Podfest 2020 Conference and the last leg of our trip to Orlando, FL

Lisa: Hi, welcome back to Rview Podcast. I’m Lisa Richart-Hernandez.

George: And I’m George Hernandez

Lisa: And we are here to talk to today about Life, Travel and Real Estate. First, we’d like to talk to you about Life. We always catch you up with our life at the beginning of the podcast and then we’ll talk about our travel and then real estate it’s all involved. 

In our life, we always have a bunch of stuff going on since we have four teenagers and we are constantly traveling and working. So we just got back from 3 weeks on the road. We came home and the house was still standing. That is great!

George: Nobody was in jail that is also great!

Lisa: Yes! definitely a good sign. So people always ask us, What do you do, How in the heck do you go for 3 weeks with your kids? Where do you keep them and who watches them? Who’s in charge of things around there? So, my oldest daughter is off to College.

My youngest daughter stays with her Dad while we’re gone. Then we just have the 2 boys around the oldest is 18 and the younger is 16. So they’re already old enough to take care of themselves. But you know they are still kids. You don’t want to leave 2 teenage boys home alone completely right?

George: No! Not at all. They’re very good kids just to start with. We are not worried about them doing anything that they are not supposed to, very respectful. But, and having said that. We have a very advanced monitoring system in the house.

Lisa: We have a ring doorbell and then we have some alarm system and all the outside doors have video cameras and Kitchen and home theater have video cameras. We kind of see where they were doing and what they were supposed to do. And then we have my assistant who’s here during the day. We have several friends that are sort of rotating in and out. And the key is we do not tell them when the people are coming to spend the night. We keep them on our toes. So people make sure they have food.

George: It’s like feeding the cat! Can you stop by and add water and a little bit of food.

Lisa: Make sure they have cereal and milk and they are good.

George: And believe it or not, teenagers can survive in just cereal and pizza bites and taquitos.

Lisa: We’re not even paid advertising for them.

George: I know, but if they could that would be fantastic! Taquitos People.

Lisa: Because then, we could fund all of our travel based on our pizza bites consumption probably in this household with 4 teenagers and their friends. 

Anyway, that was our life. When we got back, one of them had some grade issues that it seems to me is never-ending so, We’re back to study Spanish.

George: Just a touch on that, that always seems to be the most difficult thing to keep track of while we are traveling. The school that the kids belong to is Wando Highschool (which is fantastic) has this thing called “PowerSchool”

Lisa: Love-hate relationship.

George: Yes. Absolutely love-hate relationship. Love it – because we can keep an eye on the kids’ grades. Hate it – because we can keep an eye on the kids’ grades.

Lisa: Oh yes, so true.

George: And it always happens that the minute we leave, of course, they let their guard down and their grades get down and…

Lisa: …get a zero, something like that or they get a bad test grade. So we get the grades in real-time and I get alerts on my phone. There have been times when we just spent a romantic long weekend getaway. And I’m like just trying to get off this week, there’s nothing I can listen to right now and that’s gonna be better but overall it’s great to know what’s going on in real-time with our kids’ grades and keeping on top of them in their grades. I think that’s probably our biggest challenge as parents. I think we’re really lucky that we don’t have any other major outside of school issues or drama or anything like that. Keeping up on top of the grades has been our biggest challenge as parents.

George. Yeah. We’re very fortunate we don’t have any other highschool issues that are out there – drugs, alcohol…

Lisa: Yeah, hopefully.

George: I’m an ex-narcotics cop and I have drug-tested the kids before so…

Lisa: Oh yeah, so…

George: Tip to the parents, if you have any thoughts that your kids are doing drugs, there’s great drug-test kits out there, use them. That’s why they’re out there.

Lisa: Oh! Yeah. So should we tell the story actually of the drug-testing?

George: No. I think we’re gonna make a podcast on that, just a… I think that would be a good idea just kind of a parental… 

Lisa: “Here’s what we did with our kids that really helped them”

George: …heads up. Yeah, don’t be afraid.

Lisa: It actually was a tool for our kids…

George: Yes! Our kids actually thanked us for drug-testing them because then it gave them an excuse that they saved…that drugs are out there. We know it. So, they’re always tempted and now they have that excuse that “Hey my dad’s crazy, he can randomly drug test us, so not gonna do it.” And they’re grateful for that, then it takes the peer pressure out.

Lisa: Right, right. So that’s kinda bit about our life right now. Also navigating this whole coronavirus thing. I suppose everyone’s worried about that. We just got word, my daughter’s university in South Carolina, they extended their spring break for one more week. And they have two more weeks, they have definitely online classes. A bunch of other colleges has closed down, go online. I think that’s really cool actually that the colleges continue to teach but they just go online. Which kinda also makes me question whether or not we should just always be online. Like why are we doing all these other stuff?

George: I agree and I disagree. We did everything online.. Look at the issues just with their cellphones, they do not communicate. These kids do not know how to hold a conversation. Everything is over the phone, everything is a text, everything is a tweet.

Lisa: That’s true. It’s the social interaction.

George: Right. So imagine if they did school online, they would have zero social interaction.

Lisa: That’s very true.

George: And that way we would end up with a bunch of robots.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s very true, very true. Anyway, i guess we closed down all of the borders now. I guess we’ll kind of navigate that and hopefully we look back in this podcast and listen to it and say, “Oh my gosh, you remember when coronavirus was a thing?”. So, anyways…

George: We don’t have a podcast back a couple of years ago but it would’ve been the Ebola virus, the bird flu virus, this virus. I think we should all take precautions but we should also be cautious about the precautions.

Lisa: Yeah, exactly.

George: My two cents.

Lisa: And I don’t know how all these bird flu coronaviruses and all these things had just become such a political issue so I really try to stay away from that. And like my business, Real Estate…

George: No politics. Let’s move on.

Lisa: (laughs) Alright, so let’s talk about our travels. The last thing that we have that we haven’t talked about was coz we did our podcast on Mardi Gras already, we did our podcast on Disney already and now, we have not talked to our listeners about Podfest. Podfest 2020 was held in Orlando, Florida. And it was Thursday to Sunday Seminars and it was all kinds of classes about Podcasting. Learning about how to be a better Podcaster or how to get your Podcast recognized. 

How to have better sound and equipment, So we’re talking to you about our new equipment. This is our dry run a bit.

George: Half of our equipment, our microphone hasn’t come in. These are new microphones but they are not good microphones. My bad, and I’ll touch on in a little bit. I had good advice from

Michael Neo is one of the people that we’ve met at Podcast and he was so kind enough to tell me what a bad choice of microphones I made. So thank you, Michael! He just went on my Amazon and ordered my microphones and I can’t wait to get them.

Lisa: Yeah, It might be a little bit delayed probably because the shipping is delayed from a lot of places here. But I’m looking forward to hearing how great the sound of the new microphone also.

So what else do we need to talk about Podcast Fest? So, first off, we started the Podcast maybe 2 months ago and I just started investigating the Podcast. Does some research in hosting this and I’ve learned about Buzzsprouts and they seem to have a good platform and tons and tons of training stuff there and are super user-friendly. So I signed up for Buzzsprouts and that’s where our Podcast is being hosted. 

George: Buzzsprouts is awesome. If I can use it, anybody can use it. It’s very user friendly, They were awesome. They hosted a party at spots fill, the bowling alley.

Lisa: It’s a Bowling alley and Bat a giant place in Disney’s springs in Orlando. And I’ll tell you to know how I made it to Buzzsprouts.

So, when I got signed up on Buzzsprouts and then they’ll invite you to join the Facebook group. So I joined the Facebook group and they say about the tickets for Podfest and if you fill out this form some people are going to win and we are going to choose the people who will get the PodFest. And I thought that my Podcast is only a couple of weeks old and I’m worried that I won’t get chosen but I’m just going to go ahead and sign up anyways. And I didn’t even tell George that I did it.

The next day I got an email and it said “ Hey! YOUR GOING TO PODFEST!! So that was a big surprise and I was super excited 

George: Actually, She was way more excited than that. She was like a little kid at Christmas. But it’s good! We got invited so I went ahead and purchased my own ticket so that we could both go together and learn about this new experience that we’re trying to create.

Lisa: Yeah! So then we got things that “Hey will you be able to make into the Welcome party for Buzzsprouts” and I was like okay, Cool that sounds cool. And they have a Shuttle right from the hotel to splitsville and an Open Bar. Was it an Open Bar?

George: No, We have to pay for the Bar. Tons of Foods and the Bowling was included. It was nice because it was an open lane. So basically, if you bowl a couple of rounds in one lane and then go over and meet some new people and Bowl with them. That’s where we met Michael O’Neil.

Lisa:  Michael O’Neil. was one of the most interesting people that we met at bowling. Because he has a Solopreneur Podcast. Which is really interesting to me being an entrepreneur. He is also the one who told you all about your equipment to get. And he has been doing Podcasting for I think at least 4 years or maybe longer.

George: I think it was 4 years, 5 years. And he has a youtube channel too.

Lisa:  Yes, But he started Podcasting, So anyways, Who else did we meet at Bowling?

George: Bowling

Lisa: Bowling, I think we met Robin from Tampa. Everything about Tampa Podcast. He was a fellow Real Estate Agent so it was interesting to me to meet another realtor and see how he was using Podcasting to help his business. He was focusing all of his Podcasting all about Tampa.

George: Yeah, Rob O’Connor of “This is Tampa Podcast” 

Lisa: Then we met a couple of people then we came back and did some networking at the bar where we met a bunch of other fun people. We saw a guy “Beyond Bourbon street” was his Podcast. Let me just tell you that there is a podcast for literally everything. I mean, there is a Podcast about poop. I mean, I thought it was catchy the “Poopy Podcast”

George: There is a podcast about everything. There is a Podcast about people that can talk to the beyond. Like Psychic and meditations and stuff. CBD, you name it, there’s a podcast

Lisa: Yeah, there was so much. So we saw a guy “Beyond Bourbon street” Mark Balowno. He’s been doing it for a long time. Also a successful Podcaster. We had a great conversation with him. He talks all about New Orleans and Bourbon street and everything you want to know about there. So if you ever go to New Orleans I definitely check on his Podcast in addition to ours.

I wish we had listened to his Podcast before we went.

George: I was just going to say the same thing. I wish we had known him before we went to Mardi Gras. We would have done cooperation and that would have been a lot of fun.

Lisa: Yeah, for sure. Who else did we meet?

George: We’ve met Julian Rodriguez. Remember him? He was the “Couple Shift” that was really interesting.

Lisa: That’s another Cuban couple. Oh! She’s not Cuban.

George: Puerto Rican and he is Cuban

Lisa: They talk about being an entrepreneur and starting there. Like quitting their jobs and he was a teacher

George: I think he got laid off and if you ever have a chance, go and listen to them. It’s really interesting. We listen to them on our way home.

Lisa: Yeah, we had to listen to everyone’s podcast to check it out on our RV trip home which was about a 6 hours drive. So I have to listen to a little bit of everybody and just skip around.

It’s really interesting to see all the different structures and different storytelling and styles of Podcasting of different people. Even successful and not successful new and old.  

George: And I got to get one more shout out to Philip Reese. He is the one that does the history “What if?” That one to me was super fascinating. He basically talks about like, What if Hitler hadn’t taken power? What if Castro hadn’t taken power? What if the Blackout of 78 in New York had not happened?

Lisa: He’s got this computer that put all this data in supposedly it spits out like alternate endings or alternate history.

George: And He’ll get a guess and talk about it and I thought it was really fascinating and very creative.

Lisa:  Yeah, He was a really creative guy.

George: Those were the highlights. We met a lot of people, so if we are leaving anybody, we’re very sorry.

Lisa: So, speaking of meeting new people. Let me just talk about the conference in general. One of my favorite things and I go to a ton of conferences. I wish they would do this at every single conference that I go to. They called it “Influencer night” and it was at 8:00 at night maybe 7 it was like after dinner right? 

There was a little break between classes and when it started if you show up they will give you one ticket and they will give you a card and on the card. There was 4 table number like table number 21, table number 29, table number 4 and table number 10 and you go to the first table that is on your card. So we get to sit at our table but we both got separated which is even better. Because we got to meet twice as many people. It’s basically like speed dating. You get to spend 15 minutes with each group a table of 10 people. And they would say 30 seconds to talk about.

George: The way you started it is your name, where you from, what your podcast is, and then they would feed you a question. Then you had to answer that question for a minute and 30 seconds.

Lisa: Mine was like “What was the best piece of advice you ever got?”

George: Right. So you answer that question then it goes to the next person and so on down the line.

Lisa: They have a table Captain and a timer. So you have to alternate people to 1minute and 30 seconds.

George: Right, and before the questioning and answering started you have enough time to hand out cards and have a quick meet and greet and once that Gag going it was really interesting to me that there was a room full of Podcasters.

People who love to talk and everybody was so scared of that exercise. There were so many people that are like, This is the most terrifying thing ever. I’m like, Dud, you have 10,000 listeners and you’re worried about talking to 10 of us.

It was actually a great exercise and I think that even those people would say that it was great and everybody got to talk and again after it’s done we have a little bit time to kind of talk about whatever heard and

Lisa: Networking and stuff. That was my favorite conference thing that they did. I loved that these conferences are in the evening.

George: Just to finish on that exercise. So after the first round was done, They would tell you okay switch tables it’s the second round and you would go to whatever table you have in the card. So, There were 4 rounds, 10 People and per table so you got a chance to talk to 40 people in..

Lisa: like an hour and 15 minutes yeah yeah it was excellent

George: whoever thought of that that was a great idea great idea

Lisa: and then the speaker there was books in the middle you could purchase one of his books and he had them there it was on the honors system or we could go on amazon and buy it for somebody else.

So just really kind of really unique in marketing tips and stuff one thing we learned is we need to get business cards for just our podcast.

George: Everybody had I felt terrible because we met a lot of people and everybody was

like oh you have a business card and we’re like um no I’ve got my wife’s business card I can write my podcast on the back. So next year we will be prepared.

Lisa:  yeah and also people had like t-shirts with their podcasts and things so that you could I don’t know how many backs of people’s t-shirts that I set behind in different classes and I’d be

like searching up their podcasts and like saving them in my subscription so that I could you know go back and listen to them later because.

George: I think those people must have gone to a podcast last year because pod fest because one of the guest speakers touched on that he said uh you know to make sure you get your  name out there get it on a t-shirt put on the back of your t-shirt and he gave that exact example you know when you’re sitting listening to the speaker and if the speaker’s boring you’re reading all these shirts and guess what people are going to do they’re going to look it up and see especially if you have something that catches your eye and you’re like oh what’s this what if yes what’s that about and all of a sudden you’re like oh that’s interesting that’s fantastic

Lisa:  yeah they also did a good job I think for their vendors which I think that was a great idea too I’ve never seen that really before at a conference I’m sure they do it at other conferences but they had a map and they gave all the vendors little stickers and if you went to all the booths and got a sticker you could turn your paper your map with all the stickers their name on in and they were drawing prizes like every night so you’re kind of like I should go visit some more booths.

George: Yeah and the prizes were really nice. I mean they did a fantastic job putting this thing together. I got to give them credit. Everything was well run.

Lisa: mm-hmm for a fairly small conference it was really good and they said it was twice as big as last year.

George: yep the only thing I will say is when they had the breakout sessions those rooms were a little small there were three or four breakout sessions that we went to that people were literally sitting on the floor or the doors there were 30 people outside so if you’re listening out there pod fest go for it get a bigger venue or hold some of these breakout sessions in the big room you had plenty of listeners.

Lisa:  yeah for sure so tell me George what would you say was the biggest thing that you learned from podfest?

George: interesting enough if this is going to sound weird what really caught my attention was how many people were there for Podfest to learn and they had not put out a podcast yet they were like i know I mean I’m at a loss for words. 

Because it’s kind of weird to me to go to a pod fest and you have and here’s the thing if you just started and you haven’t done it.

I understand that but there were people there that have been doing this for over a year and still haven’t and everybody says the same thing. Don’t be scared just put it out you have to take that first step yes everybody’s first podcast is when you look back at it it’s probably terrible we can’t wait to look back at our first one a year from now or five years from now and go oh my god what were we thinking I know right.

But guess what we did it Lisa can attest there were so many people we’re like what’s your pod podcast about well it’s about this but I haven’t done it yet I’m thinking about doing this and you know some of the people that have been around for a while, that was listening in on the conversation like what are you waiting for.

Lisa: That was another exercise that they did. I forgot to mention that when we were on the same night as the networking thing. One of them had this sheet on the table for each person to fill out at their first table.

It had like 20 things on it like what is holding you back or what is your biggest fear about podcasting? You checked off everything that applied to you. Then you had to fold it in

quarters and then pass it to somebody and pass it to somebody else so it’s all anonymous basically and so everybody just started passing the papers all over the place I guess that’s a coronavirus nightmare but they just passed them all over the place and then everybody ended up they said okay stop passing papers and you ended up with the last paper you had in your hand or whichever paper you had and then they said who here has on their sheet of paper that they are afraid of sounding stupid.

George: Stand up if that’s what is checked off on your list.

Lisa: yeah and so then all these people would stand up and you’d say wow I’m not the only one that is worried about sounding stupid or I’m not the only one who’s worried about what other people will think or how I sound or don’t like my voice or I don’t have enough equipment.

I mean there’s all these excuses I don’t know what to talk about yeah it was really interesting and then it really doesn’t cost that much at all to get into podcasting so there was a really cool story there that or one person said the only reason I haven’t created my podcast yet is that I don’t have a computer. And one of the other podcasters gave that person they said you know what I have an extra computer I’m just going to give you mine and that was really cool they announced that on stage.

I thought that was really just super supportive like nobody was really like judging anybody else. Everybody was, I thought was really uplifting and really positive. We were straight up like we’re just here to learn like sponges. Just tell us whatever we want to learn.

George: And I think they had a really good mix of new people and seasoned podcasters which again going back to that exercise with the table with the first round they planted seasoned podcasters on every table somebody at the first table was at least in the game five years you start talking to them and things.

Lisa: yeah there was always a speaker I just realized that yeah there was a speaker that was cool right yeah um so I would say I think I learned a lot of things by the end of the conference I was like my brain is full I don’t know if I can take any more in right now a lot of my stuff that I felt like I learned more on the technical side on how to build followers and social media and how to attract listeners and I think that’s the biggest challenge probably for most people starting out in podcasting.

George: and that’s your strength is marketing and doing all that another thing that they talked about that caught my attention was consistency if you’re not consistent you lose your audience because they’re like with us we try to put it out every Friday we’re going to put it out every Friday but if we start slacking off then our audience is going to slack off so we want you to come back and listen so we’re going to put one out every Friday and I hate to say but we missed one on Friday because we were at podfest but we made it up and we’re putting out another one on this Friday and we won’t miss any from this Friday on.

Lisa: if you want any more information about podfest, if you’re thinking about starting a podcast, truly I’m not the one to ask but I have had some friends reach out to us and said I saw you at a podcast and I was thinking about doing a podcast about this how did you get started and I just actually directed them to buzzsprout because they have like a five-minute Monday that I really enjoy I listen to it every Monday it has great tips and then they had videos and I watched all these training videos on it and I read everything if you haven’t already figured that out I’m a reader so I like to read and research a lot of things that were just kind of what I did with pod fast or podcasting and buzzsprout was a huge help for me. I felt like I got a lot of information. Very simply put really quickly and easily. I’m happy that I did that.

George: yeah and they had a lot of vendors there and a lot of other providers and we spoke with all of them and I think Lisa made a great decision going with buzzsprout. I think their product is great. and again very user friendly.

Lisa: So let’s kind of I think that’s kind of a wrap on PodFest after PodFest we were actually supposed to stay till Monday and we ended up leaving like Sunday afternoon which I’m really bummed because they had a like a bumper cars game that they were doing on Sunday evening but truly from being on the road three weeks I was just mentally exhausted had a bunch of work that I had been working on and I just I needed to stop.

George: We both did I mean yeah three weeks on the road mardi gras like that that alone wore us out and then we had two weeks of travel after that yeah so by Sunday we were pretty beat and we were ready to go back to Hiltonhead and just have two days of true downtime.

Lisa:  well it wasn’t really downtime for me and he went there for work so that’s a good segue into let’s talk about real estate all right let’s talk about real estate yes so I just opened a brokerage in Hiltonhead island south Carolina about what two months ago maybe?

George: Yeah I think two months

Lisa: and I was just kind of like I’m the type of person who researches things and learns all about it and then I kind of make my move so I have a friend down there and she owns her lot she’s also a retired real estate agent and she was like I want you to you know get down here and start selling real estate so you can list my lot here I want it put in the MLS so she kind of pushed me a little bit faster than I was really intending to go but it’s good because sometimes you need a little fire under your feet to get things rolling.

George: it wasn’t a push it was more like a shove get in there

Lisa: off of a cliff yes he was like just go I want my thing listed so uh I signed up I researched what it would cost to get into the MLS and what I needed to do to get my brokerage started down there signed up for the training got all the training done.

I thought it would be so much easier because I’ve been an agent for 15 years and I’ve used our system here for MLS and theirs is completely different so it’s like a whole day of training online and I still you know have questions and I’m going to go down and do another training I think in Hiltonhead in person that might be a little bit more helpful.

But long story short I’m a set up now and I got it so that we can put our RV lots in the MLS which is a huge thing so now it’s syndicated out to realtor.com and zillow.com and homes.com and all those other websites that have you know to drive millions of buyers traffic too how many lots have you picked up already too well I have one actively listed in the MLS and then I’ve had about eight owners reach out to me that are interested in potentially listing their lots or they want to do for sale by owners and they’re thinking about selling so I was overwhelmed with the amount of response that i had from just the marketing that I had done uh in the short tiny well it was like word of mouth on the Facebook group.

George:  So why don’t you uh give us the website that you created in case.

Lisa: There is hiltonheadrvlotsforsale.com got some lots on there now the resort is great and Hilton is a great place to go RVing and you know we should talk about that more in our travels and you’ll always hear us going down to HiltonHead and the RV so if you want any information about Hilton head rv Hilton head island the main website for the resort is  hiltonheadislandmotorcoachresort.com.

and that’s not my website but it’s the website for the resort you can rent our lot we’re a lot 187. $110 dollars a night is the rate and it’s literally bike riding distance to the beach you can walk to restaurants it’s a great location

George: con conveniently located to everything, yeah and if you’re into golf there are a ton of golf courses around there the heritage is held at uh Hiltonhead.

Lisa: yeah the heritage is coming up in April heritage golf tournament and I’m sure we’ll have a podcast talk well unless they can’t.

George: maybe there’s the word of canceling it if they haven’t done that already.

Lisa: I hope they wait that’s kind of such a bummer.

George: oh side note going back to pod fest real quick the first day we were there we got our badges and they asked us if we wanted to put a dot on our badge. We asked what’s the dot for? and they said well with the coronavirus there’s a lot of people that are.

Lisa: She didn’t say even anything about coronavirus she was like well it’s for the people that don’t want to be fondled and I was like um excuse me like what kind of conference is this so basically what kind of fondling are you talking about?

George: It was for people who didn’t want to shake hands yeah fist pump or just wave but don’t shake my hand yeah so I don’t have to wash it every single time I shake hands with somebody so I thought that was interesting.

Lisa: Yeah that was an interesting side note there while I was gone in the three weeks I barely talked about real estate at all so in our future podcast we’re gonna keep it straight life travel real estate so working from the road for three weeks was good but also like challenging and stressful at times I got under contract one of my million dollar listings uh I took on a new listing sold a road a  property wrote a contract for a buyer um I had like three closings so I was really really really busy times for me and so it felt good to know that I could navigate that from the road and take care of you know pretty much everything and still be making money while we’re traveling

George: yes and I have to go and figure out a better way to provide wi-fi mobile wi-fi while we’re on the road so if anybody out there has any suggestions please email us at [email protected] so we can hear your advice.

Lisa: yeah or you can just go onto rviewpodcast.com and you can like read us a comment yeah yeah especially for me I’m trying to set that up and any comment would be great yeah because uh we use mobile hotspot from George’s Verizon phone sometimes I use my t-mobile it just depends on which comes in better but um and then of course when we’re at hotels and resorts there’s usually some decent wi-fi so but my if as long as I have wi-fi I can pretty end of my phone I can pretty much work from anywhere which is awesome.

George: and that’s what she always says as long as I have wi-fi and of course I don’t know why but I think it’s happened almost every single time we’ve gone out in the RV maybe we need to travel more because you always end up with some major deal like you just sold your million dollars home while we’re traveling beautiful it always seems to happen that when we’re traveling is when just as you’re about to send the contract the wi-fi disappears yes we lose connection so that’s why I’m trying to I want to get us mobile wi-fi so we don’t have to.

Lisa: yeah, as a matter of fact, we were listening to some other podcasters in the RV they’re like RV travelers and they have been doing podcasting for a really long time and they’re really popular podcasts and I forgot the name of wit so I don’t want to shout them out right now but one of the things they were saying is we were taking small steps on how we were going to start you know monetizing our podcast.

The first step was you know we keep having to go to Starbucks to use their wi-fi because we don’t have good wi-fi on the road so it’s the first thing we want to pay for with the podcasting money that we make is all the coffees that we drink at star Starbucks and I thought that was hilarious because I kind of felt like that one time we literally stopped at I think it was a McDonald’s like just right here so we can log into their wi-fi so I can get this email contract sent out.

Or I’m going to have like a yeah we’re breaking down right now outside in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in a 40-foot mobile home it’s not like we stand out or anything and we didn’t go in I felt bad I think we actually did go in and we ordered some food.

Lisa: yeah if we always try to buy something from somebody if we’re gonna scam off their wi-fi that’s why they had to pay for their coffees you know right that’s that that’d be great info.

George: so do you have any tips for us as far as real estate what do you what what’s your take on or not what’s your take have you seen any effect in real estate from the coronavirus since that’s the hot topic right now.

Lisa: not yet well there’s I mean one of the things is the interest rates are really really low and you know incredibly low I know and I was talking to one of my mortgage guys yesterday, uh and he was saying the secondary market like refi and stuff like that the people that are investors and this is like this is the people that like buy mortgages the bank people um have kind of slowed the refi’s down um they’re kind of inflating the rates just to kind of hold they can’t manage even the amount of people that are refining their homes right now.

So I mean that’s a good thing people that means people are planning on staying it’s good for them but not good for me in the real estate business good for the mortgage guys you’d be crazy not to refinance with I mean I think they’re dropping below two percent uh three percent right no well no not necessarily like I thought I heard that on the radio the other day it’s kind of been going up and down a little bit so it’s hard to say a day by day but overall I think that people the only ways it will really affect us is if people start like losing their jobs and money they’ve been talking about like even doing like a tax extension for people to have to if they owe taxes instead of having to be April 15th maybe it’ll be longer than that.

I just dropped off my extension paperwork to the accountant today and she said well we’ll see what you owe and if they’re going to be due by April 15th or if the government’s going to extend it so I guess we’ll it’s gonna it’s kind of really too early to tell a lot of unknowns I guess yeah really too early to tell on that and I really feel sorry for the people who are in the travel industry people that have planned their travel shut down um you know a lot of people are losing money I had lunch with my good friend Carrie today.

And she said I her and her girlfriends had planned a trip to Greece and Italy first they canceled Italy and so she was like okay so we rescheduled all to just go to Greece and then they canceled all the borders and so she’s like we’ve just lost like four thousand dollars a person.

George: yeah my parents are supposed to go on a cruise and their community they go their community plans the cruise and they canceled the whole cruise so the carnival lost about a hundred people just from that community.

Lisa: I’m sure yeah and plus they’re all elderly so I definitely couldn’t advise. I wouldn’t be traveling yeah it’s scary enough to go on a cruise ship when there isn’t a coronavirus out there I always I’m washing my hands and using all the things and they do a really great job of keeping those ships clean.

George: yes that’ll be another podcast we love cruising I love cruising yeah so we’ll next time we do a cruise we will have a podcast we might even do we should try doing a remote podcast yeah we can we now especially when our new microphones come in they’re made so that we can do it from the RV and things like that also so um and you can like set up in a restaurant or something like that and do podcasting.

we have our mobile recorder now thanks to Michael O’Neal. Michael O’Neal shout out.

Lisa: hopefully he listens to this love to send it to him all right so real estate last and final tip uh I will say one thing that happened to me this week while I was on the road and I told you I put up a new listing and my client had been talking about listing her house but she wanted to make an offer on a house that just came on the market so we made that happen it was multiple offers but was contingent upon the sale of her house which she had not had on the market yet.

It was in the lower price range it was only 178 000 so I thought okay well it’s hard to find a house in that price range in her neighborhood so hopefully, it will sell quickly we kind of rushed to market and we didn’t get professional photos done I think that professional photos are a super important part of marketing and I always stick to my guns on that and I kind of let it slide this time although she did take some pretty good photos it just didn’t really represent her online as well as I had hoped it would.

George: I think you’re two big things or three things is you do great marketing you always do professional photos and you’re staging is huge I’ve learned that from.

Lisa: yes staging is a really big deal and every single one of my listings gets a free staging consultation so we have someone that comes in and tells you exactly what you need to do to your home to get it ready for the market.

George: that is such an important thing it’s really been and that’s a great strategy too because then you’re not the bad guy exactly telling the client that they need to be alone or furniture needs to change that’s awesome.

Lisa: tell you a story about that real estate story so in my earlier years when I did everything on my own um I went over and the people said okay you know tell us what we need to do to get the house ready for market it’s like an older brick ranch home built in the 60s and it has like this little entryway and it’s like a standard square ranch style house so a little entryway and then you look to the right and there’s a formal living room that goes over to the dining room and behind that’s like a family room in the kitchen and so so I look to the right and the main formal living room is bright yellow and the wallpaper there’s wallpaper in the little entryway and it has like butterflies and stuff on it and I said and at this point.

George: so this house is like well yeah right but it wasn’t the 70s that’s my point?

Lisa: right exactly but I’m so sorry this is like the year 2011 or 12 something like that and I was like a man may be or even earlier yeah probably eleven I don’t know so wallpaper was not in style is the point and it’s making a comeback no yes it is I know but I hate wallpapers so let’s just not even go there but so I say to the lady denial we start in the front door and I’m like all right well you know I  think it’d be a good idea to remove this wallpaper and she says well what do you mean and I said well I mean I’m sure it’s been here like for a really long time since you bought the house and he says no my kids just put that wallpaper up for me for mother’s day and I’m like oh snap that was so bad I’m like okay so now I’m the bad guy even though it was true the wallpaper had to go.

you know oh that was a pick up your jaw from the floor I know I know there’s been like I know I was in a listening appointment one time and people smoked in their house and I felt like I had the listing and I was gonna get it the house was beautiful and I said you know they’re like well you know what kind of tips do you have and I said well have my stager come in I said let me just ask you one question do you smoke in the house and they were like oh no we don’t smoke in the house we smoke in the garage and on the porch well let me tell you what people if you smoke in your garage and n your porch your house smells like cigarettes and it is like one of the most offensive things for people who I would say that 95 percent of people don’t smoke and do not want a house that smells like smoke.

George: So it’s funny because people that smoke doesn’t smell it right so people know that cats don’t smell it oh they have dogs don’t smell it that’s true and and you know and I’ve always heard you say it over and over and over when you go to the presentation and you ask somebody hey do you have a cat and they go yeah and then you start talking you open that conversation and they always say to you but it really doesn’t smell that bad does it and it’s like oh my gosh because you know when you live in it you become accustomed to the smell to the odor and when somebody new comes in it hits you hard oh yeah so imagine if you’re going to buy a house and that’s the first thing that hits you that’s to me that would be a big turn off.

Lisa: yeah yeah and it’s really hard to break that to people because they love their pets they love their dogs they love their cats and they love their cigarettes.

George: and sometimes they love all three in the same place that’s the worst heck of a potpourri for you.

Lisa: yeah so I  eave that to my stagers too just kind of give them a list of things I need to do which may include getting the cats in the litter box out getting the dog out cleaning the dog hair or stopping smoking and.

George: or the potbelly pig oh that’s like a story from a long time that’s a whole nother pod fest oh

Lisa: they’re all podcasts babe not pod fast well it is kind of well that one’s gonna be a pod fest I’m telling you that one oh yeah so maybe some both r time we’ll talk about uh some of the craziest stories.

George: you know what that would be a fun podcast so we were talking about possibly doing little side stories and that would be an excellent one uh of all the crazy experiences that you’ve had as a realtor including one that I had to go as her back up armed back up this woman gets into the craziest stuff.

Lisa: Well it’s because I sell it I sell bank on foreclosures on what’s called a reo agent and I sell luxury homes and stuff too but so everything my motto is from your first home to your first mansion we can help! So it’s kind of like a little bit of everything um well a lot of everything I’ve got experience but each home has its own unique marketing proposition and um I think that’s really cool so i think that let’s wrap it up.

George: Great job I’m gonna pump my wife yeah that sounds terrible I’m gonna give a shout out to my wife she does a great job she can sell anything trust me I’ve seen some of these houses and if she can sell them, yeah nobody else can sell them and she’s awesome at what she does and if you’re looking to buy or sell a house in charleston south Carolina or Hiltonhead no or Hiltonhead now yeah she’s going to take over the world.

Lisa:  I’m going to leave her oldest daughter Lauren and one of the other kids take over the world I’ll just be a stepping stone.

George: actually that sounds great then we can just get residual checks yeah retire for real legit for reals we can go on the road and be full-timers I’m not sure about that.

Lisa:  full-timers is when you’re a full-time over

George: hmm hence the name full-timer I don’t know I would have never put that together.

Lisa: I’m like a full-time worker all right

George: let’s wrap this up before we get crazy all right so we would love this is what we need we need for you too if you’re on iTunes leave us um a review or go to our website Rviewpodcast.com it’s the letter r-v-iew-podcast.com so it’s like a plan whereas RV sometimes when you go to automatically type it in it goes to review which is rview if that’s not us it’s rview podcast and you can subscribe there and we’ll keep you updated on all of our episodes when they come out to leave us any questions or comments we would love feedback.

George: yes and please subscribe like and comment.

Lisa: and share the Share this podcast with other friends of yours that also podcast Share it on your social media help us grow help us be able to pay for our coffees when we travel that’s like my first step.

George: that would be awesome, yes but also in the comments if you want us to talk about something or if you want us to come to visit somewhere tell us why we should go and oh yeah we’d be happy to we want to travel everywhere we want to see this beautiful country of ours and if you’re proud of your hometown let us know we’ll come and visit.

Lisa: Yeah that’s that’s great that’s a great show you know.

George: that is a great shout out and if you’re the first one to do it you’re gonna be on the podcast with us.

Lisa: yay they can be on the podcast and we’ll buy them dinner and

George: we can talk about it there we go about it after that yeah all right so be the first one to do it let’s go.

Lisa: all right thanks friends we hope to see you soon and we’ll talk to you next week.