Sarah Richardson CEO of Tru Realty | Women in C-Suite Positions, Technology, & Green Eggs and Ham

Today we are talking with Sarah Richardson, Founder and CEO of Tru Realty

Sarah is a visionary female leader in our space, she is the founder of Tru Realty and is an early adopter of the Zoodealio platform.

Tru started in 2010, Sarah was coming from commercial real estate. Commercial is a different animal, the sales cycle is a lot longer and it takes much longer to scale up, but there is a different level of professionalism there. When I came into residential I was working mostly fix and flip and investor deals. What I found was a lot of agents on the other side needed help … help with negotiation, with strategy, overall contract help and I saw there was a huge need for education in residential real estate. As fix and flip changed after about 2013 I decided to educate brand new REALTORS and get them up and running quickly. 43% of new agents with Tru have their first deal in escrow within three months of completing their training, the national number is in the 6-9 month range depending on the area.

The average age of agents is in their mid 50’s and they are using 15 different technologies in their business in any given week … and we wonder why we have adoption issues in technology. We are finding that new agents, those coming into real estate as their first career, even right out of university or occasionally still in university, pick up technology very quickly. It’s very intuitive to people in their 20’s to pick up a CRM, to use marketing tools, to actually run an ad on social media and make them work.

Sarah has taken the lead on all things technology and has led the way with crypto currency in real estate transactions. We adore our partnership with Zoodealio and being a start up we firmly believe in what you guys are doing in engaging the agent and making the REALTOR part go the iBuyer experience, this is critical to all our future. The consumer needs the help of a trusted advisor because they don’t fully understand all of the deal terms on an iBuyer transaction.

As for technologies, the set it and forget it mentality is interesting. Several years ago when each began to enter into the real estate space there was this notion that technology should replace the relationship. Over the course of 6-8-10 years we realized that we are a relationship business and that technology should NOT replace our relationships with clients and the consumer. Now it is all about the tech running in the background - our drip campaigns, our marketing campaigns, have everything turned on so when we are in front of people we can have better, more impactful conversations.

Let’s pivot for a moment and talk about the fact that something like 65% of REALTORS are women and 7% or so are represented in the C-suite of companies. There is this underlying notion that women are coming into their own and getting stronger in leadership positions. There is a shift happening. But at the management lever, not the managing broker lever - there are a lot of women that level, but in the ownership and C-suite level at brokerages and in the prop-tech landscape there are very few women. I think it is good for us to draw attention to that because there may be a lot of women who want to be in management/ownership, who want to be entrepreneurs and are apprehensive because they feel there can’t do it, ultimately it’s very daunting and it’s a huge risk.

Entrepreneurship was not a thing when I was in college, they didn’t even have entrepreneurship as a degree at ASU then. Now everybody wants to create their own hustle and be masters of their own future and create their own destiny. If we went to sit on a campus right now and listened to the people who want to be entrepreneurs and get into real estate in their 20’s, 50% are men and 50% are women. So I'm starting to see that anyone who wanted to be an entrepreneur is not just a man by any stretch of the imagination. Training people to take risks earlier makes it easier down the line. Putting your mortgage at risk, taking a full commission job, accruing a lot of debt is scary to a lot of people, and especially to women.

What would her best piece of advice for REALTORs going into the new year be? There are a lot of answers to that question! For the agent who might be struggling a little, she ay even be living commission to commission - Put together a year long marketing plan. Sit down and write out a plan for 52 weeks over the holidays. There are many you can find on the internet. These are little touchpoint so you can get face to face conversations with people.

And finally, what book would you recommend every agent read? This is a bit of a joke around the office but “Green Eggs and Ham” is a great book for REALTORS to read. Sam I Am never stops, he never gives up. Its the tenacity of an agent. I've said many many times you need grit and tenacity to be good in real estate and Sam I Am is the epitome of grit and tenacity.