Episode 12: Embracing Your Strengths to Overcome Obstacles and Maximize Growth with Lana Rodriguez

In Episode 12 of Real Estate Rewind, host Nick Baldwin speaks with Lana Rodriguez, from the Lana Rodriguez Group, Keller Williams Premier in Colorado Springs, CO. Lana describes the obstacles and failures she experienced, and how she overcame them, on the road to closing 245 transactions in 2019.

Episode Highlights: 

• Lana Rodriguez finished 2019 with 245 transactions.
• Client events are the biggest source of lead generation for Lana’s group, and she recently presented about client events at the HyperFast Sales Summit.
• Lana moved from Latvia to the United States, at the age of 19, for schooling. She lived in Louisiana, and then moved to Texas where she lived for 10 years, and met her husband.
• Lana transitioned through lots of different jobs, like food service, dental assisting, and retail. What she realized is that she was really drawn to the people aspect, and making customers happy.
• Lana met her husband at one of her retail jobs, and they married less than a year later, before he left for active duty in Afghanistan.
• At that time, Lana bought a townhouse, that they still own today, as a rental property.
• When her husband returned from deployment, they attended a real estate investment seminar.
• Lana’s husband used his VA loan to purchase a quad-plex, which began their foray into real estate as a career.
• The army then moved them from Texas to Colorado Springs, CO.
• Lana decided that she wanted to have a baby before she was 30. Her husband said that if she wanted to have a baby, she was going to have to go back to work.
• Lana evaluated the retail market in Colorado Springs, and realized she would have to travel an hour away, to Denver, to gain valuable employment.
• At that time, they were also purchasing their third property, so her husband suggested she get into real estate.
• Lana’s experience with the real estate agents involved with their prior three property deals, left her feeling like she could make it in real estate.
• Lana passed her real estate exam, and began her real estate career with ReMax in fall of 2014.
• Language barriers, and her accent, is a constant work in progress for Lana, and something she struggles to overcome.
• Because of this, Lana quickly realized that cold-calling wasn’t for her. Face-to-face was her selling style, and allowed her to do what she loved most, interact with people.
• Identifying your selling style is extremely important.
• Lana completed 31 transactions in 2015, as a solo agent who was brand new to real estate, and brand new to the Colorado Springs area. She was also pregnant, and her husband took on a more demanding role in the military.
• Her first year in real estate, Lana relied on training by Brian Buffini to build her referral business. She enacted small client parties and hand-written notes.
• Lana describes some of the client appreciation events she’s hosted, including a pumpkin patch where over 600 people attended.
• Lana spent $100k on client appreciation events in 2019. However, that is the majority of her marketing budget. Her team does not pay for online leads.
• Lana rented two party buses and took 100 guests to a local Backstreet Boys concert, as a client appreciation event. It was expensive, but garnered a lot of attention.
• Bringing her parents to the United States to live the American dream, was Lana’s goal and her “why”. She was able to accomplish that in 2016.
• In 2016, she had 119 transactions as a solo agent. She was completely overwhelmed and decided to start a team. She felt ReMax wasn’t well equipped to assist her in building a team, so she decided to move to Keller Williams.
• Her success is built on repeat and referral business.
• The value proposition that Lana offers new members joining her team is that they share their database with her, and she guarantees that their database will start referring business to them.
• Lana’s team is building a boutique office in downtown Colorado Springs.
• Lana’s 2020 goals are to continue to learn and embrace the KW methods so that she can grow her team, and hit 300 transactions this year.
• 300 transactions was the goal for 2019, as well. They were on track to meet that goal, but her Operations Manager left in the summer, which pulled Lana away from building clientele, to managing the business.
• Through that, Lana learned she wants to grow her team so that she can focus on sales, not team management.
• Lana’s group is in the Top 10 in her MLS. Her goal is to become in the top 5 or top 3, and solidify herself as a mega-agent.

3 Key Points:

1. Failure in business is inevitable. You need to move past the limiting beliefs, and overcome the obstacles in order to succeed.
2. Identifying your selling style is extremely important. 
3. Client appreciation events that involve families, including kids, have greater attendance.

Resources Mentioned:

• Nick Baldwin  LinkedIn, Facebook  
• Findessexandunionhomes.com
• Lana Rodriguez website, Facebook, YouTube 
• HyperFast Agent
• Brian Buffini training