How I made $73,000 by waiting 90 minutes in Real Estate

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So, gonna be sharing with you guys exactly how I made over seventy-three thousand dollars just by having the patience to wait 90 minutes. This is going to be something that will apply to anybody in any sort of customer service industry: working as a real estate agent, anything in sales. I promise this story will apply to you, and it's just a great story. It's interesting all the way around, and I think there's a good lesson to it. So, let's get right into it.

So this story goes all the way back to when I was 19 years old, working as a real estate agent. I would post other agents' lease listings on Craigslist, with their permission, of course. What I would do is, people would call me on those listings, and then I would be able to pick them up as clients and meet new people. It just worked out great.

So, I remember this. It was a Friday, maybe around 6:00 p.m., and I got a phone call from somebody wanting to see one of those listings at 8:00 p.m. Now, I was like 19 years old at the time. I had like no friends. I had nothing going on. I had no social life. I just did real estate and I figured, you know, okay, 8:00 p.m. on a Friday. They want to see this place. I have nothing else going on. I'm going to show it to them. This is perfect. I confirmed it on the phone. I'm like, "Okay, I'll see you there at 8:00 p.m. Perfect."

So, 7:45, I get to the house, turn on the lights, and get there a little bit early. Then 8:00 p.m. comes around, and you know, I'm looking at my clock and, you know, like any minute now they're gonna be here. Then it's about 8:20, and I forgot, like, okay maybe they're lost or something, so I call them. They say, "Oh, don't worry! You know, we're close by. We'll be there very soon."

Then 8:40 comes along, and I'm like, "Wait, I'm here. Where are they?" They said, "Any minute now." I called them again, and they say, "We're so sorry. Something came up. We had to stop somewhere really quick. We're on our way. I promise I'm so sorry. We'll be there soon."

Okay, 9:00 p.m. comes around, so I've been there now at the property for an hour and 15 minutes, and they're an hour late. I'm starting to get really upset, and I'm basically thinking they're wasting my time. What am I doing here? They're not serious. Here I am on a Friday night. I've waited over an hour for these people. What am I doing? I should just leave, and I should teach them a lesson to never be late. Never mess with Graham Stephan, because I have access to this property, and only I could show this to them.

I just kept thinking in my mind, "What should I be doing? Should I just try to teach them a lesson? What's the best route to take?" And you know what? I ended up thinking about it. I thought, you know what? I have nothing else going on tonight. I've already wasted an hour at this property. I'm here. What am I gonna do? I'm going to go home and watch TV tonight? I can either be here, wait for the client, and meet somebody new, or I can go and watch TV or do something totally unrelated.

So, I figured, you know what? I'm just gonna wait. While I was waiting at this property, I kept thinking back to something that had happened when I had first started in real estate. This was probably one of my first few clients from a lease that reached out to me maybe in the first two or three months. I kept remembering this event. I had a showing scheduled at 9:00 a.m. with this one client for a lease. A similar thing happened: 9:00 a.m. appointment was confirmed. 9:30, still wasn't there. Called them and said that he had to stop for some food really quick, and was gonna be on his way shortly.

9:45 came, and he still wasn't there. 10:00 a.m. came. Again, an hour late, still wasn't there. 10:15 came, said he was just a few minutes away. Didn't show up again. Almost an hour and a half late, 10:30, and when he came in, I was so upset with him. I told him, like, "I've been waiting here an hour and a half. I can't believe this. This is so disrespectful."

Keep in mind, I was 18 at the time. I didn't have any business. I barely made any money at all in real estate, and here I was, like, you know, this is disrespectful, wasting my time, this and that. I had nothing else going on that day. I had nowhere else to be. I just had gotten up early on a Saturday. I mean, that was basically it. I was already there, but basically, I rang him out in person because it was so frustrating.

When I said that, he rang me out and said, "You know what? You have no idea who I am. You have no idea who you're talking to right now. People wait for me. I run XYZ businesses. I make all this money. You know what? I don't even want to see this house anymore. Bla, bla, bla, bla."

He ended up, I heard through another agent leasing another house the next day, the commission of that probably would have been between four and ten thousand dollars for this one client. Because I had gotten really frustrated, he didn't want to work with me anymore, which is understandable. In reality, he was somewhat of a big-time guy in the movie industry. In all fairness, he was a busy guy. He did have a lot going on, and you know, even though he was an hour and a half late, which is super disrespectful, I could have just sucked it up because I had nothing else going on that day. I just could have been like, you know what? I'm here anyway, no worries. Let me show you the house. Maybe he would have liked it, and I would have been, you know, four to six thousand dollars richer at the time.

So, I kept thinking back to that moment when I was waiting at this new house with this new client, thinking I can make the same mistake again and lose the client, or I could just be like, "You know what? I'm here anyway. Nothing else I can do. Let's just make it happen," and then maybe I end up getting a sale.

Now it's about 9:15, and a car pulls up in the driveway. I'm thinking, okay, perfect! They're here! This is great. I've wasted an hour and 15 minutes, doesn't matter; they're here now. We can start. But someone comes out of the car and says, "I am so sorry. My boss is in the back seat of the car. He's on a really important phone call right now. We're gonna have to wait for that call to end, and then he'll come in."

I may as well just wait, push my own pride and ego aside, and just think, you know what? It's for the customer. This is customer service. I'm brand new to real estate. This is me building my business. This is something I should be doing. Good! Let's do it!

It was 9:30, an hour and a half after the appointment that the client comes out of the back of the car, introduces himself, walks through the home for not even a minute, comes out, and says, "You know what? I don't like the house, but I'm looking for something else. What else can you show me?"

At the time, I was like, "Oh my god! I had just wasted an hour and a half at this property." He spends one minute looking through the home. He doesn't even go upstairs or downstairs. He just takes a quick look around, and then it was like an immediate “no.” I was like, oh no, why? Why? Like, we could have figured this out! Like, just if he looked at the pictures, he would have figured this out.

But again, I was just thinking, you know what? This is a new client. I am building my business. Let's at least see where this goes because I don't have anything else going on at the time. Let's pursue it and see what happens. It turned out that this was a one-time fluke of him running extremely late because the next showings that we set up, he was on time or early.

I ended up leasing this client a home maybe about a week later, which led to about a five thousand or so dollar commission. He then ended up buying something for about two and a half million dollars about two years later. He then ended up leasing another home in addition to the home he bought, and then he ended up referring me more business that ended up leasing from me or using me as a real estate agent.

Just for this one client, I ended up making over seventy-three thousand dollars in commissions just by putting my ego aside, putting my pride aside, thinking, you know what? I'm already here, focusing on customer service and the client. $73,000 by waiting ninety minutes!

And more than likely, over the next few years, I'm going to continue getting more repeat and referral business from the same client. And it gets even better than that. But this person ended up becoming a really great personal friend of mine, and he's just a cool person to be around.

It was just like this one-time fluke of him being late. Had I let that get in the way, and had I decided to sabotage that and think, you know what? I'm just gonna stick it to him, I'm gonna teach him a lesson, none of that would have happened. I would never have met him, we would never be friends, and I would be over seventy-three thousand dollars poorer if I just didn't wait the 90 minutes.

The big takeaway here is that if you're in any sort of customer service industry, sometimes you do need to put your pride aside, just suck it up, and think of the clients first. If you really have nothing else going on, if you're brand new to the business, it's all about the client first. The more time you spend putting into it, the more you're gonna end up getting out of it.

Now, of course, there are going to be people out there that will be disrespectful and that will waste your time. It's important to differentiate between the two: between someone who's just totally disrespecting and wasting your time versus someone who's really just running late.

At some point, you just have to focus on the customer first and realize that you're there to help the other person and not the other way around. The things I do to make sure people don't run late: first of all, I tell them our appointment is at this time sharp, and usually that would work.

One of the other things I like to do is follow up an hour in advance. So if our appointment is set for 2:00 p.m., I will send a text following up at 1:00 p.m., just saying something like, "Hi, just want to reconfirm our appointment for 2:00 p.m. sharp. I will see you there. If anything comes up, let me know ASAP. Otherwise, we're confirmed. See you at that time."

99% of the time, you just get, "Ok, sounds good. See you then." Then if I have any doubt in my mind that this person might be the type to run a little bit late, I will send one more text just saying, "On my way. See you soon." I want to say this somehow eliminates like 90 to 95% of the people that run late, just when you gently remind them, like, "Hey, on my way," "Hey, see you in an hour." Almost every single time that ends up working.

If this client does happen, though, to run late time and time and time again consistently, you do need to let them know that this is not only disrespectful to your time but also to the other agents' time who's meeting you with the properties. It is important to remind them that you have other clients that you're working with too.

Sometimes when one appointment runs late, everything else runs late as well, and everybody's schedule gets pushed back because of that. It's so important to let them know this. And then if this happens again, you're not going to be able to work with them, and you wish them all the best. At that point, it's okay maybe to let them go or refer them to another agent.

But if you're anything like me at the time, and you had nothing else going on, and you had no other way of being more productive than just waiting, it's worth it. Just put everything else aside and wait. You may have just earned an extra seventy-three thousand dollars.

Finally, I want to end this video with a quick offer for anybody who's interested. If you're interested in working as a real estate agent or you're working as a real estate agent and want to expand what you're doing, I have a course called the Real Estate Agent Academy for anybody interested in this. For the next week, I'm going to be offering $50 off plus a free 20-minute coaching call as well. Testing this out just for a week.

If you guys are interested, the link is in the description with a little bit more information. Make sure to check that out. Just got the coaching call with the course, so I'm only doing this for a week. If you guys are interested, make sure to check that out as well. Also, if you've watched to the very end and you haven't subscribed already, make sure to smash that subscribe button.

Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram. I post pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!