Top ISA Series: Tyler Stracener - The Novak Team at KW Everett

Real Estate ISA Radio

Nate Joens: Welcome everybody. My name is Nate Joens. I'm the CEO of Structurely and welcome to the... What are we on, the fourth episode of the top ISA series?

Robby T: I think we're actually on... Is it six?

Nate Joens: I can't even remember.

Robby T: A lot. We're on a number. We're on some number of the ISA series.

Nate Joens: Yes, whatever number it is, we're excited to be here with Robby T from Hatch, as usual, joining us today with Tyler Stracener from the Novak team at eXp Realty in Everett, Washington. Robby, give us the intro to him, or Tyler please introduce yourself.

Robby T: For sure. So, obviously I go by Robby T for one simple reason. My last name sounds like the pharmaceutical drug and I joke that it sounds like that with all the problems and none of the money. So I have no qualms with calling Tyler, Tyler S. So Stracener, Stracener, whatever your crap is, I'm just going to call you Tyler S though this whole interview. If it [crosstalk 00:01:06] undo it.

Tyler Stracener: Yep.

Robby T: Anyways, super excited. We were supposed to have Chris on today and something that came up, a family emergency, and, frankly, super excited because I reached out to Tyler. I've had the privilege of coaching him now for a while and although he is somewhat new to the game, not been doing this for years yet, his skills are unparalleled for being at this level of the game. And he naturally gets it.

Robby T: It's deceiving, but he's a tall man. If he were to stand up, he'd kind of disappear on us. And is a former basketball coach and fell into the ISA world. But I've said enough about you. I would love for you to kind of share about yourself Tyler.

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Right there. I come from a huge basketball background. Lots of coaching, lots of playing. Plenty of injuries, which ended my career. And a lot of that just kind of translates into what I'm good at now, and that's relating with a lot of different people. But then also just the personal competition with yourself 24/7 and the performance aspect has always been something that's been there in my life and has been a motivation for me to keep pushing forward.

Robby T: I love it. And you guys have a pretty large ISA department, don't you guys, Tyler? It's how many ISAs now?

Tyler Stracener: Well we've got three ISAs now.

Robby T: In addition to you, or three total?

Tyler Stracener: Three total. So I'm one of those three.

Robby T: Awesome. And you oversee that department, correct?

Tyler Stracener: Correct, yeah.

Robby T: I love it. Good, good. So I think one of the coolest things I want to make sure we hop into today is you talked about how you were a coach for basketball, and I'd love to hear, how is that coaching of basketball translate into coaching and leading your ISAs?

Tyler Stracener: Well, I really believe that coaching is coaching. It doesn't really matter what you're coaching. Early on in my coaching career, I started off coaching third grade boys and went all the way up through high school coaching boys. And then I made the abrupt change to be the varsity head girls coach at my old high school.

Robby T: Ahhh.

Tyler Stracener: One of the questions that I just... For some reason it just kept coming up, of, "Well, how are you planning on adjusting from coaching boys to coaching girls?" And my answer was, "Basketball is still basketball." It doesn't matter who's playing it. It's the same thing. But then making the switch to being an ISA and leading our ISA squad, I've really found that coaching is just coaching. It doesn't matter what you're coaching.

Tyler Stracener: So everything that I do now is still things that I did when I was a basketball coach. From putting trainings together, what people will need to work on, observing every single day. That's kind of one of the biggest things that I do as a coach. One of the habits was watching the players as they're walking in the door. Are they sluggish, do they have a hop in their step, what's their gait like, are they excited? Do they come in together, do they come in separate? There's so many things to watch. And I still do that with the ISA squad now. And how they walk in the door is kind of that immediate, "Oh, today's going to be a good day." Or I might need to throw in some motivation into the day.

Robby T: I love that. Good, good. So, I mean if you were to summarize, you said it a couple of times, coaching is coaching. And what is coaching? And obviously you've coached boys, you've coached girls basketball. There is one difference between the two, by the way. The balls are slightly different in size.

Tyler Stracener: Slightly.

Robby T: Slightly. That's all I know about basketball. Let's be real. Anyways, what does coaching really mean? If you were to break that down, what do you think coaching really is if you were to summarize it?

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Really, the act of coaching, I really think it's one, building the relationship, and if you don't have the relationship, the trust, and the respect, no matter how good of a coach you are, the technique, it won't be heard. So that's really the first step, is really building that relationship with whoever you're coaching. But then past that, you have to know them so well that you know exactly how to coach them. I'm sure that you can relate to this Robby, is how you coach me isn't necessarily how you coach somebody else. You have to take a different approach. And understanding really where the person comes from. And sometimes knowing them a little bit better than what they know of themselves. Sometimes pulling out those harder things that they kind of ignore or just neglected along the way. But really, the act of coaching, I really don't think it's the telling them what to do, it's... this will resonate. Asking the right questions to lead them to figure it out themselves. Because that's really where people learn best.

Robby T: I like that. So, one's relationships, two's taking a customized approach, and then three, as opposed to telling, I think that the phrase I always use is, you help them self-discover. And the funny part is that being an ISA, frankly, we can just call ourselves coaches. That's really if you think about what ISAs do in the real estate process, is they're just coaching somebody and one big ah-ha that's really played into this, is if you're coaching someone stories change naturally over time, right?

Tyler Stracener: Yep.

Robby T: And when we're having calls with leads or you're coaching somebody, the reality is that the story should be changing, new information should be coming to the table. That means you're doing your job well. But maybe we'll just petition to change it to ISAs are coaches. That's the new label.

Tyler Stracener: Yeah. Yep. And, when talking with a basketball player, really figuring out why they play this sport. Why do they love it, what's kind of their motivation, is the same thing when you're talking with a client. Why are they really wanting to do this? And so now, once you have that, you know how to continue forward and keep coaching them through the process to achieve what they really want. If you don't know that, you might be leading them in the wrong direction.

Robby T: I love that. Nate, go ahead.

Nate Joens: Yeah, no. I'm just taking it in. That's pretty interesting. Could you just give the listeners a little bit of a high level about your team set up? Where are you getting leads, some of the tech that you're using, what's the day-to-day process look like for you and your ISAs?