it’s just trying to make them all go nicely together.

[Mattias]
Embracing the chaos as best as you can. Yeah. Erica, when did you start forming your team?

[Erica Wolfe]
So six years ago, I would say. My first hire was almost seven years ago. And then after that, we got a transaction coordinator when it was two of us.

So then there was three of us. And then we got Alex, which I don’t know what her position was at that time. It was whatever.

We gave her everything and anything. So she’s in marketing and operations now. She really helped grow.

And then all the other agents came afterwards. My newest agent has been with us for two years and I’m not taking on any new agents. We all work really well together.

All of them make what they wanna make. So I’m not trying to grow some mega team here. I love the culture and yeah.

[Mattias]
That’s important. I think at the end of the day, what is the point? That makes a lot of sense that you’ve been able to achieve this life balance by not having to work weekends and evenings all the time.

So that’s beautiful. When you say you are 85% listings, are you referring out buyers to other people?

[Erica Wolfe]
No, it’s just where we’ve come along and it’s crazy because when I started, I was all buying, right? Aside from when I was working. For that attorney.

I really was all buyers because my sphere is gonna be buyers too just because of what my age was at that time. And I worked really hard to switch to listings. So through the digital marketing as well as print marketing.

So I do both and they go hand in hand. We really were able to farm properly and stay that way.

[Mattias]
That’s cool. That’s awesome. So then I guess the other 15% would be the people that are selling and wanting to buy.

Something different? Is that typically?

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, sometimes I think about it, especially how it was over the past year. I was like, maybe I should just put out some commercials speaking to buyers because we have all these listings that started sitting longer and I’m like, well, that sucks because we have a lot of money invested in all of these homes and they’re not moving because buyers aren’t coming. As we shifted more from a seller’s market to a neutral market that we’re in now, my messaging is pretty clear in talking to sellers and our commercials that are on YouTube and on Facebook are speaking to sellers, right?

Obviously when we’re promoting our listings, we’re trying to get buyers to sell it, but we’re not making buyer-centric commercials or my messaging isn’t directed to buyers.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think that sometimes I think there’s ways to also leverage listings to try to attract more buyers if you have that in your team to filter down or whatever. Certainly something that I’m considering to do.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah, and I think when you talk, we do a lot of business planning every year and we do vision boards and the vision boards are literally up in my kitchen that you can see through this window. I see every girl’s vision board. Really none of them are like, I wanna work every night and every weekend.

None of them scream that to me and that’s where buyers are. Like, of course we’ll take them, right? My first agent, she is working with two separate buyers right now and so she’s been out in the evenings and she’s like, oh my gosh, I forgot what it was like.

She’s like, this is exhausting. She’s like, I better get them under contract today because I’m about done. I was like, all right, you got this.

[Mattias]
And I love that, that you’ve clearly, everybody has an intentional kind of plan for the year every year and that they have goals that they’re trying to hit and you’re working to help them hit that. So that it’s not just the money goal, which is a part of the goal, I’m sure, but it’s also a lifestyle goal. So that’s really cool.

[Erica Wolfe]
Well, one of them, my showing assistant and assistant, she does both. Her vision board has a lot of weddings and babies all over. I’m like, she’s quitting.

She’s a hundred percent quitting this year. This is all I get from this. Stay at home mom is written all over that vision board.

I was like, can you just please give me like two months notice, Gracie? And she laughed. She’s like, I’m not.

I’m like, I don’t know, I’m bored.

[Erica]
What’s on your board for this year?

[Erica Wolfe]
A hundred million. Last year had a lot of Taylor Swift, not this year because she’s not on tour anymore. Luxury homes, a lot of boating.

Networks, cause I want to grow my agent network. Beaches, skiing.

[Erica]
And the boating and beaches and skiing, these are like you doing these things?

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah.

[Erica]
Oh, that sounds lovely.

[Mattias]
Did you make it to a couple of Taylor Swift concerts?

[Erica Wolfe]
Oh yeah, I did. I went to Europe. I was a groupie.

[Mattias]
Which one in Europe?

[Erica Wolfe]
Lyon, outside of Paris.

[Erica]
Oh wow. Oh, our girls would be so jealous.

[Erica Wolfe]
Listen, I put her up there three times. I didn’t know I would see her three times. I did it for like different aspects.

I just liked the pictures of my last year’s vision board, but hey, it came to fruition.

[Erica]
Wow.

[Mattias]
I took our girls to a Taylor Swift cover show at a local brewery last weekend. And that’s as close as we’ve gotten, but it was a lot of fun.

[Erica]
And a lot of the kids there thought it was Taylor, right? They were.

[Erica Wolfe]
Watch the movie, it’s so good, of her tour. I literally just put it on around my house.

[Erica]
They have it memorized, they’ve had Taylor Swift books, actually we’re in our studio downstairs in our house right now. And in the closet, there’s a line of Taylor Swift outfits. They come down here and they do the show and they come on the microphone and they sing.

And then they do an outfit change and come back.

[Mattias]
Yeah, we went through the Eras tour. I was playing guitar with them singing and we had music playing as well. But yeah, it was a fun bonding experience.

It was very interesting. They were really good. The band was really good.

[Erica Wolfe]
Yeah.

[Erica]
Erica, where do you feel like you are just right now in the season you’re in with your balance? How balanced do you feel?

[Erica Wolfe]
Really good, honestly. That’s why I said earlier, the most balanced I’ve ever felt. A lot of it got to being with figuring out what I like and more importantly, what I don’t like and speaking up when I don’t like something.

Figuring out a really good routine that works for me. Picked up Pilates last year. Pretty obsessed with it.

[Mattias]
Nice.

[Erica Wolfe]
Go like four times a week. I think when you have younger kids, right?

And you’re trying to have a career, you don’t take care of yourself. So I think for the first time last year, I really started prioritizing myself. Being a little more selfish.

I don’t know, it’s working out so far.

[Mattias]
I love it. I mean, this is the stuff that we try to preach that there’s a lot of traps you can fall into with real estate. I think there’s a lot of scarcity mindset that happens with real estate.

And so I think you’re a really good example of how you can kind of graduate past that. You can find kind of a vein and run with it, get what you need out of real estate and then also take care of yourself because we don’t wanna be, A, you don’t wanna be the 85-year-old agent in the office still working because they have to.

[Erica Wolfe]
No.

[Mattias]
Or the one and then ends up dying on the job basically, right? Like, I mean, there’s more to life than working. I think also, there’s other people that don’t quit because they just like what they do.

And that’s certainly valid as well. But not needing to work at some point is great. I think that having the other important things in your life as well, like time for pilates, that kind of stuff is also, you’re taking care of yourself, your physical self, your emotional self.

All that is very important. So good work. I have to ask unless, were you gonna say something?

If you have a favorite book that you would recommend, something that might be fundamental for people to read or just one that you currently really enjoy.

[Erica Wolfe]
So a huge Simon Sinek fan, so yeah. Start with Why is a good one. Right now, I’m also reading Unreasonable Hospitality.

That’s the book name, right? Because I don’t wanna add any new systems or processes or anything to my team. But I’m wondering how we shift some of the things.

And it was from a TikTok, so I’m reading this book for the second time. The author was comparing McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A and cost analysis and all of that jazz. And it really is the customer service behind it.

So that’s what we’re focusing on. But both of those right now are what I recommend. You got two.

[Mattias]
Yeah, I don’t think either were on the show before. I’m familiar with Simon’s book. Yeah, which is great.

And it’s obvious that you’re doing that. I mean, you’re having very intentional stuff with your team. So that’s awesome.

And the other one, yeah. I mean, that is definitely, like I think there’s a lot of different ways, a lot of different avatars you can, or ways you can operate your business, right? You can have like kind of, what’s the word I’m looking for?

But you can be like Disney where it’s all about the experience. And that’s kind of what you’re talking about a little bit. And so it’s, yeah, that’s great.

I love it. If people are interested in your digital marketing course, and or just to follow you, what’s the best place to find you?

[Erica Wolfe]
So @wolfeofrealestate on all platforms, Wolf with an E. And then my course is under Wolf Co RE. So it’s Wolf Co, R-E is the name.

It was available. So we took it. It works.

Awesome.

[Mattias]
Yeah, no, definitely people check her out. Erica, thanks so much for being on the REI Agent.

[Erica]
Thank you for having me. It was so fun talking. Thanks for listening to the REI Agent.

[Mattias]
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.

[Erica]
Visit REIAgent.com for more content.

[Mattias]
Until next time, keep building the life you want.

[Erica]
All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.