Monthly member profile: Jack Barry

Editor’s note: The Monthly Member Profile is a new feature that puts a spotlight on one of PAR’s 33,000 members. 

Realtor®: Jack Barry, Rainmaker
Company: Jack Barry Group, Keller Williams, Philadelphia
Years in real estate: 10.5 years
Speciality: Residential real estate and first-time investors
Local association: Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors®

How did you get started in real estate?
I owned three multi-unit properties and when I was buying my fourth property, I realized that I knew more than the other two real estate agents sitting at the table. I had just finished college and was on my way to law school and I thought, “I’m going to try this for two years.” I got my real estate license and the market collapsed, six months later. I kept going and now, here we are 10 years later.

What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to coaching without a doubt. Education, systems models, mentoring and teaching other people how to do this are also important. My current coach is probably my best coach. He’s doing what I want to do, where I want my business to be in three to five years. I wanted to have a bigger team and I needed to find someone who’s doing that. And that’s what my coach is doing.

What’s the biggest challenge of being a Realtor®?
The biggest challenge of being a Realtor® today, part one, is educating the consumer on the process. And part two is part-time agents. It’s really hard, because then we have to educate the agent, as well as the consumer.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to the start of your career?
I would tell myself to get a coach on day one instead of year five.

Why do you love being a Realtor®?
I love being a Realtor® because I get to help people achieve freedom. I give them the leverage, which is either contacts, resources, buying real estate, showing them the process. And then their freedom is a when they buy a house, and then an investment property, then they can go on vacations or get a babysitter and go on vacations and that’s what freedom is. And I love doing that with people.

What’s your favorite work story?
When my broker, Antonio Atacan, said that he wanted me to start teaching in the market center about how to get expired listings. I was new and I didn’t know anything about expireds. He said, “You have 60 days because that’s when you’re going to teach the class, so you need to learn everything you can in the next 60 days well enough to be able to teach it.” And that has just taught me that when you have a deadline and a goal, you can to learn something well enough to teach it. I can’t teach something that I don’t do, if it’s not authentic and people are going to know that right away. I did that and I had two listings by the time I taught that class, so it works.

What are you most proud of in your career?
I’m most proud that a lot of the times we have clients that say, “Wow, you guys really love what you do,” to me and my team. But then they want to get into real estate. And I love that. I love that we have delivered what we said we were going to do enough and our clients want to do that as well. That’s amazing.

What’s a fun fact about yourself?
I love to go to the beach. We go to the beach all a lot. On social media, most people think that I work all the time, but yet I have a very, very disciplined calendar. People close to me know that. But a lot of people think I’m always traveling, but I’m always working. It just appears that I’m having such a good time.

What do you do when you’re not selling real estate?
I buy and invest real estate. I show other people how to do it. I tell people in my spare time, if you follow me around, you would have a very hard time discerning when was work and when was not. Most of our clients have become friends. We go to dinners, we go to parties. Eighty percent of them are clients, that are now friends. Philadelphia’s my city, but real estate is my universe. I love real estate.