I know that because of your technology background, you’re interested in keeping current with everything and hooking technology in its best senses to real estate. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing with your current company to of blend your technology experience and bring it forward into your real estate experience.
Sabrina: Absolutely. We have chosen at Legacy to partner with Google as our business suite, our intranet. All of our business interface for my team and I is on the Google platform. Our e-mail, our contact management, our calendar, our file storage, it’s all cloud-based through the Google business platform, which is a paid service that we’re able to utilize.
After I was using Google for free like everyone else did and did not understand the tools and the additional support that you receive as a Google for business customer, it just clicked. It was, “Okay, now instead of me being my own IT department for 7 not so tech-savvy agents, I’m able to buy an in-house staff support for IT when they’re utilizing the Google platform because all of that is included in the monthly service that we pay for, not to mention all of the real estate technology, whether it’s social media-related or just setting up your computer for your real estate business.
I have been the go-to since day one. Even at my old brokerage, my broker was not tech-savvy. I taught her a thing or two about how to get e-mail and how to be productive using the calendar and all of the interfaces that all of the different real estate tools that we have to use for our business, how to make best practices, and then how to train others doing that because there are several resources that we go to every single day, not just our e-mail but the MLS services and then checking additional outside third-party websites for real estate listings, and writing our contracts. All of that is technology-based. It’s all online platform.
Then electronic signatures, only 2 years ago, had been received in the real estate industry as a form of a fully executed binding contract.
I go around and not only teach my team, but I teach other Realtors, I mentor other Realtors, not just here in Georgia, but, internationally, I’ve had friends and family and colleagues all over the world just call me and say, “Hey, Sabrina. Are you using Realtor.com or Trulia?” or “What do you think about Zillow and buying leads from them?”
I’ve always been the tech-savvy expert, if you will, in the real estate industry, where my opinion was always sought after in what was I using and what were the best practices.
Craig: Right. With this using the Google as the platform for your business, it sounds like you’ve really grown out of needing to train your own office to be more technologically savvy and discovering that you have a talent in training Realtors to really use technology to their best advantage. What have you been doing lately with that?
Sabrina: Okay. That’s a great question. It is not just Realtors that I’ve opened up my training to. Because I was featured this year on the cover of People You Need to Know, Women’s Business Magazine here in Atlanta, that platform has a afforded me several speaking engagements, where I’ve spoken before several hundred women and men at different venues and different audience sizes, anywhere from a small class of just 20 people to a large standing-room only at the Fernbank Museum Auditorium just recently of over 200 people.
When I chose a topic to speak on, it was not only the motivation and the inspiration of how did I start my journey as an entrepreneur, but I also threw in my technology business plan. When I would say that, people’s eyebrows would raise and they were like, “Technology business plan? What’s that? I’ve heard of a business plan but not a technology business plan.”
That’s something that I’ve been using as a speaking tool that I’ve gone before several audiences, not only in my own company, not only to Realtors, the National Association of Residential Property Managers just had me as a featured speaker for their state conference that just passed here in September. I’ve had standing-room only for 2 sessions of a 3-day conference, where people were so engaged in that technology class that I offered. It was a free class.
I’ve been asked to come back and speak at several other conferences and be on panels with our Realtor association. Then, of course, just in the community, where I’m out at Google headquarters speaking before other business owners just to say, “Hey, if you don’t have a technology platform or if you don’t have a website, Google has a platform for us small business owners with small budgets that you can at least have a professional look and feel for a minimal budget.”
Craig: Right. Where is it that you hope that the combination between expanding your real estate business and teaching not only Realtors, from what you’re saying, but really just teaching businesses about how to leverage technology? Where is that you hope and see that going in the next few years?
