Betting on Yourself: Kelly Werth on Relationships, Balance, and Real Estate
Entrepreneurship · From Student of the Game
Betting on Yourself: Kelly Werth on Relationships, Balance, and Real Estate
Kelly Werth has one of the longer resumes on the Noll Team. She earned a telecommunications degree with a minor in meteorology and climatology, started out in radio, and spent years in commercial real estate and at a bank before moving into residential sales. She is a Fort Wayne native and a Bishop Luers graduate, and, as Brad Noll likes to point out, the team's resident meteorologist and a former pageant queen.
Kelly recorded this conversation the week of her one-year anniversary with Noll Team Real Estate. Brad, who says "I don't believe individuals win championships. I believe teams win championships," tells her the team has gotten better since she joined. The theme of the episode is betting on yourself: trusting your experience enough to make a change, even when the change feels scary.
Missing the People Connection
Kelly loved commercial real estate at first, especially the negotiation and the contracts. After a few years she realized something was missing. "I missed the people connection," she says. Commercial deals are driven by the contracts, and the feelings get taken out of them. So she joined another team in a lead generation and business role, focused on helping the company grow and supporting its agents.
The more leads she generated, the more often she found herself handing friends to other agents when she could have helped them herself. She got her residential license back, planning to keep it in her back pocket. Within the first year she knew that was where she needed to be.
“If you take the time to appreciate life and how lucky we all are for what we have and not worry about what we don't have and chasing somebody else's dream, that's winning at life.”
Kelly Werth
Every Business Is in Lead Generation
Brad stops to make a point for every listener. Whether you run a dental office or a body shop, you are in the lead generation business. The difference is philosophy. You can buy leads, cold call, or work relationally, and Noll Team Real Estate chooses relationships.
Kelly has seen both sides. In past roles she did the chasing, knocking on doors and dropping off folders with no connection behind them. Now, when a friend mentions a neighbor who is selling but cannot connect her directly, she thanks them, thinks about the buyers she already knows, and lets it go. "I'm not going to chase down that lead because I don't have to," she says. Her business grows through referrals, and she tells each referred client that her business is built on her reputation and on what she does for them.
Brad explains why that matters. When you chase leads, January 1st is the worst day of the year because it feels like starting over. When you work relationally, there is a compound effect, and you get to take every relationship with you from December 31st into the new year.
Giving Up a Salary for Peace of Mind
Brad shares a story he had never told Kelly. Years ago he spotted her at a coffee shop in town, meeting with another brokerage during her move to residential real estate. He remembers thinking, "I want to build a team that somebody that awesome would want to work for." Kelly has her own memory. About four years ago, at a basketball game their daughters were playing in, Brad told her, "I'm never going to try to recruit you, but when you come to my team, we're going to ride."
The move still took courage. Kelly was on salary with benefits, and she had never wanted to work 100 percent on commission. What she gained was a different kind of security: balance. With Brad and the transaction team supporting her, she has taken college visits with her son without guilt, gotten back to long walks with her phone left at home, and reconnected with her faith.
When people talk about their best year, Kelly says, they usually mean money or transactions. Her numbers were strong, but she calls last year her best for another reason: a summer at the lake, fully engaged with family and friends, and evenings at her kids' activities without feeling guilty.
The Fundamentals: Communication and Time Management
Brad defines the job of a Noll Team realtor in four parts: generate leads through relationships, list homes, show homes, and negotiate deals. A support staff handles everything else, so agents like Kelly can focus on creating the best outcomes for clients.
For Kelly, the first fundamental is communication. Looking back, her best deals were with agents who communicated well, even when the transaction did not go as planned. Her daily routine looks like this:
- Shut off email around 8 at night, unless she is in the middle of a negotiation, so she can be present at home.
- Each night, write down who she needs to reach out to in the morning.
- Start the day with coffee, email, and text replies, then make calls early to get them out of the way.
- Never go more than a couple of hours without answering a text, while staying present with the client in front of her.
- Put herself in the other person's shoes. A message that seems minor might be everything to them that day.
Kelly believes most poor communication is not about unwillingness. People often avoid a question they cannot answer yet, when saying they will find out would do. Brad adds one of his core beliefs, that communication is an exercise in memorization, and suggests listeners rate themselves on proactive communication, clear communication, and follow-up.
Her second fundamental is time management. Planning her day keeps her out of the afternoon crunch, when the title company closes at five and an answer is still missing. Brad compares it to parenting: going from one child to three once seemed impossible, but your capacity grows. That is part of why he believes Kelly will double her business within five years.
Grow Constantly and Reconnect
Brad points to Nick Saban, who said many athletes fall in love with outcomes when they need to fall in love with the process. Real estate runs on outcome stats, and Brad believes making them the only focus is where burnout starts. Kelly lives the team's core value of grow constantly. She points to Caitlin Clark, one of the best ever, still talking about what she wants to improve with the Indiana Fever.
For Kelly, growth meant leaving her comfort zone. She started reaching back out to clients she had not talked to since closing day two or three years earlier. They were thrilled to hear from her, and those conversations led to new deals. She just finished her best first quarter since she began in residential real estate, with nearly all of it coming from referrals.
Brad lays out the model behind it. Connections lead to conversations. Conversations can lead to an introduction to someone going through a lifestyle change, and that can lead to a sale. "Relationships win, not selfish relationships win," he says.
What Does Winning at the Game of Life Look Like for Kelly Werth?
Kelly credits her father for her belief in relationships. When she was a sophomore at Ball State, he wrote her a letter that ended with advice she still lives by: "Don't ever forget the value of a handwritten letter." She shares the story of a referred client, a longtime agent from the East Coast who told her he did not trust anybody. She sold his inexpensive condo, then listed a second one, helped him buy a house, and is getting ready to list another. Today he carries a stack of her business cards.
For Kelly, winning is feeling at the end of the day that she made a difference in someone's life. "If you take the time to appreciate life and how lucky we all are for what we have and not worry about what we don't have and chasing somebody else's dream, that's winning at life," she says. There will always be someone with a bigger house or a nicer car, but winning is happiness and friends who show up when things get tough.
Brad adds that on a strong team, everyone is a role player, even the star. Kelly closes by sending flowers to Brad and his wife, to her husband, who changed careers within weeks of her, and to the friends and family who supported her leap of faith.
▶ Listen to the full episode
Betting on Yourself: Building a Successful Real Estate Business with Kelly Werth, on Student of the Game.
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