Why Waiting 3 Years to Buy Your Dream Home Could Cost You $50,000 with Ally Burnett

Ally [00:00:00] It's okay to be a really successful single agent. No one is taking that away from you. When you join a team, joining a team is taking what you already have and amplifying it. And so I think of more single agents sort of thinking about teams in that way

Suneet hey everyone, welcome back to the Reside Platform podcast. I'm your host today, Sunita Agarwal, and I'm super excited to hang out with Ali Burnett today. She's the co-team leader of the Secure Home Finder team in South Carolina. Which she runs with her husband, who will be on soon, Andrew. So the Burnetts have built their business around technology, taking care of client privacy, which is big, and creating a more secure relationship driven home buying and selling experience.

Suneet We're gonna talk about building trust [00:01:00] online, especially in this crazy online AI world We're in. Leading as partners and how to create a client journey that feels both high tech and high touch. Let's jump right in. Allie, what's cracking,

Ally you know, doing that work thing or at the office and I'm excited to be at the podcast.

Suneet Yes. How often do you go to the office?

Ally honestly like four or five days a week. There was a time where we were working out of our home office and we still have one, but as we have grown, our team with reside, we went from five agents to 15 agents in like six months, maybe less. we had to get an office space.

Suneet Awesome. How's that growth been for you?

Ally It's been good. I'd be lying if I didn't say it was a little stressful, but have all my friends at Reside that, you know, have helped support us along the way.

Suneet Listen to all those shout outs in the first minute. All right, good. You even got the shirt on. Good.

Ally And that's why I'm a favorite.

Suneet Yeah, you guys, this episode's gonna [00:02:00] be a lot of fun because me and Ally are homies. So good. Right? There it is. Ally. Now I said it twice.

Ally Ooh. And it's recorded and the world will see it.

Suneet Alright. All right. Let's, let's get started. how did you and your husband end up building this team together?

Ally Good question. So, Andrew and I, fun fact, we got married in 50 dates from the time that we met until the time that we got married. So he already had a team before we even got married. I was actually working, full time and it just kind of came to a point where, just with like family life and as the team started to grow and Andrew was buying, I don't know, like 300 leads a month for himself, it became too much.

Ally And so I ended up. Kind of partnering with him and, I don't know. It's happened really organically, honestly.

Suneet Awesome. how do you guys, 'cause and you know this, there's lots of husband and wife teams. In real estate [00:03:00] and in reside. Right. how do you guys divide roles? This is gonna be a funny answer. So the business runs smoothly without stepping on each other's toes.

Ally great question. And you know, we've actually talked to, some other people that are thinking of maybe, you know, doing it with their partner. And we always tell them, like, test it out a little bit. Like, don't quit your job. So it took me. I don't know, like a year and a half of us being married before, like we felt like we were at a good spot where we could both work together.

Ally Mm-hmm. You know, we both have different backgrounds and so because of that, like we kind of just, we play off each other. Right. So like. Yes, we're working in the business collectively, but we also kind of have like our own separate silos that we're doing things and then we come together. But I think the main thing is you have to have alignment on the top, right?

Ally So we may not always know what our goal is, but we know what, what we want, like somewhat what we want our outcome to be. And [00:04:00] we're very aligned on how we want the team to run, how we want our day to day to look like and what we need to do to get there. And once we kind of have that roadmap. Like that is what has really helped us become successful, I think.

Suneet I love that. it's funny, right? I mean, I've been married. Well, it's not funny. it's interesting. my wife and I have spoken about her coming into the business and we've never been able to find alignment on a way to make it work. Here I am this fancy coach coaching couples in business, but, uh. Like, what do you think people get wrong there?

Ally Well, you know, it takes some humility, right? Because when you are already, and I give Andrew like a lot of credit for that, right? Because when you're already running a successful business and then now you wanna grow. But like, you could do everything like Andrew doesn't need me. Like I'll be the first thing.

Ally He doesn't need me, but like. There are parts of the business that like he didn't enjoy doing. So it's like, okay, like what do you enjoy [00:05:00] doing? What do I enjoy doing? And like lucky for us, they really weren't the same things.

Suneet Yes, yes. I love that. So find your lane and stick to it.

Ally And where your strengths are.

Suneet Yeah. Good point. How often does work come home with you guys?

Ally Oh, define. Come home. Define that.

Suneet In about to go to bed and can you believe so and so did so and so?

Ally Oh, every day. That's how we talk about people

Suneet every day.

Ally Oh yeah. Every day. But it's never like, you know, sometimes we do argue about work, and I think we argue about more work, more in the beginning.

Ally but more it's just like us laying in bed and we're like, Hmm, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Oh, I looked this thing up. We're watching videos. We're we're watching, you know, watching your content. Hey, did you see this? Did you see that? Like, it's more of just like a conversation, like I think for some people,

Ally Work is work and for us it's more of like, it's just our life. Like I know that seems lame Totally. But like we're just nerds. No, it

Suneet doesn't seem lame. I [00:06:00] mean all this work life balance bullshit is bullshit. Right. I remember maybe my second year as an agent and I was crushing and my eldest daughter was a baby and like work life balance work was like a big bus topic.

Suneet First time I heard about it and I really went down that journey. Until I found Tony Robbins actually, that said work life integration, because, I mean, I don't know about you, but my favorite hobby is working.

Ally It's funny you say that. Yeah. Because someone asked me the other day, well, maybe how could you, you know, share your hobbies with your clients?

Ally And I'm like, well, they're not real estate agents, so I don't really know.

Suneet Yeah, exactly.

Suneet You talk a lot about building relationships before someone's ready to buy. Sometimes like nurturing leads. Which is building the relationship fancy talk. Right. For months or years, which is hard.

Suneet Right. How do you [00:07:00] nurture, what's the secret to effective nurture without a bunch of pressure?

Ally Sure. I don't think there's really any secret. It's the only secret is consistency. So, I think that the main thing is you gotta have your systems and structures, right? So, you know, obviously making sure you have a CRM, making sure you're cleaning your database, making sure you have good stages, that people are staged properly.

Ally Yes. so like that is a key to it, right? Because you wanna make sure that you and your agents are identifying things. properly when you're talking to 'em on the phone because, you know, if someone's buying next week versus three years from now, the cadence is not gonna be the same. Sure. so I would say one, making sure that your pipeline is good and making sure that you're managing that, like, within follow-up boss or if you don't know how to do that, hire someone that can help you manage it within follow up boss.

Ally making sure that like. You know, your cadence, right? Like it's not just like random or like, oh yeah, I was thinking of snee, like let me call him. Like, it needs to be very, very thought out, [00:08:00] methodical, and on a good cadence really.

Suneet Yeah. Love that. so you guys are like, have this like ecosystem, right?

Suneet Where you guys want like. To envelop the clients with their resources, right? How did he go about building like that network that you can trust to refer to people?

Ally Okay, sure. you know, sometimes we kind of think of ourselves as concierge, so,

Suneet oh, I like that.

Ally Concierge. Yeah.

Suneet So

Ally concierge. so you know, from start to finish, right?

Ally Because we're in a second home market, and so when you're in a second home market, sometimes people are just coming down here on vacation. So like the first step is finding out when you coming here again, can I meet you while you're here? Even if we don't look at houses, setting up like that first buyer consult, putting a face to a name.

Ally Then from there, you know, you could do. virtuals and also too, like leveraging your team. So for us, when we talk to clients, we tell them we have 18 agents on our team. We can serve you from Wilmington, North Carolina, all the way down to Georgetown, South Carolina, all the way out to Taber City, [00:09:00] North Carolina.

Ally And so if, like, we have a lady right now, she's in town for three months and so she has no clue where she wants to go. So we're gonna set up an itinerary for her. In like, basically like one hour pockets and she's gonna meet with one of our agents in each one of those pockets and we're gonna have to work out the money later and see who, who wins the deal.

Ally Right. But, being able to give that surface. 'cause a lot of agents, you know, if they're, if you're just a single agent out there in the world or you're a small team, like you probably can't do that.

Suneet Totally. Yeah. That's really good. What other, like, what other challenges do you think is it that come about from.

Suneet Being in a second home market because I'm not in one.

Ally Um, a few things. The not a lot of urgency. Because a lot of people that are moving here, it's a, either a second home or perhaps a retirement home. So we have kind of talked about people, you know, talked with people about it's this buzzword, I don't know, it's called retirement.

Ally So we've talked to people about this. I haven't heard that Retirement, right? [00:10:00] Because if, you know, our appreciation here is really good. And so it's one of the top five places in America to retire. So because of that, like waiting three years could cost you 40, 50 grand. Wow. So when, when you break that up over a mortgage, like it probably wasn't worth it like you probably should buy now.

Ally so I would say, lack of motivation is part of it. I would say. The other part too is like, you know, there's a lot of agents in markets that can do open houses. and that could work. But like here, the person that's buying their house is in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, those places.

Ally So like, really like getting ahead of it. So like Andrew does a great job on like, coming up with those long tail keywords to try and get that person that's thinking about coming down here before they're even here. 'cause by the time they're here. They're probably already working with an agent. Sure. So that's part of that, that building the trust over the course of time, because sometimes we don't meet people till three, four years later.

Ally but we've been talking to them that, that [00:11:00] whole time on the phone, they feel like they know us. so I, I hope that it kind of answers it.

Suneet Yeah. No, that's, that's super good. are the team leaders out there listening? What advice do you have for them to create a business like yours? Growing and able to manage multiple places and working with your spouse, although we already talked about those tips, but, but about just the team leader listening right now.

Ally Well, step one, stop doing it on your own. You need to, connect with people that have already done it before. what we realize and what we tell people all the time is like we wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, like, and embarrassing an amount of money trying to figure out different things on our own.

Ally And I think. Most of it was good. A lot of it was right, but was it the quickest and most effective way? Probably not. So plugging in with people that know what they're doing, having a coach or like in the case of reside, having multiple coaches, multiple different, you [00:12:00] know, professionals leaning in different ways like.

Ally That's one thing I love about Reside because, you know, like you have a, different background than John and John has a different background than Mia. And so being able to kind of like listen to everybody and like Brooke and, and Lauren, I mean, TC background. So it just, you know, like they're in the weeds, like they've been in the weeds.

Ally So try to connect with people that have already done it and that would, be my number one suggestion. And then on the marriage thing, you know, we kind of talked about it, but I think. Making sure that you're in alignment. Like there are even some teams that are like two, like two different, you know, like I know I think out in Arizona, Kathy, and.

Ally I can't think of her name. She's gonna be so mad at me when she sees this. Kathy and Anna. Kathy and Anna. Yeah. Like, you know, they're two women that are working together, you know, but they have mom and daughter.

Suneet Yeah.

Ally Yeah. So they have alignment. So the main thing is having alignment. 'cause that's what's gonna equal success.

Ally I.

Suneet Yes. And for everyone listening, [00:13:00] I did a great episode with Kathy Courtney, while back. So if you wanna hear what Kathy had to say about working with, with her daughter, make sure you go back and listen to that episode.

Suneet now, mom, motherhood, how many kids did do you have? We

Ally have four.

Suneet You have four kids. So let me get this straight. You run this business and you're a mom of four kids?

Ally Yep.

Suneet Do you sleep?

Ally Uh, not that much. And no nanny? No nanny people.

Suneet What's the secret?

Ally time blocking, time management. church, I don't know. Like

Suneet church. Pray a lot. I mean, like, look. So time blocking and time management.

Suneet Is that really like something that really helps you?

Ally For sure. I have to, because you know, like in one of our kids, like our youngest one, she's chronically sick. Like I have to take her to therapy five to six times a week. So like on top of working on top of the other three kids I have to [00:14:00] take her to therapy.

Ally So making sure, like in the morning, you know, I'm doing, I'm doing our recruiting calls, I'm doing all of our, follow up, boss follow up. I'm meeting with our agents, like everything is pretty much to a t.

Suneet Good. And that's the secret to life, ladies and gentlemen, is have a plan. Stick to the plan. Right. I don't know, for people listening and watching this who have followed me for however many years, or maybe it's new, like I talk about this a lot because a lot of my success comes to time blocking and actually doing the shit.

Suneet Right. Period. let's talk about recruiting. Okay. What's your favorite part about recruiting agents?

Ally when they signed the contract and they're really excited to join the team.

Suneet Aren't you making a bunch of recruiting calls?

Ally Yeah, I mean, at least the five of the day for sure.

Ally Good. you know, I will tell you that, you know, we're pushing and pushing our agents to make calls and call leads. And for people like Andrew and I, it comes naturally. It's no problem. [00:15:00] You know, it's very comfortable. I feel like the recruiting calls have been uncomfortable. But you know, like what has continued to drive me is like I know that we're sitting on abundance of leads and way too much opportunity and not enough agents, and there's agents out there that like need to feed their family and need to, you know, like sell property.

Ally And so like that's what kind of keeps me going and it's really exciting. Like when we have someone that you know and we're honored that somebody trusted us to help guide them into real estate. It's a huge deal.

Suneet Yeah, it's a big deal. Like, you know, as leaders we have a fiduciary duty to the people that we lead.

Suneet And that's such an honor, number one and number two, like there's a lot of trust and like we don't wanna let anybody down. I feel the same way about people like you, right? Is we got a big fiduciary duty and we wanna see the best for people, especially if they're doing what it takes. [00:16:00] How is making the calls, how long did it take you to get used to get comfy and calling, making the recruiting calls

Ally work in progress?

Ally Like, I'm still not comfy with the get comfy. Like it's still slightly awkward, but you know. Is you awkward? Yeah, because it doesn't, doesn't come natural really. And you know, like. It works. There's a cadence to it. There's a reason why you do it. There is, I understand that there's like a way higher methodology psychology behind it that's like way past my pay grade.

Ally And so I've just kind of trusted in it. yeah, I'm still not comfortable. That's the truth. That's the honest truth.

Suneet Yeah. So I mean, all that means is reps.

Suneet So as also your coach, here's a coaching moment. So do you have the darn GPTI made for the get comfy calls?

Ally I do, I do.

Suneet Do you ever use it?

Ally I have, you know, I was actually gonna ask Andrew if he can change the [00:17:00] voice. 'cause I kind of don't like the voice on it. Can you do that?

Suneet I think he can. Yeah.

Ally That's like such a petty thing. But

Suneet I mean, we got some other people in reside. Probably many people in reside. Many people. Period. Let me just change that.

Suneet Who don't like making calls? There's phone aversion. Maybe some fear, maybe some discomfort. Right? And I get it. so. Several of them have told me that before they start a calling block, even if it is five calls per day, they fire up that ai, make a couple fake calls, get the heebie-jeebies out, get loose, and then get on the phone.

Suneet What do you think about that,

Ally Al? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a good, like, you know, it's like a warmup before the game. Another thing too, like, I don't know if we've ever talked about it, but we're in a brokerage with 600 agents. So like me just sitting here, since we've been on this podcast, I've had three people knock on my door that are not on our team.

Ally So we do have a [00:18:00] little bit of road traffic near our office. So that does help. And sometimes I do count that into my five calls because it's a face-to-face and I'm having the conversation. You count it.

Suneet And that's one of the things for everybody listening. I discovered this when I first started my team and I was at a, a larger Keller Williams office at the time.

Suneet And like a lot of my recruiting was done from people who just joined the brokerage, right? There was a lot of opportunity there. So if you are, in a larger organization, even cloud-based, like there's opportunities within your own company to recruit, You just have to use the same principles that we teach every day, right?

Ally Agree, agree. And one thing I will say that has been. Mind blowing for me, I never thought until like the last couple weeks that people from other brokerages and other teams would refer other agents to our team.

Suneet Yes,

Ally through recruiting. And like, [00:19:00] one thing that I have started doing too, like when I'm calling my leads and they've already bought a house with someone, I ask them, Hey, who did you buy a house with?

Ally Were they a good agent? Like, tell me about that person. And at first they're a little skeptical and I say to them, listen, some of the best people we've recruited are actually from leads that we weren't able to close. And then I call that agent and I'm like. Hey, I just talked to a b, C person and they said you were an awesome agent and I would love to get to know you.

Ally And then, you know, I jumped into the get comfy script of course. But you know, like I tell them like, Hey, I just talked to,

Suneet I love that, Ali. You never told me that. That's fire.

Ally Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, thanks.

Suneet Yeah. Good. Um, what do you think? Bouncing questions off you. Okay. So, okay. What do you think clients value most when working with an team?

Suneet When they're looking to work with an.

Ally I would say collective knowledge. So like in our market there's lots of small [00:20:00] towns that encompass one general area. Sure. And each one of those small towns are very, very different. And so I think clients really value 'cause, especially because those people are coming from, that northeast area.

Ally And they may not know the difference between the different towns, like they really value. Working with people that know a lot of information about each one to make them, help them make the best decision possible.

Suneet Okay. Yeah. Good. Collective knowledge. I love that. And for people listening, like lean on your team or brokerage, right?

Suneet It doesn't mean you don't have to be the solo person no matter if you are solo. Right? Like I remember when I was new, I would say, yeah, we sold however many. Tons of houses because I was leaning on the brokerage, leaning on the team. So just so don't forget about that. Can I just mention I love Myrtle and I love Charleston.

Suneet I haven't been to Carolina in almost two years.

Ally Really

Suneet wild dunes. [00:21:00] Have you ever talked about wild dunes?

Ally I mean, so before I was full-time in real estate, I was, on the executive team at the largest HA management company in North America. And that was part of my territory. But that's like way far away.

Ally That's like two hours from us. Like that's not even But you guys' have access. Yeah, we, yeah. We don't have access to the MLS for Wild Dunes is located,

Suneet located. How much mini golf do you play?

Ally None. Only if the kids like beg or like, sometimes, you know, like I'll get coupons, like the, you know, like one round free with the purchase of a round.

Ally Like, then we may go, but like outside of that, no.

Suneet are you from Myrtle?

Ally Yeah.

Suneet Born and raised.

Ally Yep. Born and raised. Yep. How was that? Our whole family, I mean, fine. I feel like I've never really lived anywhere else other than here. And then I went to the University of South Carolina, which is only a couple hours down the road, but I guess fine, all my family's here.

Ally Like I even still have a great grandma that is alive and lives here.

Suneet Oh, dude, that beach in [00:22:00] Carolina is so awesome.

Ally No, no. And send me to Aruba. I need clear water. I need to see my toes.

Suneet Okay. I'm not saying I'm getting in the ocean. I'm saying that the beach is super nice.

Ally You know, I just, we, we don't get out there.

Ally And then the other thing too, with kids, it's stressful. The beach is like the most stressful place with kids, especially little kids.

Suneet You're right, right. And then they get sand everywhere and everyone has to get a shower. Yeah, you're right. Long hair, sand in the hair, sand in every sand everywhere. Right.

Suneet It's,

Ally yeah. And like, you know, the, the 6-year-old, she's way smaller. Than our other kids that are 14, 12, and 11. So she's trying to go like way out in the water with the big kids. Yeah. That is stressful. That is stressful.

Suneet Okay, good. So yeah,

Ally it's enough for me.

Suneet You gave me some advice for team leaders. What are some, what's some advice you have for agents?

Ally good question. Good question. You know, agents, if you're listening. It's okay to be a really successful [00:23:00] single agent. No one is taking that away from you. When you join a team, joining a team is taking what you already have and amplifying it. And so I think of more single agents sort of thinking about teams in that way.

Ally Or like one thing Andrew kind of says to agents, they're like, Hey. He's like, Hey, how much are you spending every month on your CRM and your dot loop and buying leads and whatever? And like a lot of times, like the amount of money that they're putting in. Versus the amount of money that they're making.

Ally It's not, it's not a 50 50 split, I can tell you that.

Suneet Totally. good advice. So second to last question, what's next for you guys and the Secure Home Found Secure Home Finder team?

Ally Well, one thing I'm excited about is we started our own podcast, the Buyer's Box Podcast. Yes. That has been really exciting for us. We have some awesome people that are gonna be on our podcast. Hopefully you'll be coming on our podcast and we have lots of [00:24:00] people. lots of people from Reside are coming on our podcast.

Ally that's exciting for like Andrew and I and as far as the team, you know, we're continuing to grow. we're really looking for some North Carolina agents because we have like, literally thousands of leads. You'll laugh at this. So I decided, I was like, Hey, let's try. Our system in North Carolina.

Ally So I was like, I'm gonna get my North Carolina license. Let's start from zero. Let's see how quickly I can close the deal while doing everything else. Well, within 60 days I had a pending. So then we were like, okay, this works. And so Andrew was like, okay, I just bought 2,500 leads and I was like.

Ally I'm only one person, dude. What are you, whatcha doing? So, we're definitely gonna be expanding into North Carolina because we have, way too many opportunities. And right now only, myself and one other agent who's, she's one of our top agents, so she's already busy here. I think that's probably the next exciting thing is North Carolina and hopefully coaching.

Ally We're, we're, we're working on our way to coaching.

Suneet Good, good, good. She keeps on putting it out there. You guys. [00:25:00] Allie does not stop. So that's one thing that I love about you. If somebody wants to send you a referral for business or talk more about you or find out more about your guys' new podcast, which I've been watching you guys, sounds awesome.

Suneet So way to go. Where do they go?

Ally Well, that's a great question. You know, we're, we're still in progress. Hopefully our coach SUNY can help us come up with a really good landing page, for our collective efforts here. but for now you can just email me a LL y@securehomefinder.com and I can get, get all the resources and we're on Facebook.

Ally Feel free to message me, follow us, on our Buyer Box podcast page, or we do have a secure Home finder page, website too. Instagram Home finder team.com and our Facebook page, and we give 30% referrals.

Suneet Yeah, so make sure to send all your referrals in the Carolinas. I don't care where it is in the Carolina.

Suneet Send it to the Burnetts. How about that?

Ally [00:26:00] Good with me. We have, referral partners, like agents that we work exclusively with in literally every corner of North and South Carolina.

Suneet Awesome. Love that. Well guys and Allie, thank you so much for being here today. This is a lot of fun. We didn't even talk that much smack to each other, so we kept it professional.

Suneet Everybody.

Ally It's recorded.

Suneet Yeah, it's evidence. if you enjoy this episode, everybody make sure to like, subscribe and leave a review. So you never miss a future conversation. Be sure to check out the links and the description to learn more about Ali and all the cool stuff they're doing at the Secure Home Finder team.

Suneet My name is Sunni Agarwal. Thanks for listening to the Reside Platform podcast and I'll see you next time. Peace.