Hello WomanUP!® Community!
This week's wonderful welcome is for Jackie Soto:
Joining us is Jackie Soto, partner and broker at eHomes, a brokerage out of the Inland Empire in Southern California. Jackie has been an active WaveMaker in the WomanUP! Community. Jackie also serves on the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals board and the National Association of Realtors’ Young Professionals Network.
A quote from the RateMyAgent Undisruptable campaign:
Jackie Soto is fearless. She’s learned to harness her emotions to propel her business forward. Her boutique brokerage was recently acquired by eHomes and is now experiencing the meteoric rise of growth. People want to be part of what Jackie is creating because she understands the foundation of her business is trust.
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Things have changed a lot for you since our last chat. Tell us about the journey to your current brokerage eHomes!
The journey has been more like a roller coaster! FAST, ups, downs. Divergent realty ran it’s course. I knew I wanted to build something DIFFERENT. The rapid growth and recognition that Divergent received in just two years was an overwhelming and humbling experience. It was more of a passion project for me to build something that I never had as a new agent. ALL OF MY AGENTS WERE NEW. ALL OF MY AGENTS PRODUCED - and produced with purpose and passion. High quality results came from hard work and focus on intention.
Fast-forward 2 years and I’m being approached by much larger companies with opportunities that I never imagined I’d receive. However, one organic continuous conversation over a span of 300 days and a curve ball in my personal life led to my decision to remain indie but partner with a like minded individual, Elmer Morales. January 2020 ehomes was launched with a team of 16 agents.
We are now serving over 100 agents and have a goal to help over 1,000 families this year. Doubling last years production.
What advice do you have for other women considering stepping into brokerage ownership with a partner?
First I’d ask them if they’ve considered consulting. You don’t have to give away a portion of your company just because you can’t afford to hire a consultant. As a matter of fact, Elmer and I gave each other the first year together to ensure that this would be a GREAT PARTNERSHIP. Thankfully, it has proven to be just that and we are solidifying our partnership and succession planning now.
Seek out varied strengths what I love most about my partnership and our entire leadership team is that we compliment each other. Specifically Elmer and I, I’d say we are practically opposites aligned with the same vision. This helps everyone take part in the overall “work” while doing what they LOVE and are good at.
When doing your due diligence, set your emotions aside and make sure everything lines up and has the potential at staying aligned.
My last piece of advice would be to make sure you have a third party that has your best interest at heart, review all the paperwork before signing!
We know you love the topic of mentorship and sponsorship. How many people are you mentoring now? What topics do you love to share and teach?
Well at our brokerage and now our escrow company we have a total of 120 staff and agents that I am responsible for. At the brokerage my favorite mentorship opportunities lie with helping our ehomes family discover new horizons.
A good example of that is a conversation I had with one of our agents, Ronni. On a call with her she was excited that as a new agent she had an escrow opened within 30 days of her joining the brokerage. I challenged her and said, “I want to see your name on the board. You have so much potential, you're great at what you do. I think you have the potential to be the next flex agent of the month”. She hung up the phone and later called me back. She called back to ask, “Jackie what does that look like to you? My potential”. I told her that I wanted to see her at 5-8 escrows per month consistently and I knew she could do it. Initially she was shocked, I’m sure. But now she’s at 5 escrows opened at once and her pipeline is looking FLUFFFFFFFFYYYYY.
Helping others achieve something extremely difficult that they initially thought was out of their reach DRIVES ME. This is exactly what was poured into me and helped me get beyond my fears and build self esteem enough to pursue my dreams. This is why it’s SO IMPORTANT TO ME to do the same for others.
Interview with Bill Risser at RMA… https://therealestatesessions.com/episodes/episode-254-jackie-soto/ It’s truly been reaching out to mentors and asking for help and asking the right questions. Not being afraid to ask those questions, not raising your hand to say you want to do something, but you don’t know how to do it. Asking for that guidance, that’s been huge for me.”
What is the biggest leadership lesson you have learned in the last 12 months? Healthy Compromise. Why? Because I’m a control freak. And 2020 had so many uncontrollable variables. I’m calling my last 12 months healthy compromise. This has been a challenge difficult to overcome when circumstances are out of my control. Having a partner now there’s been compromise. Being shutdown during our inaugural year there’s been compromise. Growing and scaling so quickly- THERES BEEN COMPROMISE. Focusing on what matters and creating decision making framework has helped me become comfortable with compromise.
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