Today, we have Ashley Oakes Lazosky, a broker-owner from Vegas. Today, we will talk about how she uses social media to stand out. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! Remember, knowledge is power, but implementation is more powerful!
Krista:
Hey everyone. Are you ready to be fired up? Because I sure am. I have got a baller of an agent here. Ashley Lazosky. She is from Vegas. She is crushing it, kicking butt and taking names. So if you want to learn what a top producer is doing right now to gain listings, to gain traction, even with limited inventory, she's having the best year, best months of her life. Well then stick around. Ashley, welcome. So happy to have you.
Ashley Lazosky:
Thank you, Krista. I'm honored to be here.
Krista:
Oh, we just hit 400,000 downloads this past month. So-
Ashley Lazosky:
Wow.
Krista:
Yeah, we're excited. We're excited. The podcast is going really, really good. And it's because we have great guests like you. So do me a favor. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Ashley Lazosky:
All right. Awesome. So I am from Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm a broker owner here. I've been a broker for over 12 years. I've been a licensed agent since 2003, so 18 years this year, and I own a real estate brokerage here. And we actually were a small, more boutique brokerage and we just morphed over about four or five months ago to a national brand. And just to kind of give our agents some more attraction in the market, more tools and so, yeah. We're super excited with our new branding and we are just recruiting like crazy. So yeah, that's kind of the long and short. I am originally from Montana. I've been here pretty much the whole time I've been licensed, which I said 18 years.
Ashley Lazosky:
And so I did come into this market really knowing nobody. I did not grow up here and a lot of agents in this market and Las Vegas have that advantage and we did not. So when we moved to Las Vegas and I started real estate, I say we, because my husband and I, are partnership together, but he's only been licensed about 12 years. I say only but 12 years. And so, yeah. I really kind of had to start from ground zero with my real estate business. So that's kind of the long and short of us here in Vegas.
Krista:
I like it. And you told me that you have one of the hardest markets right now. So talk about that and then tell them what numbers you're doing right now, because you're just killing it.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah. So our market is crazy. I know everybody's market is crazy right now, but Vegas is especially crazy. The last stats I was looking at, we had about 16 days of inventory in our market, which is just insanity. Our normalized market is three to five months of inventory. So we just really have nothing to sell. We have a ton of new construction here in Las Vegas and we're just getting the craziness, like a lot of people are across the nation, but even more than ever. A lot of builders aren't paying commissions. We have bidding wars, we have lotteries. It's crazy. So we are dealing with those struggles and I'm still actively selling, even though I'm a broker owner, I'm helping all my agents and they're crushing it, which I'm just so proud about.
Ashley Lazosky:
I'm really kind of stepping out of the selling scene. My husband does still sell. I take more of the listing side of it, but I do some buyer referrals here and there too. But that's really kind of what we're trying to do is build our brokerage up and then duplicate this and be able to open up other locations even in Vegas or outside of Vegas as well.
Krista:
Gotcha. So tell me how many numbers… How many transactions have you closed year to date and how many do you have pending?
Ashley Lazosky:
So we have about 40 pending right now and year to date, I think we're at 88. So yeah. So it's pretty crazy. So we are obviously crushing it as a team and brokerage and not all my agents really produce. So that's even more amazing is that they're able to get their clients under contract and able to get properties for them right now, especially in this challenging market. I really am strategic with helping them get their offers accepted. So we really have been… I put a whole list together. I think it was 22 things that you can do to get your offers accepted in today's market, in Las Vegas. So that's been very helpful to try to give them strategies. And I find that the agents in my company that are most successful are the ones that are just touching base with me, constantly, asking for my advice, asking what I can do to help them get their offers accepted, or they have a challenge that's going on.
Ashley Lazosky:
And that's how I used to be back in the day when I started in real estate. We actually didn't have a very involved broker. It was the broker that sat behind the door and you never knocked on that door or the monster would come out. So I don't want to be that broker. I was petrified of that broker back when I was 23 years old, I really leaned on my team. And so that's what we've really tried to create here is that we let them lean on us, my husband and I, as their team leaders and broker owners also. So we can help them be more successful in their business.
Krista:
So tell me what kind of things are you doing right now? And first of all, for the 88 transactions and the 40 pending transactions year to date and it's only June 10th as the time that we're recording this, I'm sorry, June 16th. Tell me what you're doing. First of all, how many agents, it's you and your husband that did the majority of that, correct?
Ashley Lazosky:
Yes.
Krista:
That was you and your husband. Okay. And then, so what are you guys doing? What would you say that you are doing to… Because I know about, oh gosh, what is it? Two and a half years ago, you were at a standing place in your business where you were about ready to leave the business. Your business got so bad. You weren't doing anything. So talk to me. So tell me a little bit about what that looked like, how long ago it was and the transition from almost being out of business and not doing real estate anymore to where you are now doing 88 closed, pendings in five and a half months and 40 pending. That's amazing.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah. I've seen ebb and flows obviously through the market like anybody has. And when you've been in this business almost 20 years, like you have, you've been longer than me, you see as the market moves. And so I got really good at when the market was obviously exploding, we all got really good at being successful in that market. I actually worked for in new construction for a builder and people were sleeping in my parking lot tents. It was crazy. Right. And then-
Krista:
I remember those days.
Ashley Lazosky:
I know, and I saw the writing on the wall and I saw what was going to happen? I have like 56 closings that were going to get ready to close with the builder just on my own and then I transitioned into general real estate.
Ashley Lazosky:
And that was kind of like a struggle for me because I kind of had to start all over again. Because I was in general real estate before I got into new construction. And then about 10 years ago, I really started exploding in the business. And what I think I got really good at is I really started niching in things. So you teach it just as well, you really got to dial down in those niches. And so for me it was open houses. Open houses were like my crush ville. That's where I'd be just… I shine because I like being conversational with people, face to face. I'm better with people, even though I'm good with them on the phone, I feel like face-to-face, I can't get that connection obviously on the phone.
Ashley Lazosky:
So for me open houses were huge and some of my biggest commissions, I just closed another deal from a lady that I met at an open house 13 years ago, I had like $210,000 year to date off of one person from an open house.
Krista:
Wow.
Ashley Lazosky:
Okay. And she was working with another agent at the time. So, it was just those long relationships really helped catapult me. So, like 2012 and 2013 were my biggest years in real estate. And I made top 25 women in real estate. I was top a hundred agents. And I carried that through really the years. And like you said, a couple of years ago, I don't know what happened. We just hit a standstill and I think it was really trying to find our niche in being a brokerage because I didn't really get into becoming a broker because I wanted to bring on agents.
Ashley Lazosky:
It just happened accidental. And so I think what happened for me is that I was trying to step out of selling and then trying to help my agents and I was leaning on them too much to be able to bring revenue to the company to make it stay afloat. And that really hurt me as an individual and as a company. And we got a huge office and people weren't using the office and the office had mold and we had all these issues with it. And it was like, you know what? We kind of had to reset, but you know what? I think a lot of people get very scared of that in the business of real estate and in general. When you're an entrepreneur, you have to learn to fail and it's okay to fail and who cares?
Ashley Lazosky:
So I tell my agents, I'm like, look, listen to me. Because I've already failed multiple times. I'm trying to tell you this, not because I'm trying to be a know it all, but because I've already done this, I failed and I've succeeded. And so I'm trying to show you what to do and what not to do. So this is definitely for us, this is navigating the waters of where we want to be long-term. And so I feel like we're really laying the groundwork and I really had some good support system because when you're an independent broker owner and I'm speaking to you, because you know, this just as much as I do, it's very isolating. It's very lonely and sometimes you don't have that person to say, do this, do that. And-
Krista:
Not a lot of collaboration, especially as an independent small brokerage. Absolutely.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yes. Yeah. It's hard. So we really turned things around by changing our brokerage and things just started kind of falling into place more. And I obviously got back into selling. But then now I'm starting to transition again, but we have the momentum that we didn't have before. And that's also tough for a lot of brokers because a lot of agents don't want to work with a competing broker. So that's kind of tough sometimes where you don't want to compete with your agents, you want to help them, but yet at the same time you still have to sell. So I don't think I'll ever stop selling real estate. I just don't know if I'll sell at the level that I did before.
Krista:
[inaudible 00:10:25].
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah. Yeah, it's a transition out and I'm giving more to John, so that's a big transition and just bringing on more teams that are going to really support the brokerage and long-term because obviously it's a volume game for us.
Krista:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So tell me, what is it that you are… What is working right now? What's working because that's the question right now. What are you doing to bring in more new business and I know you primarily work with sellers.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yes. So my biggest… Well, I will tell you my biggest pull right now and probably over the last couple of years is out of state referrals. And it used to be really my sphere of influence, obviously like past clients, which it still is. I still get a ton of referrals from my past clientele and I feel like that's a big miss for a lot of agents is that they're not working in their sphere and you don't have to have sold real estate. I tell my new agents, I'm like, you need to work your social media. So, since Facebook started, I was on Facebook telling people I'm a real estate agent. I am not a secret agent. So we are exploring into more platforms and then definitely getting these out-of-state referrals from agents that know me across the nation has been huge for us.
Ashley Lazosky:
So I just pulled in another out-of-state referral yesterday for like 600,000 that, it was somebody that I know from a group and there was like, we do get a lot of referrals in Vegas because it's such a hot place to move to. So obviously I'm in a very lucky type of market that I can get those. But believe me, I'm getting… I got one a month ago that 250 people responded on. And so you just have to stand out. Everybody tags somebody or says something that there's this agent here or whatever. What can you do to be different to make yourself stand out? And most of the time, these agents don't even reach out. So it's like, they just kind of slap it up there and then they pray that someone's going to call them, but you can't do that.
Ashley Lazosky:
So I definitely think I'm just very proactive in every little… It's like, I get like a high off of it when I get an out-of-state referral, I get a high off it. I'm like, yes, I got it. But now you've got to do the leg work. So I promise a 24 hour check turned around because other brokerages don't do that. I can control that because I'm the broker owner here. And keeping the agents updated throughout the process, that's the worst thing. You send a referral out and it's like, you never hear from the person again. So you definitely have to stay in touch with those people. Plus they will have more referrals for you. So, that's very, very important.
Ashley Lazosky:
So, coaching groups have been big for me, obviously. Obviously I started before you, but you've really been the pinnacle of what has really helped me turn my career into the next level. And I definitely think that really honing in on my buyer presentation and my listing presentation and everything that I do to encompass that, it just makes me different. And so if I can give anybody, advice, you really get to spend the money and you really even invest the time to hone in on those presentations. Because if you don't have those, you have nothing.
Krista:
Yeah. Otherwise you just go in there and you're just like everybody else and just real quickly. So it's Ashley Lazosky. Ashley Oakes Lazosky, and she's from Las Vegas. And what's the name of your company, Ashley?
Ashley Lazosky:
First-Class Real Estate Vegas Homes.
Krista:
First-Class Real Estate Vegas Homes, in case… I see, I see. In case you want to give her your referrals. I will tell you, she has been in my program. She's still in my program and anytime somebody asks for an agent in Vegas, I constantly am referring Ashley because I know she'll take such great care of them. So if you're looking for somebody to give referrals to in that area, she definitely is your person. She understands marketing like no other. She will expose listings to the masses and she's got super, super great market knowledge. So just make sure you write her name down for agents in Las Vegas. Okay. So you're obviously… Open houses in the past have worked for you. Now you're using a ton of social media and properly using it the right way. So it's actually getting a lot of exposure. I know you're totally huge into video. Give me some of the things that you're doing with video to attract new business.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah. So, and then another side thing, I have a film degree, which is kind of funny, but honestly your program really helped me hone in on, I was such a perfectionist about it because I used to be on the news actually. I did like the little stint of… I was going into journalism. That's what I wanted to do. And so it really… With getting into your program, it really honed down what I needed to do to actually promote the videos and what I was going to say in them and how I was going to do them. I knew all the technical stuff, obviously got my green screen up behind me. I know all the technical stuff, but it's really how now to put it out to the masses. So yeah. Videos have been huge for us, for our properties, a ton of my clients…
Ashley Lazosky:
So I'm really big into… I've got a lot of things I'm big into. But I'm big into Facebook groups. So Facebook groups have really kind of been my claim to fame for years and I've always used them. And I use them in conjunction with my KV core, but also promoting videos that I've done for my properties and talking about real estate or the market or whatnot. We're running those as ads, but I'm also using Facebook groups to utilize those as well. And I own, I think, 15 Facebook groups, last I counted. I might have more than that, but anyway, so… But we really are very niched in a specific market, which is Summerlin and where I live and so I own all those groups. And so I'm very strategic about what I'm doing with those videos, who… People seeing those, I run my community group.
Ashley Lazosky:
And so I get a lot of listings outside in my community because people, I friend request them once they move in the neighborhood and I control the people that come in the group and then they see my stuff. And I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a call and I don't even know who this person is. And they're like, well, we see your videos on your Facebook page and because I'm not spamming them in my community group, they're seeing my personal, my business page. So I'm always just very intentional to share that stuff. And then they're going to see a glimpse of what I do to be different and to sell their home.
Krista:
Yes, God. I love it. I love it. I love it. Yeah. So consistency is key, hard work, being top of mine. I love the Facebook groups. I know you've boughten some Facebook groups, reaching out to people locally now. And so in case anyone doesn't understand why local Facebook group is important is because you own that group, right? So you can control who goes into it, who goes out of it, you can control what content is there. If you want to not necessarily let any other realtors come in, you can keep them from coming in so that you then are the go-to top of my agent. And when you're offering value in these groups, you're helping people, you're talking with the community, what's happening in the city, what's going on, local events and updates, neighborhood disruptors, whatever it might be, then you are seen as that go-to expert and that go-to advisor.
Krista:
So having, especially Facebook groups work in communities where there are a lot of people that are coming into a certain area like Las Vegas, right? Like Las Vegas, Idaho, where else? We've got-
Ashley Lazosky:
Arizona.
Krista:
Arizona, Florida, right? Yeah. Nashville, Tennessee, like any of those areas, Utah, that just have a lot of influx of people coming into them. It's a great idea to number one, have a Facebook group that you create that's local so people can find it when they're coming there and also create video content and properly distribute it so that you become known as the go-to community market leader in that area. What do people do when they are going into a different area? They are searching online. So the goal is that you show up online when they are looking and that's exactly what Ashley has just been a master at doing.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yep. Yep. Well, and I will reach out to people by groups and then I've started groups, but I've linked them together. So it actually helps feed the ones that I've just started on my own because those grow way slower than the ones that I've already like… I notice the ones that I have, like 30, 40,000 members, I'm getting like 600 requests a day. It's crazy how much they grow and because they just are a snowball effect and so I'm noticing though, once I get one person, because I've linked all those groups, they'll request all those groups to join too.
Krista:
So Make sure, I don't know if you do this, make sure that you offer something of value when people join the Facebook groups, so you collect their email addresses because you can put them on your CRM. Really, really important. If you have a Facebook group or any type of lead magnet that you're offering something of value in a non salesy way to be able to get people's email addresses and then take those email addresses and then upload those into Facebook, to create your special audiences, but also then import those into your CRM. So then you're now you're owning that information because as great as all these online platforms are, the goal is to take people's contact information, i.e. their email address, their phone number, their names, and put them onto your own database, your own CRM. So you own that contact information.
Ashley Lazosky:
100%. And it's been a process of learning how to get the spammers out. You get these weird things where you get a snake eating a snail. Why do you post that stuff in Facebook groups? But you do get… So now I've gotten very strategic about the questions that I ask, the people that get inside the group. I have someone that monitors it. So it is almost a full-time job.
Krista:
So you have somebody that does that for you full-time that works on the Facebook group?
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah. So my assistant, she's checking it constantly. And then I've also been able to put up some blockers in there where it asks certain questions and only will allow them in. Facebook groups have gotten better about putting strategic things in there. So you don't get the spammers. Because there was so much complaints about it.
Krista:
Yeah. That's good. That's good. Okay. So Facebook groups, creating video content, properly distributing it, offering as much value to your agents as possible, being seen as the go-to agent. What else?
Ashley Lazosky:
So definitely people need… I think there's a lost art. Mail campaigns are back people. If you haven't missed it, it's 100% back and I've never out of mail. I might've let down on mail a little bit, but I've never gotten out of it. I'll tell you during COVID, I had a 10,000 mail piece that was supposed to go out and it never went out. It's stat back at the post office. It's terrible. Please. I had to go through a whole thing, but needless to say, we're out of the woods, I feel now and mail's getting back to normal, so people need to be going into mail. But I've been doing mail for years, like I said, and I really have honed it down to what you need to do and you need to pick a strategic area and I was telling my agents, pick an area you live in. The area that you know like the back of your hand, the area that people are going to see you in, the people that are going to see your open house signs in, own the next door, own the Facebook groups.
Ashley Lazosky:
It's this whole circle connection and then now you're implementing videos and ads into people in that area. So it is the location domination. You have to really hone in on doing all those things so that you do come together. I always say it's like that movie, Focus. I don't know if you ever watched the movie with Will Smith, but he was trying to get them to remember this number. He was doing this betting thing and he just kept having the number on the back of the jerseys. He had it there and he wanted this guy to say this number, it was a scam, and the guy did because he kept seeing it everywhere. That's what you want to be like. You want to be that agent. They're like, what did I see you? Did I see you in [inaudible 00:22:18] Yeah. I see you everywhere. So, when they're ready to sell or buy, they think of you.
Krista:
That's always with what we hear. We always hear, I see you everywhere. I'm always like Josh quit saying everywhere, there's got to be at least one, what's the real thing. He's like, they said they see us everywhere. I'm like, okay. Okay.
Ashley Lazosky:
Yeah, because you're a master of that. So I think that's like a lost art for people with real estate where they just, look, I love videos, love social media, love all those mediums, but mail is still one of the best mediums.
Krista:
And the best way to do mail is you're going to want to do content, a minimum of two times a month if possible. Okay. And you're going to want to make sure you send co nice high quality content with good, valuable information on it, to the same people over and over. Doing just listed, just sold cards are great, but they're just seeing it one time. You want to show up in front of the same people every month, all the time. So you get top of mind awareness, that's called digital… It's called location domination. You follow that up with digitally marketing to people, when you do that, make sure you're getting… You're doing something like property radar, or real market reports. You're getting those email addresses.
Krista:
You're uploading those email addresses into Facebook, creating a special ad audience and targeting those people with direct information about the neighborhood within your Facebook marketing campaign. Super, super important to do that. Okay. Ashley, we're almost wrapping up here. So I always… And you have been awesome. So let's go ahead and get one more time, give your contact information and people can refer you. And then I always end it with one valuable piece of information, if you could give whether it's personal or professional, what would that be?
Ashley Lazosky:
So I definitely feel like if I can give any agent that either is starting out or might've been part-time or maybe feels like they're in a slump, you really need to be intentional about what your daily activities are going to be. You don't have someone to be accountable to. You don't have a clock you're punching, but you need to treat real estate like a career and a job. So if someone was to tell you, you need to be to work from nine to five every single day, you would show up, right? And you would do your job. I feel like that's a big miss for a lot of agents is that they kind of are all over the place and then they don't do those daily activities. You have to do those daily activities. I literally wake up every single day and go, what can I do today to better myself in real estate to advance my career and to make our company better.
Ashley Lazosky:
So you've just have to keep that in mind every single day. And it's definitely… Look, real estate is one of the most stressful jobs on the entire planet, distressful careers. It has the biggest fail rate of any other career on the planet. And there's a reason why. People aren't consistent. People do get very knocked down by the daily minutiae that happens in our careers. It's very stressful. So, just try to stay positive. It's just, you're going to hit slumps. You're going to hit bad things that happen. You just got to keep moving forward.
Krista:
That's such good advice. Success breeds success. Momentum builds momentum. It's a matter of too many agents are not treating their business like a business. They're treating it like a hobby and an order. It's kind of like when you work at Costco, you clock in at eight, you clock out at five, right? It's like you do it every single day and you have to be there at that register or do whatever it is that you do. If you do real estate and you treat it like a full-time job, and you're intentional about what you're doing and you give it the time and the momentum that it takes work to start working, it will work. But typically, you need really good coaching, accountability and support to make that happen. So invest in yourself, invest in the right brokerage. If you're in Vegas, reach out to Ashley because she's looking to build her team there and she'll get you some leads and give you some great training with some great experience. And Ashley, thank you so much. One more time. Give everyone your contact information so they can reach out to you.
Ashley Lazosky:
Okay. So our website is yourbiggesthomesearch.com. My cell number is 7022811198. And you can reach me at Ashley.Lazosky and it's L-A-Z-O-S-K-Y dot firstclassagents.com or@firstclassagents.com. But yeah, I'd love to work with any of your referrals, any questions that you have, anybody wants to reach out to me and invest in coaching. Invest in a good coach because Krista has really changed my career. She really, really has. So I really attribute a lot of my success to the things that she taught me and you can know as much as you think you know, you always need to be humble in real estate because I promise you there's someone that's going to teach you something you didn't know.
Krista:
Aw. Thanks for that. I appreciate that. Yes. Love you girl. You're so awesome. And everyone that's listening, it's great to sit here and be here and to listen. And that's so wonderful, but everything happens in the implementation. So listening is great, but you got to implement. So implement and as always, thank you so much for your time, everyone. [inaudible 00:27:07] and I'll see you next time.
