Be the Solution with Maria Quattrone

Building Your Real Estate Empire One Relationship at a Time

• Maria Quattrone • Season 1 • Episode 337

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The secret to lasting success in real estate isn't found in flashy marketing campaigns or viral social media strategies—it's built one meaningful relationship at a time. Broker Gina Romano reveals how this philosophy has fueled her 21-year career during a candid conversation with Maria Quattrone on the Be the Solution podcast.

"In relationships, the little things are the big things," quotes Gina, sharing how she's cultivated a business so rooted in authentic connections that she "would never have to take an online lead again" to maintain her success. Before becoming a powerhouse broker with two thriving offices in New Jersey, Gina honed her relationship skills selling Longaberger baskets as a direct sales representative. This experience taught her the value of handwritten notes, meaningful conversations, and genuine interest in clients' lives—skills she transferred directly to real estate.

What makes Gina's approach particularly refreshing is her willingness to blend traditional relationship-building techniques with modern strategies. While her brokerage attracts primarily young agents under 30, she teaches them "old school" fundamentals like neighborhood farming, personal calls, and face-to-face meetings alongside cutting-edge digital marketing. This marriage of approaches creates sustainable business practices that withstand market fluctuations and technological changes.

The conversation also explores how the industry has evolved, with teams effectively replacing the supportive function traditional brokerages once provided. Gina's "team-ridge" model offers the collaborative benefits of a team structure while maintaining individual agent identities—all built on the foundation of strong relationships between broker and agents through consistent one-on-one coaching.

Whether you're new to real estate or a seasoned professional, this episode offers a powerful reminder that our business thrives on human connection. As Gina wisely notes, "You can have every shiny toy and a million followers, but if they can't connect with you on a higher level, you might not get business." Ready to build your business through relationships rather than transactions? Listen now and discover how the "little things" truly become the big things in your real estate career.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
Facebook Page: REMAX at Home Facebook
Facebook Page: Rise in Real Estate Facebook
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Maria Quattrone:

Hi, I'm Maria Quattrone and this is the Be the Solution podcast, and today I have a new guest, gina Romano. Gina is from Mullica Hill, new Jersey, and she is a broker. She has two offices, one there and one in Hanfield. I'm excited to have Gina on. Although we are so close we're only about a half hour apart this is the first time we're actually meeting and so I'm excited to bring Gina on. Gina, welcome to the show. Thanks, maria, thanks for having me.

Maria Quattrone:

I have a quote specifically for you this morning, gina, and the quote is this in relationships, the little things are the big things, and that's by Stephen Covey In relationships, the little things are the big things. I love it. So when we talk about you know, in real estate, in life, relationships are everything, and it's the development and the growth of the relationship that really makes or breaks you as a human and as a business owner. Today we're going to dive into relationships and the capital that you build with people over time. So people don't. You're not meeting somebody and developing a relationship in one moment. That would be like meeting them and saying do you want to get married? That would be ridiculous.

Gina Romano:

I use that analogy all the time with my agents. It's funny that you say that.

Gina Romano:

So you talk to them about when they meet new people and yeah, so I've built my whole entire real estate career prior to even being a broker because I was an agent. I started as a solo agent back in 04. And I started that whole real estate business one relationship at a time and my success took years, where you know, sometimes you get rookies they do phenomenal but I've built like relationships. I always like dive really deep, but I do that with any relationship. I've been married 31 years.

Gina Romano:

You know any relationship that I go after friends. I'm still friends with one of my best, one of my best friends I've been friends with for oh gosh, I don't even want to date myself, but probably 50 years. So so I dive really deep in relationships and I believe that's the core of every human is how you build relationships with people. So part of my brokerage and mentoring my agents, I have a lot of new agents, newer to the business, very young. We attract a very young agent and I stress on that that this is a relationship business at the end of the day. And you can have every shiny toy, you can be on social media and you can have a million and one followers, but if they can't connect with you on a higher level relationship, then you might not get business from that.

Maria Quattrone:

So how do people build the relationship when you're just starting out in the business? What are some things that people can do?

Gina Romano:

I teach them to be authentic, right, because people want in this day and age, they want authentic people. Don't be salesman-y, don't try to sell them. You know, just listen. People want to be heard in anything, but more so in our business, right, I feel like people really want to be heard and, you know, make people feel important and, like you said, do the little things because they're actually the big things.

Gina Romano:

If you think about a relationship between a husband and a wife, and if it doesn't work, it's usually the little things that broke down the relationship to make those bigger things.

Gina Romano:

So I just feel like everything in life is built on relationships and I think that's what I have attacked my real estate business. Then, when I moved over to a broker, which I was in the business 15 years before I even became a broker, owner of a company, and I get to lead that with my agents. I build that rapport with them. So hopefully, leading by example is one way. If you say, what do I tell them? Hopefully it's leading by example because I do do little things for them to make them feel special and important and I felt like one of the reasons why I opened my brokerage was I felt like that lacked a lot in our industry, because you had, like the brokers, owners, and then like the agents, and sometimes that gap the broker didn't know who they were, and I felt like that was one of the things that made me open my brokerage, because I wanted to take a little bit of a different spin on it.

Maria Quattrone:

No doubt. So that's something interesting you know how our setup is here, and you just met Dara is that we work together. Dara is here every day, even though she's our broker of record for the office.

Maria Quattrone:

I don't want to be a broker of record. She's a broker worker. We work together, hand in hand. I'm the front of the company, dyer supports that and handles all of our seller clients in the back part of the office and also works with the agents. So it's a very different dynamic than what you would see at.

Maria Quattrone:

I would call it like a big box brokerage, a hundred percent. I won't name any kind of names, but most of them there's this person broker that nobody ever meets or like literally there could be. There's one broker record for five offices and maybe they pop into an office like once a week or once a month or only when there's like a major problem that is managing. You know associate brokers, maybe of the office. So it definitely is a different dynamic and I think also that you know the. The style brokerage is that you have all these agents that are under there and everybody is doing their own thing and they're doing it differently, correct, and the reason I started my company it sounds like maybe you did too so when I asked you, gina is it so that everybody shares in all the marketing, all the tools, everything that you would have to do if you were an independent agent?

Gina Romano:

Correct. So, yes, I've run my company similar to what you would think is a team platform, right? So they call it a team ridge, which is like a broker and a team, but we're not an official team. We don't. It's not. We don't collect numbers, we weren't do any of that.

Gina Romano:

The company started as that and it was only because I started the company as a very small team and then, you know, broke away from that when I was able to financially and it made sense and things like that and but I love collaboration. I was the person and I did come from a Remax platform. I was the person that everyone came into my office and been like, how did you do that flyer? What are you doing with the new construction to get business? And I am an open book. I will tell anybody anything, because what I've learned through the years is you can tell everybody what you do and maybe 1% is going to do it. So it's not like it's my competition or anything.

Gina Romano:

I don't believe in any of that, and that was one was that we can all share, similar to almost, like you're saying, like a team, but we're not a team, right, we're not the. They're not the teams that you see that are massive and and like that. What do you think about? Now I'm going to ask you a question because I get this. What do you think um, did the team actually just replace? Because you've been in the business as long as I have do you think the team actually replaced the traditional brokerage when the brokerage did a lot for you?

Maria Quattrone:

I do, yeah, and we're a team office. Okay, so we also, even though I do own the brokerage and we are Remax in name, but we don't operate on the Remax platform, so we're not that you pay into it. You know 95, five kind of thing Absolutely not, because I am the rainmaker at our firm, so I bring all the business in and then it gets dispersed throughout. I still do. I am still in production at this point, so I am handling the listings. In fact, this year I've listed 123 properties so far.

Gina Romano:

Wow, I'm like barely breathing at this point. With with production, I think I closed four deals this year.

Maria Quattrone:

So, yeah, I am a listing machine. So I and some of them now I'm starting to so I and some of them now I'm starting to like I have been this year I've been giving listings, assigning them to some people and some other agents in our company, and as more agents learn the list side of it, I'm going to assign more out. So it's um, I do believe in the value of a brokerage. I think that you know one of the things when I was at my old firm, and that was, you know, I've had my own office for 11 years. So when I was at my old company, I would be making you know the listing presentation and the processes and the systems, and nothing was given to you.

Maria Quattrone:

And then my friend, he and Phil, they sat over there like 15 feet from me and they had to make their own too. And then we had to get assist, hire our own assistant, and then we had to all train our own assistants. And yet we're next to each other, but we're competition, but we're in the same office and we got to redo all the same stuff. That makes zero sense to me. Exactly when I entered the industry 21 years ago, I thought it was the stupidest setup I've ever seen in my life. Why are all these people doing all different things?

Gina Romano:

And why are they all running around trying?

Maria Quattrone:

to figure it all out.

Gina Romano:

Right and no one wants to share. Let's face it. There's no share. I always did, me too, but no one else does. God forbid, anyone should tell you how to start a team or how to do a listing packet, or, like you said, the burgers that I started was conventional. It was a century 21 at the time and we did have people for that. So I was, I was kind of, I was kind of brought up on that as baby gina realtor and, um, we had uh, they'd call them back then marketer people, but they were marketer people and that we had somebody to put our sign up and somebody that that take the sign down and somebody that would send out the postcards for you. So I was very fortunate that, as you know, 21 years ago there really was no teams Like, everybody was solo agents. That's just what it was.

Maria Quattrone:

Well, that's the thing. I started a team within less like a year of probably around a year, in 2005. Okay, and so what? That did not make me very popular.

Maria Quattrone:

People did not like that. They did not really. They didn't know where it came from. They're like how is this person? My first deal was March 31st 2004. And from March through December, I closed 17 sides in a time where I was working full-time somewhere else. And then in 2005, february, I left my career in that business and I did 38 sides, you know, and we didn't have DocuSign right.

Gina Romano:

People had to come in and explain the contracts.

Maria Quattrone:

And that's when we had to take the packet and drive it to Feast of Real Pennsylvania on a Friday night at seven o'clock.

Gina Romano:

And you needed six copies.

Maria Quattrone:

And you wanted to-.

Gina Romano:

And she needed six copies.

Maria Quattrone:

So it's like so you know. They're like where'd she come from? How is she doing this? And it's like the reality was is that I learned my sales acumen in radio sales Right, and I learned how to sell into cold call when I was 23 years old. And I learned how to sell and to cold call when I was 23 years old, and so I did that hard work for many, many years. Where I even entered this industry and I actually tried to explain and impress upon people, gina, is that you have to do the work, whether you already did it or you're going to do it now. And when you enter this business with zero sales experience and zero realty, it's think of it as a four year minimum owning curve. Yeah, it really is.

Gina Romano:

When they come in at least this is what I see with my organization is I get a lot of young people come in right out of college again, zero sales experience, zero life skills. Young people come in right out of college again zero sales experience, zero life skills and they see me today you know, I say this is the Gina Romano after 21 years and the you know the fancy cars and the nice clothes and the things and they're like they think they're just going to get right in and they're like I want to make $150,000 in like six months. I'm like, okay, that's probably not going to happen. But but they, because you're so successful that it can happen right away, but they don't see everything you did on the back end to get to where you're at no, and that's from the very beginning, Gina, I explained to people we I have a thing called a day in the life of a realtor.

Maria Quattrone:

I host it twice a month, In fact. I'm going to record it, and I explained very upfront what the expectations are, what, how long it's going to take. This thing is like you're entering college. Forget about if you went to college or not.

Maria Quattrone:

I could care less, because I have three ones in college. Two of them are 19, no college. They went one a little bit and then didn't go. The other one came here right after high school. So I have like three 19 year olds here and I explained to everybody and I have 50 year olds that are just starting and or ish, maybe older, older than 50, older than me, and I'll be 55 in a couple of weeks. So I said this is four years. You have to say, you have to know going in, this is four years and I need to tell you that people quit and by two they're out 87%. Are you going to be a statistic of the positive or the negative? Because if you want to have a career in this business, you've got to be all in, you've got to be willing to roll up your sleeves, you've got to be willing to work days, nights, weekends, whatever it takes. It's five o'clock. You go home Right now. There's no clock. Okay, I'm leaving, yeah, no, you know what the clock is 20 conversations a day.

Gina Romano:

Agreed, but you could say it. I don't know how you feel about that, but I mean you could say it. But I think when people really like get in it and really say it, it's really eyeopening. Well, I show them you should have not helped. Like selling sunset, selling LA, whatever, selling Manhattan, it's ridiculous.

Maria Quattrone:

Millionaire real estate agent.

Gina Romano:

Yeah, it's like that's not reality.

Maria Quattrone:

People, I wish it was that that's the worst show, I know, but no, we're not HGTV and this is a sales organization and this is a sales business. So it all comes back to that building of the relationship. And really, you know, gina thing, you said building one relationship at a time when you entered in the business, how did you do it? What did you do every day?

Gina Romano:

So, funny enough, I came from, so I was a stay-at-home mom for 12 years.

Gina Romano:

That's my backstory Prior to that I was right out of high school I worked for a secondary mortgage company. Again, I'm dating myself, but this goes back to the late 80s. There were secondary mortgage companies, so I had a little bit of that background. Of course it changed and evolved and things like that, but I kind of understood it a little bit. So, being a stay-at-home mom, I just wanted to get out of the house and I did home decorating or not decorating, direct sales and I did very well.

Gina Romano:

I sold a product called. Well, I did sold a bunch, but I did very well with Longaberger baskets. It was a handmade basket out of Dresden, ohio. Long story short, they were overpriced, $150, litter like baskets that you could have went to AC more and bought for like 10 bucks and I realized through that that I was really good in sales. But again, what they teach you in there is handwritten notes. Reach out to five people a day, have meaningful conversations because you have to go into someone's house and sell them an overpriced basket. So I was building relationships through that. I did very well. The first year I sold baskets. I sold $100,000 in baskets and I made like peanuts. I made like $25,000.

Gina Romano:

Okay, so my husband was a contractor Market was really hot in 2004, as you know and he was like I want to start doing something flipping houses or building, because he's a builder by trade. Why don't you get your license and sell like a real product? Because this is crazy. You're going out three nights a week, four nights a week, and you're selling these baskets. Whatever my point of that is, I attacked my real estate career the same way.

Gina Romano:

I knew how to sell baskets and that was building relationships. That was writing handwritten notes to people. That was reaching out to people, not to ask for anything but to literally just check in with people. So, like you, I didn't do a lot of cold calling, but I did a lot of my sphere calling. So I came into the business. They said, okay, you need a sphere of influence, which I didn't even know what that was. But I was like, well, I have all these names from all these demonstrations that I did. They're like great. So I would reach out to these people and build a relationship. Like, oh, how are you doing? How are the kids? And again, going back to the relationship took it to a whole nother level. I knew their kids, their daughter because I was in their house.

Gina Romano:

So I knew everything about them, which is kind of how I evolved. So everything I did as a home demonstrator I did as a real estate agent. But like, who does that? Who goes in and dives really deep into relationships from day one with the people they already know? So that's how I built out my business, building out relationships. And then that evolved to taking people to lunches and like I tell my agents, like you know, take past clients, like I go out and have drinks with clients, I, you know, I have lunches with clients, like I'm just doing that, like building that relationship.

Gina Romano:

I always did real big client appreciation parties and in oh I think, oh nine, I connected with Ryan Holmes and that was like a game changer for me. So at that time they were looking for someone who could. Because you remember, oh nine, the market, oh eight, no nine, the market tank, and nobody could sell houses and Ryan Holmes was selling brand new homes but they couldn't. They, the other people that were moving to their houses couldn't sell their houses. So they were looking for what they called a preferred realtor. I had had a couple of friends that sold houses for new construction and they were just good friends of mine. And again through that relationship, they put me in front of the executives at Ryan homes and they were like, yeah, we love this girl, she's great, she's got a great listing presentation, whatever.

Gina Romano:

But again it all went back to the relationship because I had two girlfriends that sold new construction and I never asked for anything. I never asked for anything. I don't believe in asking for things, I believe in attraction and you attract what you put out. We kind of talked about that a little earlier. But yeah, so I just really deep on relationships and that's really how I built my whole career. And again, that's a slower process and I tell people that you know, if you're going to do it that way, it's a very slow process but God bless you.

Gina Romano:

Today, 21 years later, I still get people that will call me that I sold five, six houses for throughout. You know they're moving, they their divorces, whatever happens happen in their life. And I would never have to take an online lead at this point in my life, like if my kids went away and it was just Gina Romano, it just went back to where it started. I would still have a nice book of business and never have to do an online lead or talk to a person again, but of course we do, because that's what we do, right? I'm sure you're like me. You go in a bar, everybody knows I'm the real estate agent and things like that. But the relationships are so strong now and a lot of my clients have become very close friends.

Maria Quattrone:

Isn't that what it's about?

Gina Romano:

It is.

Maria Quattrone:

Helping people, and so for the new agents that come in, would that need to do business right now?

Gina Romano:

Yep, so I teach a lot of the basics. A lot of them that come in are under 30. So I would say three quarters of my organization is probably 28 and under. I do work side by side with my son who's 29. Well, he'll be 29. And, you know, I feel like I'm a mother to them a lot, like I'm teaching life skills as well, because I think that that comes into play because, you know, there's a.

Gina Romano:

I have guys that are like 22 years old, that never sold a house or bought a house, don't know anything about real estate. So I feel like I teach basics, what we learned a lot in 08 or 04, because I believe in handwritten notes, I believe in reaching out to your sphere, actually by phone calls. I teach them how to farm neighborhoods because we live in a you know pretty. We're in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, so we have subdivisions, so it's, you know, having an ice cream truck. I had one girl put flags out for 4th of July. She's a brand new agent. She's like. She texted me the other day with the favorite word. She's like oh, my God. I put the flags out. They put a shout out on Facebook to me. I had people from the neighborhood texting me and so I teach a lot of the basic stuff, like the stuff that we were taught when, when we back in 04. And then I surround myself with all these young kids I like to call them, and they're very social media driven, so we kind of marry them two together like the old school with the new school, and that's kind of, I think, what our sweet spot is.

Gina Romano:

So, yeah, I mean, I just, I'm sure, like you're doing, just constantly mentoring people. I coach people one-on-one. Every one of my agents I have about 30 agents right now and I coach everybody one-on-one. I tried group coaching and all that. I don't like it. I like this because, again, I'm a relationship person. So I feel like I can move the needle more with Maria. If I sit and talk to you like this and we through what to do, and then you say to me this is my pain point, then I can. And again I feel like you know a lot like you, you take a pain point and like just spurt something out. At this point, 21 years later, I don't know how many transactions I've done in my career. There's not pretty much anything that somebody can like kind of hit me with that I don't have any response to.

Maria Quattrone:

So you coach weekly, monthly.

Gina Romano:

Bi-weekly, every agent two half hour calls, so an hour a month just one-on-one with men, and a lot of them are through Zoom like this, and I find that it moves the needle a lot quicker and we can get someone into production fairly quickly. We're also a Zillow Flex team so that helps but we can come into production. But again it's the one-on-one, just kind of guiding them, building the relationship. I also believe that I'm building the relationship with my agent, so we have retention.

Maria Quattrone:

Sure Right.

Gina Romano:

Kind of goes hand in hand, because you're getting me again the broker, my, my office in Haddonfield has another broker, but I still manage all the agents meeting, like I coach them, I do the meetings and things like that. So we do two meetings a month and they get two coach calls.

Maria Quattrone:

So that's, it's a mentorship, and again, it's all about building relationships, and relationships are built one thing at a time, like you know. If you think about you know, I always say the devil's in the detail, it's in the little things, it's really not the big things. People will say, you know, oh, nobody gets divorced over toothpaste on the counter, toothpaste in the sink, stuck on the sink right. It's usually like the little tiny thing was the last straw. Yeah, as an example, as an example, as an example, as an example, as a positive example, though you know, it's the, it's in contribution, so that we can make an impact on people on a daily basis, weekly basis, as much as possible. So that's how we have to be the solution podcast. We believe that each and every individual is the solution for their own life and so, gina, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was great to have you as a new guest and I'm excited to watch your continued journey and helping all your agents grow and build one relationship at a time.

Gina Romano:

Thank you, thanks, I appreciate it, it's been fun.