KW’s Jay Papasan on success through business habits, not flashy marketing

HousingWire

This week on RealTrending, Tracey Velt talks with Jay Papasan, executive at Keller Williams Realty and co-author of The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.   Tracey and Jay talk about what it really takes for rookie agents to thrive in today’s market, from building a solid database to developing effective lead generation habits early on. Jay shares the inspiration behind his new and upcoming book The Rookie Real Estate Agent and offers some veteran advice on prospecting, compliance, and why foundational business habits matter more than flashy branding.   Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:   Most new agents fail because they miss the fundamentals.   A database of 250+ contacts is a tipping point for success.   Lead generation beats branding—especially in the early days.   AI tools can support—but not replace—agent action.   Open houses remain a top lead source for beginners.   New agents need structure, discipline, and a runway to succeed.   Related to this episode:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ⁠Jay Papasan⁠  https://www.jaypapasan.com/  ⁠Jay Papasan  | LinkedIn⁠  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaypapasan/  ⁠Jay Papasan | KWRI⁠  https://kwri.kw.com/leadership/jay-papasan/   ⁠⁠⁠The RealTrending podcast features conversations with the brightest minds in real estate. Every Monday, brokerage leaders, top agents, team leaders, and industry experts join us to share their secrets to success, trends, and the lessons they’ve learned. Hosted by Tracey Velt and produced by the Hou

Transcript

00:00Are you actually participating in the habits that you need for success in real estate?

00:06Today, I spoke with Jay Papasan. He's an author, a corporate speaker, and an executive at Keller

00:11Williams Realty. And he went over the habits that every real estate agent, not just new agents,

00:17but every real estate agent needs to be doing in order to succeed. And it's a really interesting

00:25conversation. So enjoy the podcast. Good morning, Jay. Welcome to The Real Trending Podcast.

00:31I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know who wouldn't know

00:37you, but I'm going to have you just do a little introduction about yourself to the audience.

00:44Sure. I mean, my through line has always been books. And I unexpectedly launched a whole career

00:50in real estate in 2000 when I joined Keller Williams. Back then, there were 27 employees

00:56and 6,700 agents. Today, I don't even know how many employees we have. I think we're in 56 countries

01:02and I like 180,000 associates around the world. So it's been a bit of a rocket ride, but I've had

01:08the privilege of working shoulder to shoulder with the founder, Gary Keller. We've written a number of

01:14books together. If people have been exploring a career or have a career in real estate, they've

01:19probably heard of The Millionaire Real Estate Agent or Shift or The Millionaire Real Estate Investor.

01:23We also wrote a general business book called The One Thing. All told, our books have sold about 6.8

01:29million copies. And I think we're up to about 44 languages now. Congratulations. And you have a new

01:35book out. It is called The Rookie Real Estate Agent. And so where did you, what was the gap that you saw

01:42in the industry that provoked you to write this book? Well, I mean, just as a publisher, I used to

01:50work at HarperCollins. We always analyze the market. And there hasn't really been a new traditionally

01:57published book or not a self-published book in this category in close to 20 years. So people are still

02:04giving the same old books out. And a lot of people were getting The Millionaire Real Estate Agent,

02:09which is great to kind of like expand your mind, set your mindset, but it's not really a tactical

02:15guide for how to stick. So the inspiration is really, we hear this stat. I don't know that I

02:20can verify it, but it sounds accurate to me that about 85% of all new agents will be out of the

02:27industry within 18 to 24 months. So they come in with high hopes for a new career, you know, to be

02:34their own business people. And because they don't get the information they need when they need it,

02:40a lot of them kind of cycle right back out. And I feel like we can do better than that as an industry.

02:46So what kind of information in the book, if you were to write this 10 years ago,

02:52what's different about today?

02:54I think we address some social media, right? So that was brand new back then. We address it

03:03tangentially, but it's not the point. So like what's actually surprising is how little the basics

03:10change over time. So a lot of people want to move past the simple, boring things you have to do to be

03:16successful, but they don't tend to change a lot. So like this actually came out of a series of

03:22questions. We were interviewing, every year we interview more people for the Millionaire Real

03:26Estate Agent. We have our podcast, you know, we have all of the products that we continue to build

03:31around kind of our flagship book. And we would ask the question, what's the thing that you did your

03:36first year that other agents don't? And we're asking people that are doing like 120 million in volume.

03:42These are the biggest businesses in our industry. And I started to notice a pattern. They were all saying

03:47the same five or six things. And I was like, I think that in itself is a book. How do we give

03:52people the proven fundamentals so they can launch a career and hit up? Our goal is to hit six figures

03:58in income in the first 12 months. That's the question we asked for the book. Okay, great. So you've

04:04worked with a bunch of top producing agents over the years. So when you look at who succeeds early in

04:11real estate, in who struggles, what are some of the patterns that really stand out for you?

04:19I think they treat it like a business. So I think a lot of people come into this, a huge percentage of

04:25them, it's a second career, it might be a semi-retirement career, depending on where they are,

04:30or it's a part-time job. And the reality is they will announce that they've launched their business,

04:36but they're not really treating it that way. They're treating it kind of like a side gig or a hobby.

04:40And so I do think fundamentally understanding that you've launched a business, like you have to pay

04:45quarterly taxes, right? We all hear those mistakes. And then it's really about five habits.

04:51So it's not a lot of things. They build habits around prospecting and marketing. We call that

04:57lead generation. They do habits around role play. People think, oh, role play is for beginners. But if

05:03you interview the top, top agents, they're still doing it. They're still doing it with their teams.

05:08They still sharpen the saw every day. It's just 20 minutes. They work from a database.

05:15They treat their finances like, you know, they do the simple things. Like they might have a simple

05:20P&L. They have separate accounts. And they really are very purposeful around their education.

05:27They're not just going to the class because it's got free donuts or free lunch. They're going because

05:31it's information they need when they need it. So like those five categories kind of add up to a whole

05:37bunch of success. So where do you stand on databases? I've heard two different stories. I've heard get

05:43as many people in there as possible and, you know, market to them. And then I've heard all you need is

05:49like 100 really good people in your database and to hit those 100 people, you know, quarterly with

05:58something. What is your advice? Well, we actually devote three whole chapters to the database.

06:04That's how important. And it was kind of an accountability moment. We've been telling agents

06:09for years and years that your business is your database. Your database is your business. And that

06:15is the only path long term to sustainable predictable business. So I would say it's more than 100 unless they

06:23are incredibly well positioned clients or very high price point. But in general, we predict that about

06:296.5% of your database will transact every year. So if you just do the numbers, about 65% of people in

06:38the United States are homeowners, and they move on average about every 10 years. So you can do the math.

06:45So if you had 100 people, you might have seven transactions. Can you get all of them? And is that enough for

06:51your business? There's a great article called 1000 true fans, I think it's by Mark Andrensen.

06:57And it's this idea that if you have a database of about 1000 people that truly know you and know what

07:04you're in business for, you can build actually an enormous business from that. So I would aim people

07:10more towards hitting that goal. And we have evidence that just hitting 250 in your database is actually a

07:17tipping point. So if the average person knows 150 people, you got to think that realtors know a lot

07:24more. Right? So can we purposely get about 250 people in our database to start and then start

07:31communicating with them regularly? Yeah, absolutely. So how do you advise new agents to kind of balance the

07:38lead generation with learning the business over their first year?

07:43So there's real tension, like you get your real estate license, and it teaches you nothing about

07:48how to build a business. Right? It teaches you how to transact the business in legal terms, mostly.

07:55So there is kind of a minimum viable amount of education we need. So I think I the motto I would

08:02preach is just in time learning instead of just in case learning. I think the mistake a lot of people

08:09make, and it's actually the number one myth understanding that we say that people have,

08:14is they think they have to know everything before they can take action. It's actually just the

08:18opposite. You need to know the minimum to take action. By taking action, you'll see where you have

08:23gaps like, oh, I don't really know how to say that. Maybe I need to do some role play exercises and

08:29conversation exercises with an experienced agent. And then I go back and do it again. So I think minimum

08:36viable education and just in time learning is where to go with the resources we currently have

08:42available. I know we as a brokerage have a massive library of on-demand content. Most of our competitors

08:48do too, or there's YouTube, or frankly, there's this book. As I get to the place where I'm stuck,

08:55I now can jump in and rapidly learn the things that I really need to learn in order to do the thing.

09:01We've got to get out of this, I have to know everything trap. It stops so many agents,

09:05and it delays their income. You think about how fast we earn income in this business. If you had

09:12a willing buyer or seller day one, it could still be 120 days before you got paid.

09:17So there is some urgency to get into production, and that should trump. Lead gen should be the trump

09:24card over education unless you just can't move forward. Yeah, absolutely. And there's definitely,

09:32I would say, an obsession with social media and personal branding right now. So how should rookie

09:39agents focus visibility or skill building? What is your recommendation there?

09:49Skill building, obviously. That's where I'm going to go every time. I do think that social media is a

09:54gift for new agents because it's largely free. So it's an investment of time, not money. And that is

10:01really great when you're just starting a new business. But the question they have to ask themselves,

10:06and I've literally encouraged people to put a sticky note on their computer screen if they're at work

10:12doing this, and just ask the question, am I networking or am I not working? And a lot of times,

10:20we get caught drifting through the scroll and we're not really working anymore, right? We're just now

10:25caught up in the dopamine rush that some very high paid engineers in California have learned how to

10:31trick us into. So I think I would go in with purpose. And when we're talking with people, like if you have

10:37an open house, you're going to promote it on social. It's a great way to tell your friends and everybody in

10:42your sphere, one, that you're a active, busy real estate agent. I'm doing the work. I'm touring this home.

10:49Those are great ways to kind of document your journey to kind of build this very basic brand

10:55of I'm in this industry, I'm working every day. And you document the work versus spending lots of

11:01times on Canva building out your little social campaigns. Branding can come over time. Let's

11:08focus on the lead gen. And most of the business, frankly, is not going to be in stories or reels.

11:13It's going to be in your DMs, right? Which goes right back to that's just another way to prospect.

11:18Hey, Tracy, I saw that your kid graduated this week. Congratulations. Are you thinking about

11:24maybe buying an investment home for them when they go to college? Like, how do I turn every

11:28conversation into a potential real estate conversation without being that guy?

11:33Yeah. Well, and I have to mention this because this morning at probably 8am, I got a phone call on

11:40my cell phone from a number that I didn't know. And it was Cocoa Beach. So it was close to me and I

11:46thought I'm just going to answer it. Well, it was a Keller Williams agent, actually.

11:51I think Sean Flaherty or Flannery, I can't remember, prospecting, just calling me to find

11:57out if I knew anybody buying or selling a house. And I live in a neighborhood that there are not a lot

12:03of listings in here. And it's a desirable neighborhood. And he was the first call that

12:08I've gotten in probably two years. Two years. Well, here's the thing. We're now aware that

12:16TCPA guidelines matter a lot. And we do spend a significant portion of the book making sure that

12:23new agents understand that. A lot of people think, I'm too small. It doesn't matter. It does.

12:27Yeah. So we've seen even smaller teams get caught up in these class action lawsuits. So yes, prospect,

12:36but do it in a TCPA compliant manner. So I would tell you, we do a lot and we actually teach what's

12:42called golden letters in the book. And that obviously you can do it through door knocking,

12:47you can do it through letters, but basically you're going to a neighborhood like yours, very desirable.

12:52You have buyers and you're like, have you ever thought of selling your home? It is a very

12:57great way, relatively inexpensive way to get listings. And that is a massive jump ahead for

13:05most new agents to actually have a home to list versus a buyer to represent.

13:08Yeah. And he was compliant. I had worked with him before, not in a professional capacity for real

13:15estate, but in a capacity through journalism. So yeah. Fantastic. Good for him and way to go out

13:22there and work his database. There we go. Absolutely. So you've long been a proponent

13:28of models and systems. So how has Keller Williams kind of evolved its training approach and strategy

13:34for today's agent? So I can remember way back when, when I first started Gary, Dave Jinks, when he was

13:41still alive back then, we wrote a course called camp four, four, three. Right. And it was like four buyers

13:47and four listings in the first 90 days, three months. But like, we tried to put a very tight

13:55timeframe on it and ask what are the activities they need to do to launch their career. And it's

13:59been called career launch. Now it's called ignite. And I think we're on the fourth generation, but the

14:04same thing. What, if you ask the question, how does someone right now, I just asked our head of education

14:11and Robert said, our goal with ignite now is nine agreements in 120 days, very specific number nine.

14:19I was like, okay, talk to me about that, but we're not going to go into it. But if you ask a specific

14:24question, it really constrains what you're doing, right? You can't just do anything and get nine

14:29agreements in 120 days. So it focuses on a model that's designed to get an outcome. And we have some

14:37evidence or hopefully a lot of evidence. That's usually how we work. We interview hunt,

14:40we interviewed 250 agents for this book. Like what is the pattern of success? And so that's how we

14:47always do it. And because the industry is always changing, we all, we have to kind of reframe the

14:52fundamentals because a lot of times you say open house and people hold their nose. I'm sorry, there's

14:58really cool ways to do an open house now, and they will actually get you a ton of business.

15:03Yeah. And what about AI? And, you know, that's obviously a big buzzword now, you know,

15:10you gotta, you gotta get involved in AI in some way and automation. So what are some tools that

15:16rookies can be using? How invested should they be in automating their business right off the bat?

15:25Not that much. They don't have that much business in the beginning.

15:28Yeah. Right. So I think of AI is not about effectiveness. It's about efficiency,

15:34right? How can I shave hours off of my work? If I'm building my business, almost most, most of my work

15:40is around building a book of business and AI is not going to do that for us. So I do think though,

15:47building habits around staying technology kind of proficient, really, really important. So I'll just

15:53give you like all of us here, Gary included, we are experimenting with what is and isn't useful,

16:00what is and isn't practical. So everybody plays with ChatGPT. I think it's a good thought partner,

16:06but it lies like a rug. So you have to fact check, like, do not rely on it to write a contract for

16:11you. We've seen attorneys get in trouble. So, but it can answer questions. If your mentor, if your broker

16:18is not available, it can give you general guidelines, especially around public information,

16:23right? You could ask around what are five things I should know about an inspection

16:27or five questions. Like you can ask broad questions. There's a lot of evidence on the web.

16:32Just do a little fact checking or at least raise an eyebrow because we do know that ChatGPT will tell

16:37you an answer to tell you an answer. I like Claude for writing. I'm very picky about my words, obviously,

16:45and it has less of the hallmarks like the emojis and the dashes that you see that say,

16:50scream, Hey, this was written on AI. So you look at Claude, it's good for drafting. Like if you have

16:57a listing, like maybe you ask Claude to help you draft the listing description, but then you have to

17:01finish it. And then I would just throw out two more to play with. I know a lot of agents out there

17:07are on the fly. So one app I really, really love is called Whisperflow and it'll integrate with every

17:14single thing you have. It's an AI dictation. And so whatever you're doing, whether it's text message

17:19or whatever, you can integrate it and you can just dictate what you're going to say. And because it's

17:25not just Siri or whatever, it'll know that the person Sean you're talking about is S-H-A-W-N or it will

17:32learn it quickly. And over time, like for a relatively free resource, it is amazing for speeding up your work.

17:40And you think about driving in the car, right? You could do a lot of dictation between appointments.

17:45So I think that's a great tool. And this is forward thinking. I have a friend Tiago Forte.

17:52He writes about building your second brain. It's this idea of a lot of the knowledge we need,

17:57we can't access it. We learn it when we don't need it. So how do we access it? And most of the agents I

18:02know have a million notes on their phone. So could we level it up? And like notebook LM

18:08is relatively inexpensive. It will tie to all your notes. And now you've got AI digging through

18:14all of that for what you actually know. It'll only talk about what you've told it,

18:20not go out on the web. So it won't lie to you. So you can go out there and say, great,

18:24what are all of the documents I have around eggs? And it'll at least serve them up quickly. So those

18:29would be four tools I might be playing with, but don't get lost. Like that's not going to be the

18:34difference between you making a hundred grand in your first 12 months or not. It'll be a nice to

18:40have. And if you're learning along the way, it will serve you in the future. I do believe in the AI

18:45enabled agent for the future. They will have a huge advantage. Yeah. Yeah. I need that notebook

18:51one. I'm going to write that one down for sure. It's Google's notebook LM, right? There are a few

18:55out there competing with it right now. It's the leader. And that's why it's such a,

18:59this market is going to evolve so rapidly. The tools that we use will also evolve, but it's worth

19:06playing with it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it's kind of the app,

19:11you know, store of the, of the, of the past where we had a million different apps and it kind of

19:17funneled down into, you know, just some really important ones that you use all the time. They

19:22kind of the cream rises to the top. Right. So, yeah. If you look at my usage on my phone,

19:27it's about five apps. That's where all of my power usage goes. Right.

19:30Me too. And I don't know why I keep the rest of them on there. So.

19:34Well, here's a hack too. If we're just going to do that for new agents, I set a timer every day.

19:39I can't be on Instagram for more than 20 minutes without it shutting down.

19:42Yeah. And that kind of gamifies it. Like, how can I get, I use it for business. I sell books. I'm an

19:48author. I represent Keller Williams. How can I get in and out without getting lost in it? And on the

19:53weekends, I let myself play. Okay. Yeah. That's a great idea. Do that for kids too. Definitely.

20:00Yeah. It's in the parental controls for both the Android phone and the iPhone.

20:05Yeah. Interesting. So there are a lot of new agents coming from second career or they have

20:10side hustles. Does your roadmap change at all for them compared to those starting out as their first

20:18career? It does because right. There's a certain amount of kind of minimum work to hit viability.

20:26It's kind of like how much runway does this plane need to take off? And if you're a part-timer, unless

20:32you get extraordinarily lucky, you're going to need more runway. And so I think the number one advice I

20:37would give them is you have to be even more focused on the fundamentals. My wife launched our real

20:42estate team in 2009. She had hard constraints. She was going to drop off the kids in the morning

20:48and she was going to pick them up in the afternoon. And she worked basically from 9am to 2pm and then

20:55after the kids went to bed. And so she still made 85 grand in her first year by doing just the

21:03fundamentals. So I would say put some constraints around your real estate business. And when you're

21:08there, be there. When you're not, don't be there. I also think ethically, if you're working a job,

21:14you can't cheat on your employer, right? So do it on your lunch break. Make sure that you're taking a

21:20half day if you're actually going to go out and show homes and not just be working remote today.

21:25So do it ethically. And the number one advice I would give them if they really want this as a career,

21:30instead of spending the new income as they get it, I would start kind of a runway fund, let's call it.

21:37How much would I have to save up in order to resign from my job and feel really comfortable

21:43about going all in? Because most of the acceleration happens when we treat it like a full-time job,

21:49because we're able to do all the things to kind of keep a steady book of business growing

21:54and not have those giant gaps. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So the one thing,

21:59it's a podcast as well as a book, correct? Yes, yes. I would like to say it's a movement,

22:06but we won't go all the way there. A productivity movement. So how does that

22:12mindset tie into how a new agent should approach their first year in real estate?

22:18Well, habits, the habits of success. When we interviewed those top agents and asked what

22:22they did differently than other agents, a lot of them were building some really key habits.

22:28It's not a lot. I gave you all five earlier, and it starts with legion and role play. They were

22:33doing those things early, and they just kept those and maintained those habits. So we actually

22:38dedicated an entire chapter to success habits, and we broke them down. What are the things that we

22:44should learn to do every day? What are the things that we should do once a week, once a month, and

22:49maybe once a quarter? And when you look at it that way, like things like continuing ed, you really only

22:54really address in the fourth quarter of the year, right? Yeah. But it's something as a new agent,

22:58you can't forget about or your license will lapse. So kind of coming up with a rhythm and just putting

23:05it on your calendar, little appointments with yourself at the end of the month, go look at

23:09your bank accounts, create your amaturist or use your bookkeeper on a P&L. How am I doing,

23:15right? What is my pipeline look like? So we give them some core business habits to begin building early,

23:25because if they build them early, it'll serve them for their entire career.

23:29Yeah, absolutely. So this is our lightning round. So this is like off the top of your head.

23:35What's the worst advice new agents still hear?

23:40Focus on brand. I see agents spend an inordinate amount of time building out their website and

23:47business cards. Like who uses business cards anymore? I actually teach agents don't even have them.

23:51Say, I'm sorry, I'm all out. Can I have your information? Right? I want to control the

23:56conversation. I don't want to hope that they will call me. But yes, you might leave them in an open

24:01house, but I don't hear about a lot of business going there. So do the bare minimum on the brand

24:06stuff. It really is going back to this. I'm just kind of delaying the work that will actually make me

24:11successful. All right, great. The most underrated lead source for rookies.

24:16SoI is always the number one, but it's not underrated. Everybody gets it and they knows

24:23it. I'm going to go ahead and start with the people who already know and like me and trust me.

24:27I still think open houses. We devoted an entire chapter to open houses because it is kind of

24:35the ultimate combination of in-person prospecting, door-to-door prospecting, and marketing. You get

24:43all of the benefits and before you ever have a listing, most people out there don't realize

24:48it's not your house that you're holding open. You just look like a very successful real estate agent

24:54and everybody walking through the door, the probability that they are thinking about buying

24:59or selling is so much higher than bumping into someone at the mall. So I still feel like it is

25:04incredibly useful. Our top teams do it at a high level and people should not turn their head when they

25:11hear open house. They should dive in. Brand new agent listening right now, feeling really

25:18overwhelmed with the market situation and just everything that's going on. What's one piece of

25:24advice you could give them to help them with their overwhelm today? I think if they're worried about the

25:29market right now, it's actually an opportunity. My wife launched her business in 2009 just in time for the

25:36very worst of the great recession. But because she built habits and a market where it was harder to

25:43transact, when it got easy, it felt like she was walking on air. I mean, it's never that easy, but you're

25:49building the right habits. I see a lot of people start like in 2021, right? Where it was just like, how fast can I

25:57transact? And then business goes away and they have to build brand new habits. They don't know. So first off, understand

26:04it's a gift. But the number one advice I give pretty much any entrepreneur is goals before phones.

26:11A huge percentage of people, the first thing they do when they wake up is they look at their phone.

26:15And that means they're in their text messages, their email or social media, which is almost always other

26:21people's priorities. And we teach this, we do this in our training. First thing, look at your calendar and your goals.

26:28Take five minutes. Like, what did I say I needed to do today? When you remember what you said yes to,

26:34it's easier to say no to the distractions. Then you can go out and go do the other things. But

26:40take five minutes, remind yourself of your current commitments and goals before you go out in the world.

26:45Great. And finally, where can people find the book, The Rookie Real Estate Agent?

26:50So it comes out on September 9th. It will be available in all major bookstores. If people are

26:57coming to our mega camp in San Antonio in August, that's where we'll have like 500 copies for the really,

27:04really eager people. But in general, September 9th, anywhere you buy books, you'll find Rookie Real Estate Agent.

27:09Great. Well, thank you so much for joining today, Jay. We appreciate you.

27:13Thank you, Tracy. It was a pleasure to be here.

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