66 Deals at 28 with Zero Bought Leads • Megan Walters
Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents
Megan Walters shares how she built a seven-figure real estate business without buying leads or cold calling. As a young agent from Columbia, Missouri,
Key takeaways
- Success in real estate comes from being visible in public spaces like coffee shops rather than sitting at a desk for hours.
- Leveraging FSBOs and expired listings with high-value follow-ups drives consistent lead generation without paid ads.
Main topics
- Lead generation without buying leads
- The power of public presence and networking
Notable quotes
"If you're sitting at your desk or at your home, you're not doing your job. You need to go meet new people."
Conclusion
Megan Walters proves that success in real estate doesn't require expensive lead purchases
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) You've been at your desk four hours today and you have nothing to show for it. Today's guest got told that eight hours a day at the desk was the job, so she walked out and the year NAR named her 30 under 30, she closed 66 deals. She's never bought a lead, she doesn't cold call, and she'll tell you exactly what she does instead. All of it is free and you could start this afternoon. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping It Real is brought to you by Real Geeks. Speaker 1 (0:27) How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads into interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well, RealGeeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose RealGeeks as their technology partner. RealGeeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and build for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Speaker 1 (1:00) Real Geeks also includes an easy-to-use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow-up conversations. Real Geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness. Visit realgeeks.com forward slash keepingitrealpod and find out why realtors come to Real Geeks to generate more business. Again, visit realgeeks.com forward slash keepingitrealpod. Speaker 1 (1:29) And now, on to our show. Today's episode is brought to you by Corded.io. Are you looking for agents to join your brokerage or team? Now, as a real estate recruiter, I can tell you the answer is always yes. But most agents aren't looking to move right now. So how do you know who to contact? 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If you are looking to grow your brokerage, Corded.io is the best tool out there. Visit Corded.io to schedule a demo. Again, that's Corded.io. And now, on to the show. Speaker 1 (3:08) Welcome to Keeping It Real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. Today, I'm super excited. We are talking to a younger agent who has just started crushing it and she's going to talk to us about how she's been able to keep it real. I really encourage you to, I'm going to give you her Instagram in a moment. I want you to watch her Instagram videos. Notice how polished she is at such a young age, like truly remarkable with her presence on video. And she does a lot more than that. She's an amazing agent as well. But I really want you to check out her social because I was really blown away by this. And I've interviewed. Speaker 1 (3:50) some of the very top social media agents literally in the country. And that's not really how she built her business, but it's very interesting how she does social video. So I'm going to give that to you in a second, but her name is Megan Walters. And let me tell you more about her. So she's a nationally recognized realtor. She's a real estate investor and educator from Columbia, Missouri. She ranks in the top 1% of agents nationwide. She was just recently named as one of NAR's top 30 under 30, which is a very prestigious thing, and recognized as one of Como's 20 under 40. So Megan proves you don't have to be in a major market to build a seven-figure business. So she started her career, get this, at 22. And think about how hard that must have been. But she focused on creating repeatable systems, scalable processes, and it led to now over 1,000 career transactions. Speaker 1 (4:45) 50 rental doors of her own in five years. That's insane. And a team now that closes 150 and actually more than 150 deals every single year. So she's co-founder of the Walters team at EXP. She's in Columbia, Missouri. her husband Jesse works with her and she now channels the same passion into teaching other agents through the seven figure real estate academy and day one agent. So she shares the exact systems and strategies that built her business from the ground up without Speaker 1 (5:15) without relying on, these are the magic words everybody wants to hear, buying leads and cold calling. She does neither of those. And she's a lifelong Columbia resident wife and proud mother. She's committed to helping others create lasting success through real estate. Follow her on Instagram, like I said earlier, at Megan Walters. That's M-E-G-A-N, Walters, just like it sounds. Megan, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for that. I'm blushing. Speaker 1 (5:42) It's, you're, you're a big deal. And I'm glad that it's really fun to talk to people as they're ascending. And I know, look, you've been in this business a while now, you're not brand, brand new, but you're still young in the business. And what you've accomplished in a short amount of time is, is truly remarkable. And I understand completely why NAR, you know, bestowed upon you the 30 under 30, like that is no shock to me, but I can't wait to introduce some of your, some of. Speaker 1 (6:09) who you are and what you do to our other agents who would love to emulate and get your success so okay here's where we're going to start so somebody early on told you that the way to succeed this was not good advice for you but it was probably good advice for a lot of people but it didn't work for you and i want you to tell me about why it wasn't the right fit so somebody said hey in order to succeed at this business you need to be at your desk eight hours a day and The year NAR named you 30 Under 30, you personally did 66 deals with almost 20 million in volume. So when did you figure out the desk advice was wrong and what did you do instead? Yeah, pretty soon. Because when I sat there, granted, I got to hear conversations of other top producing agents because that was pre-COVID. So people were in an office. So it was a little bit different than today. Speaker 1 (7:03) I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't meeting new people. I was meeting the agents that were having the market share and that they were talking to clients, but I wasn't. And so I ended up instantly saying, if I'm going to sit around and try and build this business and work, I'm going to go sit at a coffee shop. And I'm going to just drop the fact that I'm in real estate to somebody next to me, because that's a client, the agent sitting in the cube next to me, they're not going to buy anything from me. So I'm just going to go do the work in a public place and somehow possibly drop what I do for a living, whether it's Speaker 1 (7:32) a silly sticker on the back of my laptop. Maybe it was something on my shirt, something that alluded to somebody being able to talk to me. And so that was really my thing is like, and I'll tell people that work for me now, I'm like, if you're sitting at your desk or if you're sitting at your home, you're not doing your job. But you need to go meet new people, whether it's at a coffee shop, whether it's at a networking event. We are in a people business and you don't get in front of people by just sitting around. Speaker 1 (7:59) And so that was really, it was about probably the first couple of weeks when I sat there and I'm like, I'm bored. I need to go do something. And yeah, so I instantly just started going out and making, since I'm from here, I knew a lot of people. So I had that advantage, but people knew me as Megan, the girl that grew up here. They didn't know me. A 22 year old, nobody is giving their million dollar home for her. No, so I had to go in. Your friends want you to do well. Speaker 1 (8:27) 22 year old your friends by the way aren't buying and selling homes at 22. nope nope they were still in a bar era and a whole different different stage of life so at that point i'm like well i have to go be a part of the chamber and in the and my biggest thing is like there's a lot of you know everybody has a local board there's a lot of things that the local board is incredible for but again i challenged myself in the sense of like why am i gonna go spend a lot of time at the local Speaker 1 (8:52) board because that's again a bunch of real estate agents so instead i went to like the chamber of commerce women's network anything that frankly had nothing to deal with real estate because i knew i'd probably be one of the very few in the room that did what i did so that is that is so that is incredibly an incredibly wise insight for somebody at 22 because yes can you absorb great technique from people next to you at your cubicle who are big producers, of course. And you certainly, you know, if you're, if you're at your desk and you're studying the MLS for an hour so that you can master a part of the market, good, awesome. I'm with you, but that's maybe one hour a day. And then the hardest part of the job is getting business. And so I want to like really get specific here. So going into a coffee shop, by the way, as a woman, I'm assuming by yourself. Speaker 1 (9:46) This is not the easiest thing to do. And there's maybe even some safety considerations or at least like, is this even the right move? But this works for you. So tell me, what did that look like? You go to a coffee shop, are you literally going from table to table being like, hi, I'm Megan. This is like, walk me through it. How does it work? Yes and no. So a lot of times back then being from Columbia, I would normally know at least one person. Speaker 1 (10:12) And so when they would walk in, I would make a point and it would be a familiar person. I'd be like, hey, like, how are you? Like, what are you up to these days? And just honestly, just start casual conversation. And then somehow I would just manage to say what it is I do now. And that was it. It was just one simple touch. I would always make sure that me and that person were connected online, because at that point, it was the start of me consistently posting to start telling everybody. Speaker 1 (10:37) online what it is I did. So I made a point to then add that person on social media. Then they would consistently see what it is that I do for a living because I knew that this was going to be a long-term thing. I knew it takes at least like, I think, I can't remember what this thing is, but it takes like 10 times for somebody to actually remember what it is that you do. So I knew that that person is going to have to now nine more times hear what it is I want to do in case they ever turn into a client. And so if I had like office work, if you want to say, I was in public doing my office work. So if that opportunity Speaker 1 (11:04) walked in the door at the coffee shop, I always made a point to go be friendly and reintroduce myself as what it is I do now for a living to somebody I already knew. And so that was a big, that was my office time, if you want to say at the start. It's brilliant. And so for those of us that go, Oh, like I live in Chicago, like, and so I'm not a practicing agent, but if I were, this is what I, this would be my version of that. So I live in the city. There's millions of people. I'm probably not going to run into somebody I know, but. Speaker 1 (11:34) People who go to coffee shops tend to go to the same coffee shop almost every day. That's kind of people's things, right? Their ritual, especially people who sit in coffee shops, they tend to be their regulars. So I would start becoming a regular and I would start figuring out a way to be like, oh, I see you come in every day. Like I'm so-and-so. Like I think you can totally do that with strangers. Again, you know, make sure you're doing it in a safe way. Speaker 1 (11:59) And that's what I would do even if I'm like, well, I don't know people that go to coffee. I don't even drink coffee and I would go do that. Like there's a coffee shop at the end of my block that just opened up. It's like a fancy one. And it's a really big deal because we don't have any fancy coffee shops within a couple of blocks. So I would be there every morning for at least a few hours, getting to know all the regulars, being super polite, not weird, but just kind of like once in a while turning to the person next to me, like, I see you in here a lot. Speaker 1 (12:25) Do you live in the neighborhood? Like I would be super, and I wouldn't talk about real estate unless it came up. I would just be like, oh, tell me, like I live up the street. Are you in the area as well? Like, oh, cool. What do you think of the neighborhood? Like you just have conversations and then those become the people that you see. And then, you know, you can always sit and do things like what Megan's talking about. So if you don't live where you grew up and there's those people aren't already in the coffee shop, because I'll bet you met strangers in there too. I'll bet that happened all the time. Speaker 1 (12:54) I love that. That is so, so smart. Thank you for... I've done this... We've done over 800 episodes. I don't think anyone's ever given that exact tip. So yeah, unless I just don't remember, but I'm pretty sure no one else has given that tip. Okay. I want to walk through yesterday. So today is Thursday. So I'm going to walk through your Wednesday. Literally not a typical day, just whatever yesterday was. So what time did you start working? What were the first three things you actually did for your business? And what did you not do? Which by the way, it doesn't have to be things that you wanted to do and didn't do, but maybe just tell me, walk us through yesterday. Tell us how it worked for you. What worked? I have to like literally look at my schedule because I'm like, I don't remember. So I am an avid person that wakes up at 4 a.m. every single day. Speaker 1 (13:49) Why do you do that? Do you have to? No, it's just, I've always done that. It's like, I can't sleep. Sleeping in for me is like 536. Gotcha. It's I'm an, I'm that annoying person. No, it's a, it's a great habit. I just thought, well, maybe you have like a newborn or something. I wasn't sure what the, what the precipice was, but okay. Or what do you do at four o'clock? Um, I work out. So I normally like from four to four 30, that's like mom time. Like Speaker 1 (14:16) I can have my coffee. It's silent in my house. And then I normally start working out by 4.30. Around 5.30 is when my husband will wake up. And then that's when we normally have like kind of like our decompressing time. He is my business partner too. So we normally have, we're normally talking about work instantly. And normally kind of around