Divorce Real Estate: How Randi Dukes Built a $32M Practice in the Niche Most Agents Avoid
with Randi Dukes
Divorce Real Estate: How Randi Dukes Built a $32M Practice in the Niche Most Agents Avoid
Most agents hear “divorce listing” and quietly route the call somewhere else. The parties aren’t speaking. Someone doesn’t want to sell. There’s a court order in play that nobody has read closely. It’s the kind of file that eats a week and pays the same as an easy one.
Randi Dukes went the other direction. A Dallas–Fort Worth agent and certified divorce real estate specialist, she has closed over $32 million in volume across 85-plus transactions and was recognized as a top 750 producer in 2025 — with divorce listings as a defining piece of the practice. She is also refreshingly unwilling to sell the niche as easy money. “It’s harder than most people think it is,” she told Mattias on this week’s episode of The REI Agent.
What makes the conversation worth 38 minutes isn’t the niche itself. It’s that almost everything Randi has built to survive it — the neutrality systems, the intake discipline, the emotional boundaries — turns out to be good practice for any transaction you’ll ever run.
Why do most agents avoid divorce listings — and what does that leave behind?
Randi got licensed in 2020, roughly three months before COVID shut the country down. She came in from two unusual directions: years earlier she’d been a nurse, and in between she spent about twelve years as a content creator, starting on Blogspot back when blogs were new and eventually working with national brands. Both show up in how she practices today.
The niche found her personally. She went through her own divorce nine years ago, and it reframed what a home sale actually is. For most people the house is their largest asset or close to it, and the proceeds are what make the next chapter possible — paying the attorneys, clearing marital debt, and funding not one household but two.
That’s the part the industry underweights. A divorce file isn’t one transaction that’s unusually annoying; it’s often a listing plus two subsequent purchases, and the quality of the sale determines whether both people land on their feet. Randi is clear-eyed that this also makes it a business opportunity, and equally clear that treating it as only an opportunity is how agents get it wrong.
How do you find divorce clients without ambulance chasing?
This is the question Randi says she has worked hardest on, and her answer rules out most of what the industry would suggest. Divorce filings are frequently public record. You could pull them and mail them. She won’t.
“I don’t want to be the ambulance chasing version of a realtor in this market,” she said. Mattias offered the word predatory, and she took it — the same dynamic exists around foreclosure and bankruptcy lists, where the data is available and the approach still curdles the relationship before it starts.
What she does instead is slower and compounds better. She builds relationships with divorce attorneys, who are the natural referral source and who want a competent agent they can hand off to. She publishes genuinely educational content on her own site, which brings in people searching for help at the moment they need it — including other agents who find her and refer clients rather than deal with the messiness themselves.
That last channel is worth sitting with. Agent-to-agent referrals arrive precisely because other agents don’t want these files. Being the person in your market who does handle them is itself a lead source.
What do her SEO habits have to do with any of this?
Randi’s blogging background is the engine underneath the sourcing. She made a deliberate early choice to run her own website rather than the one her brokerage and CRM provided, because she wanted control of the SEO — keywords, structure, content strategy. For the same reason she’s skeptical of building on a platform like Substack, where the search equity lives on someone else’s domain.
Her three tips are unglamorous and she’s the first to say so:
Be hyperlocal. She found real estate SEO easier than the broad lifestyle blogging she used to do, because a local market hands you a defined audience instead of asking you to appeal to the entire internet.
Take keywords seriously. The balance is writing something actually valuable while making sure the people reading it are in your market.
Be consistent. “Like everything else, if you’re consistent with writing things, Google is loving that.”
She added a wrinkle that most agents haven’t caught up to yet: optimizing for Google and optimizing for AI assistants are now two different jobs. “They like different things. They like things phrased differently.” For a niche where people research privately before they ever call anyone, being the source an AI cites is quickly becoming as valuable as ranking.
What does neutrality actually look like in a divorce transaction?
Ask Randi for the single biggest factor and she doesn’t hesitate: maintaining neutrality throughout. Both sides will try to pull you at different points. Your job is to be visibly, procedurally impossible to pull.
The intake is where it starts. Usually one spouse initiates contact — sometimes by preference, sometimes because a court order names them. Randi then runs the exact same intake with the other party, even when that party isn’t happy the house is selling at all. Her reasoning is practical: in a marriage where communication has broken down, what one person knows is frequently not what the other knows.
Those intake questions go deep fast, and they’re financial as much as personal. Is there a protective order on either side? Is there a court order to sell? Are there liens on the property? Has a second mortgage ever been taken out? Divorce correlates with financial stress, so she opens title early to find out what the house’s actual situation is rather than what either party believes it is.
Then neutrality becomes an operating system. Weekly listing updates go out as one email to both parties, copied and pasted identically, so nobody receives information the other didn’t. She even alternates which name goes in the “To” field first from week to week. It sounds fussy. It’s exactly the kind of detail that prevents a party from ever constructing a story that you favored the other one.
How do you win over the spouse who didn’t hire you?
That first call to the other side is, in Randi’s words, the harder phone call. You’re a stranger introducing yourself, explaining your role, and then immediately asking deeply personal questions of someone who may believe you’re the opposing team’s hire.
Her approach has two layers. The first is to be, as she puts it, very black and white — to treat it as a transaction and keep her own emotion out of it. That’s not coldness; it’s what makes her safe to deal with. She’s blunt about the cost: “I’ve had very rude things said to me. I’ve had people blow up. I’ve been yelled at, called names. It’s not for the weak of heart or the faint of heart.”
The second layer is compassion, deployed deliberately. When someone is angry or frightened, she meets it with acknowledgment — I understand this is hard, I understand you’re doing something you don’t want to do — and finds it reliably dials the temperature down. Where there’s a court order, she reframes her role around the client’s own interest: this is happening, so my job is to get you the best possible outcome from it and set you up for what’s next.
She also notes something that surprises people: the party who blew up somewhere in the middle is usually the one who comes back at the end, house sold and funds in the account, to apologize. She doesn’t take the blowup personally, because she understands she’s meeting people during one of the most stressful experiences of their lives. It’s a posture she traces directly to nursing — sitting with people in their best and worst moments, and treating that as an honor rather than a burden.
What does a well-written court order actually do for the agent?
This is the most concretely useful stretch of the episode for anyone considering the niche.
A court order to sell is not self-executing. As Randi points out, an order doesn’t make people move out, allow showings, or sign documents. She’s currently working a file where one party is refusing to vacate, which has reshaped every term of the offer on the table. Not unusual — par for the course.
The orders she likes are the specific ones. Divorce attorneys who know what they’re doing will name the listing agent, set deadlines for each step, and — critically — sometimes include a clause stating that if a good offer arrives and the parties don’t agree, the agent makes the final call. She calls that a real protection, while being honest that it’s uncomfortable to be the person saying “we are accepting this.”
And then the attorneys largely disappear. Once the order is written, they step back and only re-engage if someone is materially violating it. At that point the house isn’t their area of expertise, and the agent is effectively running the show. Which is precisely why the quality of the order — and your relationship with the attorneys writing them — matters so much.
What are Randi’s three golden nuggets for any agent?
None of these are divorce-specific, which is the point.
Controlling your emotions is the key to a successful transaction. Celebrate with clients, cry with them if that’s real — but keep emotion out of the negotiation itself. Mattias backed this with a story against himself: earlier in his career he cared so much about building the business that he once fought to hold a deal together long past the point he should have read the writing on the wall. The upside of the discipline is that you become the steady center for people. As Randi notes, clients have told her they called simply because talking to her calmed them down at eight at night.
“There are no emergencies in real estate. There may feel like there are emergencies, but there aren’t. We aren’t saving lives. And so I’m not saying not to give it all of your attention, but don’t give it all of your emotion.” — Randi Dukes
Do what’s in your DNA. Borrowing from Tom Ferry: you can try every marketing tactic in existence, but if it doesn’t resonate with you, you won’t sustain it. If you hate cold calling and door knocking, you won’t do them. She allows the caveat that you still have to push past your comfort zone — but building on tactics that fit your personality beats forcing yourself into ones you dread.
Every bit of lead generation is a long-term strategy. Agents chase the quick win; the follow-up is what actually closes. An open house that produced no client that day wasn’t a failure — it means you should be in conversation with that person for the next two years until they transact. Reframing it that way, she says, removes most of the disappointment.
Her relationship philosophy fits the same mold: “I will keep in touch with you until you tell me to go away.” Interestingly, divorce clients are the exception — roughly half don’t stay in her sphere, because they need to close that chapter, and she respects it. Her favorite book, Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, powers the rest: cookies when a tough option period ends, a bag of diapers when a client turns out to be pregnant. Surprise and delight, made standard.
Listen to the full episode
Randi Dukes is @randydukesrealtor across social platforms, and her blog lives at randydukesrealtor.com. The full conversation covers her blogging-to-real-estate path, her sphere and referral systems, and more on how she structures divorce files from intake to close.
If the through-line here resonated — that the durable business is the relational one, built on remembering the details that matter to people — that’s the thesis REI Agent Advisor was built around. It’s the CRM Mattias describes in the episode: FORD-based tracking (family, occupation, recreation, dreams) that surfaces smart prompts at the right moments, so the kids’ names, the anniversaries, and the milestones aren’t floating around in your head. Technology that helps you be authentic rather than performing authenticity. Take a look at advisor.reiagent.com.
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Full Episode Transcript
Welcome back to the REI Agent. My guest today is Randy Dukes, a certified divorce real estate specialist and agent with Repeat Realty in Dallas Fort Worth area. Randy has built a practice around one of the most emotionally complex and underserved real estate niches in the business, helping families navigate the sale of a home during divorce. With over thirty two million sales volume across eighty five plus transactions and recognition of as a top seven hundred fifty real estate producer in twenty twenty five, she has turned a specialization most agents avoid into a durable and meaningful practice. She brings both the technical expertise and the human approach that this kind of work demands. Randy, welcome to the REI Agent Podcast. Glad to be here. I mentioned when you first got on it that I felt a little bit weird, so I’m excited to talk about divorce with you. It’s a bit of a heavy topic. Yeah. Well, before we dive into that, I do want to hear kind of like what got you started in real estate and kind of your journey getting going. So I started as a realtor six years ago at probably one of the worst points ever, right? Three weeks, well, three months before COVID hit in twenty twenty. It didn’t make a huge difference for me because I was already starting from square one. So I just dove in really hard. And as we all know, the next year ended up being absolutely crazy. So in some ways, I was super lucky to get started at that time because the market was so wild. I actually have a background of being a nurse years and years ago. and then did content creation for about twelve years before I got into real estate. I always joke that I was one of the early bloggers on the scene and created this whole influencer thing. But it prepared me really well for real estate, both on the technical side of things and then just learning to negotiate on behalf of myself and other people. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about that? Like what were you what were you were blogging? I was, so it started as a complete hobby. Um, blogs were brand new. We were on blogspot and I did it as a little bit of a scrapbook, a way of keeping track with my family. And then I realized that if I was posting about things that were creative or kind of fun, I was seeing more traffic. Other people were, were watching or reading this. And so it led me into this idea that I can probably monetize this. Um, And that’s what I did. So I just initially sold sidebar ads for thirty dollars a pop and then realized as the years went on that there were larger companies seeing me. There were third party platforms that you could work with to get jobs and ended up working with huge brands across all spaces, really. Okay. So this, you’re doing creative stuff. Like, so was this like any, uh, things related to houses? It was a house projects. Was it interior design? If you’re not watching this right now, she’s got a, uh, a wallpaper in the background that is as bright as a statement. It looks really good, but it tells me that you have that creative side that you. I do love the creative and the color. I was working in that space doing projects for the home as well as small craft type things. I have five kids. So there were lots of theme parties. There were lots of fun food projects and a little bit of everything. Okay. Very fun. Very fun. So Are you blogging now at all for real estate? It sounds like it’d be apples and oranges a little bit. I mean, unless you just kind of continued the same kind of house stuff, but that was creative projects or whatever. But as far as what the real estate market is doing, are you doing any kind of blogs now? I do. That was one of the things that I brought over into real estate. I learned so much about SEO and how to optimize a website. And it made sense that you could take a lot of those same ideas and apply them to real estate. It’s a long-term strategy. Obviously you’re not hitting anything overnight, but it is one of the ways that I bring leads into my business through blogging about different things and creating that website. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. And have you, one of the things, I know Substack is really popular right now, but that is putting things on their platform, right? So I feel like that kind of doesn’t do well for your own SEO. Have you explored that? Have you thought about using Substack or has that been something that you’ve canceled out of your system because of that reason? I haven’t thought about it a whole lot, but that is a huge deterrent. And even when I first started, we had a website through our brokerage and our CRM, and I quickly opted to not use that because you don’t have enough control over the SEO. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty as much as I know of the backside of things and really be able to control what those keywords were what the content that I was putting out there that I was trying to be super strategic about directing people to my site. So it didn’t make sense to have it living somewhere else that I couldn’t control that. Sure. Can you give us a couple of quick high-level tips for increasing your SEO or if somebody is using a website that they can control those kind of things, what would be something that you would suggest? One, I would say be hyperlocal. This is actually something I found easier to do in real estate than it was when I was just trying to write this massive blog that appealed, honestly, worldwide. Because being hyperlocal means that you already have this very directed audience. And that somehow felt much easier because you can really niche down on what you’re trying to go for. Keywords are super important. And just… I mean, there’s that give and take of you’re trying to make sure that you’re providing something that’s of value for people while also trying to make sure that the audience that’s really reading it is in your market. So keywords are super important in that realm. And then just being consistent. Like everything else, if you’re consistent with writing things, Google is loving that. And now we have the whole AI component. So I’ve been learning a lot about that. These are really two different things, trying to appeal both to Google and to AI. And they like different things. They like things phrased differently. So it’s a whole world. Yeah, that is a really big shift in the industry for sure. And just, you know, online traffic in general, I think, you know, looking to get yeah the those crawlers all the all the ai uh bots to to like what you have is a whole different game so um yeah well thank you for that that wasn’t uh part of the uh the thought of what we’d be talking about today um but it is really interesting it is really important i think you know web web presence is definitely important um people do that different ways i mean not having the having a seo optimized website isn’t necessarily uh, requirement here. And I, and there’s definitely people who have, um, been able to pretty much make it with just YouTube. Um, and that is also a hyperlocal thing. YouTube is another huge search engine. Um, second biggest, right. Um, and people who are thinking about coming to your market, um, will often go to, you know, YouTube to, to research. And I think that’s where, um, you know, that’s another angle of kind of getting, um, a lead source from um keywords and you know being hyper local it can really pay off right so how how what where did the divorce thing come from and and and where did you like decide to kind of double down on that that niche I got divorced nine years ago and it was really my first experience in my small world with anything like that. And it made me realize at the time we owned a house for most people, their house is, if not their greatest asset, one of their greatest assets. And I realized how important it was that you have the proceeds of a really good sale in order to carry on with the rest of your life. So for most people, it’s probably helping pay for the actual divorce for attorneys. It’s helping you pay off any debt that there may be in the marriage. And then helping two different households carry on for the future. So it gave me just a different view. And then I obviously had a different level of compassion as well for what people were going through in that situation. Yeah, I can imagine that would definitely help to have the perspective to have that. Um, so was that something that you thought about pretty early on? Um, I know that, you know, anybody that’s been in the business for a while that have, have like heard about that being kind of a, uh, you know, an, an area of getting business people needing to, uh, to, to, to sometimes often will buy two houses as well. Right. I mean, that definitely can happen as well. So it’s definitely from a volume standpoint, it seems like it could be a good opportunity. Um, again, it sounds weird to say that it’s an opportunity, you know? It is, but I think it’s harder than most people think it is because where I don’t want to be the ambulance chasing version of a realtor in this market. So where do you find these clients? And that’s always been a really big deal for me to figure that out. I want to enter into everything in a very relational, compassionate way. So you’re not searching court records to then send a mailer to somebody who’s going through a divorce. Um, and so it’s a lot of relationship building with attorneys. This is where the SEO has really helped me, where I just have some educational pieces on my site and have had people find me many times that way, including other agents that have found me and referred clients. So it’s a really different piece because the same marketing, in my view, I think there are a lot of different ways to do it, but I wanted to be super careful not to do it in a way that felt kind of gross. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I, I totally get it. I mean, it’s, it can feel predatory maybe. I mean, there’s a, that’s a great word. And I mean, that’s true for other things that can be public record. Like if there is somebody going through bankruptcy or going through foreclosure, sometimes that stuff is public records. And I think it’s definitely lists that people get and can target. And I’ve talked to people who have specialized in helping people get out from under their foreclosure or try to save the mortgage. And I think as a result, their business has gotten some either referrals or sales from people who just end up needing to sell, but they help a lot of people not have foreclosure. in the process. And I think that’s kind of like maybe a similar, not that you’re playing mayor’s therapy or anything, but an example of where you can maybe niche in a difficult area and not be predatory. Agreed, because it’s really what you’re bringing to the table in the situation. In a divorce situation, it’s obviously really tricky. You’ve got two parties that are often not getting along. Very few divorces end up being amicable in the heat of them. And so you really have this opportunity to care well for people. And I’ve always loved that side of the business. In addition to divorce listings, I love anything that’s a transition because I think Real estate already brings about so much emotion anyway. And being able to really enter well into that is something that’s beautiful. It brings me back to my nursing. I always used to say in nursing, you have the opportunity to sit with people in their best and worst moments. And there’s something really beautiful. It’s very much an honor. And weirdly, real estate has that same element to it, where so many times people are buying or selling a house. There’s not happiness surrounding it. It might be full of joy, but there’s a lot of negative emotion. It might be a death. It might be a divorce. It could be downsizing where there’s both emotions, good and bad. And that too feels like an honor to get to work with somebody in that situation. That’s well said. I think even in like a circumstance of purchasing a home, upgrading a home, whatever, that it’s all positive, like for the reasons behind it, there is often still negative emotion involved with it. It is a stressful time. I mean, moving can be really stressful when things, the way that the other party, you know, negotiates in the home inspection, that kind of stuff can bring out like, the best and worst of people we get to be there with them through that. So I can see how that could be heightened or, well, the, one of the things I was going to ask you, and one of the things that I was just thinking about was in, in a divorce situation. So often, you know, in, in married couples you know, you’re going to have a, one of the people that, you know, might be the person that handles, you know, like if they were to sell a house together, there’d probably be one guy, one person that would, be kind of more in charge of it. They handle the logistics, they handle the, you know, like they, you know, not that they’re making all the decisions, but they just kind of have defaulted to that person. Now you have a divorce factored in and you have the possibility of like, you know, like people wanting to be like, they’re on my team or like, not that they’re necessarily trying to get you to be on their side, but I could imagine that’s another dynamic that you have to be very cognizant about. So how do you navigate all that? is probably one of the biggest factors in divorce real estate, that you are maintaining this position of neutrality throughout. And both sides end up at different times wanting to pull you. They’re wanting… you decide a little bit depending on what the scenario is. So neutrality is huge. And sometimes there’s always one person, as you said, that starts the situation that’s pulling in the agent. And that might be based on a court order. It could just be based on preference. There are a lot of different ways that that happens. And then once you’ve spoken with that one person and done intake, you’re doing the exact same intake with the other person as well, which isn’t always simple because sometimes there is a party that isn’t loving the idea that this house is being sold. But you really have to go through the exact same thing because in a situation like this where communication may not have been great for the last few years, what one party knows is not always what another party knows. And then throughout the transaction, keeping that neutrality. even down to sending an email to this party first this time and this party first next time or copying and pasting. So when I give a weekly update on your listing, it’s an email that goes out with all of the information because again, one person may not know anything about the showings that are going on. It’s a copy and a paste so that there can never be any idea that one person is being favored over another. So I guess like probably the first challenge for you is to win over that other party that didn’t bring you in, right? Right. And that’s like, you know, hey, I don’t want to use their agent. I mean, I can imagine there’s things like that that happen, right? Right. That’s exactly right. And it shows up at different times throughout this transaction as well. Um, but definitely that first phone call to the other side that didn’t start that didn’t initiate this, this situation is the harder phone call, just introducing who you are, what you’re going to be doing, and then trying to get some basic information. And then even your intake is so different. You’re asking questions that are deeply personal, but you have to know, is there a protective order on either side? Is there a court order to sell the property? Are there any liens on the house? Sometimes one party knows about that, the other party doesn’t. Has the second mortgage ever been taken out? divorce just by nature of being not a great scenario often ends up with financial issues as well so you’re really diving in super deep right from that get-go and then opening title to find out okay what is the exact scenario of this house um just so many moving pieces in that divorce world What are some tricks to winning over that other party early on? Because, I mean, you kind of have to. Yeah, I mean, like you said, you have to ask these really deep personal questions pretty fast. But, you know, usually I’m sure you’re trying to build the rapport and kind of trying to get some buy in from them at the beginning. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So one being very black and white. I’m treating it very much as a transaction, keeping my emotion out of it. And in these types of transactions, that’s sometimes harder. I’ve had very rude things said to me. I’ve had people blow up. I’ve been yelled at, called names. It’s not for the weak of heart or the faint of heart. But you have to realize always the perspective. This is just a tricky situation. So keeping your own emotion in the midst of that. And then honestly, just trying to show compassion. This is a really hard situation. And so I always find that when somebody is deeply emotional or angry or any of those more negative emotions, entering into it with compassion and understanding can really dial things down a lot. Yeah. So like probably really trying to show, yeah, the empathy, compassion with, with also somehow conveying that you’re not like going to be taking sides in the, in the, I’m not there. I’m also your agent. And not like, I’m wondering about like, if there’s a way, an angle with like a fiduciary duty, like, you know, if you can highlight that, that I would, you know, have fiduciary duties to represent both of you all equally. Like it’s not, you know, it’s, it’s, It’s something that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a tough, tough situation, but I want to make sure you understand that I’m working at for both of you. And we will work at it from a neutral standpoint. Yeah. Just kind of off my head. Very much. And just a lot of things that I understand. I understand this is really hard. I understand this is difficult. I understand you’re doing something you don’t want to do. just showing that compassion to both sides, especially if it’s the side that didn’t hire you from the beginning. And then sometimes it just comes down to, I know this is hard. There is a court order to sell this property. And so now my job is to get you the best out of that court order. So I want to help you be set up for success on the other side of this. This might not be what you wanted, but this is where we have to go from here. Yeah, that makes sense. that makes sense. Because I mean, ultimately, they would have to still sign a listing agreement, right? I mean, like, yeah, so it’s not like, go ahead. Sorry. Right there, there’s a court order, but that doesn’t mean that people are moving out and allowing showings and signing documents. Sometimes in a court order, um, divorce attorneys get very, very specific and those are always the best. They may even list who the listing agent is to be. They’ll give deadlines for things, but sometimes there’ll be a clause in there that says if there is a good offer and the agent thinks this is a good offer, but both parties aren’t agreeing, the agent actually gets to make the final decision. Now, that’s a really nice protection. It’s also really difficult to be that person who’s saying, hey, we are accepting this. Yeah, that would be hard. It’s very hard. Yeah, you’d almost want the attorney to take that off. Right, right. And honestly, in real estate, what I find is that the attorney, once that order is written, they want to back out of this. The only time that they’re really involved again is if somebody is absolutely not doing what they’re supposed to be doing according to the order. But at that point, the house is not their area of expertise. And so most are backing off and just letting the agent take over. Sure. That makes sense. That’s really fascinating. I think it is definitely it’s cool that I feel like you found a purpose in it. I think that having the experience and having the empathy can turn what turn like the really hard times into something like it’s part of the process. It’s part of why of doing it. which probably helps you sustain it. And I think to underline your point earlier, this probably isn’t for everybody. It might sound great that you can get three transactions out of one from a consistent referral source, but it’s not all a bed of roses. I think you have to have a level of passion for it because it is really difficult. There are times I just laugh and think, what am I doing? This is one of the most difficult types of situations you can probably have in real estate. And I’m seeking this out. So I think you do have to feel a lot of passion for it. And I get a number of referrals from other agents, even in my market area, who just know, hey, I don’t want to deal with the messiness of this. And so they’d rather refer it out to another agent who understands it a little better. That totally makes sense. And I think that is definitely something I preach all the time on the show is knowing when to step away, knowing when to fire people. We have a holistic approach to life through real estate under here as our sub-theme. If you are getting sucked dry from a transaction, which all of us have experienced, like if you have a client or whatever that is just making your life miserable, it’s not worth it. And, and so I think like you really have to consider if you’re going to do a niche like this, if, if you have that passion, if you have that, you know, that desire to really help people. Cause I mean, cause at the end of the day, that’s the reward, right? I mean, you are helping people, you are, you are providing a really important service to people who really need it. It’s just that they will ooze on you. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Have you had people, I would imagine this happens a lot, but have you had people or any stories that come to mind where you’ve had people come back and really thank you and apologize for how things went at certain times when it got a little messy? Yeah. Usually that person who blew up somewhere in that transaction comes back at the end and they are grateful. Now the house is sold. They have a check in their account and there’ve been a lot of apologies of, I’m sorry. It’s the emotion of it. And this is the part I don’t take it personally. I understand this person is going through probably one of the most stressful experiences of their life. And I can take it. Yeah. Well, kudos to you. Cause I don’t think a lot of people could and it, it, or just repeatedly, you know, like I think that can get, and I’m sure like if you were having like, there’s probably easier ones than others. And I would imagine if you have like three or four at the same time, it could probably start feeling like, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? Yeah. but also there’s another side to it when you’re selling a property just for somebody who is selling their house at some point they might make a decision that they’re not selling this market is not working out they’re not going to do this they hate listing price divorce real estate is different because they are selling this house so there is this weird sense of security in it where you know there are only certain things you can control in this transaction anyway and your job is just to keep working as hard as you can to get this done but the house is going to be sold. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I can totally understand that. Yeah. Are there any funny anecdotes without giving out personal details that you can share? I’m sure there’s been, I’m sure you have some stories. Yeah. I don’t know if they’re funny is the problem. Lots of situations of, One person is absolutely refusing to sign documents. They may be refusing to let somebody come in and see the house. I have a situation where they’re refusing to move out. So that has altered every bit of the offer that we have on the table. It’s not really funny, but it also is par for the course. These are really common scenarios in divorce real estate. Okay. Yeah, no, it’s wild. I had a. Yeah, I don’t know if I could say I have any funny ones either, but there is there’s There’s been some interesting ones. I had somebody that had multiple rental properties, like, twelve that we had to work through. And that was an interesting process through the whole thing. But anyway, I would imagine that’s not your full book of business. Why is it? I would imagine you stay in touch with these people as well post-closing and try to have that sphere. What other practices do you do to maintain your business? I’m a big sphere and referral person. Although interestingly, divorce doesn’t always play into that because sometimes those people are just a done. It’s a part of their life. They need to completely close off. So I actually, with at least fifty percent of my divorce closings, they’re not people that I continue. And that’s their choice. They just they need to close the door on that. But in my business in general, I will keep in touch with you until you tell me to go away. I love the relational element. I love that for a month or more, I am completely enmeshed in your life. I know your kids. I know your dog’s name. And so really love to continue that relationship later. I’m big on pot pies and little surprise gifts. And I do a lot of marketing and directed work toward my sphere, which is where a lot of that sphere and referral source comes in. And then I also just do a lot of broad marketing. I have certain things that I love, as I said, the transition. So I kind of look at that. That’s downsizing. It’s all of these different things. I do. I teach classes. I do a lot of the SEO work. I do mailers. I’ve cast a wide net initially. And now I’m actually trying to hone it in a little bit and go really deep on the things that work well and the things that I think go with who I am. but I’m a big net person. Sure. Oh yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. That is interesting about it being like kind of a closed chapter and, and, and kind of have anything to remind them Um, that that’s a part I hadn’t considered. But, you know, I mean, I think, yeah, I have to, I have to quickly plug some of the stuff you said to, to our, our CRM related really quick. We have a CRM. If you go to reiagent.com where you are able to actually keep track of things like the kids’ names. If, if a birthday comes up, you can keep track of that there. You can keep track of the pet’s names, their occupations. It’s all forward-based. So, so, you know, family occupation, recreation and dreams. so that when you are communicating with your clients, that you can say things to them that they care about, right? So like things that they care about. And in that conversation, if you just simply kind of keep track of those details a little bit, CRM is designed to then be able to give you smart options or prompts to communicate to your clients. So if they know it’s an anniversary, if they know it’s a birthday, if you know it’s a kid’s birthday, if you know it’s a kid’s going to be starting a new thing like high school, these are great opportunities to show that you care, that you think about your sphere and you don’t have to have it all in your head floating around there. Some people are better than I am. Yeah. But yeah, this allows for technology to make you authentic to people, not try to take you out of, try to pretend to be you authentically. It’s you, but giving you prompts and smart things that will just build that relationship. So again, go to ariaagent.com. Randy, what about golden nuggets? Do you have any golden nuggets for our listeners today? Yeah. I do. And I kind of I think these go across the board, not just for divorce, but for really all of real estate. And I did allude to a couple of these already because they just come up constantly. But one that I think is huge, I’m an associate broker at our brokerage and I see this all the time. Controlling your emotions is the key to a successful transaction. And in everything we’re dealing with people who are already emotionally, even if it’s good emotion, you have got to be the person. I’m not saying not to celebrate and maybe even cry and deal with all of the things with a client. But when it comes down to the nitty gritty of the negotiation, I think keeping your emotions out of it creates a very good transaction every time. I want to underline that really fast. That’s so true. There was a huge shift in my business because I cared so much. I wanted to build my business so much that I kind of cared too much about the transaction. Um, and, and that had negative, um, for the reasons you’re talking about. Sometimes I think there’s one example where I tried too hard to keep the deal together and I should have just saw the right on the wall. Um, but I’ve poorly described it in the past where I’ve called it like taking the title. I haven’t even read the book, the subtle art of not giving it. F, and describe it that way. But I don’t even know really fully what that book’s about. But the point I was trying to make is separating the emotion from it. Because if you are able to provide an amazing service that isn’t wrapped up in emotion, and you become the center for them. And people have often told me then that I just wanted to talk to you because it calms me down at eight at night. Right. There are no emergencies in real estate, and every solution has a problem. Those two things I remind myself of all the time. We can find a solution for anything. Now, it may not be your ideal solution, but it’s going to be a solution. And there are no emergencies in real estate. There may feel like there are emergencies, but there aren’t. We aren’t saving lives. And so I’m not saying not to give it all of your attention, but don’t give it all of your emotion. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well said. Sorry. And then other nuggets. I think Tom Ferry always says, do what’s in your DNA. And I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think that we can try all of the marketing in the world. If it doesn’t resonate with you, you’re not going to do it. So if you hate cold calling and door knocking, you’re not going to do it. So you have to do the things and, and there’s a caveat to that because you do have to push yourself out of your comfort zone and And just do the work at different times. But you have to do what feels good for you, what actually fits with your personality. So that may be the pop buys, the birthday cards, all of those things. If you’re already bent toward that kind of relational focus anyway, doing what’s in your DNA is way more of a win than forcing yourself to do what you hate doing. And then the other one is, and I say this all the time too, but every bit of lead generation is a long-term strategy. And I think agents are always looking for the quick win, but you have to view everything as this is the beginning and it’s the follow-up, the constant follow-up that actually gets you to the finish line. And if we’re viewing things like an open house, if you didn’t get a client that day, it doesn’t mean that wasn’t a success. It means you better be talking to that person for the next maybe two years until they finally transact. So everything is a long-term strategy and you’ll take away a lot of your disappointment if you think of it that way. Yeah, it’s really true. You’re planting seeds in many ways and it, it can be hard when you’re starting, um, because, uh, you know, you don’t see that eventually all these seeds that you’ve uh planted compound and then and then results in a bunch of fruit that you know like you know comes in so like i think there’s often uh especially in slower markets where like it uh you might take three years of seed planting right to really see kind of like a you know in your uh the results from it and it can be challenging to kind of see it through but you’re absolutely right those are those are really good nuggets thank you what about a favorite book? One that you think that’s fundamental that everybody should read or just one that you’re currently enjoying? Yeah. So I’m an avid reader. I’m always digging into some kind of good book. I love books about the business. I love hearing how people do things differently, but one of my absolute favorites, which goes along with everything we’ve talked about today is unreasonable hospitality. Just this idea of creating surprise and delight. So you’re giving people the unexpected. And I, Love finding ways to actually make that a standard part of my business. Maybe sending cookies when the difficult option period comes to an end or delivering the little birthday gift or delivering a bag of diapers when you find out a client’s pregnant. Those little ways of just creating this next level relational hospitality I think is so cool. I love it. There’s a couple of things that you’ve said now that have reminded me of. So I have a book coming out and in the process, this is kind of a story of a kid becoming the REI agent, right? So they’re going through the whole process of what I think that is. self-discovery is, I think, really important. I think who you are, understanding who you are is huge. And I think there’s various, you know, personality tests, things that can help you along that path. There are ones that I like better than others, but I think just the journey in general is really important. I think understanding if you’re going to, you know, burn out really fast, cold calling, don’t do that. It’s definitely not for everybody, but for others, it they can handle a hundred nos and be totally fine. So it’s definitely something to know about yourself and that’s gonna help. The other thing is kind of brand archetypes. And I think that kind of what you just highlighted is the classic, disney type um like disney and i’m blanking on the actual magician i think is what it’s called that’s the brand archetype uh where you are providing this amazing experience like like you know every little detail is considered and you know like from like Disney, the trash is never emptied. It’s goes down, you know, into tunnels or whatever from, from the top. So like, like that is a really awesome thing that you could, you could really lean into and that kind of book be perfect, um, for that. And, and even if that’s not your main focus, like it could be a great reminder of like, you know, how you can make this, you know, even more special thing for, so I love that. Randy, finally, if anybody’s interested in following you on social media, reading your blogs about what kind of wallpaper they should put. No, but seriously, where can people find you if they want to find out more information about you? I’m randydukesrealtor on almost all social media platforms. And then my website is randydukesrealtor.com. And my blog is linked up on the main page there. And all this will be in the show notes. If you’re driving down the road and don’t have the ability to write any notes from these awesome golden nuggets, definitely go to reiagent.com, sign up for the newsletter. And the summary of these episodes will all come once a week. And there will be a blog about this episode as well. So definitely check that out. Randy, thank you so much for being on the show. It was an honor talking to you. It was great talking to you as well.
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