The Business of Giving

Kevin Krall 0:00
You're listening to special programming sponsored by the cars marketing Chamber of Commerce. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. People live in live.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the business of giving podcast. My name is Guy Dawson and I am the Executive Director of the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. And we are an organization that brings businesses and nonprofit organizations together to create synergistic relationships that benefit the community. And we started this radio show as a vehicle to share the merits of cause marketing and to really show people the value that nonprofit organizations and for profit businesses bring to one another. And that's really the essence of what the cause marketing chamber is all about. We see both entities as pillars of the community that can leverage a relationships amongst one another to create just wonderful opportunities. And we again, we really appreciate the opportunity to be working with 91.5 that film over here at UNLV. To to share the merits of the things that we're doing in the nonprofit and for profit worlds. I have a co host with me today. And his name is Devin Sandvik. He owns a real estate company, and he's a participant in a lot of the things that we do with the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce. Welcome to the show, Dad.

Unknown Speaker 1:43
Yeah. Thank you, guy. Thank you for having me on.

Unknown Speaker 1:44
And tell us about the profession that you're in.

Unknown Speaker 1:49
Yeah, so I am in the real estate industry. So not only on the residential side, but we also do the commercial side, and even some investment consulting as well. So that is our industry as as what we participate in there.

Unknown Speaker 2:03
Yeah. And you are a young entrepreneur, how old are

Unknown Speaker 2:06
25 years old? Turned 26? At a couple months, though,

Unknown Speaker 2:09
almost 26 years old? And how long have you been in business? Been in

Unknown Speaker 2:14
business as a as my current position as a broker for two, almost three years now? But we're going to be going on to the I think seventh year in the real estate industry as a as a whole though, as far as the the investments ago. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
So you've been in really, you're 25 years old? And you've already been in the industry for seven years. Seven

Unknown Speaker 2:37
years? Yeah, pretty much since I was 18. And then, outside of that, I've been an entrepreneur for another two years on top of that, since since I was 16. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 2:48
What got you into entrepreneurship in real estate?

Unknown Speaker 2:50
Yeah, so I've always, I think I've always had an affinity for sales in general, like I've always loved helping people and kind of connecting like a product to a solution has always been something that I've really enjoyed, not like the pushing the product type of sales, you know, but the definitely the connecting side of things. So I've always liked filling in gaps where I've seen, you know, seen fit, and then I got into real estate, because my parents are investors. And so I think that's like how most young people get into real estate is like their parents have experienced in it. But yeah, I had an opportunity to go up to you and are, they're like, Hey, can you manage a property for us up there. And then after I started managing that property for them, got into Airbnb, got into teaching other people how to be landlords and be Airbnb hosts. And then it just kind of went from there. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:39
And most people, they're in their early 20s, like you are and they're just kind of finding their way really figuring out what they want to do with their lives. And you seem to really kind of know where you want to go. Obviously, you're, you're really focused have was this something that just clicked for you? You knew you were in the right industry, right off the bat,

Unknown Speaker 3:59
man, I, I knew I wanted to be a real estate investor. And I was like, alright, what are a couple of ways to do that. I was like, I can work at a job that I don't like, and then go use that money to go invest in real estate. I was like, or there's maybe a better way to do it. I actually enjoy teaching people how to invest in real estate. So what if I aligned my job with where I wanted to put my money anyway? So I think I think that's where I first got started into real estate. And then opportunities came along the way and I said, You know what, there's, there's more to this industry than than just me teaching people about real estate investing. There's luxury home buying, right? There's commercial real estate, there's there's leases for businesses, there's the coaching other realtors not just coaching your clients on how to successfully make money in the real estate industry, but actually teach other real estate professionals, how to, you know, lead their clients. So I got into that side of things as well. Later on in the business, but yeah, as that opportunity came jumped on it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:01
How did you learn enough to teach? Was it just being around this with your parents being investors? And how did you get sharp enough to where you could actually teach people about these things?

Unknown Speaker 5:11
Yeah, yeah, I wish I could say that I had like, some amazing resource. But I made the mistakes firsthand, which is definitely the least efficient way to do it. But I did it fast and made the mistakes. I overcame them. And then I said, You know what other people are probably going to appreciate the time savings of not making the mistakes I did. So yeah, it first started out from stubbornness doing it my way. And then later on, it came into Okay, how about I associate with people who are more experienced than with with me, and we do it together?

Unknown Speaker 5:41
So you had people that mentored you and are probably still mentored you as a as a real estate person?

Unknown Speaker 5:48
Oh, absolutely. What's what's funny is, as the broker owner, even though I'm in charge of the leadership for the entire company, the first two agents that I hired on had more experience than I did. And so what's funny is the people that work for me are actually part of my mentorship as well. So yeah.

Unknown Speaker 6:04
And so you went to college. And I know, when we were off air, we you know, this, again, this show is all about the business of giving in with a cause marketing Chamber of Commerce, our focus is supporting the success of, of businesses and nonprofit organizations. But before we were on air, you were talking about some of the nonprofit oriented things you did before you even really work in business while you were in college. You want to talk about your, I guess a lot of people don't look at the political experience as a nonprofit or cause oriented experience, but it is. Tell us about your background and political campaigns.

Unknown Speaker 6:42
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So. So I got involved in politics on the university level. And so when you're a political club on campus, you you're involved with things that affect college students, but you're also you also do things with college students that affect actual election campaigns as well. So while you can't, you can't officially say like you're supporting a certain political candidate, you can use them as recruitment opportunities. So people got jobs from like becoming a part of Yao is who I was involved with at the time. So yeah, so there are certain things like that, that you could be involved with. But yeah, you don't make any money doing it. So like, you're out there, because you want to be there. We used to host a lot of debates. So our main focus was like, how do we spread diversity of thought of political ideas across the student campus, both on the conservative side and the liberal side. And so we had to really team up not only with people that were aligned with us, but we had to team up with people who thought we were the enemy, like, your political, your politics, or like, what's killing this country or whatever, right? On either side, either side, left or right, because we were technically a centrist organization. So yeah, we brought on everyone from the Republicans to the young democrats. There's the the Young Socialists club, we even had the Marxist club at one of our debates as well. So yeah, we do it all.

Unknown Speaker 8:09
And I would imagine, that's where the learning takes place. Because you may be politically diametrically opposed to someone I mean, the whole other end of the spectrum with them, but for the good of the whole, which is what by the way, the political system oughta way it ought to work in this country, even though it doesn't sometimes work that way. But for the good of the whole, being able to put on the debate or to be able to have healthy discussions about things. You have to put your your preferences and your ideology aside to make it happen.

Unknown Speaker 8:40
Oh, yeah, you got to it. What's great is it's great for the debaters because you you learn extra perspective, right? And when you're on stage, obviously, you're you got a certain goal, but then when you're off stage, it really does force you to find common ground with people that you don't want to find common ground with. And that that exercise, I feel like is it's healthy for people. So it was it was definitely a great experience. But it's also great to, to be able to help people and watch people go through that. So yeah, you get to really learn how to align yourself with people you didn't think that you could find agreement with

Unknown Speaker 9:12
I would imagine you learned a lot to dive in about leadership and organization them being involved in something like that pulling people together team building. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 9:22
yeah. So that was the first time I really kind of found out what I was good at doing in life was through through volunteering. And so I found out that I love bringing people together and hosting a great event. Like that's really what I love doing. I don't like doing the the knocking and the inviting and all that kind of stuff. Once people are together. I like getting people all together and saying, Hey, look, we can all have a fun time, even if we disagree. So

Unknown Speaker 9:48
and so we need to send you to Washington DC right away.

Unknown Speaker 9:51
I don't know. I'm only 25 So what I can think I think I

Unknown Speaker 9:55
can't even run for president. Oh 10 more years.

Unknown Speaker 9:58
I can be a state senator. I Ain't no no house,

Unknown Speaker 10:02
house of the Republic, he couldn't be in the house and House of Representatives, the

Unknown Speaker 10:05
House of Representatives that could be on but yeah, so I don't know, I haven't thought about running in politics yet. But I have been involved in like, political campaigns. And so you get to meet politicians along the way, which is definitely cool. When you're doing that.

Unknown Speaker 10:19
What did you learn the most through that experience?

Unknown Speaker 10:23
I would definitely say the the leadership skills, yeah. When you are able to not only align somebody with yourself with a with something that's common, you know, you don't have to get somebody on your same page all the time, you just have to find something that you can find in common with and then you, you build from that one thing. So I think that's helped me so much in leadership, because I look at my team now, as a broker owner, and my team is all different. We all have different backgrounds, we all have, like different people that relate to us. But yet synergistically it works so much better than doing it just the way that I would do it. So just to see my team do something different than I would, even though it works, you know, like you have to find the common ground that creates the effective solution, not just like, what you would do

Unknown Speaker 11:12
tap into the talent of people who are around you, because the people who are a part of your team, yeah, have a lot of untapped talents.

Unknown Speaker 11:20
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, for example, like, if someone speaks Spanish, like, I'm not going to micromanage them, and, like, teach them how to how to sell real estate to someone who only speaks Spanish, like that's something that, you know, you take the ball on that you run with it, like if I got my own way of doing it, and your ways better, like, do the better way, you know, so I think, I think my experience involved in Polit, like politics, or like volunteering taught me how to just let people do it their way at an early age, which I think a lot of people don't learn, usually until a little bit later.

Unknown Speaker 11:54
So and you building your business, let's go to that. Yeah, back to that piece. How did you build it? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:01
absolutely. I built, I built I think, probably 90% of my business, just through networking, just through talking to people. And, and honestly, just taking people out for coffee. That was that was the most of my marketing. And most of my coaching that I got, and all that kind of stuff was just going out to coffee, people bouncing ideas off things. And then just following through following through with whatever that meeting was, whatever you accomplished in that meeting, you don't let it go to waste, you actually say, hey, you know, we have a follow up meeting or we have a follow up email, we do something next that actually makes it happen.

Unknown Speaker 12:34
So yes, taking action is so critical, and actually making things happen.

Unknown Speaker 12:40
It's the only thing you can control you like you can control the actions that you take. But you can't control like, like when you go out to coffee with someone, you can't control the conversation, you can't control the direction, or the agreements or whatever that person wants. Like if they want something at the end of the day, and you're just not aligned. You can't control that lack of alignment. But what you can control is when you do find alignment, you do find something that works, you can control whether or not you follow through on it or not

Unknown Speaker 13:08
absolutely action, especially in this. You know, we're talking a lot on this show about starting a nonprofit organization or starting a business. And I mean, the mean, when all else fails, take some type of action, I think is such a critical point not to say that you shouldn't plan and organize, oversee now we have a strategic approach to doing things but don't get so caught up in the preparation that you don't actually just pick up the phone and make the phone call set the appointment. When has that been something that's helped you to be more successful? Oh, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 13:44
You gotta you got to pick up the phone, especially in the real estate industry. Everybody knows a realtor, right? So why are they going to? Why are they going to call you? So if you make if you make the effort, right, suddenly you stood out because nine out of 10 Realtors aren't calling people back right now that a 10 realtors are handing the business card over. And you know, they're not doing any kind of follow up whatsoever. So you can already put yourself in the top 10%. Right, then you can get to the top 5% through experience through other value ads that you do. But following up is, you know half of it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 14:17
Yes. Follow Up is where that's a real habit to be developed, isn't it?

Unknown Speaker 14:23
Just slowly and it can it can even get overwhelming. And so I would I would even say my follow up as has changed throughout time when I've when I've been more busy or less busy. But it's been strategic you make you make a strategy for how you're going to follow up and then you execute it, you know?

Unknown Speaker 14:39
Yes. And so for you seven years, you've been in the industry two, almost three of which we've been in a pandemic. So what's that been?

Unknown Speaker 14:50
At At first the I think the first six months of the pandemic was an absolute panic not for just me, probably for everybody. But I think it was the best time Um, to start a business because it brought the competition down, like, and at the end of the day, like, you know, I hope, I hope no ill will on anybody, especially my competitors. But if everybody's going through a hard time, it doesn't make me unique. And so so now I'm on the same level as everybody else. If everybody's at zero, and you're competing, you know, you're all you're all going to run the same race, right? Versus you start a business than everybody else who's already 10 steps ahead of you, you got to catch up. So I didn't have to do any ketchup, because everybody was at zero because nobody knew how to operate in the virtual world, you know, in real estate. So I got to, I got to actually get ahead. Because Because of it, we had the first six months were brutal. And then after that picked up, and and I'd say, Yeah, my ability to adapt was the, the, probably the key contributor. So outside of the follow up, the adaptability was, was probably the second biggest factor. What did you do to adapt? Yeah, so I went to virtual networking groups, because that's the only thing that that was allowed. I had already been working on these, like these 360 listings and these these virtual tours before the pandemic even happened. And so I was able to advertise them and do these 360 open houses. So these virtual open houses where people could actually look around the entire room, they could, they could plug directly into my 360 camera, and I could walk them through the entire property. So a couple of those things helped me kind of stand out and get some attention. And then once you have the attention, and you're already a professional person, then the rest of it's easy. So yeah,

Unknown Speaker 16:39
so you develop new skill sets. You had some basic technological advantages, probably because you're a you're a Gen Z, right? You're sort of a millennial Gen Z. Yeah. Beyond the Border of that.

Unknown Speaker 16:50
Yeah. So some people think 1995 And earlier is millennial and some people were like, No 1997 and earliest millennial, I'm 9096. I'm like, right, right in that middle. So high technology

Unknown Speaker 17:00
capabilities. Usually, my son's 22 You can do anything. So that that's that's obviously an advantage though. Just being raised with the technology. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 17:11
yeah. So. So I was already used to the technology, and then and then bringing awareness to it. And once people knew that I had the awareness, then that was good, too. And then I started, honestly, at some of these networking events, I started doing these like real estate coachings and teachings and things like that. And I'd, you know, everybody had a chance to be a speaker at some point in time in the quarter. And people were able to see like, Okay, this isn't just somebody who sells real estate, like this is somebody who has actual strategic knowledge of the industry and the experience in it. And that kind of separated me as well. And so between the technology side, and then also on the education side, that's how I was able to stand out. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 17:53
And I think the first time I met you was at a giveback event that we had that was at the Eastside cannery back in, I guess that would have been 2021. It was like January of 2021. We we did a good back event with three square. Yeah, really tough time in the city for a lot of people. And we gave a lot of basic foods out to people that day. How'd you I know, you're very good friends, with Carl, who's the chairman of the board of the chamber and my co host of the show he's having he's a little under the weather today. And his voice isn't as strong.

Unknown Speaker 18:28
Yeah, no, I met Carl through a team networking event. So so we hosted that, and then he invited me out. And I like, I like doing hands on things with volunteering. And in case you're listening to the show, and you're you're trying to start a business, people that actually show up to the hands on events stand out, like when you when you show up at the event organizers, you know, and this is what I found even in like, like wildlife conservation as well, you might get 40 people that show up to the meeting that plans the event, sometimes you only get 10 people that show up to the actual organizer events that like 8020 principle, right. And so when you actually show up, hands on, that's the highest value your time because you're meeting the 20% of people were willing to get their hands dirty, right, willing to help out people. And those are the top producers in the community. So I would say like if you want to meet some of those top producing people that are out there and want to support and help other businesses that are doing the same, like get your hands dirty with something like even if it's not exactly what I'm talking about here with three squared, or at the cause marketing or with wildlife conservation, like, like, do something. You know,

Unknown Speaker 19:32
I agree with you, Davin that volunteering, being in a volunteering situation is an excellent networking opportunity that's productive. Like you said, you get a good, a good type of person that wants to put their hands on something that they're high quality people generally

Unknown Speaker 19:50
Yeah, and it's a good return on your time because I mentioned networking and like follow up as one of those key factors that helped me and success. But some of it is where you now work as well. And so causes or nonprofits, charities, or just just things that you're passionate about that people are going to show up and do anyway. They're not showing up there to be involved in your business. But if everybody's there and accomplishes the goal, why wouldn't they then be curious about your business once once they get there? And so it's definitely a high return on investment for your time.

Unknown Speaker 20:23
Yes, absolutely any time and there's so many opportunities to be a volunteer at a cause oriented event, maybe a golf tournament, maybe some of these give back events like we do at the cost chamber where we do community already oriented events with, we've done so many things, suicide watches, and things with three square and But absolutely, you're going to meet great people in those environments. And like you mentioned, you may not do business, you're not really going there specifically to do business. Oh, yeah. But at the same time, as you had mentioned before, you're rubbing elbows with high quality people, and who doesn't want to make great connections with high quality people? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:05
absolutely. Because Because I think if you're showing up to like a volunteering event, or any type of a give back with like, okay, like, how do I make money today, you're, you're not gonna do anything, like, if you if you show up with like, who can I meet, that's immediately gonna buy a product today. Like, that's not that's not going to be successful. But if you go with the goal of okay, how many people can I get in my circle, that are probably the top producers and other product categories, and eventually going to need my services, not this year, but next year and five years down the road and 10 years down the road, you have that long term, play with it. That's how you make plenty of money, when you're not even focused on, you know, on how you're gonna make money today, if you're just focused on building the relationship first. Yeah, that's where it happens.

Unknown Speaker 21:47
And you've attended quite a few of our events with the chamber, what what makes you keep coming back? What draws you to the things that we do?

Unknown Speaker 21:56
Yeah, I would say that I'm one of those people, I don't, I don't take a cause and stay with it for like, a super long period of time. And when I say super long, I mean, like, you know, I haven't been a part of a cause for, like, 10 years. Plus, you know, I found that in college, I had kind of like a run of, of what was successful for me, and then what I was really passionate about. And then like, my political passion kind of died, when I, when I started into real estate, I really found entrepreneurship and just other things more important. And it's not that I wouldn't do a networking event, you know, politically speaking, right, or wouldn't support it. You know, I still have the same political beliefs. But at the end of the day, it's just not it wasn't fruitful for me, right. And so, I always like to think of like, what's next, right? Even even whatever I'm doing now, whatever causes I support now, they might not be things that are going to just light me on fire in 510 20 years. And so I like going to the cause marketing events, because I get so much exposure to, to other charities and some charities, you know, I get introduced, and I'm like, you know, what, I at least know where to send somebody if somebody else is gonna get fired up about that cause, but I know that for me, I'm like, man, like, it's just, it's not something I have the time for, or it's just not something that I'm gonna get fired up about, you know. So I think that's the value that that cause marketing brings to me and going in continuing to go. But yeah, I've found recently a couple of things that I'm involved with, that I actually really enjoy being a part of, and I like, I like having a resource to be able to send people to, if they're not as passionate about what I'm passionate about, at least I can help them find something that they are, you know,

Unknown Speaker 23:38
speaking of nonprofits, we're both a part of a networking group called Spark, which is also a nonprofit organization that you share about the development of this great organization.

Unknown Speaker 23:50
Oh, man. So I'd love to Yeah, so So what Spark is all about is bringing people together and providing the maximum value in a network. We're all about coaching people to kind of take that next step and go to that next level. So we were a part of this organization called Team referral network, right. And so we looked at what they were offering, and not not to bash another organization in any other way, we actually interact with plenty of other networking organizations. But we thought to ourselves, you know, what we can, we can really take what we have in our network, and we can make some tweaks and changes and we think we could just add some extra value. And so we left team, we started our own networking group called spark. And our goal was that you have an entire table team of leaders that can pretty much take you from like, you've never networked a day in your life and you don't you just started a business. You don't even know what networking is. You can meet a variety of professionals that you're going to need to talk to anyway in order to get started. And then by the end of it, you could actually pretty much start teaching people how to be a better networker because nobody gets more annoyed about networking, the Networkers With other networkers because you know, you go to a networking event, and sometimes people have the same dry comment, like, you know, they introduce themselves, and then they immediately ask, so what do you do? And really what they're asking guy think you know, is what can you do for me?

Unknown Speaker 25:13
Right? That's what they're giving the giving givers gain mentality. Oh, no, in the networking world,

Unknown Speaker 25:21
right. And don't get me wrong. Am I? Am I guilty of it, too? Yeah, there's times where you know, you're at a networking event. And everybody's asking that question. And you're just like, you know, like, I didn't come up with anything creative today. Like, we're all guilty. Like, we're not. I'm not coming from this place of perfection. Absolutely. Yeah. However, there are there are opportunities to, to be more creative. And we try to teach people how to do that. And also, we try to get variety, but also teach people that you can cooperate with your competition as well. So yeah, that's what we're about. They've asked me to be the founding president of it. So I currently lead our morning meetings at 815 in the morning, at the we work, so if any businesses are out there interested in checking out definitely check out our Facebook and we're very warm and welcoming crowd.

Unknown Speaker 26:07
Yeah, it's an outstanding organization, the cause marketing chamber is a member of that, as well as my company, classic communications. And I built my whole business, Davin through networking, I know that it works, but it's about the kind of crowd that you pull together. That makes the networking experience fulfilling, right, financially and otherwise. And I just, I love the job you're doing as the leader of this group. And it's just a strong, strong net, where I've been in many, many, many groups. So I, I know a good group when I see it.

Unknown Speaker 26:38
Thank you guys. Like I said, my, something I found out that I really enjoy doing is just bringing people together. And so So yeah, to be given that position, because it really was it was given right, it was it's a gift. It's nothing that like I earned or like got voted in on right, it was we created from scratch, and people were like, Hey, let's give you this opportunity to, to pull it together. And so I really like hosting, and being able to kind of, do bring people into something, you know, and then create that energy. So it's been fun. Yeah, how

Unknown Speaker 27:08
can the listeners get in contact with you? Because you've really shared a lot of great knowledge about real estate. And I think that you would definitely be someone that could represent a person well, who, who wanted to get into investing or buy their first home or whatever it is that they're looking for.

Unknown Speaker 27:23
Yeah, or even on the agent side. So if you want to start a career as well, you can give me a call answer my phone. 702-518-1606. But if you're more comfortable on social media, just look up Davinson Vic on Facebook. You can also find my website, Devin sundeck.com. So I'm a pretty accessible person.

Unknown Speaker 27:40
Yes, and we've got events that are coming up for the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce, the cause and business education series workshop is on Tuesday, September the 20th. From 6pm to 7pm. The featured speaker that's an online event, you go to cause marketing chamber.com And you can get all the information about this event. Our featured speaker will be Allison Jones with polston tax. She's going to show about tax strategies for businesses as well as nonprofit organizations. This is Carl Domeier. Legs baby, he is the presenter for that event. Great information, go to our website, cause marketing chamber.com For more info. And we also have our monthly mixer event, which is going to be on the 27th of September and it is going to be at Big B's barbecue and we have a featured nonprofit organization, rec. It's a Veterans Organization organization. I always screw up the name, but please go to the website to check out what it is because I don't want to screw up the name. rec therapy barbecue. There we go. We got a young guy with a great memory. Yeah. And he actually mark is a wonderful, wonderful person that helps a lot of veterans. Oh, absolutely, yeah. And that's from six to eight on the 27th and for more things that we're doing as a chamber of commerce, we always encourage you visit our website, cause marketing chamber.org We've got a lot or cause marketing chamber.org or cause marketing chamber.com We've got a lot of things that we're developing events that are coming up and again, we appreciate the opportunity to share the wares of the cause marketing Chamber of Commerce, you can like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram also on Twitter. And we're developing a YouTube channel where we're going to be having lots of these podcasts of different people in the nonprofit and for profit world that we interview so you take care of yourselves out there continue to do good. Give back to your community and do great business See you soon. The weight of the world

Transcribed by https://otter.ai