From Courtroom to Closing Deals: Noelle Nielsen's Real Estate Revolution

Join us on this inspiring episode of "Total Agent Access" as we sit down with Noelle Nielsen, a seasoned realtor from Duluth, Minnesota. Noelle shares her eclectic career journey, transitioning from a headhunter to a lawyer, and finally finding her calling in real estate. She opens up about the trials and triumphs of changing career paths and the lessons learned along the way. Noelle emphasizes the importance of authenticity in marketing, advocating for a genuine online presence and the power of building real relationships with clients. She discusses the critical balance between work and life, the future of professionalism in the industry, and her personal commitment to community and gratitude. Whether you’re a budding agent or a seasoned professional, Noelle provides actionable insights on thriving in real estate through authenticity, resilience, and strategic calm. Tune in to discover how you can elevate your real estate game while staying true to yourself and positively impacting your community.

Links
Instagram: @noelletheminnesotan
Email: noelle@minnesotan.com

Takeaways

🔥Don't be afraid to try different things and change paths in your career.
🔥Find what you love in your industry and focus on that.
🔥Be genuine in your online presence and don't force yourself to show up when you don't feel like it. Focus on engaging and authentic content to attract clients
🔥Prioritize work-life balance and manage stress
🔥Embrace professionalism and adapt to industry changes
🔥Give back to the community and practice gratitude
🔥Actionable takeaways: focus on listings, be authentic, stay calm in the face of change

Transcript

0:01

And we're back with the podcast. Now, I always think that my opening should be kind of like we're introducing a boxing fight or something like that. I should do something rather bravado, especially with our next guest. We have none other than Noel Nielsen from Duluth, Minnesota. I'm trying to learn before we started recording, I was asking questions about Duluth and I think although we're hundreds of kilometers apart, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers apart that we both live in very similar rural type areas. But anyways, one of the best smiles in real estate, I have to say, is Noelle. So Noelle, how are you? I'm going to just pump you up because you're one of my favorite realtors to follow on social media because you are one of the funniest. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I love your shirt today. It says, you are enough, which I love that. because everybody is enough and you have to learn that. Live by it. Yep. true, yep. And it's how I live. I live that way. Excellent. But so if you don't know, know well, you have to check out her socials. I was just giving her a hard time that I haven't seen many goat videos or videos involving goats and her on her hundred acres doing goat things and I feel a little bit disappointed. You know, I can't please everyone all the time. The goats, you know, the goats, they were an accidental theme that happened in my life. When things got crazy a little bit, we had moved to a farm. We got 120 acres here where we live. And all of a sudden I happened upon these goats. And we basically became accidental goat farmers. And the next thing I know, my whole feed is filled with goats. My messenger is getting sent goat videos, goat memes, all of the goats. And I couldn't go to a single conference without somebody yelling, hey, how are the goats? And I realized maybe that wasn't the brand that I really wanted to portray as a luxury agent. And so we ended up partnering with a resort that took over the goat care. They are now offering goat yoga though. So if people are really in a hankering for some goat time, I always send them to this resort and it's in Northern Minnesota. It's beautiful. So yes, we don't have the goats anymore. I need to get in my car and come to northern Minnesota. Yes, you should. You know, unfortunately my perception of Minnesota is all taken up by one of my favorite TV shows, Fargo. Well, that's great. I mean, that's way. We do. It's part of why I branded my team as Minnesotan. If you can see it up above me, my logo. It's the state of Minnesota with the North Star in it. And our brand is Minnesotan. And it's because I could not go to a conference without somebody asking me, where am I from? What is that accent? Where are you from? And I think some people just watch my videos just to hear the accent, which is so weird to me. It's not a lovely accent. It's a, I don't know. I don't even know how to describe our accent, but it's different. And the Fargo movie for people that are from here, we watch that movie and we're like, that's not our accent, but I think it kind of is actually. I don't know. came to that realization. It's a brilliant movie, brilliant TV show, but did you grow up in Duluth? Is that where you're originally from? Yes, I am from a very small town. I graduated it's just outside of Duluth. It's about it's about a half an hour outside of it. I graduated with 30 people in my graduating high school class. And just small town Minnesota girl. Not not a city girl really. Although I've lived in the cities. I've done all the cities things but yeah, I'm from small town. Yes. in rural Minnesota. Yes, I can see no neighbors from where I live. It's amazing. Sounds like a dream. What do you like, you know, you live on this farm. What do you like to do with your family? You know, do you guys go out and hang out with goats and other things? What kind of farm do you have? Yeah, well, so now it's just kind of a tree farm. We have about 80 harvestable acres of lumber on our property. And we also still do the chicken thing, and we may eventually get horses. But what we do, we kind of, we love to hang out outside. Minnesota is called the land of 10,000 lakes. So during the summertime, You can find us outside investigating different lakes and hanging out. We can, we're at a skip away from downhill skiing where we live. So this winter we, of course, our first winter getting season passes to the local hill where we now live, we got no snow this year, which was very unusual. Two years ago, we got all the snow. And then this year we got none of it. And I like to say it's because we bought. season passes for the first time this year, but we did. did that to everybody because it was the same up here, up here in Northern Canada. It's all be... because of me and buying the ski pads. have now found our culprit. So, before you got into real estate, what did you do? Yeah, that's a great question. I have done a lot of things. I actually started out professionally after college as a headhunter. A lot of people don't know that about me, but I was in the HR world and was into recruiting. And then from there, I decided that I needed to change the world and I went and got my law degree. And I became a lawyer and I practiced real estate law. for a while and I was very bored while doing that. So I started picking up a camera during my spare time and became a photographer also. And while I was doing that, I decided that I was enjoying that more than being a lawyer and I was actually making more money doing it. And so I quit being a lawyer to go off and be a photographer. And I did that for several years and it took off. It did very well. And I found myself one day photographing a wedding that would have been the height of what I wanted to do. I was photographing a professional athlete's wedding. And as I was getting pushed around on the bus by some drunk wedding people, I realized maybe that wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And I went home and I got my real estate license. And in part, I got my license because we were planning on selling our house. I was one of those agents that got their license to sell their own house. And that was 10 years ago. And ever since I haven't looked back, it's been quite an adventure. Holy smokes. Okay, these are all things that I did not know about you. You are a lawyer. That is incredible. Most people would think that would be the pinnacle. Like that's what you all, making the parents happy, you know, everybody, hey, I'm a lawyer. And you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna be a photographer. Yeah, yeah, I went to school to do a thing that I didn't need to go to school to do at all. But you know, I have no regrets. I am actually thinking of getting one of those tattoos right here that says no regrets. I don't know if you've seen that meme. Is how I love life. I can, I can imagine it actually, Collin. Ha ha ha. But you know, I have just decided, you only get one of these lives that you have, try it. If you wanna do it, try it. If you wanna go for it, go for it. There's no mistake really that you can't come back from. Right? And so I have tried. I've tried a lot of the things and now here I am. I am now a professional house slinger. You know what, just in that, that is really, really great advice because a lot of us, you know, when I grew up and my perception of what adulthood would look like was that in high school you had to pick one thing and that was going to university to do that one thing. And that was the rest of your life. And I always thought there was something wrong with me because I like to, you know, I'd go over there. That looks interesting. And I'd do that. And then I would sort of become a... bit bored and I'd go do something else and I'd get bored at that and that and I found my way along into real estate which I've been doing for 18 years and you know I found myself here because I really enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, you know, I am now 41 and I'm still trying to decide what I wanna do when I grow up. That's how I wanna live my life, right? And the thing I think that's so amazing about real estate. is there's a million different ways to reinvent yourself within it. There's a million different ways to do it. No two realtors are the same. And, you know, I think it's kind of how I found myself in leadership in real estate is because I love realtors. I love realtors because all realtors are different. Everybody has a different background. You never know when you're talking to another agent, like what career did they previously have? Like, that's what you said. What did you do before real estate? Right. because it's actually pretty rare for somebody to get right into real estate. And it happens. It does happen. In fact, the business partner that I have, that I run my sales team with, he did that. He started in real estate right away. And even that is different because most people don't have that as their background. So I just have become really passionate about realtors in general, because I love to hear what their backgrounds are. I love to know what they did before real estate. That is exactly right. What you just said is exactly why I started this podcast because I'm really interested in how other people go about it. And like you said, there's many, many ways to sell real estate and to run your business. And it all depends on what you want out of your life. And then you fit that around it, right? That's right. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so yeah, that's just an incredible story of being a lawyer. I didn't know that about you. So I'm a little bit blown away. Um, you must have some. I keep it quiet. It's kind of a secret weapon. I try not to tell it to people. I just had this conversation with somebody the other day. I would rather be unexpected. I would rather walk into a room and be unexpected instead of to walk into a room and just disappoint people. That's a really good way to be very underwhelming, right? Yeah, and then nobody expects it that when they start talking to you, you're like, yeah, I'm a lawyer. I lead with the goat farm more often than anything. I lead with the goat farm. I think that is far more interesting to start a conversation saying that I'm a goat farmer. And then go from there. Because I have to say, you know, like if you're putting out content around being a lawyer or putting around content being a goat farmer, I'm going to take goat farmer all day. I mean, because people want to be able to relate to what it is that they're watching or listening to, usually. They want to envision themselves in that thing. And, you know, while many people will probably never experience actually being a goat farmer, they do want to understand what that is like, right? Because it's just, it's nature, it's human nature. It goes back to, you know, the inception of when people were, you know, we didn't have cars and things. We all... naturally we all were farmers at one point. We were scavengers for our food. Yeah, and some of us more than other, like my great grandparents, where they moved to this country to become farmers and literally had a big farm. That's what we came here to do. So you must have some really terrific stories that you could share with us, but what is your worst real estate moment? And, you know, tell me that story and what did you learn from it? Oh, my worst real estate moment. Because if you've been doing it long enough, you could have a whole bunch of these stories, right? And it depends on what your outlook is in life. I could use an example of something that we personally went through not that long ago with trying to get into short term rentals and rental properties. We ended up actually. the goat farm situation turned into a home sale. I ended up buying that, the person who gave me the goats, I bought their property. And it came with two properties on it. And we were gonna do some flipping inside of this beautiful property when we got it. And it ended up turning into a bit of a nightmare on the construction piece inside and a tenant that we had. decided to do some work inside of the property and it turned into a nightmare, right? And what I learned is that we didn't really wanna be in that. And you know what, it's funny because so many people get into real estate and then they think, okay, the next thing, now I've gotta get into investment properties. Now I have to do this. And I decided to sell off the properties because I decided it wasn't for me. I learned that. And I just always love to chat with other realtors that are in that whole realm of investment properties and whatnot. And there could be some crazy nightmare stories that come out of being on the investment side. And I'm going to try to avoid that now. Yeah. Self-awareness is crucial. I know exactly what you're saying because it seems like it's not only a logical path, but it's a path that many agents before us have taken where they get into real estate, they build up their business, start making, and then they start investing in their own product, right? It's not for everybody. It's hard. what we've done in our life is we've decided to do what's called house hacking. So we buy properties, live in them, and then move on to next ones when we find a good deal and find a place to move to. And for me, that has been a much better personal way. to get into the real estate investments, if you will. There's a million, again, there's a million different ways to do it. And maybe there's an agent out there listening to this that's like, hey, I really think that I have to get into short term rentals or I have to get into rental properties because it's what everybody else out there is doing. I say, no, you don't have to. You don't have to do that unless that's really, you feel called to do it. Because You're taking on a whole nother job, a whole nother set of responsibilities, a whole nother set of management, and it actually could take your focus away from the thing that you were originally in real estate for. Yeah, it takes away from the core. So you do have to decide that. Um, my wife and I are very, very similar to you in the way that we will go into a house, fix it up the house that I'm in right now, like everything below behind me and whatnot, uh, wasn't here. It was an empty basement in a very, very old house and we completely got it and we've been living here and we'll eventually sell it and then you move. And I liked your term for it. House hacking. Yeah, house hacking. It's kind of one of the dangers of being in real estate is you see properties and then you're like, I could buy that. You know, I could sell my place. and then your family's like, pump the brakes. Oh yeah, we've moved many times in our real estate life. I mean, I got my license because I was gonna move. That's why I got it. So yeah. which is amazing because up here in Canada, especially in British Columbia, it's not easy to get your real estate license. It takes, uh, it's about six to eight months, probably. It takes a while. It should, you know, it really should take that long. It should. Yeah, I think sometimes the barrier to entry is not quite high enough. That's a whole nother topic. That's a topic we can unpack under the challenges of the real estate industry, right? So in your team, and you got your license and whatnot, and we've all had those moments where all of a sudden it all clicks and everything sort of makes sense, and you gain some clarity. Tell us about your aha moment, that moment that sticks with you and helps push you forward in your business. I'm still waiting for that moment. I don't know. I don't know if I've hit that moment yet. You know, I have kind of been on a bit of a journey with getting my license. It started just me as a solo agent. You know, I moved out of doing photography into doing real estate full time. And, you know, over the 10 years, the first three years, I really didn't do much. I was a young mom. babies were all three, we had three babies, three and under. And, you know, I love talking to moms. I get their real estate license to do it part-time while being a stay at home mom, because that's what I thought I was doing. I thought I was gonna do that. And then as I started really using my camera to market the business and using my background, my business sort of took off unexpectedly. And then I needed a team. So I just had to, I put out in a video with my son and we called him Realtor Boy. I would dress him up in a little red suit. In fact, I think I've got a picture of him somewhere in here but I would dress him up in a little red suit and I would bring him around and I would video him showing houses. Oh, here's one where he had a blue suit on. But it's his business card and we called him Realtor Boy. And oh, here's his first business card. And so I started doing this thing because I didn't have, I didn't have childcare really. And so my kids were coming with me to work. And then one day we had an epiphany that, man, if I'm actually gonna do this full-time, I actually probably should start treating it like a full-time job. And so I got help at home with the kids and I started going to work as a realtor. And we launched this team. I had about 10 teammates. The team outgrew my office space. So then I decided why not just start a brokerage. So I went ahead and opened a brokerage and the team of 10 then turned into a brokerage of 20. And then at that point, that was maybe about five years in, I realized that maybe I didn't actually wanna be running a brokerage. There was more things involved in that than I knew. And they knew I was taking on. And the part that I actually loved was in mentoring and chatting with agents. I didn't really love all the crossing of T's and dotting of I's on the contracts and the being in the office at, you know, 6 PM on a Friday night when an agent needed me to cut them a check and all the things. And so we moved onto a cloud-based model and then that group just kept growing. It was like unstoppable. And my group turned into, you know, a quite a large organization of about 600 agents. And I think for me, my aha moment. if I have to pick a moment was really in realizing the thing that I love that we've already addressed is working with realtors, right? For me, I still love buying and selling houses and helping people buy and sell houses, but for me, the thing that really fills my bucket is getting to help other realtors do that same thing and helping them brainstorm, you know, how to market, what to do brand and their marketing thing and moving forward in that light really has helped me kind of come into my niche in real estate. I agree that I always call it the juice, you know, the juice in this is helping other people and watching them succeed. I love that. And I think that's probably why you and myself are team leaders because we're drawn to that, that our successes come with helping as many people as possible. And now, you know, I'm putting out on social, on Instagram, particularly as much knowledge as I can, because I just, I love getting those DMs. And I'm sure you do too from your fantastic videos. You love getting those where people are like, hey, you know, like that really helped me. Thank you very much. And I'm like, wow, you know, that's the power of social media and the helping other people. And that's the juice. Yeah, and you never know what one thing or one nugget you're gonna share with somebody that's gonna maybe change their life, change their family's life, be the catalyst to encourage them to go out and do the thing. Yeah, and it just feels amazing. So on that point, can you open up your toolbox and share with our listeners, what are your marketing secrets? What worked for you when you first started and what is working for you now? And I see that you're laughing because you're gonna tell me a funny story. you know, I shared a little bit about it, about starting with my son. And, you know, I think depending on what you're doing in this industry and where you want to go with it, it's going to depend on how you market, right? There's no one way to do this business. There are so many different ways to market. And I've tried a ton of them. I've tried a lot of them. Um, and I have found that for me, just being genuine online is my biggest asset. And honestly, there's days where I don't even feel like being online. So if I'm having one of those days, guess what? I don't go online. And I think, I think that that's the difference is that there's a lot of people out there that force themselves to show up because we've been coached by the Gary V's of the world to go out. We got to put out 12 pieces of content a day. We got to show up. You got to post multiple times a day. You got to constantly be in your stories. You got to be constantly putting up content. You got to be running a business page. You have to do all these things. And the more. networking I would do and the more masterminds I would join and the more conferences I would go to, the more overwhelmed I started to get and then the less passion I had around doing any of it. And so then I decided about four years ago, I'm just going to take a break. I'm going to take a break and see what happens. And I went offline for a whole year. I took a whole year off. I would sometimes go on there to monitor my Facebook messenger. I went from posting so much and so often and so much like heavily produced content to doing nothing. What's funny is a couple months in, then the messages started flowing in. Where are you? Where have you been? What's going on? Is everything okay? It's like, hey, we live in such a world that has to be present, has to be online all the time. You can't even go on vacation and turn it off. I want to change that. I wanna encourage people that if you need a break, you need to go offline, you need to take a month off, you can. And so for me, my marketing toolbox really is gonna look a lot different from most other agents because my marketing is just being present on Instagram. It is being present on Facebook. It is showing up and responding to people and engaging with them. If I see somebody's story that I like, I will show up in their inbox making a comment to them and really having a true relationship-based business. And in order to have that relationship-based business and show up on social media, you have to be authentic in how you show up. It has to be authentic for you. And if you're forcing it, it's not gonna come across as authentic. You know, I went to a conference for 500 women this week with the girls with grit. was following along. Yeah, and you were following in my stories probably. And you know, it's because I haven't, I actually, but right before this call was just getting ready to do a little recap reel of the week. And instead, when I go to these conferences, I like to put my phone down. I'll use my phone as a camera and use it to take pictures and video, but I don't necessarily feel the instant need to post immediately. because I wanna be in the moment. I wanna be present. I wanna look at people in the eyes when I'm having a conversation instead of being looking down at my phone. When I'm going to lunch, I will set my phone aside unless there's some kind of emergency because I wanna be present in the moment. And so for me, my marketing toolbox is really that. It's focusing on relationships, it's focusing on being genuine, it's focusing on trying to show up where maybe other people aren't. So that when the time comes and people think of you, whether they're thinking of joining a team or joining a group or selling a house, right? That you are the person that they felt like they connected with the most. It's that old saying, people wanna work with who they know, like and trust, right? Is that? because I'm very much the same way. And I keep on hearing, you know, my coach or whatever in the back of my mind saying, Oh, you gotta, you gotta produce content, pull out your phone, make a post, do all that stuff. But I really, I enjoy just putting it down in and stopping and looking around, talking to people and not being distracted and enjoying. why you're there and you're there not to produce content, you're there to make connections and talk to other human beings. Yeah, well, and the secret that I've found out is if you put out really engaging content, really authentic content, people don't care if you take a few breaks in between. And then when you're doing it, it's way more meaningful and you're a lot more likely to get people to stop and look and read instead of like, oh, there's Colin again. I saw his thing yesterday. I'm just gonna scroll right past that. And when I got started in marketing on real estate, I rarely, rarely ever talked about the actual real estate. I rarely talked about the products. In fact, I just, I put up a listing today. I just put up a listing. It's a winery, very unique property, $2 million. And instead, I'm not thinking about even posting that on my social media today. I don't even know if I will, I probably will. But instead, I'm like posting about the relationships from the conference that I went to this last week. And I'd be more likely to post about my relationship with the sellers. than I would about the actual property itself because that's just been my style. That's what I do. For me, the property of course needs to be featured and be unique and we do need to know how to market them using the actual tools, you know, through the MLS and all of that stuff. But when it comes to personal brand. You know, that is my brand. It's about the relationships. be personal in your personal brand. Now, would you say what you're doing there is kind of a way that you are finding some work-life balance? Because you're a mom of three. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. I always ask people, how do you find that balance? And a lot of people will say it's BS, that it doesn't exist. And that's fine. I don't think it exists either. I just think that it's a way of life for some of us. And a lot of people, a lot of real estate agents sacrifice their time for money. And I, like you, like to be present when I show up. So is that just part of how you remain balanced and into your family? Yeah, yep. At dinnertime, the phone goes away. Usually by eight o'clock at night, I've turned it off. I get up really early every day and spend a good hour awake, just kind of having quiet time before anybody even is awake. And then when I get the kids up in the morning, I am fully focused on them until they get off to school. And then I hustle hard during the day. I try to stack my calendar close together as much as I can and book everything in as much as I can before they get home at the end of the day. And there is no such thing as work-life balance. I agree with that comment, but I do think that you can find balance in the things that you're worrying about and stressed about when you're not at work, right? And I think that is where a lot of agents really struggle is that they can't... let go of that one deal that they're really stressed about what's going to happen or what's happening on the communication or is it going to close? Stressing about things, and I used to be that way. I used to do that. I used to stress really hard about the smallest of things. Now it's like, I don't know. I don't know if it just comes with experience in the business or if it comes with... Also finding other residual forms of income so that you aren't always stressed about if that deal is gonna close or not, right? There's only so many things as an agent that you can do to make sure that a deal closes. But putting that stress away, it's so important because the work's gonna be there tomorrow. The work is gonna be there tomorrow. If you are showing up consistently and showing up. for your clients and showing up to work, which allow realtors don't treat their job like it's a job. If realtors actually worked from nine to five, like other people and other careers do, and they showed up for work during those hours, they might actually be less stressed in the off hours. It is funny, isn't it? Yeah, I kind of just rambled there, but I think I answered your question. Yeah, I think it was really great. I was just letting you go there. What is the one thing that has you most excited about the future of your real estate business? Uh, the unknowns. I think we're seeing a lot of unknown that is coming up, especially down here in the good old US of A we are experiencing some craziness with the commissions and all that. And I think what's going to happen is agents as, as technology continues to rise as AI continues to show up. As some of these other ancillary vendors like the Zillows and the Realtor.com and all of these other things that have maybe given agents a little run for their money show up, it's going to force agents to treat their job more like a job. It is going to make agents show up in a more professional manner maybe when it comes to the actual business of real estate. And I also think we're just going to see some really creative innovation ahead of us. And I think that that's really exciting because as change comes, you never know what new doors are gonna be opened, what other opportunities are coming. So everybody running around like chickens with their heads cut off. And honestly, when that happens, they actually do that. The chicken bodies run around, I've witnessed it. But instead of everybody running around. Ha ha ha. Nice little thought that you put in there. I'm a farmer, okay? We did 60 meat chickens. I don't really look forward to doing that ever again, but I've tried it. But instead of everybody... You know, honestly, it's a good illustration though, like as we were doing those meat chickens and they were all running around with their heads cut off, I don't want to see our industry go that route. I would rather we don't do that. I would rather that we work together and remain calm and find innovative ways to move with the changes that are coming toward us. And I do think that we have some amazing thought leaders in the industry across all different, you know, brokerages and boards and people that you can pay attention to that have neat ideas that are gonna come in that are going to just. enhance this business and enhance the industry for our clients and for the people that work with us. Yeah, professionalism is, you know, I think where we are all moving towards better professionalism. And, and I think that is nothing but a good thing. So give our listeners three actionable takeaways that you think every agent should be doing in their business right now. Oh man, well one, I think listings are gold, right? Every agent should be aiming for more listings. And in order to do that, you need to be marketing yourself. The best marketers are the ones that are gonna win the listings. And so to me, you can put out a brand that looks pretty and that is nice, but it has no actual personality with it. And I have found that instead, most of the people that have become my clients or are part of my sphere, they actually would rather see that fun stuff. They would actually rather feel like they know me personally. And so I would encourage agents to go after listings, to show up for themselves online in an authentic way that's gonna attract in the clients that they are really hoping to work with. And third, don't panic. Come on everybody, let's just remain calm. Go to some conferences, enhance your life, fill your bucket with goodness so that the goodness can pour back out. Get your mind right, listen to some good podcasts, read some good books. Leaders are readers, right? So fill your brain with really good content so that as you are showing up online and you're showing up in your life and maybe you have a family, you're showing up for your family. Instead of having panic and chaos and uncertainty coming out of your mouth, you can have confidence and clarity and be showing up in a way that is, you know, more powerful and engaging for people and more positive. Yeah, I agree. Um, and just especially about attracting the people that you want to attract. And you do that through being authentic, authentic online, authentic in your life. And you will attract the people that you want to work with. Uh, it, it's a challenge when you first start in real estate because you, you just want to stay alive. You want to stay in the business and you're just trying to make money. But after a while, you'll realize that you resonate with certain. type of people and you find your niche, you know, and the people that you want to work with and that is solely done with being authentic in how you show up every single day. Well, and the other thing that you might end up doing too is repelling the people you don't want to work with, right? Attract or repel? Yeah, yeah. You know, if you can get rid of the ones where you, that is the people that are stressing you out, keeping you awake at night, making you feel like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, or making you feel like, I just was having this conversation with a girlfriend in real estate the other day. She had a multimillion dollar listing and she ended up firing the seller. right? Because it was not in alignment with what she wanted to do and in her business and it was causing her more stress than that commission check, which may or may not come in at the end of the day, was going to be worth. And I think if you're in that position where you can attract or repel, the repellent sometimes is what can keep you moving forward in this job. Oh, I totally agree. The very first time that I fired a client was almost, it was a aha moment for me where I learned that I get to choose the life that I want to live and the people who I want to surround myself with, including clients. I get to choose those. And when you make that decision and you have that mindset, life can be really, really good because I just love my clients now. And if I come across one that just doesn't jive with me, if I wouldn't go out and have a beer with this person, I'm not gonna work with them. It's just simple. It's simple, you know, like I don't need to. And it's very, very empowering. And I think as a young real estate agent, you need to learn that, that life is not worth that. paycheck, go out and have fun. Like you said, from the very top, you only got one of these lives. Make it a good one, right? I agree. So my experience is that generally realtors, like yourself, are a very, very giving bunch. What are you doing to give back to your community? Oh boy, we have a lot of different things going on with that. You know, for me, about in 2019 in the fall, I had the opportunity to go to Malawi, Africa. And it changed my life. I was there for a month. I was there with several of my family members run this nonprofit. And so when we went there, we got to see all the things. And one, really come home to appreciate what we have here, right? And two, to know that as we're doing community initiatives around here, we also can give back outside of the local community. And, you know, it really changes your perspective on life when you see people making their houses out of mud and water and baking their bricks and living in in places that we wouldn't even necessarily store our garden tools in, right? And so I did that in 2019 and ever since then it really has propelled us into constantly thinking about ways that we can give back into the communities. There's a few local organizations here that we... we've gotten to be a part of in a really big way that give back. I think one of the things, and of course with the Africa thing, what I'm focusing on is housing because what we do as agents is so important with helping people get into homes, but there's so many people out there that don't have housing, right? Whether it is globally or even locally, homelessness is way up. rates of homelessness are way up. And so trying to find organizations where you can give back or find shelters. I've participated in quite a few organizations to that, raise awareness around trafficking and some of those things. And so I... We have a lot of different ways to give back. It's been really a blessing. The more that you're able to bless others, the bigger blessings return back into your life. And I always encourage agents when you're getting into this business to find places where you can give back. We're super active in our church. And so that for me is kind of our number one way of impacting a community on a local level is finding a place like that or an organization like that where you can touch lives of people on a local level. And then also finding an opportunity, like maybe going on a trip where you can give back to another community that will enhance your perspective to be grateful of what you have when you come back. Yeah, it's certainly it's very, very eye opening. In my early twenties, I traveled through Southeast Asia and just saw what it was like there. And it just changed my perspective. You know, it's very, very hard to complain where we live about things having been there, you know, and it's probably the same as what you saw. You know, you come back and you're like, how can I ever, ever? about my life. Yeah, yep. It's ironic because during the time that I was getting ready to go, I was helping a builder, a luxury builder, I represented a luxury builder at that time. And I went from helping somebody shop for, you know, $5,000 in wall cappuccino maker, right. And then I go, I mean, the juxtaposition of it is just a little mind blowing. I did a lot of crying. when I came back from that trip, just thinking about things and it does change your perspective when you get an experience like that. I fully agree. So next up we have our, I like to think of it as being famous, the famous rapid fire round. Are you ready for it? I don't know if I am or not, but we're gonna do it anyway. Ha ha ha! Beautiful. I love your attitude. That is so good. What's the one piece of technology that you just can't do without and why, and you can't say the MLS or your cell phone. Oh shoot, my phone. I would say, oh, I would say Zoom. I live where I want, go where I want, do whatever I want all because my office is mobile. What's the best book you've ever read and why? Well, the Bible, that's an easy one. But an actual book, I would say The Art of Impossible is one that I read recently that is just a mind blowing book. It's about a former reporter that turned into like an adventure hobbyist of reporting on sports and high performance athletes in like the crazy surfers and snowboarders and people. And he kind of talks about how people can achieve the impossible thing through mindset, right? And through showing up and through grit and through coming into flow. And it's such a good book. If you haven't read it, you absolutely need to read it. It's going on my list. What is the best business advice you've ever received? Oh. best business advice. I've done so many businesses. Oh, that's actually probably the hardest one that I have gotten. I would say to just go for it, right? That, and it seems like such a simple, easy thing, but so many people are unwilling to just go for it, to make the change, to do the decision, to take the hard step, to take the scary choice, you know, to go on the path less followed. It's... If you're in your heart thinking of something, and you know, it's kind of how we started off this podcast, but go for it, try it, you only get one life. Love it. Now imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to earth, but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have, your food and shelter is taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500. What would you do to resurrect your real estate business in the next seven days? I would go around, do I have social media? Do I have social media? But I have no friends probably, zero friends. No social media presence. I would go around and start one of these podcasts, call and start interviewing people. And I would go around and start trying to get to know other entrepreneurs. This is kind of reminds me of like. the school of hard knocks, there's these young guys that go around and they interview all these big millionaires and billionaires. They find them by looking at what cars they drive or by looking at fancy houses. Have you seen these kids? They go around and they ask questions like this, right? They just keep asking questions and the entrepreneurs initially are standoffish, but then the more questions I get asked, the more they warm up to the material and they start sharing insights. If you just learn how to, and maybe that's part of why I have had some success in this industry is because when I went to law school, really law school just trains you to be a professional question asker. I would just go around and start asking questions until I got answers and can figure out some ways to get in and make money in real estate. Again, there's a million ways. to make a living at this business, it doesn't necessarily have to be the traditional way that everybody is used to. Yep. And just to give. find something to wholesale. I mean, that'd be the quickest way to make some cash is wholesale. Yeah. And a quick shameless plug, I do have a podcasting course for real estate agents coming out and it's gonna be 500 bucks. Ha ha ha. Oh, I had no, seriously, I had no clue, but how perfect is that? I just plugged it with this. I said I've been keeping it like I haven't mentioned it in my socials at all or anything. I was just like, okay, I got to open it. I got to tell people about it right now. So that's coming up. That's coming up. So whenever you're listening to this, you can follow me on social and find out my course and how to connect with your community and community building podcast and connecting with people locally. Before I send you away back to your farm, give us a quote that has guided you in your life and then we'll say goodbye. Okay, that's funny. This morning as I was going for a walk, I was thinking about a quote actually. I didn't, I was naughty and did not look at your homework before this. So this has been good. I was thinking about a quote that I used at my high school graduation ceremony. I was one of the speakers at the high school graduation. And... surprise me. You know, it's a quote I use and I never really thought about how often in the next seasons of my life I would end up leaning on it. But the quote is a Helen Keller quote and it says, when one door closes, another door opens, right? And every opportunity that lays in front of you, sometimes you have to close the door in order to walk into that next one. And so instead of looking at the closed door behind you, just keep looking forward. I love that. Yeah, I love that quote. That is so, so very true, right? So one of the big things that we like to do on this podcast is we love referrals. So if somebody had somebody coming or leaving in your area in Duluth, how can they get a hold of you and send you a referral? Well, they can find me on the socials that we talked about, Instagram and Facebook. It's just Noelle, the Minnesotan. It's pretty simple. Yep, I love referrals. We have a good referral system set up here in the state of Minnesota. And in part why I created that brand and the team was because I was getting so many referrals that I needed a place and a structure to be able to handle them all. So we have that here. We'll take all the referrals. I love a good referral and yeah, look me up. we all, referrals are the absolute best. Referrals are amazing. Yep. So I'll help everybody out. I will put Noel's all her contacts down below and into the show notes. And we'll make it super easy that people can just go there and send you a referral. Perfect. I'll take it. All right. So what we've learned from this podcast so far is that Noel's going to put out more goat videos to satisfy me. And I have to say, I was going to have a little laugh in this just before we leave that I was probably one of those people texting you going, where have you been? Yeah, well... More are coming, you know, that's the thing. I think a lot of people think, gosh, if you leave the business or if you leave the social media for a while, you'll never go back. And that's not true. Like you never leave it with the intention that you're never coming back. You just leave it until you get your brain clear and just come back. And the goats will come back. They'll show up. Yeah, you can always reinvent yourself. I love it. I love it. And then we'll jump off from there. Noel, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It was really, really great to catch up with you and we shouldn't leave it for so long next time. Yes, I loved coming on. Thanks again, Colin. Anytime. You too.