Real Tea Podcast – Season 2: Episode 13

Welcome to the Real Tea Podcast brought to you by Tennessee REALTORS® and sponsored by Rule 1st, “helping you live closer to what matters.” I’m your host, Angela Shields. This podcast is created for Tennessee REALTORS® to get the “tea” on all things real estate in Tennessee. We’ll bring you engaging conversations with esteemed guests in the real estate industry and cover a wide array of topics including current events, governmental affairs, education, and legal updates.

Angela Shields (AS): Alright, so we are excited today to have one of our featured speakers at our upcoming conference, Ms. Heather Haase, who is coming to us from Ohio today. She is a speaker, an instructor and most importantly a REALTOR®. So, you are out in the field and practicing and we very much appreciate you coming onto the Real Tea Podcast with us. So welcome!

Heather Haase (HH): Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited.

AS: We are excited to have you. And before we start talking about the topic that everybody’s going to want to hear about, we have a tradition on the Real Tea Podcast. We are called the Real Tea. So, I like to ask everyone, “what is in your teacup?”

HH: Ooh, if I’m not feeling well, it’s just like mint–like a mint lemonade kind of mixture. So, I get what they call the medicine ball at Starbucks. Yes. So, good. Green tea, citrus, or something like that. But typically I’m not going for tea, I am going for coffee. I am a iced coffee drinker.

AS: Iced coffee. Ok. I love coffee myself, so I understand that. I had a member on my exact team who introduced me to the medicine ball and I’m going to tell you, I don’t like it.

HH: Only–only when I’m not feeling great am I drinking that.

AS: Yeah, I tried it. I had lost my voice, so she was she was being so kind and helpful and and wanted to help me get my voice back but it was it was not for me. And no, I got that–I got laryngitis at a conference a few years ago and my friend’s like, “Here, let me bring you one of these.” And it worked enough to get me through the conference enough to clear out my voice. And but I had laryngitis the whole week I was at that conference.

HH: Yeah. Well, hopefully that is not going to happen at the conference we have coming up.

AS: Not at all. We are super excited to have you come and visit with our members. We’ve heard nothing but great things but what I’d love to do is to have you give us just a little bit of your background and how you got into instructing and I can’t wait to hear about your nickname. So, let’s let’s kind of jump off into that.

HH: Okay. So, I’ve been doing real estate now for about nine years and I’ve been doing the speaking teaching roughly about five. And the reason I say roughly is because I started naturally falling into the teaching stuff because people be like, “Hey, can you teach me how to do that? Can you teach me how to do that?” I wasn’t the first person to be doing social media things in my area but I was still more on the cutting edge kind of side where most people didn’t know how to go “live” on Facebook. Most people did. And now things that seem very–like you do nowadays. But the other way I started getting into teaching is I was a part of the NAR YPN and they have a grant that allows the YPN advisory board members to come to other YPN across the country and teach. So I had to come up with topics and then I’m like, I started really falling into that and I had a few mentors that were like, “You’d be really good at teaching this.” So people kind of just naturally told me what I could be teaching and not only that but the company I worked for at the time hired me on as their training director and it just kind of spiraled from there and I absolutely love teaching and speaking. So it’s it’s been a really great adventure.

AS: Right. And so like I said, we’ve heard great things about your topics. And the two topics that you’re coming to teach with us is social media and then it’s also AI, which AI is becoming so popular these days.

HH: It is, it is. I didn’t want to jump on the AI bandwagon when it started, you know, coming out in like end of 2022, really started taking off 2023, people were just teaching AI to teach AI and I’m like I really want to know to learn this a little bit more and figure out because what I always like to say my classes are about is connecting people to something they feel is missing to be able to take that step towards using social media more or using AI more or marketing anything like that. I want it to seem attainable because you can go and you can hear all these speakers about 30 different ways to use AI and then you leave that classroom and you’re like, I’m going to do all this and then you do none of it because you don’t know how to take that first step necessarily doing that. So, I always say I’m like I’m the person that’s going to get you taking that first step.

AS: That’s exciting.

HH: I know. A lot of times we sit in those classes as well and and you’re right, you walk out thinking, “Oh, there’s so many things I could do” but then you get back, you’re like, “I have no clue where to start.” So that’s exciting. So, members would be able to come and have at least know how to jump into it and get started.

AS: I love hearing that. So, one of the things I know is from members that have taken your classes elsewhere is that you keep it very light-hearted and fun. So, how do you make AI or social media fun?

HH: It’s easy for me because I’m already a naturally very fun person, very funny, everything like that. I also don’t get super into the technical side of things ’cause that’s where I believe most people you lose them. I get into the application and the theory and really get people thinking and asking themselves questions and  give them that confidence to move forward with it. I love keeping it fun. There’s been studies as well like with Toast Masters and NSA and stuff like that about how to like every few minutes you should be making somebody like laugh or move. And I also wanted to go to school to be a kindergarten teacher. I was a daycare teacher for a while and a camp counselor and the things I’ve learned there I have also applied to adult classrooms as well because it makes it more fun and interesting and people want to come back to it.

AS: That that sounds great. So, if you were giving an overview of each of the classes just as an elevator pitch, what how would you what would you say about the classes?

HH: So social media trends is all about the trends that are going to be happening in 2025, 2026 that come with social media that are good to know in case if you want to start to learn about them and jump on the bandwagon before they get super popular. But we’re also going to be learning about trends that are evergreen. So trends that last like that have been over social media for years. We also get to learn about the history of social media trends when social media was the trend itself. And then with AI for REALTORS®, we’re going to be learning different ways that AI can help our real estate business and apply it and give you the confidence to step in there.

AS: That’s exciting. Are there times that you think that sometimes REALTORS® just jump on every social media platform and they really should just focus on a few?

HH: 100%. I am very much focused on a few but there are I have colleagues that teach social media who will tell you to be on all of them. I believe if you are able to sustain that, do it but I also don’t believe every piece of content in the format it’s in. So for example, video I don’t believe it belongs on every single social media that it may belong more like as a blog post or you know something like that, like recreating it but once you start adding extra steps people are less likely to do things. So I really want people to always focus on one to three social media accounts because where you focus on expands and then once you feel comfortable enough focusing on more then you can expand from there. I really–like I always say I really want to I see the benefit of LinkedIn and YouTube. I just haven’t done it yet because I’m just not ready to add that into my already busy repertoire with social media and such.

AS: Oh, I can imagine.

HH: And then with AI, there’s just so many different things that that it can do. Everything from helping you write something to I imagine even I don’t know you probably know so much more but I can only imagine all the different things that it now has gotten to the point where where agents now can actually see what it does whereas before nobody really knew what it was. Yeah, it was um–No, it’s been a very interesting journey because AI can do so much and there’s so many different programs out there. Most people it it’s kind of like Kleenex. Like when you think of tissues, you think of Kleenex.

And so with AI, you mentioned AI, people automatically think ChatGPT because it’s probably your number one AI product out there that people are familiar enough with but there’s so much more out there and there’s constant and it’s constantly evolving. Um, there’s another app out there called Productive AI that can help listen to your phone calls and keep notes. And of course, it lets the other person know like it’s recording the call and everything and it will take notes for you on that phone call and then enter it into your CRM.

AS: Wow.

HH: Like, so it’s able to help make your business a little bit more efficient. You could focus on that phone call a little bit more and then you don’t have to worry about anything else. For myself, it’s also been great for like meetings. So when I’m having like Zoom meetings or Google meetings, there’s usually an AI that’s a companion that’s taking notes in the background and it’ll create me a whole transcript of what’s been said and then it’ll also do a summarization as well. And how many times have we been in that Zoom meeting where you’ll have somebody who’s accidentally turned that on and everybody’s trying to figure out who turned the who turned the otter thing on?

AS: Yeah. Yeah. All the time. So, we mentioned that you are a practicing REALTOR®. So, how does that come into play with your with your teaching? I imagine that you’re able to bring real life experiences into your class.

HH: 100%. And so, I’m able to relate back and I coach agents at my office are just like newer agents. I actually just got done teaching a new agent orientation at our board. So, I’m still really involved at our board levels as well. But it helps me stay relevant to what is happening in the everyday REALTOR®’s life. Um I and even if I can’t don’t know exactly what might be help happening for a top producer versus a new agent because they have very different needs and stuff like that. I’m usually a I talk to enough people that I’m able to bring it together how like these certain products can help them and whatever opportunities that they’re missing. So almost like a SWOT analysis for their business.

AS: How do you personally stay up with all of the technologies that are out there? It has to be just um daunting to to always be on top of it all.

HH: I use ChatGPT to help me seriously like I pay for ChatGPT so I get the most updated information everything like that but I will ask it hey what are the trends happening this week what is um what’s this happening on Tik Tok and whatnot but also I am on these social media networks enough to be able to notice the trends I’m able to notice that Facebook for example your Facebook pages aren’t getting as much traction as they used to. They’ve been pushing everybody to creator profiles a lot more but also your main Facebook page isn’t your friends much anymore. It’s like all these ads. It’s anybody who’s be paying to basically be on there.

So, I’ve been telling everybody, I’m like, if you look at your bottom of your phone screen, ’cause I’m assuming you’re on your phone, they have a whole little tab to where you could just see your friends post and you just have to switch over to that to be able to see what your friends are posting. But it also–I tell people to get out of their headspace if they’re seeing their numbers go down because that is happening because not as many people are on the main page anymore. So you have to be making sure that your content is engaging enough to make it to that main page.

AS: So it feels like if you’re going to conference it would be great to be able to take both of the classes. It feels like they kind of work almost together. You could take them and  and use it independently, but it sounds like you could really use it together as well.

HH: Yes, yes. Correct. I talk a little bit about AI and the social media trends because there is a lot of AI that’s being involved with social media trends, but AI for REALTORS® is going to be a completely separate class on its own.

AS: Yeah. And then just to put a little plug in, I know that you’re also going to work with our AEs and help them out a little bit, which is very exciting.

HH: Yeah, I’m so excited. I have written classes for marketing and communications. I just sent out a survey for the AEs to give me some feedback on what they’re looking for because I started interviewing a lot of my AE friends and they all had something different like, “Oh, this is what I like. this is what I use.” So, I was trying to see if any AEs have been using AI or what type of class that they really want because one of the things I hate is talking to one of my AE friends and they’re like, I went to this conference and it was such a dumb class for AEs and I’m like, “Well, tell me why it was a dumb class ’cause I don’t want to be like that class.” I want a completely different experience that helps whoever is in that classroom our training or whatnot from the AE with 60 people on their board because I think I heard that you guys have an AE with only like 60 people and then to the AEs with thousands of people on their in their board and stuff like that. Like, I wanted to be relevant to everybody that’s going to be there.

AS: Yes, we have from 60 all the way to over 6,000 and they all do a great job servicing the members. So, it’s I think it’s going to be great for them to be able to learn and get more proficient as well. They’re all very dedicated.

HH: I’m so excited.

AS: Yeah. So, I’m I’m very excited again for our members to have this opportunity. They are always looking for that fresh and um what can make them sharper. So if you had a few words just to be able to say um this is what you’re going to learn, what would you tell them?

HH: You’re going to learn how to connect with whichever class you come come with. My goal for you is always for you to walk away with one attainable item uh as you leave the classroom. And most people are like, “One, I’m going to these hours classes. Don’t I need more?” Well, there’s been so many studies that say that you the more you learn and the more you have on the list that you want to apply, you almost do nothing after you leave the classroom. So, my goal is always one takeaway. You put that at the top and then you work your way down that I want you to implement in the first week. But I really want you to feel connected to whatever goals that you have for your business and there’s going to be different things in both of the classrooms that you’re like, “Oh, I feel confident I could possibly take this next step to do.”

My job at the end of the day is to give you confidence to move forward with AI and making it your best friend or at least something that’s not so scary. And there are scary components of AI, don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of very scary components but I’m very much know your know your tools so you know how to work with them, not against them. Avoidance is never good but also with social media, there’s different things that you could be doing out there to give you confidence to put yourself out there a little bit more because I always tell people you don’t need social media, but it’s also free, so why not use it.

AS: Right, it’s a great marketing platform. Like you said, it’s free. And Heather, if you have somebody who’s a little bit experienced with AI or social media, and then someone who is not so experienced, would you say that both should come to the class?

HH: 100% because I feel if you’re just a little bit experienced, you’re still going to get something out of the class. And if you’re somebody who doesn’t have any experience, you’re going to at least get the confidence to try to start using AI >> to try something >> at the very least that I’m hoping you walk away with. >>

AS: Yeah, okay. And then I want to ask you um kind of back to a personal question. I know that you really enjoy going to conferences. You get a lot out of conferences. So tell me why do you go to conferences?

HH: So for me, it’s very much the networking aspect. I love conferences. I call myself a conference junkie. I’ve been all over the place, even before I was starting to teach and I got to learn but I got to meet so many different people that have helped me with my business. And also to be able to get referrals. My number one category for doing business is agent agent or niche is agent to agent referrals because I meet so many people from across the nation because of these conferences I go to. So networking is one. And then of course the second is really the education portion. I love learning new things and being able to take them back and implement in my business.

AS: Yeah, that’s one of the things that we always talk about that that’s a huge benefit of membership is being able to meet people from all over the state, all over the country. And just like you said, you summed it up perfectly about the referrals. Um and just, you know, we always talk about the realtor family. I always say that if you need something and you are across country, all you got to do is call a realtor and tell them you’re a realtor and they’re going to help you.

HH: 100%. Yeah, 100%. Like my friends, my non-REALTOR® friends, they’re laughing at me because I’m always like like they’ll be traveling. They’ll be like, “Okay, well, I got a person there like if you need need anything.” Like I had a friend going to just like a–like a fun thing in Vegas and I was like, “Okay, do you need anything while you’re in Vegas?” They’re like, “What do you mean do you need anything?” And I’m like, “What are you looking to do in Vegas that you might need?” And they’re like, “I don’t know. I might need a cooler.” Call my friend out in Las Vegas who’s a REALTOR®. I’m like, “Hey, can you let my friend borrow your cooler for a few days?” And they did. I’m like, “Do you need reservations to a steakhouse ’cause I got a REALTOR® for that.” I’m like, “An AirBNB? I got a realtor for that.” Or even like I had a another non-REALTOR® friend that was looking for referrals for a lawyer for something up in Michigan. So, I put on my Facebook like, “Who do you have for this stuff in Michigan because I got–I got people everywhere.”

AS: Yes, it’s it’s amazing. It’s a great network to have and that’s the way you build that network is to get out there and meet people.

HH: Yeah.

AS: Well, any last words?

HH: I’m just super excited to be coming to Asheville, NC for the Tennessee REALTORS® Conference. You can call me Heather or you can call me “Sunshine.” I go by both. So–but I do promise you, you’re going to have a fun time if you come to my classes.

AS: Well, we can’t wait to host you and look forward to having you–I would like to say in Tennessee but this time we’re going to be in Asheville, North Carolina. So, we look forward to having you in Asheville, NC at the Tennessee REALTORS® Conference. So, thank you for joining us today.

HH: Thank you so much for having me again.

AS: We look forward to seeing you there. So, safe travels.

HH: Will do. Bye!

AS: Bye!

–––

Thank you all for joining us today on the Real Tea podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends and colleagues. Then visit tnrealtors.com to submit your questions and topics for future episodes of the Real Tea podcast. Thanks for listening. [Music]