Impeccable service and savvy investing with Krasi Henkel

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor, and life coach, Trista Guertin.

Hi everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. Thank you for joining me today. I have a special guest. I have Krasi Henkel. She is the principal, broker and owner of properties in the Potomac, based in Northern Virginia in Loudoun County, but serving the Washington DC metro area. Correct? That's right. Well, welcome Krasi. Thank you so much for joining me today. And why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Trista, thank you for having me. I'm really honored and I so value your podcast and the information and the value that you provide to your listeners. So thank you. I feel very honored to be here.

Oh, you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Well, also, I wanted to let you know that, the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors Small, a small broker committee that I chair really appreciated your, information and they found it very valuable and they've even talked to me about it, so thank you. Oh,

good. I'm so glad. it was a real honor to do that presentation for your team, and I really enjoyed it, so thank you for the opportunity.

Oh, yes, thank you. It was great to meet you because of that. I know. I'm going to tell you a few things. So. My real estate journey began when I was just nine years old. when I helped my immigrant parents, navigate the real estate minefields of the United States. And let me tell you what they were minefields. My next significant conquest came a few years later when I was engaged and my fiance and I decided that three months up from our wedding, we should probably find someplace to live. So we spent an afternoon looking at apartments and our last stop was what we thought was an apartment, but was a condo. So the real estate agent there was very nice and saw that we were very young and said, well, these are for sale. And like we were being talked down to, and I took the, I said, well, we'll take the brochure. Anyway, we both were studying accounting and we were graduating with our degrees in accounting. And so we, we took the brochure, then we went home and we talked to his parents and my parents, and we didn't discuss anything we saw. We just. Whatever it is we were doing that evening, and when I went up to my room to get ready to go to sleep, I sat down and I put all the brochures of all the apartments and the condo out on my desk and I looked at them and it didn't take me long to determine that owning the condo was far superior financially than renting somebody's apartment. So I ran the numbers and they didn't look right to me. So I ran them over and over and over, and probably two o'clock in the morning, I finally said, you know what? I keep coming up with the same answer, so I'm gonna tell John about it tomorrow. So I went to bed, I got up, I went over to his house and said, Hey John, and this was on a Sunday. Here's what I came up with. And he went, okay, well let's go buy it. My husband doesn't take very much persuading. Let's go buy it. We go buy it. So we went out and it was a busy day at the model, and so I had to actually tap the, agent on her shoulder, say, excuse me, we'd like to buy a condo. And she looked at me and was, oh, you were here yesterday. So she recognized us and she was very nice and she was very helpful. Look, we had no jobs, we had no income, we had no money. We were buying a condo and how do I do that? But I do that with aplomb And she sat us down at her desk and gave us all the options and showed us what we can buy and how we can do it. And when it was all done, a half hour later we got in the car, drove home, told my husband's father, he bought us a condo, that he was going to be on our mortgage, and he is gonna give us a different. That's when I decided that real estate was for me and that impeccable service was going to be my goal for my business. So this agent, was very busy, but she found time for us and gave us her undivided attention, and she really showed me how it should be done.

Okay.

And then again, I asked a lot of questions and I really schooled myself too. So by the time the transaction was completed, I was pretty not naive about real estate anymore. So then before I founded properties on the Potomac, I spent 11 years with the federal, government corporation. Where, I reached a GS 15 level and I, I was an auditor and then I investigated organized crime and, embezzlement of pension funds. And then I built a portfolio for them that went from 40 million to 130 million.

Wow.

And I got this big award in $250 and I was like, wait, what? Meanwhile all these junk bond kings on Wall Street were making $250 million bonuses, and I'm getting $250. And I realized that that is what they had to give. And I, while I appreciated it, I realized that there was more in the world than that. So I decided then and there that I was going to switch into real estate. And look, getting into real estate is expensive. And you have no income Promise of any kind, and it's all commission. And I couldn't afford to get into it before that, simply because it was so expensive. And we had a house and a mortgage and car payments and all the debt that goes with the young family and a kid. and a nanny. And so, you have to be able to afford the kid, the nanny and the car payments and the house payments. So you have somewhere to live. But somehow all my, pension funding that I had, all the money that I had accumulated in my pensions, account was enough to give me six months of income. And so I jumped right out and went right in. Wow. And it was funny because I tendered my resignation notice on the day, on the same date that I started. Okay. 11 years earlier. So it was kind of funny. the director that I gave my notice to, 'cause I was up there, I was a director, I was a division manager, director, I dunno, whatever my position was. But there were like 60 people under me. And, and I wasn't doing anything that I liked, which is another reason I had to leave. but anyway, I, went to him, gave him my notice, and he looked at me. He goes, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm gonna go into real estate. And he goes, it's so competitive. And I thought to myself, huh, I am the competition. It did not set me back at all.

Right? And

then he said, well, you know, there's so many of them. And I said, yes, there are, but they need a good one. And I'm going out there and I am the good one and I am the competition. So hold onto your hat. And with that, two weeks later, I went into my own business, which is real estate. Okay. Back then we had something called desk duty, and my first desk duty was at 9:00 AM the very first day I went full-time. And at nine oh two, a call came in from Pat and Daryl and a very older couple who lived in our community, and she calls me up, she goes, hi, I am Pat. We wanna move closer to our cemetery and we wanna sell our homes. Wow. Now, this is the very first call I got. Amazing. And I said, okay, cemetery, why are you calling about cemetery? She goes, we're moving to Florida. Okay, whatever makes them happy. I made the appointment, met with them that evening, and in my typical way, I go out to kill a fly with a sledgehammer. I did that. The listing was mine, I guess, with the minute I walked through the door, but I didn't know that. So I persuaded them. They were gonna list with me, and so we did nice and that was my very first. Full-time listing. I had others while I was still transitioning, but this was my very first full-time listing.

Wow.

And from there on, I've never looked back.

Wow. It

has been so much fun.

How many years ago was that?

that was in 1986. Okay. Do the math. Okay. so today I am the owner, the president, the CEO, and the principal broker of properties on the Potomac. And in the years since 1986, I have sold, I, I can't even think how much I've sold. I've probably sold 2000 people homes or maybe more. lots of billions of dollars of real estate. But, I remember each one very vividly.

Yeah.

And, We are a woman-owned company. Of course. I own the company.

Yeah.

and we're a boutique, but we're a boutique not to be fancy and fussy because we are very selective with who we, whom we choose to do business. Not because they have to be a big transaction or anything in particular. They have to be somebody who really needs the level of care and attention that we give. We're not a one-stop shop. We are a, very particular high quality service organization. And as I said to my manager or director years ago when I resigned, we are in the service business and I intend to give impeccable service. And that is our mission statement. If you look at our mission. Our mission is to provide impeccable service. If you want a one-stop shop, if you wanna go online and sell your house to an online company and buy through them and have no transaction fees and undercut yourself, that's everybody's prerogative. But the way we do business is we salvage every dollar for our client. we look at them as a whole picture, not just as the real estate. You know, oftentimes when they call and tell me they wanna sell their house, my first question is, why do you wanna sell your house? What can we do to keep your house? I keep telling people, you don't get rich selling real estate. You get rich owning real estate.

And

one thing that's interesting is I wrote a blog some years back on my website about Shakespeare. everybody knows Shakespeare and everybody knows that he was pretty well off because he was a playwright. Well, the reality is, is that he was well off because he held a lot of real estate. Okay. He bought second largest farm in Stratford upon Ivan, and he invested his money from his proceeds of his plays and the proceeds from the theater and the ownership of his theater. And so people have made their fortunes in real estate, right? So my job is to try to help people make their fortunes in real estate, and whether that is helping themselves so they can move up, helping them. Keep so they can move up, but still keep, I mean, there's so many ways to be able to keep their homes, particularly people who have very low mortgage rates. Right now, people with their two and 3% mortgages, I would never suggest they sell their homes. You know, keep your house, buy what you want, refinance, take an equity line of credit, use that for your down payment,

right?

But now you have, you're controlling so much more equity and you're controlling so much more property. And, so my goal for my clients always is to work on their wealth, work on their entire portfolio. I mean, look, I have a degree in accounting. I have a degree in a finance. And my point of reference is always how do these numbers work? You can see from my little condo story when I was 22, that's how my mind works. And the thing is that we're a small company and we don't have room for a thousand clients. Okay? You know, we have room for a couple hundred clients, okay? But we want to give those couple hundred clients our undivided attention. the way we operate is the agent who takes on the client takes them on from the moment that they have their first interview, to the moment that they close. That means inspections. That means, working with the lender. That means going to closing, that means going through walkthroughs, whatever it is, they have to go through that with our client. And then our client goes to closing, and then afterwards, there are other issues. they have to move in. They have to eat lunch. We, we'll send them lunch. We'll do something that, makes their move a little bit easier, even if we recommend the movers. Sometimes we recommend movers, and sometimes we, we have a list of people that we like to recommend because they're so good and they, they share our value of impeccable service. Okay. And so I look at our business as this is the largest transaction of your life. It is the largest liability of your life. It's the largest investment of your life. It is so important to make a good decision. it's not enough to open up the computer and poke at a map and go, this is where I wanna live. How do you know? And the other thing is, is that, we show a lot of properties. We can walk into a property and suddenly we open the door and my client goes, it smells bad. And out we go. other days, we'll walk in and the fragrance just wafts out. We're like, oh, let's go check this out. So you never know. And therefore, while everybody is moving to technology and there's a lot of room for technology in our industry, and I use a lot of it when it saves me time, but not to the detriment of my clients.

Right.

my research is done. I don't just go on and say, give me a market analysis for this address. I go in and I do my own market analysis. That means I go street by street. I look at the various concept, the difference components of each property that I'm evaluating. And so I evaluate their house relative to the actual competition and relative to those that have recently closed within their area and not within a five mile radius of something that could be across something, on a railroad track or something next to a gas station. There's a big difference. Sure. so I am very, very, very cautious with that, and I teach my agents that. Okay. So additionally, in my role as a salesperson for all these years I've been doing that, but now as my role of a broker, I have agents that work for me. And those agents I train from the ground up. And we work on, what is our goal? what is our why? why are we in this business? and then of course, and all of the agents that work with me love the service. They love to be able to help people. They love being able to see people prosper. And that's our goal. Mm-hmm. And so in, in our company's business model, most of our time is spent asking questions. And again, designing solutions. I've been to clients' homes where they're like, well, we wanna buy investment property. Okay, well, your investment property interest rate's gonna be about 8%, but you have this wonderful house here that's at 2%, and you can make money on this rent. Why don't we buy you a new principal residence? That has more of a tax deduction on the, interest portion and keep your existing property as an investment property. And they're like, oh, never thought of that. So I do that all the time. And sometimes I talk myself out of a listing, but it's in my client's best interest. And so I feel that I get compensated for doing what's best for other people. And if I don't get compensated for something, well then it wasn't best for them And we just go on to the next one. But Properties on the Potomac was designed to be a customer service, client service orient oriented. And to give our clients the utmost attention. Not everybody needs it, but those who need it we're available.

So who would be your ideal client?

Oh, what a great question. We have an ideal client, as a matter of fact. You know, it's funny in my personal mind now, each agent has their own ideal client. And they're different. Okay. I have an agent who wants to work strictly with luxury properties, and she only wants to stay in Loudoun County, and she only wants this particular demographic, and that's what she works on. But I have another agent who is a college student, and she wants to work with the clients who are gonna be renting until they're out of college. And then they're gonna rent again, but then they're gonna buy, and again, with my business model and so forth, she sits down with their own, with their parents and says, Hey, why don't we buy you a house for the next three years that you can rent out, have it appreciate, and then after your child's son or daughter moves out of it, you can continue to operate it as a, as college housing. And then when you're ready, you have a wonderful nest egg for retirement or whatever. And a lot of people are doing that, in colleges, in Richmond, in Williamsburg, in in, Woodstock, in, all the areas around the major universities in Charlottesville. Charlottesville is a little tricky 'cause we don't have any real estate left to buy, but, Williamsburg is very active and you can still get a reasonable house, that's four bedrooms and three and a half, four baths and make it less expensive for each tenant than renting an apartment or renting a dorm. And then you don't have to mess with parking. 'cause parking is right there, right? Parking on com college campuses is a nightmare. So this is what one of my agents does. And then, My, my ideal client, if I were to work with a client, my ideal client would be somebody who's an engineer, a physicist who has linear thinking, who says, I wanna go from here to there and I don't wanna do all the whirly gigs. I wanna go straight line and go to there. And I always show me the money, show me the numbers, and leave me alone. And then as I show them the numbers and I show them the money, I give them space and let them come to me and let them ask me more questions. but I also share an awful lot of information. 'cause these people have children, they have interests, they have hobbies, they have needs. Some people wanna be on a hundred acres in the middle and they don't wanna see anybody. Some people wanna have a townhouse where they are very close to people because they need that particular community. So it's my job to discern from what they tell me where they wanna be and show them what they want. Another thing that I do is I work with Equestrians to help them find their horse farms. And let me tell you, it took my husband and I five years to find a farm that we found was suitable. It was not ideal, it was just suitable. But I had a vision and I fixed it. and it took me 27 years to fix it. But it's finally the way I want and it's where I want and it's how I want. And when I moved in, I thought to myself, oh my God, I moved into a hovel. But, it gives me so much pleasure to wake up in the morning and see my horses and see my fields and not see a lot of chaos going on around me. And so I show properties to equestrians. I sell farms. I have some years where I sell 10 farms and I have years where I sell one farm. And you can buy a five acre piece of ground and turn it into a farm, or you can buy a house on five acres. As long as it doesn't have an HOA prohibiting it. You could put horses on it. If you're in Fairfax County, you can put horses on two acres. I can't imagine doing that, but technically you can. So, there's so many. You can do multi hundreds of acres. You can do two acres. And sometimes I look at equestrian facilities out in the west, particularly California, and they call it a ranch, and it's three quarters of an acre. And I'm going, where does the poop go? but now these horses produce a lot of manure, so you've gotta be prepared for it. And, and because I own a farm, because I have horses, because they are my first passion since I was I think three or four years old, I have built an environment for my horses such that it will be ideal for their welfare and for their happiness and for their health. And, and also give me a chance to enjoy them and ride them in a safe environment. But I know how many, sorry? How many horses do you have? I have four. Okay. one belongs to my husband, who is a fox hunter, but he's retired. He's turning 29 in April. And then I adopted one from a friend of mine who had rescued her, because she didn't have anywhere to keep her, so I took her and now I have her. And then my two horses are, one is a thoroughbred off the track and one is my, thoroughbred cross, but the one off the track I've had since he was a yearling. So I put him on the track and I took him off the track and I. Did whatever I did with him. Yeah. But we ride and it's just pleasure. But we ride massage and, again, it has to be precise because that's my nature. And, we really enjoy our company. And I haven't ridden since November. I hurt my arm, my thoroughbred went up in the air and pulled my tendon and and then the weather got terrible.

And

so I was like, well, no use riding for a day and then messing around for two weeks and stewing about it. I'm just gonna give them the winter off and then we're gonna start. So I've just started up again. What was really surprising is they're just as good today as they were last year. And absolutely as though I'd ridden them yesterday. But they really looked surprised to see me. They're like, oh, you're here. I. it's great fun and it really does. 'cause, real estate is a very intense business. When you're working on a deal, you're not working on a deal to work on a deal to get paid. You're working on a deal to make sure all the little boxes are checked to make sure that all the details are appropriate, make sure that everybody has the proper, understanding and agreements because it's not enough to just ratify a contract. Once the contract is ratified, that's when the work begins. The work begins with the home inspection and making sure every item on the home inspection that is agreed to have been correctly repaired and it's functioning. and then we have the loan process and making sure, blips come up. I had a client years ago buying a very expensive house here in Loudoun County, and we were three days out of closing, and my lender calls me up, she goes, you won't believe this. There's a collection on their credit from a library. we had to solve that very quickly.

Yeah,

I mean, I have had to release collections from libraries and liens from the IRS to get people to close. They're like, well, we paid this lien. I'm like, well, where is your payment? Well, here's my canceled check. Well, okay, then I go to the IRS and I have to get them to do all the necessary paperwork, but I go to the IRS and get a released. I have to get a release and take it to the lender. I mean, this work is, this is not for the faint hearted. And you have to be determined, and you have to be willing to sacrifice some of your own personal interests from time to time. Because what has to be done when it has to be done, gets done. And that means if I don't ride that moment, I don't ride that moment if I have theater tickets, but I have got to get this thing out to the lender before 10:00 PM I will if it kills me. And that's how it's been ever since I've been in the business. And I have no regrets. It's just. Such a remark. it's become a lifestyle. So to me, I know that if I want a listing to sell, all I have to do is say I'm going out of town and it sells. As soon as I leave town, everything sells and everybody wants to buy something.

Well, you mentioned, when we first talked, last week about the process that you go through recruiting your agents. And you touched on this a little bit, but maybe tell us a little bit more about that, because I think it comes down to really some of the mindset work that, that we discussed. Oh, yes. How you work with them. Well,

you know, everything is a 90% mindset. Whether you're working with a client, you're changing careers, riding a horse, playing golf, swimming, whatever it is you do, it's 90% mindset and you have to be in the moment. You have to be present. You have to be thinking about what you're thinking about at the moment and not what you're gonna have for lunch and not about the deal that's pending or what's going on over there. It's real estate is just like being in the theater on the stage. When you're on the stage, the show goes on and it doesn't matter what else is going on, you have to be present. Mm-hmm. So when I work with my agents, my first thing I have to tell them is, listen, when you're meeting with a client, you are meeting with that client and you're not stewing about, oh my God, oh my God, do they like me? Do they this, that, da da. They're not gonna like you if you're stewing. So what you have to be is present, and when you're present, you become engaged. And when you're engaged, you are connecting. When you connect people like that. And more than likely they're gonna wanna do business with you if you don't connect. And if you're superior, they're not gonna be connecting with you. I keep telling my clients, look, don't tell them how many degrees you have. Don't tell them how smart you are. Tell them how much you care and tell them how much you care about them and about their situation. And there was a story I heard years ago where somebody went to a party and met somebody and that person never said anything and they were deemed the most interesting person in the at the party. 'cause they let everybody else talk. Right. So I keep reminding my agents. Let them talk. Let your clients tell you what's on their heart. And again, we are a variety of hats. We wear so many hats. We listen. we listen for underlying currents. You know, are they really selling the house? 'cause they want to sell the house to get something different? Or are they selling the house 'cause they can't afford it? Are they selling the house because their children don't like you don't like the neighbor's children? Or are you selling the house because, you're thinking of getting a divorce? there's all these different things and it matters to understand what the underlying criteria is so that we can give them the correct suggestions. We can't give you a correct suggestion if you're thinking of getting a divorce and we're saying, oh, well keep your property and keep it rented 'cause you could do da, da, da, da, well great. But if you wanna separate, it isn't gonna work. So we really try very hard and people don't always wanna be upfront with it. It's sometimes it's painful and they don't wanna talk about it. Yeah. But it's our job. I. To find out. And the way I train my agents is ask questions. We ask questions. And we keep asking questions. And you can ask the same question 10 different ways and get five different answers, but then you have to do your equal sign. Does this make sense? And, we also only work with people that we believe we can trust. If we feel that they're withholding information, if they feel, if we feel that they don't trust us, we're gonna get down to the bottom of it and either find out where that distrust or where that particular vibe is coming from, or we're just not gonna do business with 'em because, signing on to sell somebody's home is a relationship. Sure. Signing up to take them around and show them properties and find them the right property. You can't find somebody the right property if you don't have that trust and understanding of what their motivation is. I keep reminding my agents that we are not chauffeurs, we are not sightseeing, advocates. we only show properties to qualified purchasers, and we only show our listings to qualified purchasers, which is why I don't particularly like open houses, because they're, most of them aren't qualified. As soon as they come in and they fall in love on the house, I'm like, yep, you can't qualify. You don't qualify for it. I mean, look, there's price points and there's price points. There's nothing we can do about that. so how I work with my agents is I keep reminding them, please be present. What do we have to do to be present? we have some wonderful online training classes, so I recommend to all of my agents that first thing in the morning is prepare the night before for a 10 minute video class with our training department and have them listen and get motivated because, every day is a new day and it's like riding my horse. The evening I put my horse up and we had a perfect ride. The next day I go out there, I'm like, who are you? But it's the same with our clients. It's the same with business. It's the same with us, right? Yeah. You wake up in the morning and you're off and you don't know why, but everything you do, you knock your coffee off and your computer won't start and the car has a flat tire. I mean, if it can go wrong, it will. But how do we overcome that and not reacting? I'm all about, the show will go on, if you forget your lines on the show, you don't have a meltdown in front of the public. You pick it up and you go. recently I was at a ballet with this amazing dancer and her shoe slid out. And she fell. there's nothing more scary for a ballerina to fall in front on the front of the stage. And you know what? The consummate dancer, she just picked herself up. she never even touched the ground and continued like nothing happened. and I said to my friend, who is my companion for the evening, I said, this is what makes her so good. You know, anybody can point their foot but overcoming this. And so we have to also overcome situations. we might go to somebody's house to list a property and the kid's sick. Well, I don't particularly wanna get sick. I'm be like, you know what? I wish, I could come in, but because X, Y, and Z, let's reschedule it. And that I don't have any problems with that. I don't want to get sick. Getting sick is not my thing. And so I keep telling my agents, make sure before you go, you call these people, send them a text, say, confirming our appointment. Everything is a go. Have you had any changes? so we wanna make sure that we're in good shape.

No, and I think that's, yeah, that's really important. And that's right in line with a lot of the coaching that I do because you have a human brain and you're right, like one day, and then you wake up the next day and the morning work that, that you're doing with your agents, that's exactly what I tell my clients to do, is that you have to get up and you have to clean out your brain focus and be really intentional about what you want to think that day and what you're going to feel and what you're going to focus on. Because otherwise it just, you have that primitive part of your brain that's just gonna take you into the ditch or into the weeds, and it takes daily work.

It, it's so easy to get sucked into the weeds. Yes. Yes. and it is a constant, vigilance. Yes, absolutely. To be checking in with yourself.

Yes. And

where am I? And how do I do it? Now I do it with my horses. Because I can go down and visit with my horses at the barn and I can see where they are and I can see when Stryker, my thoroughbred is looking two miles away. I know his brain is out there. I'm like, Hey, come back here. But it's the same when you're working with a client at the moment, something captured their attention and you gotta get it back on the issue at hand. Right. So my job as the broker, is always maintaining mindset. I have two rules. Check your mind and show up. the other thing is show up every day. Whether you're going to go, whether you have an appointment at the moment or not, show up, show up, ready to go on an appointment.

Right.

You know, show up ready. Have your makeup on, have your hair done, have your teeth brushed. So if you get that call, you are five minutes out of getting into your car. Now we are not reactive per se, but occasionally something comes up and somebody goes, Hey, I didn't know this was gonna be available, but I wanna do this. And if you're not available, you don't show up, somebody else will. Sure. Yeah. And it is competitive and we are the competition. Sure. And I keep reminding my agents that we are the competition, we are the competition to technology. Because in the end, technology could not do a scratch and sniff test. Technology cannot feel what's in your heart. And in the end it's. Home is where your heart is. And so we have to be able to circumvent all the technology and go straight to the feelings and the heart of the home. And, and that's where those decisions are made. So me, as the owner of the company, as the leader of the organization, I have to keep going back because it's easy for me to be linear. Remember who my ideal client is, an engineer. but I have to keep going back to the engineer's spouse who may or may not be linear thinking. he or she might be very different thinking, but they might be the ones who are making those decisions. So, who, who's gonna be making those decisions and how do we align and figure out what's important to them so that we can deliver what's important to them? We want to align with them so that we can do what's what they want, not have to align with them. So we get the deal. we get the deal because we deliver the services, but that's, that comes later. Most importantly is how do we make our clients feel about their new home, about their real estate situation? There's so many iterations to that. And our job is to keep the heart in the business, even if we're buying investment property, even if we're never gonna live in this property. We still have to think people are gonna live there. How will they feel? And I keep telling my clients who buy investment properties, listen, never buy something you would never live in. Okay. It's okay if you never planned to live in it. Yeah. But if you had to live in it, would you live in it? Yes. Okay, fine. Let's buy it. But if they were like, no, I would never live in it for 10 minutes, then we're not gonna buy it. Because you're not going to attract the kind of people you want to work with. And if you don't wanna work with these people, then you just have an ongoing problem. So our goal is to put our clients in homes that will bring them joy. will enhance their lifestyle and enhance their quality of life and also be available for them long past the purchase or the sale or whatever the case may be to help answer their questions. Because, residential real estate is a big quagmire. And the news, I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the United States, our news is abysmal. And

funny thing, same thing's happening here, but we get all your news.

Well, I know Canadian real estate's been flying off the shelf And doing very, very well. in our job, in our industry like Northern Virginia, we still have so many multiple offers. And then we also have, and we have. We have not had, thank goodness in the Washington metropolitan area and Northern Virginia, we have not had the major institutional buyers who are coming in and just buying everything for cash and turning it into a rental.

Right.

but, we have to pay attention to that. And being a member of N MBA's leadership team, I'm forever vigilant with that sort of stuff. And, we've been paying attention to it very closely. But again, because I'm on an NVAR leadership team, and NVAR stands for the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, so we have 13,000 realtors who are members of it. And when you're a member of NVAR, you're also a member of VAR, which is the Virginia Association of Realtors, and then you're also a member of NAR. And I'm sure everybody's heard of NAR, national Association of Realtors, but I'm also a member of the greater G-C-A-R-G, the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. That's Washington and Montgomery County and Prince George's County on the other side of the Potomac River. Okay. And so I get the news from all sides. And it's funny, different sides of the river perform differently. So I have to keep my agents aware of, people do cross the river and you don't get many, but you get a few. And the people from Virginia don't wanna go to Maryland. The Maryland people think Virginia is just the boondocks. And so they don't want to come. But then every once in a while somebody makes, puts their toe in the water goes, oh, it's not so bad. And there's some wonderful opportunities on both sides of the river. So smart people make their decisions and you hear, well, this area has more taxes and this has less taxes and whatever. So I've done all the numbers. And the reality is this, whether you live in Maryland or you live in DC or you live in Virginia, the differences in property taxes, the differences in local income taxes and the differences of certain benefits are available in the various jurisdictions. When you look at the whole thing, there's hardly any financial difference because some prices are less expensive and some prices are more expensive. And then vis-a-vis the taxes and all that other stuff, it all works out. So if you wanna live in dc, live in dc, if you wanna live in Maryland, live in Maryland, don't put yourself in a hole. And I'll show my clients, I show them numbers left and right. Here's what it costs to live in Maryland, and you can see this is what it costs to live in Virginia, in a similar house, in a similar school district and a similar whatever. And they're like, oh, I didn't know that. And so then it opens up our pool of potential properties much better. And because I under, I've lived in Maryland. I grew up in Maryland. I live in Virginia and my daughter, who's also my associate, lives in DC So we have that area very, very well covered, and we're very, I. We're very passionate about our whole area. Everything has something to offer. whether you wanna live in Old Town Alexandria and have the history of the Revolutionary War, or you want to live in, Montgomery County, in some brand new subdivision, or you wanna live in an 1860s, mansion in Frederick County, Maryland. We've got all that and it's just a matter of where will you be happy. And where does, what aligns with your vision? What aligns with your dreams?

And so you also have a couple of blogs. You're an avid blogger. Tell us about those.

Oh, thank you. Well, some people paint. Yes. And I write, I'm not a painter. I have to, I seem to have to have art in my life, and I see writing as an art. So I have two blogs. one is for Properties on the Potomac, of course, and you can find that on our website prop, properties on the potomac.com. And just go up to the top right and you'll see the blog button. And in that blog I pretty much talk about real estate. I talk about, service, I speak about architecture, about current activities, current events. I recently posted something that the sky was not falling, because of course, once the NAR settlement came out, everybody went ballistic. And then when the new administration took over and all these people got fired, hired, rehired, I don't know what they're doing, but whatever it is, it's making people uncomfortable. And of course, the claims are hundreds of thousands of houses are hitting the market. Well, the truth is, it's not the truth. The press is not telling the truth. And so I had to pull up every listing and look at every listing and compare it one year to the next and see that, that we just have a marginal increase. We do not have hundreds of thousands of more inventory. If we did, we wouldn't have all these people making multiple offers. And I have to keep reality. And so, that's part of, that's one of my blogs. My other blog has nothing to do with real estate. Has everything to do with things that are beautiful, with things that are I. Enhancing in our lives, something that is, and I'm a big Shakespeare fan, so I chase Shakespeare as much as I can. recently I attended a play called A Room in the Castle at the Folger Theater in Washington. And it was just such a remarkable play, and I had the privilege to be pressed there, so I had press seats and I attended the reception and met the actors and met the producers and the writer of the play. And the, the play is amazing and that blog particularly talks about that play and that play is a take on Hamlet, but the women in Hamlet.

Oh,

and Hamlet is mentioned but not shown. And Gertrude is there and Ophelia is there. And there's a new character Anna, who is the handmaid of Ophelia. Okay. And Ophelia's a young girl and she has a guitar and she writes love songs to Hamlet. And that's how it starts. However, after a while she deter, she's not sure if she loves him, but she loves love. And so the play is just remarkable and it's 90 minutes of sheer entertainment of what fing and all of a sudden, I personally have never liked Hamlet to play. 'cause I think he's just a whiny boy and she's a needy girl. And I just have none of that. but this sheds a whole new life on it, right? And because I brought my daughter to this show and she'd studied Hamlet, of course, as part of her education. I said to her before the show started, I said, well, tell me your take on Hamlet and Ophelia. She didn't even think about it. She goes, he is a narcissist. And he manipulated her. He manipulated her into thinking she was crazy. I went, oh, okay. And, and she said, and she should really be the star of the show because she endured all this nonsense. Well, at the end of the play, I had to agree with her. I'm like, oh look, she does have a voice and she does have an opinion and she's not a needy girl. And she did stand up, but she got stood up by nobody else but Gertrude, his mother. And, she figured it out and, oh, but let me tell you. The costuming in that the, the set was very simple. 'cause the Folger Theater is not a very big stage, but it's made to resemble the Globe Theater. And it is absolutely brilliantly put together. It's been recently restored and, the play was marvelous. So I wrote a blog on that and shortly before that, David Tenets, Macbeth came out in the movie theaters, and I think it was in the movie theaters for two days. And I got lucky and I saw it. And so I, I wrote a blog about that, and it's an English production, and it's going to be soon, it's gonna be streamed on one of the streaming services. I can't remember which, but I've written a blog on that. But then I'd write blogs on the Dolce and Gabana Spring Fashions. And I like it.

I also

wrote a blog about the Virginia National Ballet, about their snow white production, which was absolutely beautiful and brilliant. And I had never heard of Virginia National Ballet. How is that possible? I used to be a dancer. but they're an exceptionally good regional company with some outstanding dancers. And, that blog takes me places and introduces me to things that I had no idea existed. So not only does it give me a chance to write about beautiful things and about new experiences. But it gives me a chance to share those with other people. I'm working on a new blog. I mean, I have several blogs right now. One is, in Progress is about a 16-year-old artist who lives here in our community. Mm-hmm. Her work is marvelous, and I just happened to catch her on social media one day and she had an image of bluebells, which are my favorite flowers, and I sent her a message going, I want that painting. And she brought it to my house, and then we became friends. And then I've, I'm working on her blog. I think it'll be ready today and then tomorrow, as I said, I'm meeting with the pilot, who started Smokehouse Pilots and we're going to be talking about, and I wanna thank him for, all the work that he did. I mean, I don't have a particular personal. Investment in North Carolina, other than the fact that they're people who need our help and I wanted help. And so how much I appreciate the fact that every, and I went shopping, I went to the Dollar store, I filled two baskets, I went to Walmart, I filled, 'cause they're not looking for Sak's quality. They're looking for something to survive on later we'll send them Sak's quality. But, but, he was, he was so instrumental in it and he's such a nice man. And so I'm gonna talk about to him and thank him.

So that was, following the hurricane. When was that? In the fall, right? that

was in September. it was Hurricane Helene. And it was that big devastating hurricane that hit Tennessee. It hit Western North Carolina and it hit parts of Virginia, but really northern, western North Carolina was where it was just really horrible. And now they have fires because it's not enough that they got washed away. Now they're gonna get burned down. They've got some big fires going on, and I'm concerned, but again, there's a lot of equestrians out there. people have moved to there because they're in the mountains and it's really beautiful weather and we're tired of the hot in Virginia. We go down there and now we can't because it all burned down after it washed away. but I'm always amazed at the generosity. I woke up this morning to notices about we have this many trailers lined up in trucks and ready to pick up horses and livestock and get them out of the way of the fire. So there's just so much giving and when you're in real estate, your real estate, you can't pick it up and take it with you. So you have to be able to figure out how do you evacuate and take as much that's precious to you as possible without losing your life. And then of course, the California stuff I can't even go into because that's beyond me. But the stuff that's close to me, like North Carolina, it's only five or six hours away. So, I'm very invested in that. And I encourage people to donate. I encourage people to get involved. I get involved. I donate. and our company does too. I always encourage our agents to let's put everything together and do it. A couple of my agents and I in September just loaded up truckloads of stuff. I took two truckloads. I have a big truck. I took two truckloads over there to the airport so that they can ship it off. And, and then there was a moving company in Winchester who took, I think, eight moving bands. Down there. and another thing that I was doing is I was doing a lot of social media and making sure people knew in North Carolina they knew where there were resources for trucks and transfers were, and also where we can donate things. And who was collecting. Then there was a guy named, Corey, who was in my immediate community, and he took out, I don't know how many tractor trailers full of hay and horse feed just out of our little southern states here. And I had called southern states and said, Hey, if I give you some money and I buy some stuff, can you have it shipped or can you send it forward? She goes, oh, here's Corey. He's doing all that. So one of the feed manufacturers donated. Two tons of feed. My little donation wasn't very much, but it was something. Yeah, absolutely. but again, we are very involved in our community and our, our, the importance to us is that our community is not just our immediate house, but people who matter to us. And, our community has relatives down there. We show down there, we've had Olympic riders down there. We've gotta make sure that, that community is safe.

Right.

As, as safe as it could be. I can help that, but we wanna help them as much as we can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's nice work and I look forward to reading those blog posts. No.

Well, it's fun. I don't like, the reason this blog started to be honest with you, is I was friends with a local publisher of a paper of our community and I was having lunch with her one day and she goes, oh, my, journalist who covers X, Y and Z is sick and can't make it. I don't know how I'm gonna be in two places at one time. I can do it. 'cause my father was a journalist, I was an editor of my yearbook. I wrote for the school paper. it's not, I've written a newsletter forever.

Yeah.

I said, well, let me cover it for you. So I did and she liked it. And so then I went and I said to her, here's what I will cover. I will cover pretty dresses. I will cover nice events. I will not cover politics. I'm not going to go to a town hall meeting because my eyes will run with tears of, out of boredom. no, I'm, I will cover performances and special people, book signings and that sort of stuff. And that's exactly what I did. But then, with technology and money and covid and whatever, the paper stopped publishing. And then in 2019, I missed writing. Because I was writing three and four articles a week and I missed writing. But you have to realize, I used to write at two o'clock in the morning. I got my work done. I was just writing late. And, I went to the Middleburg Film Festival and just as a, as an attendee. And then I discovered that I really missed writing. And I thought that the Middleburg Film Festival, the films that I watched, I think I watched six or seven films in that three day period. And I thought, what if I just write reviews on those movies? But rather than writing reviews that everybody writes, I was gonna give them like a one line, sunny and bright or dismal and dark. And I did that for the eight movies that I watched, and I put them and I wrote them in the blog, and I just started the blog. So they didn't get much reading, but it was a fun thing. And my friends read it. And now that particular blog, the front page of style gets, I think I have, I'm up to almost 19, no, up to 18,000 viewers in 82 countries. Even Albania is reading my articles. That's amazing. And I'm going, I wonder, and I'm always curious who in these countries is reading them and how did they find them? yeah. You know, that's amazing. it's, yeah. And it's a lot of fun and, the young lady that I'm writing about, the new artist, Her heritage is North Macedonian, but they spend summers there. So I'm eager to see if I get some North Macedonian readers.

There you go.

Yes. Also my niece attends, duke Ellington School for the, for the arts in Washington DC and that's a very amazing school. But I was a sponsor. Properties on the Potomac is a sponsor for them. And, we, they had a big black tie event. And, so we were sponsors and we donated some major items for their auction. And then I wrote the blog. Well, that blog just flew off the shelf. That was really shocking. And I keep getting nice notes from Duke Ellington too. Not from, but from school. Yeah. But the school, yeah. thank you so much for, your support and we really appreciate it. And, we were so shocked that you did all this for us, but it went around the world Amazing. So it's so much fun. Yeah. And, and keeping in that. One of the things in addition to writing about who's doing what and helping whom properties on the Potomac does sponsor, some really excellent athletes. this year we sponsored Adrian Alor. she's a high level world class dressage writer, and she's in Wellington, Florida. And today she has, at one o'clock, she's riding her last, CDI test, Grand Prix musical freestyle. She writes her own musical freestyle. She's trained her own horse. This is a self-made rider. And I've known her since she was two. Oh. And, but I've had her training my horses since she was 18, and that's been 12 years ago. But she is such a remarkable rider. So this year I said, I wanna support you again. what do you need? So she told me, and I paid her show fees. And so properties on the Potomac is a sponsor for that particular show. I also sponsor Nalani Horse Rescue because again, in keeping with my horse passion, this particular rescue finds horses in kill pens, in auctions and places like that, and finds horses that have a future and brings them out and then retrains them and finds them forever homes. And that is such a remarkable. A piece of work that this particular woman does. and I'm on her board of directors. It's called Milani Horse Rescue. Okay. And then of course, the Duke Ellington School. And then I have a ballerina in New Orlando Ballet, and I sponsor her because I've known her since she was a young girl. And she caught my eye and I said to her ballet teacher, she's special. And she's like, oh, we got so many special dancers. I'm like, you got one. She's the one. She is the one. I was right. And she's amazing. And, so I help sponsor her. I've written about her and, it's just, it's very rewarding to, to be able to, we don't, we can't give hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we can give a few thousand here and a few thousand there. Mm-hmm. And it can make a difference in somebody's ability to buy some more lessons to, to get some more coaching, to do something that helps them, grow. So that's what we do.

Well, that's fantastic work, and we'll make sure we put the links to everything in the show notes so people can find you. You're so kind. Oh, no, it's my pleasure. You are a force of nature. This has been a fantastic conversation, so I feel like we could go on for another hour course. We'll have you back another time.

Well, I will, you know, It may sound as though I just marched right out there and just said, here I am and I'm going to do it. And I'm not going to look back, which is true. But I will share with you that the summer that I was making the transition from part-time to full-time in my real estate in career, we were sitting at the Kennedy Center listening to, a Mozart concert, and it was perfectly still. And what is my mind going through? Oh my God, we're gonna be homeless. All of a sudden, this fear gripped me and I was going, oh my goodness. What have I done? What am I doing? And my poor husband is going along for the ride. And by the end of the concert, I had to get those cobwebs out of my brain and look him straight in the eye and go, are you comfortable with me doing this? He goes, yeah, sure. You're gonna be fine. He has no doubt in his mind. And that helped me so much. And I had to go through that. And then when I came out of it, because he gave me his confidence, I went forward. So it's not, it's frightening to go forward. It's easy to go into the what if Nebula, but pay attention to your why. And as long as your why is strong and you are doing it for a good reason, and you want to provide service, really all we have to do is don't give our time. We have no inventory, none of us, whether we sell widgets or we sell cars or we sell houses, the only thing we sell is our time. And how you use your time is really valuable and trust yourself and trust your competence. I had to go back and ret trusts my competence and once I did every once in a while, and this is why I go back to Harvard, I go to William and Mary, I get certificates in business excellence. I get certificates and negotiation, not because it's mandatory, but it's important to co to confirm your competence and improve your competence and be the best you can be for the people who need your services,

right? Yes. Keep investing in yourself. Yes. Well, Krasi, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. I've appreciated your time and all of your insight and experience. I think it'll be really interesting for the listeners. So thank you It's been fun. Thank you

so much.

Absolutely,

I'm so excited to be a part of this and I appreciate your time and your kindness and your interest, and I hope that it's valuable and beneficial for your listeners.

Thank you for listening to this Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin. We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life Again, as always, you can head to tristaguertin.com for additional resources and to book a one-on-one coaching session. You can also follow Trista on Instagram at tristavguertin Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll see you next time.