Be the Solution with Maria Quattrone

Mindset, Grit, and Conversations: Jo Ferraro’s Formula for 2026 Success

• Maria Quattrone • Season 1 • Episode 350

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In this Be The Solution episode, Maria sits down with Jo Ferraro, a powerhouse real estate leader who has served South Central Wisconsin since 1999 and ranks in the top 1% nationally for real estate professionals. With over two decades of leadership, grit, and mastery, Jo shares what it really takes to succeed in a shifting, skill-based marketplace — and why the market does not dictate your success. What you do, consistently, does. 

Maria and Jo dig into grit, consistency, skill-building, connecting with people, and the mindset required to win when others check out — especially during the holiday season when most agents mentally disappear.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Spring Market Starts NOW — Not in the Spring

2. Consistency Is a Non-Negotiable

3. Lead With Value — Not Your Voice

4. Skill-Based Market = Repetition Market

5. Make Business a Game — Gamify Your Discipline

6. Reflection Season = Improvement Season

7. Discipline > Perfection

8. A Thousand Dials a Day — Yes, Really

9. The Magic Number: 20–25 Connections/Day

10. Leadership Is Responsibility, Not Rank

11. Be The Solution — Not the Victim

12. 2026 Outlook: A Breakout Year Through Skills & Conversions


BEST QUOTES

Maria’s Best Quote:

“It’s not what happens to you — it’s how you handle what happens to you. We are our own solution.”


Jo’s Best Quote:

“What you do today will affect your first quarter. Stay engaged, stay consistent, and you’ll win.”
 


GUEST CONTACT INFO

Jo Ferraro
Website: soldinmadison.com
Phone: 608-445-6204

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:

This is the Be the Solution podcast, and I'm your host, Maria Quattrone, and I'm excited. I have a new friend I recently met at a conference last month, and welcome Jo Ferrero. Jo, she has been in South Central Wisconsin real estate since 1999. A long, long time. She's in the top 1% of real estate professionals in the nation with her extensive market knowledge, negotiating skills, and award-winning service. We welcome Joe this morning. Thanks, Maria. It's great to be with you. Oh, I'm excited. I'm excited, Joe, because this is the time of the year when people usually check out. And I say people, I mean real estate professionals or maybe not so professional, but real estate agents start to check out. And one of the things that makes somebody strong is that that grit. So, you know, especially this time of year because the holidays are coming and there's like one excuse after another that, you know, you can't do the work. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about that. Um, what it what it takes to be gritty and what it takes to succeed, and how the market doesn't dictate our success.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, that's a key point. I think a lot of agents like it slows down a little bit. We're in Wisconsin here, so it's winter months are a little slower than the spring market, but I tell my agents the spring market starts right now. What you do today will affect um your first quarter. If you stay engaged, stay consistent, you're gonna win first quarter. And my team, they've seen that um over and over and over again. We may get a little tired, usually around um September, October. It's like, okay, I'm tired. I've been like working so hard nonstop all summer and spring. Um now it's time to double down. Um when you are saying agents, like um step back a little bit, by all means do that. You've got to have some good rhythm in your life. Um, I don't like the word balance because I don't think you can really have balance. You have different grades and seasons in your life, but being able to do that, stay consistent and make the connections because that's who we are, that's what we do. We connect, we pick up the phone, we call. But setting that consistency up, whether it's two hours, three hours a day, that's it. Non-negotiable, non-negotiable.

Maria Quattrone:

You know, every conversation or excuse me, every closing you have started with a conversation with a family that needed your help. And I always say the mindset of like, if I don't talk to them and they get some other person, they may not have the best real estate experience. So it's it's having that mindset of like you know, but also the mindset of this is my profession and it requires X. In our case, X is at least at minimum two hours to three hours of connecting with people every day. Yeah. If we're not connecting with them, what else are we doing?

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, we're we we build relationships, and I think when you lead with value and you don't make it all about you, the biggest thing I see salespeople do is they talk constantly. They talk too much, they don't listen, they're not active listeners, and so they're not digging deep and really caring and bringing value to people. I think when you actually really care, because you want them to have a great experience, you want what's best for them, we need to get out of our way and dig deep and help them and build those skills to connect and really build deep and meaningful relationships and friendships with them.

Maria Quattrone:

Well, I think that over time, you know, friendships can be developed through actually being the professional that you are, getting to the point. I always say, you know, building rapport isn't you know, agreeing that you all like the same stuff, right? Building building rapport is asking those hard questions up front as a professional so that you can determine if you really can help them or not at this point. They may not be able to buy, you know, they may have to really sell before they buy. But if you don't ask the hard questions and ask people like questions that maybe for them might be uncomfortable, but it's all about asking questions. And I think we're definitely more in a skill-based marketplace than you know, else it's just flying off the shelves in five seconds.

Jo Ferraro:

So at least in our market, anyway. Yeah, 100%. That's one of our main focuses this year is building skills, building those muscles, and you do that by repetition, doing over and over and over again. Over and AI now, with the world of AI, it's crazy, isn't it? How fast this has come the last couple of years. Um, but we have AI coaching that it's really fun, and there's different personalities. So our team is all doing that. Now we're part of a contest. Um, we want them to have 50 coaching calls with AI, our AI in our system by the end of this year. And is that a role play? Um yeah, pretty much. But with the AI coach. And then you ask the questions and then uh they'll give you the feedback and they'll tell you what you did great, what you did better, and it kind of scores you. Um, and our team did this uh all together during our business planning, just so everybody knew how to get on it and had their system updated. And it was hilarious, but it was really good. And my team's a little competitive, so they were like, Oh, what score did you get? Which one did you do? Because I did like Count Dracula, and I was like, Oh my god, this is real, you know, like he's really thinks he's a vampire, and so I was caught off guard, and I think I got like a 7.8 out of 10. And then somebody else on our team got an eight something, and I'm like, whoa, and somebody got a nine, and it was just really fun, and the more you do it, the better you get. But you can do buyer, you can do buyer seller, you could do just selling, listing, you can do a buyer presentation or consultation and a seller presentation. Um, so it's just gonna be really fun to see how quickly that can scale our scale up so we win more.

Maria Quattrone:

That's awesome. So much fun too, you know. I said it's gamify it.

Jo Ferraro:

100%. I do that just naturally in my life. Everything's a little contest, everything's a game. Let's see this. And if you clean the house, I gotta sit down and have a cup of coffee. You gotta win, find those wins and um make it a game, make it fun. Because it's not always fun, right? Our world is not always fun, it's very stressful. We're dealing with people, one of the biggest transactions of their life financially, and it's super emotional. And so we have to make sure that we do a checkup from our neck up every single day, sometimes every single phone call to make sure that our mindset's in a good place um so that we can take care of and guide people through this.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, I just I don't think this business needs to be as stressful as it is, you know. I think there's little things that we can put in place to make it a little less right easy. Um nobody needs more stress. No, no, nobody needs more stress. And you know, this is the time of year I say that it's my thinking time. What uh solutions uh can we come up with at this time of the year when the you know there's less business just generally and a little bit more time to actually think. Like I look at it saying, okay, what was good this year, what wasn't good this year, and how can we fix it? How can we be the solution? Like, really, how can we fix what the problems were? And uh that takes that takes thinking. And so you can't be always doing unthinking, they don't really work at the same time. So yesterday that's how I bring this up. I was not really, I don't know, I was doing stuff around the house, like just moving things around. And I stopped and I went and got my book is always not too far from me. I I keep a book, I carry it around with me. And my husband's like, What are you doing? I said, I just thought it's a great, I just thought of something. I have to write it down because I think I'm gonna remember this an hour later and it's gone.

unknown:

Right.

Maria Quattrone:

I write it down, and he's like, What are you writing down? I wrote comps. He's like, What? I said, Okay. I said, you know when I said in the MLS, there's a section that has seller's disclosure, any any any uploaded documents, presentation of offers. I said, Why aren't we including comps? Like, here's why the price is the price. You know, why isn't that something we're doing? And I already come up with all these other things that we should be doing that we're not doing. And and, you know, we operate at a very, very high level on the listing side. We're listing brokers. So, you know, um I sit here and I think about it. I'm like, you know, real estate's always been done like this. So why are we continuing to do it like that? Because it's always been done like that. You know, for example, I don't know about in your state, but in our state before COVID, it was customary to have an in-person settlement. The buyer, the agent, the seller, the seller's agent, the title company, maybe attorneys, and whoever else decides they're going to be there. And that would take hours because always somebody's late, which is to me is amazing, but that's how it goes. And so we're sitting there, and usually you're now if your client's late, you're sitting there talking to the other people that you don't know, make an idle chitty chat, which I don't like. I'm just that's not me. Yeah, and then, or if they're late, then your seller is sitting there and he's looking at you, she's looking at you, and you're like, oh great, you know, we're wasting their time. I'm wasting my time. Or wait, they're wasting everybody's time. And so COVID happened, and we were already trying before this, our company was already working with clients that try to have them do d packages because we didn't want to sit there and waste our time and their time. So we did have some clients that would sign it, but the customary thing was to go to closing. So COVID happens, we're shut down in Pennsylvania. Closing still had to happen, so everything happened remotely. And guess what? Everything still happened remotely. Wow, and we use these packages 99% of the time for our sellers, and we sign remotely. So the only time we have closing and it's in our office is when the buyer is signing a mortgage, and it's our client, and that's it. So, other than that, no more sitting around for hours wasting time. Yeah, an example of it was always done that way, that's why we did it. And now coming up with new things just because they've been done that way, you don't need to be right.

Jo Ferraro:

Well, it's always this time of year to reflect and find out what did you do that was working? Let's double down on that, especially for agents. I think where'd your business come from? How can you add another lever for leads or connections? Um, but figuring out where your business came from, what you did really well, and double down on that. And then also, what can you change? What do you need to change? Because I love that idea about putting the comps, like a CMA, in your listing docs. That's brilliant. Because how many times do we have that agents don't even know their market sometimes?

Maria Quattrone:

And even just a lot of times, because the buyer comes from wherever they could Philadelphia like is a pretty big place.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah. But I mean, you're educating the agents too, so that's huge value. Probably a cut down on your negotiation time, you know, and help your sellers get more money, which is important for them.

Maria Quattrone:

Yeah, sellers want the most money and the least time with the least headache. So that's sort of lean, that's start alleviating the pain points for them. So that that's that's why I love this time of year because I have a little more time to think. Right. You know, I'm not running around like I'm not at the beach every weekend. We go to the beat, the Jersey shore here. So I'm I'm not down there. Not that I can't think down there, it's a different cadence. Yeah. And I think life is about you know, cadence. Like, I'm a person who I like cadence, I like habit. I've sense that you are this in similar in that way. Of like, here's what we're gonna do, and this is how we're gonna do it, and we're gonna practice. I say, until not you can't get it wrong until you to you, you can't get it wrong, not till you get it right.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, 100%. I think you and I both probably been doing this for a long time, and uh I think back of where I started and building this and building my team uh for all these years and failing forward, I will say the the worst thing an agent can do, and I've seen this happen, or agents get into perfection. If you're a perfectionist, you're probably gonna be paralyzed and not do anything because you're never gonna know everything. I love learning, I love growing, trying out new things, change is just part of life. Um, but doing this with five kids building a team, I had to be extremely disciplined. And I was time blocking, and this is when I did this, and I learned, I think I had a coach, and they said urgent isn't always important. Um, so this is a good time of year to also do a time study, like track your time every 15 minutes or half hour. You get to see where you're really spending your time, and is it where you really need to? So our team's uh doing that right now too, and it's it's it's good, it's eye-opening because it makes you stop and think, oh, what should I change? What could I do better?

Maria Quattrone:

So time study is an interesting thing to do. I've done many over the years, I haven't actually done it in a while, probably a couple of years now.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

But you look at, I think it's very helpful, especially if you didn't run your life off of a calendar. Like I run off of a calendar. So, and I teach people to run off of a calendar, but I don't know, Joe, if you'd be surprised or not, but most people don't operate off they like that, they don't operate like that. Yeah, and so I think that's really important. It was really saying, you know, how was my time being spent? And how can I I'm how can I make a small change? It's not always about the big changes, it's a little detail to make it better.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, I heard a coach one say, I think it was Chaplack, he says, uh tiny hinges swing big doors. Yeah, yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

Tiny hinges swing big doors. That is a hundred percent true. I I must say it, I don't know how many times a week I say that because people need to hear it over and over again. Like we need to hear it over and over again, they need to hear it over and over again. You're always somebody's coach, right? Right. I have a coach, they have a coach, the coach has a coach, always somebody's coach. I think it's important, you know. We're always growing and pouring what we have, the knowledge that we have into our people. It sounds like that's what you do. Um, you do a lot on that support that you're giving them, and uh, it's a lot of a lot. It's a big we've uh a lot of responsibility.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah. I always looked at that. I used to get very stressed um when I thought about that, but and I still do sometimes, but I really think of like my agents, I feel responsible for them and their families because some of them are they're the sole breadwinners, um, and they need to have high levels of income, and so just providing opportunity and leads and support and encouraging them and believing in them is huge, and then building systems around them to where, like you were talking about earlier, leaders, building leaders, because they're the CEO of their business, not me. They get to choose, we all get to choose, right? So we're responsible for our choices. If we choose to slack off all day and don't do the things we know or we need to do, well, that's they get to own that. Their goals are their goals, not my goals.

Maria Quattrone:

I say if you're not doing the work that you need to do, you know you need to do for you and your family, I ask why don't you like yourself? Because if you know that's that's the only way to be successful is to do the work and you want success, why don't you like yourself? I said that's a bigger issue. I said the Way we build confidence, right? The way you build confidence is through repetition. Over and over and over and over and over again. It's just like going to the gym. You're not gonna get a muscle the first day you go, right? You're gonna get it after you've been there, I don't know, a hundred times. However, you know, it takes what it takes.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, I always start with the end. What do you want? What do you want your income to be? Start with the end and then work it backwards. Here's what I want. I want to make a hundred thousand. I want to make two hundred thousand. Okay, let's look at your numbers for this year. Track what they've done, how many conversations, how many appointments did it take to get a listing, how many listings went to close. So if you do that, and then what's the source of their business? So then you can really strategically coach them on where they want to go. Because one of my superpowers is this I see people where they can be, and because I so much, I so deeply believe in people, um, and that everybody's a leader. We I don't know if you've ever read the book Um Real Leaders or The Leaders Without a Name or something like that, but I believe everybody's a leader, and when you can help somebody get to where they want to go and celebrate the wins along the way, that's huge. But you got to start and then work it backwards into daily actions, and then how much time? How do you track that? How are you gonna stay on track? And then also plan for the distractions because there's always distractions, things come up, right? But if you can plan for that and expect that, then it's not a big deal when it happens, you know. You have to double down, so just keeping it simple, really.

Maria Quattrone:

I think it's important, I agree, to plan for what could be what could get in the way of the success.

Jo Ferraro:

And if it happens, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna get yourself back on track? Or when this comes up, what are you gonna tell yourself, or what are you gonna do? What actions will you take to make sure that doesn't happen? So it alleviates some of that.

Maria Quattrone:

Well then yeah and you also then you're aware, right? You're like, oh, we did talk about that. Oh, I remember. Jerry said this is gonna happen, this is what I need to do. Right? And it's like you have a bad day, you can't bury your head in the sand, sand for the day to get hith hour and bury your head in the sand, you know, take a walk. Um I think this time of year is really important just to, like we said, reassess and plans for 2026. And 2026 is here. It's in full swing. So if somebody was brand new joining your team and they've not been in real estate, and this is like their first their first rodeo, what would you have them do?

Jo Ferraro:

A thousand dial day. A thousand, a thousand dials in our system. In how long? One day. In one day. Because if they can do that, they can handle 100 or 250 a week, right? If they can do a thousand dials and make so many connections, they're gonna learn forward. We have a we joined um place, which has been amazing for our team. Um, I think our market's up 2% this year and sales year to date, your year over year. Um, and our team's up 35% because they're doing the work, but they've bought into the system. Um, we have agents on our team that have done a thousand dials a day. And this isn't like a triple-line dialer. This is hard. Um, but if they can make a commitment to do that and just talk to people, get them over the fear of the phone, you know. Um, I remember when I started and I would make phone calls. And back then, you know, we had a book. You could pick people on a street. Now we call it circuit prospecting, and we have all these tools to help us get the information. But I would be so nervous just picking up the phone, and I would screw up and I would hope people didn't remember my name because I'd be like, oh, I hope they don't remember my name. And I remember my sister would laugh from the other room because we'd go to the office and do this together at some of my calls. But you know what? I got really, really good at just talking to people on the phone. That I I've not heard about a thousand dollar, thousand-dial day. Yeah. But we since we joined Coach, we also have like an agent onboarding coaching training that goes through the scripts, goes through everything so they can learn. And now with AI coaching, it's gonna even accelerate that um faster.

Maria Quattrone:

Right. I don't think I've ever dialed a thousand dials in a day.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah. It's really, and if they if they don't hit it, you know, when they do, I think it's of course we celebrate it because we'll we'll bring food, we'll like take care of them throughout the day. Um, so they're just going through. And it's just like our pond. We have a lead pond, sure, where we haven't met with these people. Um, our ISA has not set an appointment with them yet. And so um it's just more opportunity. How long does it take to do the thousand dials? It depends. I mean, how many contacts you have too, connections you make. Of course, of course. I mean, I'm that's really, I guess, our focus now is connections, not so much the dials. That's just to help them get into our system and learn it. Sure. Um, but then it's really all about connecting because that's what you can you can call 500 people and depending on what time of day you do it too. It could take you eight hours, it could take you 10 hours, it could take you if you're not getting any answers, you're gonna get through those dials a lot quicker.

Maria Quattrone:

Yes, I would struggle to get a hundred dials in because I was talking to people, right? I was talking, yeah, I was talking to people, and I did it, I did this all kinds of different things, but this once one for a month I did 100 dials a day, and I couldn't do it because I couldn't actually keep up with the amount of business. Funny how that works. Right, literally drowning. Oh, same, yeah, drowning with a hundred dials, but a thousand dials. That's a lot, yeah. I like it though.

Jo Ferraro:

Indoctrinate. It's just here's the opportunity. We want you to be successful. Here's what you can do. Start here. Um now I'd probably put them on AI coaching for at least 10 calls, 20 calls, um, before I give them, because they have to, in our world, they have to bring some business to the table before they get access to our pond. And they have to be proficient in Brivy, which is the CRM we use. And so that just really helps them. But that's once they get there, that's like, oh, I can do this, because you're you're putting them in a tough situation that's very difficult. Um, but if they have grit, they're gonna get through it. If they have big goals, they're gonna do it. Because you're right, if they did that and were really proficient and building their, they had high level of skill, they wouldn't be able to keep up, right? So then you back it down and then you build in the consistency like every day, two hours.

Maria Quattrone:

And so, from a standpoint of connections, I always like to ask leaders this what do you say how many connections you should have a day?

Jo Ferraro:

Um, it depends on what your goals are and where your business comes from, really. Some people are great at networking events, you can talk to 10 people a day. If that's and how good you are. If you talk to 10 people a day, I guarantee you you're gonna at least do four to six closings per month. But you can get momentum up if you're new. If you're new, depends on your your skill level, your communication styles. Um, but I would probably guess I should look at our numbers, but can't pull them up right now. Um, if you're brand new, I'd say you should have at least 20, 25 connections a day.

Maria Quattrone:

Yes, thank you. 20. I think if you're new and you want to be able to do two transactions a month, you need to talk to 20 people a day. It's I when I talk to 20 people a day, it's brutal.

Jo Ferraro:

It's a lot. Well, with all the business you're doing too. Well, if you didn't have any business, it's probably not that hard.

Maria Quattrone:

It's not hard if you don't have any business. I said, What else are you doing? Right, you don't have 80 listings. I have 80 listings. So showing people, but you know what the beautiful thing is? You get to choose. Yeah. And you could choose to do the work and be successful, or you could choose not to be, and probably, you know, we'll be doing something else.

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I loved uh first, I loved meeting you and your energy. Um, but just the name of your podcast, be the solution, be part of the solution, not the problem. Right? How many times have we run into people or agents and and ourselves included? Sometimes we fall into the victim mentality, right? Poor me, woe is me. Um this person did this, or this did this, or somebody said this, and it's like, so be the solution. What's the solution to that? You feed into it, you go down that rabbit hole, and the emotional roller coaster, or you step back and step up and go, hmm, what's the solution? What can I do? What did I do that may have contributed to that? Where do I want to go? So if I want to go here, then you need to grow into who that person is, first off. You want to be confident, start acting confident, but be the solution. Like on our team, when something comes up and it does, it's like, all right, what can we do about it? What do you think the solution is? What are the options? You can either stay stuck or get out of bed, get your morning, your mindset right, and move on. You know, the world, we can only control what's in here. You can't control everything else, but we can control our mindset, and we can choose to be the solution or continue to be part of the problem.

Maria Quattrone:

That's right. Be the solution. So be the solution happened because of COVID. Because we couldn't go out. And I remember I told this story on Saturday. I was meeting with somebody. I said, you know, when COVID happened, we were shut down March 20th, 2020. And I remember going, oh my God, this is like insane. So everybody goes home, Pennsylvania real estate is shut down. Wow. And for 10 weeks, I was very first I was like, this is crazy. Then I was really angry because everybody else was selling real estate like crazy all over the country. So within 10 days, I was watching social media and I'm watching other leaders in in our real estate community here, and nobody's saying anything, nobody's on social. I'm like, what is going on? Then I see somebody who does a big team. He's like, well, send all the people home, so I guess we could sit around and watch TV or some something crazy, something. And I'm like, this is not the this is not the solution. This definitely I start going live on Facebook. And then like within two weeks, my marketing person, she's like, we're gonna do a podcast. I'm like, okay, well, um, what? I'm like, what? She's like, yes. I said, okay, well, we need a name. And then she's like, well, how would you describe your business? And I said, well, and then I thought, because I thought back to the early years, and I built my business in expired listings. And I said, we're the solution. And then I was like, well, that's not the that can't be the name. We're the solution. So it's like, so we came up with be the solution. And I truly believe in this mantra of be the solution. We can have the victim mindset, like you just talked about. Woe is me, blah, blah, blah. This happened to me. It's not what happens to you, it's how you handle what happens to you. It's who you choose to become, and we can choose to become anybody we want. Yeah. And we are the solution. We are our only solution. There's nobody, and I mean nobody coming to save us. And I say us, what's going on here?

Jo Ferraro:

Right.

Maria Quattrone:

My husband, as much as he loves me with all his heart and soul, he can't fix what's in my brain. Right? I just say I'm using myself as an example. Right. I have control of it. I don't have control of him or you, Joe, or the eight of my agent partners, or anybody else. It's just what I can do and bring to the table. And so that's you know, the lesson through COVID. And five years later, here's still happening, still going. And so the solution is how can we help others see it for themselves? How can we continue? Just think about it. Like if everybody in the world wanted to be solution oriented, if everybody in the world was kind, if even 10% followed this, we'd have a different world. We'd have a higher frequency.

Jo Ferraro:

Right.

Maria Quattrone:

You want to change your world, change your frequency that we operate on. And sometimes it takes a while to figure that out. Like sometimes people will never understand it, they'll never get it. I have people like, well, they're you're don't you don't have to hang out with them.

Jo Ferraro:

You don't have people like that's exactly what I was thinking. Um, get into the rooms and hang out with people that bring you up, are real with you though, um, and level up. So I always say, get in the rooms, like I would fly anywhere um and just be around other successful people that were way more successful than I was at the time, just to learn and be in the rooms. I'm like, whoa, the energy level was so different than some of the people. And so you you gotta get yourself in those rooms. And it's like the butterfly effect. Have you ever seen that or read that book, The Butterfly Effect? Like, it's like the ripple. I think of it as like you throw a stone in a river or a lake, and the ripples, it goes out. That's that's our lives. All of us have that special something in us, and it affects everything, and that's negative or positive. Yeah, no doubt.

Maria Quattrone:

Negative, hopefully more positive. Right, 100%. This morning I read my chapter. I read is I was given a book on my birthday um by my father and his new wife. And it's about um passages with God. And this morning was all about kindness to Corinthians. And what kind act you know, would you will you do today? So it got me thinking. Um I didn't come up with my kind act yet, but not just being kind, but going over and above something that you wouldn't normally do. So I think you know, spending what it took me, I don't know, less than five, three minutes to read it. It's more about the thinking about it and then the doing of it, right? And so I take a picture, take a picture of it. So I remember what I'm what I'm supposed to remember. So as you know, before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask you like your thoughts on the on 2026 and um you know doing anything differently or adding things to what you're already doing.

Jo Ferraro:

Um, I think 2026, I think for our team, um, it's gonna be a breakout year. Um, this last year has been like a building year as far as getting our foundations and our cadence rhythms um kind of set. And now we're we've done a really good job at that. And now I think it's just gonna be a breakout year, but we're mainly gonna be focusing on um conversions, building our skill, converting at a higher level.

Maria Quattrone:

So a lot of a lot of skill building. Breaking that down. I always say don't leave a meeting without scheduling the next meeting. Yeah, don't leave a phone call without scheduling the next future pace, future pace, future pace. Yeah, a lot of people that come into real estate don't know sales, so you have to you have to learn to learn that that part of the business, which it's all about asking questions, all about asking questions.

Jo Ferraro:

I newer agents, like if somebody's newer now, I would go interview with some teams. Oh, yeah. Get some leverage. You're gonna like people on my team have told me you know they learn in one year what an independent agent would learn in five years on their own, which is crazy.

Maria Quattrone:

That is true. Yeah. That is sure. You know, and a lot of brand new agents who have never sold real estate and go on a team, they don't even actually know how good they have it. Right. Yeah. So are you are you hiring?

Jo Ferraro:

Yeah, we're looking, we're gonna grow this year and we're gonna bring more partners in with us. We call them our business partners because we're all in business together. Um so yes, we're definitely, but they've got to be a right fit for our culture and where we're at. Um a little protective of that right now because we've had some changes the last couple of years. But I've had agents on our team that have been with me 15 years. My director of ops has been with me, I think 16 years, the end of this month, um, which is crazy, and I'm so blessed for that. Um, but yeah, we want to bring in probably four to six agents more on our team right now. We're we have 10 full-time agents. Um, so we'd like to uh bring in some other rock stars.

Maria Quattrone:

Amazing, amazing. Well, how can people reach you, Joe? What's the best way?

Jo Ferraro:

Um, you can go to our my website, which is six oh or my cell phone, 608-445-6204, or go to my website, sold inmadicine.com. Soldinmadison.com.

Maria Quattrone:

That's easy enough. Yeah, it's easy enough. Love it. I love it. Well, I appreciate you, Joe. Thank you for sharing with us on the Be the Solution podcast. I wish you and your family a wonderful holiday season and a fabulous 2026. Oh, thank you. It's been great to be here with you, Maria. Happy Thanksgiving. You too, thank you.