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Name: Scott Degnan
Title: California Division President
Experience: 25 years in real estate and lending
Location: San Diego, California
Brokerage name: Jason Mitchell Real Estate (JMG)
Rankings: No. 1 referral team, No. 2 real estate team for volume and units nationally
Team: 70 agents (California)
Transaction sides: 111 (personal production)
Sales volume: $90 million (personal production)
Awards:
- Salesperson of the Year (2019 and 2021)
- Division President of the Year (2020)
- Teammate of the Year (2019)
- Most Valuable Teammate of the Year (2022)
- Leadership Excellence Award (2021)
- Chairman’s Circle (2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022)
- President’s Club (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022)
- Salesperson of the Month five times
What’s the best advice you ever got from a mentor or colleague?
Letting the clients know that the money is not in their deal, but the real money is in all the referrals they will send if you find them the perfect home and exceed their expectations when navigating through the transaction.
What would you tell a new agent before they start out in the business?
Work really, really hard; help others without expectations; and be nice. These are the words I received at dinner one night from the owner of New American Funding, Rick Arvielo.
What do clients need to know before they begin a real estate transaction?
They need to have a good feeling about the agent who’ll be helping them. Will this agent take my calls after hours and on weekends when I need to discuss items about my home? Are they easy to work with and good at problem-solving when issues arise during the transaction? But most importantly, are they a team player and willing to do what it takes to help me and my family close on the home of our dreams? This is a partnership.
What do too few agents know that would make their lives easier?
You cannot be a part-time agent, period. Referrals are the name of the game in our industry. Without having a company like Jason Mitchell Real Estate (JMG) providing the warm referrals (not leads) of clients expecting your calls, it can be very difficult to scale your business.
All of our agents receive eight to ten referrals every month. More than 40 percent of our agents receive 20+ referrals every month. Being in leadership, I rarely take referrals and I’m still able to average over $18 million in volume every year.
Our agents are not only scaling, but because of these opportunities, they are now creating their own teams, creating more opportunities for their teams and their own families while being able to brand themselves with marketing, not JMG. Again, referrals are how you win in today’s real estate industry.
What is the one thing everyone should be doing to make their life and business better?
Not sure if you can narrow it down to just one thing in our industry, but it’s important to have a plan. Write down your realistic and attainable annual goals in December, not January. Then reevaluate those goals on a quarterly basis.
Write down your tasks for the next day the night before. If you work from home, like a lot of Realtors do, make sure you get outside for a walk every day. Don’t respond to any work emails or calls during that time. This is about you taking a break to recharge for the second half of the day. Nothing is that important where it cannot wait for 15-30 minutes.
The big one for me is spending quality time with my family. I leave my phone in the other room after a certain time at night so I can devote quality time to my family and not be distracted by the sounds of people emailing and texting me.
