From $8 to Real Estate Maven: Lailan Bento’s Journey
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Wait, you were buying coffee and mortgage people? No, no, no, no. Okay, listen. If you're listening to this and you're an agent, you don't buy coffee for the mortgage people and the title people. They buy you coffee. They should buy you dinner, to be honest with you. I know. You are their client. Don't go buy them coffee. That doesn't make any sense.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of Like It Says in the opening, man, the show that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, kids, live in the studio, I got somebody, she's a baller.

And, you know, being here in Las Vegas, we are considered little very people don't understand this, but we are considered the ninth island. And what I mean by that is we have a massive migration of Hawaiians that have moved to Las Vegas over the years, henceforth the ninth island. So it's always good to have somebody from one of the actual islands come to the studio.

This guest today, she is an absolute baller realtor in Hawaii. She was voted one of the top 20 Hawaiian realtors on social media. She is the co-founder of the Hawaii Development Group, which we'll talk about in a minute.

She's been featured in Entrepreneur, and man, she's got a cool story to tell. So welcome to the program, ladies and gentlemen. This is Lylan Bento. Lylan. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. How are you? Are you fired up from that intro? You just fired up right now? That's awesome. So you are somebody that, much like me, you are in the real estate business, and I'm always kind of curious. So I

I think you mentioned when we talked in my office earlier that mom's into business, so obviously that's how you got into it. So tell me about you growing up in Hawaii, because I always like to see, because obviously highly successful people, right? They leave clues. And I like to see, was there a major problem that happened in your life? Is it like I overcame something or was it just nurture straight up that made you a baller? Tell me about growing up in Hawaii. Growing up in Hawaii is beautiful. I think what makes it different is...

we're all mixed ethnicities, right? So you grow up and you don't really see, I don't know, skin color. It is, you know, you have the Japanese friend and the redhead friend, and that goes back to the plantation days. And if you're familiar with Hawaii, you'll have like those mixed plates. So there's food from all of the ethnicities, but you,

growing up there, I think that's what makes Hawaii different is we all grow up together. We all know each other. We all take care of each other. So that I think is the beauty that I haven't seen anywhere else. I lived in California, then moved back to Hawaii and, um,

I think that was great. It was a great childhood. Grew up in a place called Hawaiian Homelands. You have to be at least half Hawaiian to grow up there. So it was a little bit of a rough neighborhood. Then went into, my grandfather was a senator for 30 years. Oh, wow. And he, you know, I was in hotel sales and then went into working for a former governor for eight years, which was a blast. And then ventured off into real estate, $8 to my name and just took the leap. And yeah, that's it.

Wasn't sure if I was going off a cliff with the $8. All right, well, let's talk about that, dude. There's so many people, so many people like jump into real estate sales and they see that and it has a 90% failure rate. Like people don't, like 90%, I always tell people,

You know, I used to go and speak to new agents and do like a new agent symposium. And I used to say, hey, take a look around the room because 90% of the people in this room ain't going to be doing this in 12 months. Right, right. And so...

What do you think is the difference in what makes people successful with this and not successful with this? I think you have to be organized. You have to have that grit of, and then you also have to have, you know, anything is possible and whatever it takes, right. In real estate sales. I mean, you're pounding in a sign or I'm mopping or, you know, sweeping. I mean, you are all of that in real estate sales. So if you, I always say there's no divas in real estate, right? It's a hard industry to be in. There's so many little details. Um,

But I think if you just have that grit and you are just driven, you have to be self-motivated for sure to make it in real estate. But yeah, that's what I see. It's that people see the glitz and glam of it, but it's a lot of background work, right? For your clients and pushing the next girl through. Well, let's talk about this. You said grit is a requirement.

And again, this goes back to the, I literally did a podcast. You can go back and find it in resilience where I talked about how to build resilience and how to build grit, those things. Is that something that you think was innate in you or is that something that you think was developed over time?

Probably developed over time. I've pretty much been driven or tried to like do my best in whatever I'm doing my entire life, whether it's playing sports or, you know, in school, something. And I just feel like I always have to be doing something like being motivated. So I just think probably developed probably over time, I would say, but yeah.

you know, jump leaving a nine to five job, no paycheck, $8. I had to make it right. Yeah. Survival. How did you even pull that out? Because seriously, like I tell people, if you're going to get into real estate, you better have three months of your bills in the bank. Like, how did you manage that? My husband, he, you know, he had taken a job in California. So we were able to, you know, if you make sale, that's fine. If not, but it was still like, okay, I'm leaving this for me. I'm like, I got to make it right. And,

So he was like, I'm giving you one shot and that's it. So I was like, okay. I was a soccer mom at that time. I was like, you know, all the sporting events, right? My friends, family, I was selling to, I was selling to everyone. And I, with that $8, all I could afford were business cards, I think off of Vistaprint. And I went around because Hawaii is so small. Hawaii is like one big, small town. I went to like all my family businesses and would put my cards everywhere.

at the reception with the perforated edges on my sister's salon, my cousin's car dealing business. I mean, there, it was funny because people would come in and accidentally grab the card. Cause I, I would put my cards in front of their business cards. So they would think it was their card. I just like went from there. My first year, um, I think I sold 24 homes. Your first year you did 24. And I had a previous boss. Okay. Stop for a second. Cause if you're listening, that is an anomaly. That is not, that is not how this normally works. Um,

that's amazing. So, so let's, you did that strictly just from glad handing, no marketing budget, just straight grassroots shaking hands, kissing babies. What would you say? So other than obviously tricking people into picking up your business card, right? Let's talk about those first couple of sales because that's a lot of people I've challenged with any industry they get into without having a track record. So how did you convince those first couple of people to work with you with zero track record?

I think just my relationship with them. They knew who I was. I started with my sphere of influence, right? Of people that actually know me. So they trust you, right? Those are usually your first sales. So it was like an uncle, then an aunt, and then a couple of the soccer and basketball families, right? That were interested in buying. But yeah,

Yeah, that's pretty much how I started, just with the people that know me instead of... And then as I would do each sale, I would put a little bit into marketing, into marketing, which I think people just... Oh, there you go. Takes the commission check and we're in a vacation Europe, right? Yeah. Yeah. The real estate rollercoaster. Marketing. I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm poor, I'm poor. I'm rich, I'm rich, I'm poor, I'm poor. Yeah. Right. Exactly. But let's talk about this. You skipped over it a little bit, but I want to get granular if we can. Granular. Let's get in there. So...

When you had your first couple of sales, you say people trusted you. Now, I find that what people trust is confidence. So there's two ways to do this as a newbie. And this is not just real estate specific. This is any industry if you're getting into it. You can either go the, hey, look, I don't know, but I'm going to find out. Or you can just exude confidence that you know what you're talking about. Which way do you think you went? Which way was it? Probably the right way.

Probably the latter. Yeah, just exude confidence and go for it. And you're going to laugh at this story. And all I could afford when I got into the industry, I'm like, I don't know what a surveyor does. I don't know what a contractor does. I would meet at this one small coffee shop and the staff in there would laugh all the time. It was like a joke because I would, all I could afford was for them, you know, I would meet with the contractor or me with title and escrow because I want to understand because I thought to myself, I don't understand.

my clients are sure as hell not going to understand. Right. So I, all I could afford was to get them coffee. So I would have like these little coffee, like morning, you know, meetings with these people, but individually so that I could really grasp what real estate entails, right. From the start to finish, who are all these people? What do they do? You were buying, you were buying coffee and mortgage people. No, no, no, no. Okay. Listen, if you're listening to this,

and you're an agent, you don't buy coffee for the mortgage people and the title people. They buy you coffee. They should buy you dinner, to be honest with you. I know. You are their client. Don't go buy them coffee. That doesn't make any sense. That's funny. So you spent time...

trying to educate yourself through the process, but there was a little bit of fake until you make it on the front end, right? Right. And I realized quickly was the first job I ever had where my broker was nowhere to be found. It was, it was like they're on the other side of the Island or they're actually in Vegas in a club and I'm trying to, you know, write a contract. Um,

But I did have the next broker that I did have was incredible. And she explained to me, if you go into a sale thinking I'm the listing agent, that's all I'm going to do. That sale will never close. You have to be a team player. Sometimes you may have to go meet the appraiser. You have to just be flexible. You know, some people go in and like, I'm the buyer's agent. I did my job. Yeah.

Yeah, I think- Kind of got to corral everyone. Yeah, no, no. I think probably the best way I ever heard anybody say it was Ryan Serhant was on the podcast. And he said, when we were talking about deals and your involvement in the deal, he said, my loyalty is to the deal because I know my client wants the deal. So a lot of people think their loyalty is to the client, but your loyalty is to getting the deal done, whatever it takes. And sometimes that means acting in the interest of the deal because you know-

in the heat of the moment, your client may be adverse to whatever you're saying, but they do want the deal. So I thought that was an interesting way to put that when you said that. And I think, you know, as in being in real estate, I think sometimes we have to take our clients out of the emotion, right? Because then they get all us all ruffled too. But then like you just said, they really want the home. You have to kind of step back, let them cool off. That's what I do. And then, you know, give them a few hours and I'll respond because if it's like right there in the heated

you know, emotional, I don't know, tantrum of a client, you know, at the end of the day, like you said, the objective is they want the house to kind of get them off the ledge. How do you calm them down? How do you calm people when they freak out? What do you do? I just, what I do is I just remind them, okay, this is the home you wanted, right? And it has a big backyard. There's a, you know, right across from the great school for your kids. Just try to remind them why they're even in the deal. Um, and it usually calms them down, but you know, it's, it's sometimes it's

They think the stellar is coming after them. The stellar thinks the virus, you know, and it's really not. We're all on the same team. Yeah. I used to. It's hard. Yeah. So, yeah. Sorry if I keep touching my nose. I got to explain why. People listen to the show know, but you don't know. So I have this awesome thing called trimelgenial neuralgia. And essentially you have a nerve that runs through your face. Wow. And if I touch certain places on my face, I get electrocuted.

Like a taser. And currently, and currently it is on the left side of my nose. So I have a really hard time like plugging my nose. And on some days it just kind of runs and I can't touch it. Oh my gosh. Forgive me if I, if I keep sort of touching around it, cause I'm trying to do that without touching it. Anyway, the fun fact, fun facts today on the, on the old podcast, we do Joe Rogan style where we just go straight up, just raw here, which is good. See, but back to calming people down. Um,

What I like to do and what I do and some of what you just said, yes. Like, for example, I'll do the Chris Voss method where if somebody is mad, I'll go right mad with them. I'm so mad. Me too. I'm mad with you. Blah, blah, blah. I'm mad too. And then and then and then I'll go like, well, but maybe this and then maybe this and maybe this and I can kind of step them down.

But I find if they're really mad, it's like, for example, you're married, right? Have you ever calmed down in the history of calming down when your husband told you to calm down? No. Never. It does not work, right? It's the same way with clients. You just can't do that. So I'll go that method. But also, like you just said, and I agree with it totally, which is I never let anybody cancel a contract on a house unless they're standing in it. Like if people are like, oh, I don't want to deal with this as too many repairs. Cool. Let's go take one more look.

Yeah. And then see if that's what you really want to do. Because if they fell in love with the house in the first place, it'll help their emotions a little bit as far as getting them back down to earth, which I like. Right. And so, yeah, I agree with that totally. So,

I do the same thing with canceling. I will, I think maybe because I played sports my whole life, I will go down fighting until it's like, Laila, we have to cancel. Like, I will try to see, like, is it the lender? Is it, you know, what is it? Yeah, which way is it? Right before we're canceling. So here's the thing. I'm going to go back to you about the fake it till you make it or the learn stuff.

I, if you're ever taking a disc test, is that something you've ever taken a personality test? I did. And I was like, don't tell me I'm going to, I'm going to tell you what you are just being in here in 10 minutes. Cause I love to try to do this. I'm going to guess your high eye.

was one of your indicators. And then the second one, I can't quite figure it out. It's either going to be S because you said you wanted to go sit down and learn everything with people, which would be S. Yeah. You'd really want to understand that. Or, but there's some D in you too, which is that driver disc, which is what makes you go out and hand stuff out. So what was it? ID or IS? It was actually in like, I think it was actually in like a little bit of all four. The teacher was trying to, it

it's like I can be bossy. I can be, you know, a team player. I can be, it was kind of interesting when I look at all of it. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. See like a leader, but then you can, you know, yeah. A little bit of everything like type a personality, but then. Yeah. Well, you're definitely type a cause cause cause. You gotta be in real estate. I don't know. Yeah, dude. When I, when I look at people, if you're thinking about getting real estate or I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you a heads up real quick. Go take the desk desk. Go take it. If your desk comes back, DC, DC,

That means you should be an accountant because you hate people. You like numbers. You like things to be right, but you're not going to have the empathy you need to get through somebody through a dangerous time. Right. Right. If your disc is SC, right? High security, high conscientiousness,

You may be able to do this job. You'd probably be happier as an assistant. I was just going to say that. You'd be much happier as an assistant. But if you get this job, you should probably be an assistant first so you can learn everything about this job because you're not going to feel comfortable talking to anybody about it until it's done. If you are high D, high I, just go do it. Yeah. If you are D and I in some combination of those two, that is like...

Less than 2% of the population has that disc. And it's like natural ability for sales. You're like Michael Jordan of sales if you have that. So go do it. Go do it. If you're not doing this, go sell something. You should be. Well, let's pivot a little bit because you started selling real estate in obviously 24 your first year. That's huge. I'm guessing those numbers stayed pretty consistent, right? Yeah. How long have you been doing it? How long have you been selling real estate? 10 years now. So 10 years now. But you've kind of pivoted now because you went from handing out cards and running. Well, you know what? I'm going to hit back on one thing because I skipped something very important that you said.

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I think at the time in 2014, which business is always changing, right? And I feel like one thing I could recommend would be you have to be able to pivot, right? In real estate. Because Zillow at that time was really, really strong, strong lead. So it was Redfin before they had their own Redfin agents. So I would did Zillow. I mean, I actually did it all. So I try to help new agents.

From luxury magazines, videos to, I just would take a portion of my paycheck and then put it into different types of marketing. And then at the end of the month, I would see like, okay, this one was working, this one isn't working. Okay, stop, stop, because that's great. I love that, all right? Sorry, when you make a great point, I'm going to stop. Yeah, okay. I'll stop. It's a good thing. It's not a bad thing. So when you talked about you knew what was working, what was not?

This is a huge mistake that people make in any business, right? In any business when it comes to advertising is they put all of these hooks out that all land in the same boat. And that's a mistake because then you don't know which hook is actually catching the fish. So if you're going to do advertising and you're going to put stuff out, there needs to be different landing pages, different QR codes, different phone numbers, different everything on everything you put out so you understand where things are coming from. Right.

And so many people, I'll never forget this, dude. I walked, this is way before your time, right? Back in the day, 2006, 2007, there was a book here in Las Vegas called The Real Estate Book. And it was about this big. And it was like that thick. And every agent advertised in The Real Estate Book.

It was just a sea of agents. And when I first got here, I asked the guys across the hall for me, their team. I said, I saw the book and I saw their ad and I said, hey, what's your ROI on this? And they said, what? So what's your return on investment on this ad? Yeah. They said, I don't know. So what do you mean you don't know? They go, well, we just, we just do it. And I go, why? And they go, because everybody else does. Yeah. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's terrible. So obviously you were, you said you knew what was working.

Right. Whether it was Yelp or Zillow. When I started years ago, Zillow was actually really good. And then my best leads I've ever had were with Redfin, but now they're on the island with their own agent. So it's kind of diluted. Bastards. Bastards.

Sorry. But if I could recommend anything, I always tell people this. I'm a stickler and I'm a firm believer of marketing. And any company I've ever worked for, it's like that's the first thing. Even the developments I'm on. Yeah. They're, oh, it's expensive. It's like, well, everything's online. Where are your buyers coming from? You know, they're not driving around, right? How are they going to find us in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with these developments? You have to have a strong...

I feel marketing campaign. I mean, all different types of channels, whether it's a YouTube, email, newsletter, blog, anything. I feel like more, you know, channels you have of marketing, a lead will come in, you know, from one of the 10 versus, oh, I'm just going to be in Zillow. Well, you're huge on social. I know that. So which channel do you have that you think generates the most revenue into closed sales? Because I'm curious what you have to say. Did I bring my phone in here? Oh, I did.

Go ahead. I'm curious what you have to say because I'm going to compare it to something somebody else said. With marketing. Yes. Which one of your social media channels generates the most revenue for you? Which I'm slacking. I should be even more on social media, but I feel like this, and this is what I do because I've been in sales. I always ask somebody, by the time they email me or call me,

you know that they have already clicked right they're clicking on all your social accounts then they're clicking on your website then they're reading your reviews then they're going to contact you yep so as long as those are you know done nicely um but that's the thing about social media it's hard to track which one it comes from leads because they're bouncing all over and then they'll reach out to you well then you're going to love this piece of information because i thought this was fascinating to the point where i screenshot it the other day do

to get me to watch like an hour long YouTube video, it's got to be really interesting. And Alex Ramos, he put one out the other day that I wanted to see because it's his data and he put it up. Right. I just thought this was really interesting. It'd be great for you with what the thumb we're good to, which is he has all of his YouTube. He has all of his channels. Right. And I took screenshots of all of it and he talked about which ones generate the most revenue. So where you should focus your attention. And I thought this was really interesting because it was not what I thought. Right. So,

He talks about the channels that number one, households are on them, that the household is worth over $100,000 a year. Okay. Which these are our clients, right? This is who we want, right? Right. So number one in that aspect was YouTube. So number one is YouTube. Okay. You know what the worst one was? Instagram? No. TikTok? No. TikTok. TikTok is the worst. Wow. Only 28% of households that earn over $100,000 a year are on TikTok. Wow.

It's the younger generation. You're marketing to a bunch of kids. Yeah. That's what you're doing, right? Yeah. Number two, or even tied with as far as results driven where people are is Instagram. And then right below that was Facebook. Wow. So he said, yeah, he focuses almost all of his online now. He's like, look, we were spending equal amount of time on all of these channels. And now, yeah, it's good to be omnipresent. But he goes, now all of our attention is going really to Instagram and YouTube because that's where the fish are.

Wow. That's where the high dollar clients are. So if you're some, I thought that was super interesting because I see all these agents that are dancing in front of the camera for, for clicks and that is not turning into money. Apparently it just don't, it just don't turn into cash. So on that basis, it's kind of like, all right, you might as well figure that out. Wow. So I know that, you know, you spend a lot of time on Instagram now. Yep. So what content do you think is working for you for your client base? What do you, what do you make that works?

Well, I do a combination of real estate and then like a lifestyle. Okay. Right. Which I think I need to do more real estate related. More real estate related. Yeah. And more educational of like Hawaii, the different areas, what are the people looking for? I definitely need to grow on that content. Very cool. So-

Let's talk about development. Let's shift gears here a little bit and talk about developing stuff. So you are now turning into with Hawaii Development Group, which is your agency, which represents large developers in Hawaii, which...

Like there's two ways to do this business. Actually, there's many ways to do this business. But as far as residential goes, you can go out and put business cards in front of all of your friends' cards at their businesses and do one-off houses, which there's nothing wrong with that, man. That's, you know, we grind out 4,000 of those deals a year. Or you can get hooked up with a major developer that wants to build a lot of stuff and hire you to sell it all. Yeah.

So that's kind of a quantum leap in sales, I guess. So talk to me about first, before we get into the nuts and bolts of these developments you got going in Hawaii, talk to me about how those deals got done. How do you go from here to there? How do you do that?

networking, business networking. We were a part of several political campaigns. I come from a political family, so that was the way I'm raised. But business networking over the years of just meeting different people, networking, you,

Just, yeah, definitely want to network because that's what took us there. Hawaii is just, business is all relationship based, right? And so once you have a great reputation of, okay, they can do this development, people just start approaching you because they know in Hawaii, right, connections goes a long way. That development will stall if you don't have the right players in place. Right.

So we went, my mom was approached to help a developer and she interviewed him first because we have developers that come through Hawaii all the time. Want to make sure that they're really doing what they're really saying they're going to do and not build luxury homes and then forget about the parks for the kids and go back to the

go back to Utah or wherever they came from. Yeah. So she started that 10 years ago. Utah. You know, they just named Utah Scammer Central. Like more scams and Ponzi scams and stuff come out of Utah than any other state. Fascinating. Look at you, Utah. Look at you. Somebody said they should name their new hockey team the Utah Ponzi Scam. I don't know. Anyway. Anyway. So...

Networking. I'm going to talk about that because I think I see a big problem that real estate agents make and that is this. Realtors spend way too much time networking with other real estate agents.

Exactly. I don't understand it. Right. It's like, here's the thing. I talked to one of my people yesterday and God bless this person. She's all gung ho for, for one of the realtor group she's in. She's like, it's really helped me. It's done this. And I'm like, that's wonderful for you. She's like, would you support something we're doing? And I said, no, I said, just cause I don't believe in it. I said, I think, look, if I'm going to spend time away from my family, right. If I'm going to spend time away from my family, you know,

It's going to be something that's going to help my family. And hanging out with a bunch of realtors, they're never going to buy a house from me. It's never going to happen. And I own the company. They would come and work here. But my thing was, this person said something like to the effect of, well, it's important to know all these other realtors because when I send an offer over, I want them to know this. And I just asked him, I said, do you think anybody in this town doesn't know who I am?

And they said, no. I said, I've never been to one event ever. Yeah. Because I built my reputation on business. You're right. Because the biggest producers, they're never at any real estate networking classes. Ever. They're outselling. Now, I do believe that it's nice and important to build camaraderie with the agents in your office. I think that's important. Right. But wasting your day going to all these realtor events makes no sense to me at all. Right.

But I love that you're like, no, I'm networking in a political circle. I'm going to where my potential clients are. And I think so many people don't network with intention that way. I know. So when you go to a networking event and you're walking up to somebody cold, what do you do?

Introduce myself. I started networking when I was a teenager. My mom would force me. I can't even believe I'm in sales. I'm naturally shy. And she would force me to go to these things. That's the S. That's the S. That's the S. Okay, keep going. And yeah, she would force me on these tables and I was forced to speak to people. And I just started, you know, introducing myself to people. And yeah, it's...

It's gone a long way. So let's pretend that we're at a networking event. You don't know me. I'm still... Yeah, no, no. Dude, you're getting some baller stuff out of this. So let's do it. So I'm at a networking event. You walk up to me. What do you say? Hello, my name is Lylon. How's it going? Hi, Lylon. Hi, Lylon. I'm John. It's going good, Lylon. And then I say, what are you doing? What do you say? I was just going to say... Do you ask what they do? Yes. All right. How do you answer that question? For me? Yeah. What do you do?

That I own a real estate company. You own a real estate company. That's what you go with. Okay, cool. For me, right? I do two things when I network. All right. This dude. And again, I want to copy it. Please, please, please do this. Right. So I got this. The first part I'll give full credit to my dude, Bradley for this one. His, his concept. I love it so much. And I've heard it years ago and I still hang on to it and I still do it. Right. Which is if somebody asks you what you do,

They're not really, they don't care what you do. They're asking, what can you do for me? Is what they're asking. So your answer needs to be given in a way that I'm explaining to you what you do for people. Like for example, if somebody asked me what I do, I say, oh, an end-to-end real estate conglomerate that takes all the friction out of a real estate process for buyers and sellers. Wow. They go, what does that mean? And I can say, well-

We're in a very large real estate brokerage with 585 agents. We're fully vertically integrated with mortgage title and everything. Our concierge service handles the move. I mean, everything that has to do with that whole transaction, we handle in-house for our clients. So it just makes the process so much easier for people. Right, right. And now it's like, okay, cool. That sounds intriguing to me. Right. So like for you, if I'm in that circle, what do you do is I help developers smash their projections and sales. Yep.

How do you do that? Yeah. Talking about that. So that's number one. Okay. The second thing that I always do, especially in a busy room, right? A busy, busy room is I never ask people what they do. I say, tell me about you. Okay. And then as soon as they start saying they're, they're all elevator pitch of, well, you know, I work for this company and we do this and blah, blah. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't ask what you do. I said, tell me about you. Are you married? Do you have kids? Are you from here? Because they just spent there on this hamster wheel of what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? Right. Right.

In a networking scenario, for me anyway, it's more important to be memorable than it is to have a good memory. And by asking about them personally, they will remember you. I love that. Right. So anyway, but obviously, dude, you're killing it with this networking game because being able to flex those, that political muscle that the family has and get this done. So you got a big, big, big development. You got a couple of things that are working right now. Yeah. Let's talk about them.

We, I'm starting actually a property management company, property management company, and my end goal is to become a developer. So the first development, we were just anticipating just doing one development, right? What, as I was saying earlier, but now we may be doing three developments, which is

We were scheduled to just do one, and then a developer approached us that we had sold his first phase, which sold quickly. So that was the second one. And then the third one, we were approached about two weeks ago. So I've had a couple of meetings with this company out of California that's looking to build about 2,000 homes. Yeah. So you've got the first guy, the first developer you were telling them about my office. They're building an entire town in Hawaii. Like a whole city is happening on the Big Island of Hawaii. Yeah.

So when you walk into that meeting and they're like, yeah, we want to hire you guys to sell an entire town. How does, like, I can't even get my head around that. I mean, are you guys handling the commercial space leasing? Are you handling just the, all of it? All of it. Oh my God. Yeah. And my mom has been on that project for 10 years. Hawaii has, as I was mentioning, the strictest building regulations in the country. So to get, you know, between the county and the state zoning, it takes a while there.

Um, where somebody else probably would have given up in real estate. Right. Is this ever going to go? Who, who else do, what else meeting would we have to go to the state capital? Do we have what title company? Oh, now we don't tile insurance. Now we have title insurance. Just all of these things where somebody would want to get paid and, you know, or they're just going to quit. Right. Cause they're not getting paid. So we've been on that project 10 years, no pay, you know, consulting. I mean, it has taken a long time, but we just were like, okay,

- Pushing each other, my mom and I. - And you're finally at the finish line there now. - Finally at the finish line. - When are they gonna start breaking ground or have they already started? - December. - December, you break ground. And what is getting built first, housing or the infrastructure or the commercial or what's gonna build first? - The commercial with housing is gonna be the first portion of this development. But what I love about it is being from Hawaii, being a Hawaiian girl, it's gonna start with workforce housing. Workforce housing is much needed on that side of the island where all the jobs are. People are traveling from the other side of the island.

Because where the development is located is the perfect location to have housing for all those hotel workers, policemen, school teachers, all of that. Because right now they're driving from one side. How far does that drive on Hawaii? About two hours each way. Holy crap. Yeah. So people are driving two hours to go to work and two hours to go home? Right. We just did a report. 12,000 people drive every day to that one area.

Oh my gosh. 12,000. So when you guys built, so, okay, let's talk about, because it's such a fishbowl, right? It's such a, it's such a, it is a consolidated thing. So when you start, when you start relocating all of these people to the other side of the Island, does that create a glut of inventory on this side of the Island? Or does some, do other people move in? What happens to that? We're having on the other side of the Island, you're having people that are on the other Islands moving there because on the East side of our Island, you can buy a brand new home on a

it's water catchment, but a custom home on an acre for like three, 400,000. So people from like Honolulu or Oahu where it's really expensive, 1.3 for a median home there, they'll sell their old home and then move to our Island on that side. And retire over there. Yes. So I, we are seeing a lot more inventory on that side of the Island though. A lot of more spec homes who are flipping homes just because it's a lower cost compared to the West side of the Island where this development is, they call it the gold coast. It's

all of these resort communities, high-end homes on that side. But there's not really housing for the middle class. For the workers. Yeah, for the workers. For the workers. And you guys are building that first. So they're breaking ground in December. How many units are they going to build? How quickly?

They're going to eventually, I think it's going to be about 5,000 homes eventually. What's the first phase you guys are building now? The first phase right now is 432 homes. Okay. And you guys already have a sales office open? You're already selling? No, we're working on our sales office. Sales office is coming up. Because it's like a dirt road right now. They have to put in the two intersections and then the infrastructure first. Okay. So the undergrounds, that stuff will improve. So we'll probably be in a trailer somewhere. Awesome. I'm thinking, right? Yeah.

Moving up, moving on up in the world. I'm going to have to park my Escalade and probably get, I don't know, a truck? Escalade can go in the dirt. That's not a problem. Escalade can go there. So when people are coming through these, you know, the workers that are over there, right? Right. These are middle America folks as far as income. These are not high dollar folks. Right. Which is good. And so-

Are you guys going to also, now, you're wanting to get into developing, I know that yourself, we talked about that, but are you guys going to kind of go around, obviously the developer probably has a lender partner, they probably have a title partner, all of those things. Yes. Have you helped facilitate those relationships? Yes. Okay. And even

Even though it took us 10 years for that first development, the connections that we have are just gold with my mom and I and my family throughout the state at all levels of government. Even though we weren't, you know, free 99 for 10 years, we were able to establish all the different connections over the years, which I find interesting.

That's a huge plus, right? Because then now it's not one development, it's three. So then you're working with the same people in the government, right? Right. Or inspectors or appraisers or banks. It's all the same. So as things start to move along, it's just once you've paved the road that you guys have been going for 10 years. Yes. You get to drive on it as often as you like. It's a good way to put it, I guess. And people now see that, that you guys have gotten this project to the finish line or help with your connections, get it there. So now more and more people are showing up. Right.

Right. So we talked about scale earlier. Yes. Right. We talked about scale, which seems like you got to get going quickly. So what is your plan for scaling that business effectively, quickly without losing the quality of what you guys have built? I have a business partner. He's actually with my husband in the parking lot, but

Exactly. We have an entire strategy because we need to, like we were talking about, hire producing agents. You need, you know, there's all these standards I have. Service, I'm a stickler on service. So just image all of it of what I'm looking for in a perfect, not everyone's perfect, but you know. Your avatar, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Because I come from strict, you know, background of work. So I'm, you know, working for a governor. I

I didn't even have these kind of nails. But, you know, I couldn't dye your hair. But, yeah, so that's what we're looking at. Oh, my gosh. So there's a team of us. It's almost worth going on the YouTube just to look at these nails. That is dangerous. My rebellion nails. Yeah, dude. I would stab myself in the face if I did that constantly. I got enough face problems. I don't need to stab myself in the face. So that's what we're working on. There's a team of us that are going to be doing the interviewing process, not just myself, but to hire top producing agents that are self-driven because, you know,

You know, developers, they're going to ask, what is your production? 100%. Right? Somebody sitting there in an office not producing, you're costing them money, costing me money, right? You're costing us as owners money. How many, because here's my thing, how many transactions get done on that island a year? Like in a year, how many get done would you guess? Just a couple thousand, I would think. A couple thousand. I should go and look at it. Not that much. I think it was like 1,500. Everyone is a realtor. Yeah, because how many agents are there? 1,500.

- 1,500 on the island. - Okay. - Population is about 200,000.

So 200,000, you got 1500 agents. So yeah, you can pretty much like here, you can hit a seven iron any direction, hit an agent in the head. You just answer the phone and you're going to succeed. Pretty much how it is. Well, it's so funny, dude. Well, here's my thing. Like, and this is something that I always like to talk to powerful female agents about, which I love talking about, right? Which is, you said something earlier, which was, you said, you know, I was a soccer mom when I started out real estate. Dude, if you look at our MLS, especially here, and it's nationwide, it's the same thing. Half of the realtors in America have something in common.

They didn't sell a house last year. And because this is a job that a lot of, like you said, soccer moms, soccer dads, whatever, whoever is the person at home that doesn't necessarily have to get it done, likes to get this to say this is what they do. Right. So that's what's more part of the problem with the image. But on the flip side of that, I don't know of any other profession that

that is really dominated at the top by women. Like you guys are killing, like I gotta work hard to keep up with you guys, right? Like I gotta work hard. You guys are crushing. Right. And there's no ceiling, right? In real estate. No. Which I love because before real estate, I was selling Hawaii in the hospitality industry. Yeah. On salary. That's all they get you, right? Working seven days a week, working the same crazy hours. And then one day I was like, I can do this for a corporation.

I think I can go into real estate. So that's what made me start thinking, you know, getting stuck at the salary and, you know, for years. So I thought, you know what, let me just try and see if I could make it. Why do you think women are so good at this job? Because especially for your mom, you have to be able to multitask.

Multitasking. Mom cultasking. We'll go with that word. Exactly. We just coined a new phrase today on the podcast. Mom cultasting. I like that. No, that's good. I have always, or I would have thought that the answer would have been something like, well, I think we have a higher level of empathy than most people do. That's true. Or whatever it is. Yeah. But I think the mom cultasking is actually a better answer. Yeah.

I mean, the text messages and emails and all of the people you have to juggle. It's almost like having toddlers, right? Being a mom in the kitchen, making breakfast with a team of toddlers. Yes, it is. Everyone like nugging at you, you know, like tugging on your nightgown, right, for breakfast. Yeah, and trust me, the more money they have, the bigger toddlers they are.

No, don't, don't stick the, don't stick the fork in the, uh, in the electrical socket is essentially what you're doing. It's your deal. Don't kill it. You're going to kill your own deal. So no, I love that. Um, what percentage of, would you say the agency in Hawaii are female? Is it like, is about same or is it? Um, maybe about 70%. There's quite a bit of males. There's more men getting into real estate.

I would say. Yeah. Or they do it probably part-time because of a family at home, I'm thinking. Yeah, it is part-time. So let me ask you this. You had, and it was a luxury. And to be honest with you, when I relocated my business out here from Florida, I had the same luxury. Yeah.

So this is like my wife like was working and carried me while I got the business started out here. When I first moved out here from, from Florida, she supported us for probably that first six months. So God bless. Thank you. High five to my wife. I'm not, I'm not ashamed to say that I was a kept man, which I think that makes me man candy a little bit. So I'm okay with it, but it makes me real. Yeah. We got started and yes, I had that advantage, which was lovely. But what advice would, what advice would you give to me? It doesn't have that advantage. Yeah.

Maybe start off, but see, I don't think people should go into real estate part-time because I feel like you're, if you're not in the trenches with us, you're not going to understand and, you know, how to make the deals work, how to, you know, the proper training. But if I started off, if I had to still have my full-time job, I would go into it slowly and part-time, I think. Yeah.

sitting open houses on the weekends. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do when you're not doing your nine to five and team up. I would, I suggested this to agents team up with somebody. Like if you work full time, maybe team up with someone that is in real estate full time. You know, if you have, if you have leads coming through or something, you both can work as a team instead of, and then slowly get into real estate and slow them over. I see. I think for me,

I think the only way anybody should ever get in this business is on a team. On a team. Exactly. A hundred percent. I don't think, I think having owned a, owned a, a large big box brokerage before. Right. Of a big name that you would know and teaching those classes to new agents and watching that 90% failure rate happen again and again and again and again and again. I can tell you anybody that ever calls me that's new, I'm always like the only way to start this business on team. It's how I started. Yeah. I started working for one of my good friends, uh,

that charged me a 50% split. You know, like she's the one that got to it. So the V's, right? Dude, it was, you know, this was, this was Kendra Todd that won my, won my season of the apprentice when I was on that show. And, uh, after the show was over, we had sold out of my tech firm and she was like, what are you doing? I'm sitting on my boat doing nothing. She was like,

get a real estate license, come sell real estate with me. It'll be fun. She said, and yeah, come work with me on a 50% split. But here's the thing. She, I get it now. I mean, then I was like, okay, whatever. But she was paying for the leads. She was setting up seminar stuff. She was, she had an expense to all that stuff. But I also know, look, I would have figured it out regardless. I think I'm probably, everybody likes to think they're special. I think I'm special. I would have figured it out. But, but,

I think that being in that experience with her, definitely because she had a financial investment in me of if I didn't do well, she was going to lose money. Right. That's the difference. Yeah. That is totally the difference. And I think here's the problem. Here's the catch 22 though. Nobody that has a team that wants to make an investment in somebody else wants to do that part time.

Like I'm not going to make an investment, like just my team, zero chance I would hire somebody that's part-time. Right. Just can't. Right. So. I'm right there with you. Yeah, you just can't, dude. You just can't. Can't do it. Because it's time consuming. Dude. You have to stop, you know, what you're doing and then try and train somebody and then, you know, they're working the next day at work and yeah. So time consuming. So, so what I would always say in that, in that minute or that, that moment, that time is save money.

Work, save money, get a side hustle, do what you got to do. Right. Put three months, you know, figure out what a month of your life calls or what I call a mole, M-O-L, month of life. Figure out what a month of life is, save three months and then burn the boats. Right. Because if you go to work for a team, you should be able to close something in 90 days. And guess what? If you can't do it in 90 days, working on a team that's giving you leads and teaching you what you need to do, this might not be for you. Right. Yeah.

And then go get another job. Yeah, I agree. But that is the pathway to giving you the highest chance of success and the highest probability of success is that's the roadmap. Right. You just got to jump in. That's what you got to do. So how big do you want to scale your business? I mean, how big do you want this company? What do you want? What's the goals? I probably will have to have a couple hundred agents eventually as the, you know, the different phases of the development go through. I think the first development I needed to scale probably about 150 eventually and

And then the other, that's 10% of your total agent count. Yeah, I know. So how do you reconcile that? That's the thing about Hawaii, right? It's out. Yeah. Like I need this style, but yeah, I'm going to go to the beach on the weekend instead of sitting in your open houses. So it's much harder because you know,

to find labor in Hawaii. That's for sure. Is that, does it, nobody wants to work. Okay. Listen, I wasn't going to throw the stereotype out there, but that was going to be a question. Is the island lifestyle. Yes. Is that real? Is it, is it? It is. It's absolutely real. And people will say, Oh, this work we're late. We're on Hawaiian time or that's because it's Hawaiian time. And I'm like, well, actually I'm the one that's Hawaiian and no, this isn't a wine time. You got to show up on time. And it's, it's, it's crazy. The amount of work,

- Money of poke bowls I've had to deliver to construction sites, to cookies, just to get people to show up and get going. - To get them to move. - Yeah. - So, a question. - Surf's up, the construction crew is gone. - So wait, so when people from, let's say the mainland come to Hawaii to look for a second home, do they pull the, "I'm on Hawaii time," and then they're late 'cause they're there? They don't pull that. - They do. - Shut up. - Well, it's funny because I was thinking, visiting here in Vegas, you probably have the same thing in real estate that I do in Hawaii. You plan everything, you're gonna be organized. Okay, this family's coming in, we're gonna show homes.

for the whole week. They get to Hawaii and they basically lose their mind. They go to a luau. They've had one too many Mai Tais. And then I'm trying to call them the next morning. And they're like showing up late. Do I have breakfast? All right.

I'm going to give you a gift if you want it. Right. And it's so important, especially here in Vegas, because you want to talk about people showing up and losing their minds. We are in the losing your damn mind capital of the world if you're not from here. Right. This is where we are. The life we have chosen is here. I'm going to give you a nug, if you will.

And all of my people are taught to do this. And it's so imperative in Vegas, especially when somebody is coming. We do this for every appointment we ever make, right? But you have to tie them down. And what I mean by that is this. Make an appointment. The last thing you say on the call, the last thing I say to the call to you, like if we may have an appointment for tomorrow at 9 a.m. and you just got to Vegas, I'm going to say, Lylan, before we get off the call, let me ask you one more question. I got to ask you a question.

Are you good about keeping appointments? Are you good about it? That's a really good question. Because here's the thing. Yeah. Nobody's ever going to tell you, no, I suck about keeping. No, I'm completely irresponsible. I'm going to use that. Everybody's going to be like, yes, I am great about keeping appointments. And you say, okay, cool. Cause as you can see my time, right, my timeline is really tight and I'm setting this time aside just for you. Right. Right. That statement has probably gotten more people off the craps table at one o'clock in the morning than anything else. Cause they're sitting there like,

Dude, I got to meet this guy at nine o'clock. I want to go. I want to stay here. I'm on a roll. I told him I was good about keeping appointments. Damn it. And it'll get him here.

it gets them here. Yeah. You got to time down, especially if they're going to get that, that pig in the ground thing in the Mai Tais, like you said. Exactly. Oh, man. And the beach and the sunset. Come on. You know, the appointment was at eight. I might. They're showing up at 10. I might not show up for a week. Yeah. You put me in that situation. Especially if they come from a city, right? Yeah. It's just, it's paradise. Cleveland to that. Come on. No, you're not, you're not showing up. Yeah. You're getting on island time as quickly as you can. Absolutely. So,

It also, you were also one more thing. I just, I saw this and I didn't get to it. We talked about it. So you were featured in entrepreneur. Yes. Yes. What was the article about an entrepreneur? Talk about that. That's a big, that's a big deal, dude. A podcast actually. And then they did a write up for entrepreneur. And then I just was in modern luxury Hawaii business went for women, um,

this past month. I love that. Congratulations. That's awesome. I thought that was a spam, you know, cause we, people call us all the time, right? In real estate. So you don't know what's real, what's not real. I love that. Yeah. I love that. Right. Well, dude, like I said, ninth Island, here we are in Vegas. So, and I'll do the same for you. If you ever have people move and listen to this, if you're a realtor and you're listening to this, I'll tell you what I'll do.

And I do this for everybody, which is you send me, you can, if you, anybody in your office or anybody, you know, that's near you needs to buy something or sell something in Vegas and you send them to us and our team, I'll pay them 30% for their referral. And I'll pay you 10% just for sending them just for connect. You can take me on a text message. We're all in this together. I'll give you 10% just for connecting me with whatever agent has a referral to come to me. I mean, Zillow Flex is 40%. Why not pay 40% amongst ourselves? I don't care.

Especially between here and Hawaii, right? Because you're at the same. Totally. From Hawaii's moving here. Yes. And we have a lot of Hawaiian realtors that work here at Simply Vegas, which I love. Yeah. Which I love. One of my dudes, he's my hero. I'm going to tell a story because you'll appreciate this. Yeah. His name is Gabe Harvey. Okay. And when the fires happened in Maui, Gabe's from Maui, right? It's a Lahaina, right? He had family there. Yeah.

We did, he came to me and look, I'm not taking any credit for this whatsoever. I made a handful of phone calls. That's the extent of what I did. Okay. Right.

He said, can you get me some places to do some fundraisers where people can drop stuff off? And I said, sure. So I literally just made a couple of phone calls to some friends of mine that own Barts and blah, blah. And we did this. They got, it was insane. He went to Delta and got Delta to pack it all up and fly it for free on their cargo stuff to Lahaina. Like three airplanes, cargo planes full of stuff. Wow. Lahaina. He did all that himself. Right.

All of that he did himself. It was amazing. And that's the beauty of Hawaii, right? Amazing. And the people. I think that's what draws people to our islands too. There's just the beauty, the culture. People are genuine. Yeah. I'm sad that a lot of them moved here. I think we have more Hawaiians here than we have in Hawaii. So one more question that's off the cuff before we wrap this up, just because I'm curious. What do Hawaiians think about Mark Zuckerberg? Yeah.

Not very happy. Not very happy. He bought, I don't even know, we're in real estate. I didn't look this up, but who sold him that? Because there are old Hawaiian families that have ties and are on title that he's trying to pay off in. Yeah. Doing a quiet title, right? Which takes years in Hawaii because of Hawaiian kingdom and all the Hawaiian families. I thought you couldn't buy land like that.

is a howly, if you will. They can. I mean, Larry Ellison owns Lanai. And I just had a client that has an oceanfront home in Molokai bought on our island moved from Arizona. She was explaining that Molokai Ranch on that island is owned by some Singapore investment company that's doing nothing with it and laid off. That was their biggest employer on that island. So it's fascinating how

I kind of agree. What is everyone buying, right? Because they're able to buy a whole island. So here's the question. As somebody that's in real estate in Hawaii-

I mean, are you like power to the people? Are you like, and you're, you're, you're obviously in politics. Are you doing anything to try to hang on to the homeland and stop this outside billionaire investment? Yeah, absolutely. So that's what kept my mom and I going on the first, that biggest development because of the workforce housing, small businesses, right? Those are my people at the end of the day. And so I don't want them all moving away. And I feel like

As a Hawaiian, you have what's called a kuleana. So the kuleana is your responsibility to give to like next generation, the next generation. So this year I've, I created a college fund scholarship fund for local kids and I didn't care about,

what their grades were, I didn't care what their financial gain was because I was a middle class Hawaiian kid and we got not even a free pencil, right? My dad was blue collar worker, you get nothing. So I created that this year and I'm also creating a nonprofit to help local kids because there's such a disadvantage. There's no trade schools, schools, all of that for private school and for college.

I saw my daughter go to a private school her whole life, and now she's at USC. Would she have had that opportunity going to a public school in Hawaii? Probably not. Dude, out-of-state tuition to USC? You are balling. More expensive than Harvard. Yeah, it is. Trust me, it is. I got a kid with Ivy League aspirations. And yeah, man. Woo!

Oh, USC. Good for you. It's incredible. USC, you know. It's ruthless. It is. And somebody on their board of directors must love Hawaii. I know Mr. Benioff sits on their board of directors. He owns Salesforce. He lives on the same island that has homes on the same island that I do. But they are letting a lot of kids. So maybe the billionaire thing is working out a little bit. Yeah.

Maybe it's working out. Yeah, he's doing a lot of things on the island. He just gave $150 million to hospitals, you know, our medical services, all of that. So you're right. They are moving there. So give them back a little bit. A little bit, yeah. A bit. Letting local kids in. Helping out. Well, dude, congrats. Having your daughter at USC, that's amazing. Congratulations on that. That's great.

Well, Lylan, if they want to find more about you, see more about the developments, learn more about you, how do they find you? Where do they love? My Instagram is my name at Lylan Bento or Lylan Bento.com is my website. And then we'll be able to provide our, my cell phone information too. Lovely. Call me anytime. Cool. You need property in Hawaii. You call Lylan, you call her. You want to, you want to look at some of these new developments there, call her as well. All right. Or if you want even better, if you're a baller realtor in the island of Hawaii, you can

Somebody needs some help trying to scale. So Carl Island, let's make a move. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for joining us, guys. People kidding. Yes. I hope you got as much out of this as I did. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.