This week on the Team Lally Real Estate Radio Show, we interview Chad Shimabukuro of Keller Williams Honolulu. We’ll talk about what makes Keller Williams so unique and profitable for real estate agents.
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Who is Chad Shimabukuro?
Chad Shimabukuro is the Team Leader and Principal Broker at Keller Williams Honolulu and is one of Hawaii’s top 100 realtors for the past few years. He was born and raised on Oahu, attended college in CA and resided in AZ. He is a licensed mortgage banker in multiple states, and a real estate broker in California, Arizona, and Hawaii.
To reach Chad you may contact him in the following ways:
Phone: 808.596.2888 x1018
Email: chadshima@kw.com
Website: https://kwhonolulu.
Social media: kellerwilliamshonolulu
Interview Transcription
ATTILIO:
He is a licensed mortgage banker in multiple states and a real estate broker in California, Arizona and Hawaii. He is currently the team leader and principal broker at Keller Williams Honolulu. And is one of Hawaii’s top 100 Realtors for the past few years. Please welcome our guest, Chad Shima buckaroo. Welcome Chad. Yes, welcome. Hi, guys. Hello. So
we got to clear there.
Are you related to Jake?
And can you
CHAD:
know you know what’s funny is? People ask me that question in town. Are you related to Jake on the west side? They say are you related to Miley? Yeah, so that goes to show like what what? Where that question is originated No, but I’m not related to either,
ATTILIO:
either. Shimabukuro is Japanese for Smith.
CHAD:
That’s right. Okay. It’s right. That’s exactly right.
ATTILIO:
Alrighty, so Adrian, go ahead.
ADRIENNE:
So um, so Chad, this I think this is the first time we’ve had you on the show. So, welcome. We’re very excited to have you. And I know we had our intro. But let’s let’s talk story a little bit about, you know, first, what high school did you graduate from?
CHAD:
I always like to joke and say I went to this really for affiliate. I went to Camilla Lord campus, which is Farrington High School. I actually went to McKinley and then graduated from Farrington and I grew up in the Collini area.
ATTILIO:
You know, even though I graduated from Kamehameha I did go to Farrington, because every day for lunch, I would go to the Taco Bell down there in Cali.
I get that burrito supreme. And then and then make our way back up. They don’t let the kids off campus anymore. So no more. No more exchange student program at Taco Bell and Kali. Kamehameha School. That’s right.
ADRIENNE:
Yeah. So So boy, so born and raised here, but then you left and somehow got involved in this real estate industry. But you had quite the journey. Yes. Tell us your path of travel. Yeah.
CHAD:
Well, that’s the short version of it is I went to I left after high school, went to Southern California attended college there. And you know, trying to find my way I really thought I was going to be in the medical field and be a doctor and was pursuing that path. And I ended up leaving didn’t finish that and, and when I thought I was gonna change course and go to law school and didn’t finish that either. It was kind of just find my way and kind of it’s a testament to how unbelievable the real estate industry is. And I had friends that were doing mortgages and real estate, and they kept saying, you know, forget what you’re doing there. Come over to what we’re doing. It’s it’s really fun. It’s unbelievable and, and so forth. This was probably around 9899 Around that time. And I finally made the jump in got into the industry in 2000. And I
ATTILIO:
remember y2k, you remember all the computers the whole world was Prince was doing his final concert party like it’s 1999
ADRIENNE:
and Chad was getting into real estate and mortgages I remember I
ATTILIO:
bought I was living in Arizona was wintertime I bought a lot of flight firewood
ADRIENNE:
yeah you know what I was doing? I was bartending party you know, that
ATTILIO:
was doing on a wall. Just completely buying out all the water bottle water and toilet paper. Oh, yes. Do we clean people we buy the bottle water and toilet paper when anything? Sorry. All right. The UHF warriors they lost all season by bottle water and toilet paper we got about the store.
ADRIENNE:
Okay, so bad back to
ATTILIO:
Oh, toilet paper and water. So you’ve
ADRIENNE:
been in the industry about 22 years and have had experiences with different brokerages and brands and roles, maybe share a little bit of that part of your journey.
CHAD:
Sure. And you know, what’s interesting is it’s funny how how life goes and how our industry and the availability in our industry, not only the opportunity to get into our industry, but the different things that you can do within it. And especially kW. And I can talk to that in a little bit too. But I’ve I’ve been an independent agent, I’ve had my own teams I’ve ran other people’s teams are what we would refer to as mega teams. And I’ve kind of floated around and done different things. And I and I love that experience, not only on the real estate side, but also the mortgage side to that having that mortgage background has only made me a better real estate agent because there’s a lot of transactions that I may have saved as a result of knowing the finance part of it or what issues may arise when I’m representing a seller and the type of offer that’s being sent over I can kind of look at it and immediately see You know, that’s that’s not going to work for a variety of different reasons.
ADRIENNE:
Gotcha. Now you’re taking all of this knowledge and experience and you’re sharing it, and now training and teaching the KW Honolulu agents. So tell us about this, this training that’s available for
ATTILIO:
the difference between coaching and training. Yeah, yep.
CHAD:
Sure, yeah, I’ll tell you this, too, is, um, I never thought that I would be in this in this role or position or anything like that. It was really, some of it is you guys some of it is collecting, it was one of the owners of kW, Honolulu, and other people that kind of encouraged me to take this role. But my why is I love helping other agents, whether they’re new or experienced, and, and pouring into them. And basically, I feel as though I treated as though the industry has given me so much in terms of opportunity and, and money and income and all and homes and all these other things. I owe it to our industry to pour back and to create better agents. And I think the difference in kW and, and other firms is, there’s such a high failure rate in our industry that we want to set people up for success. And so there’s, we offer training, coaching, mentorship, education, they sound like the same thing. They’re really different things. And we have the whole gambit of that that really allows someone to succeed at a high level. And let me just say this one thing, which is interesting and might resonate with some agents that are maybe new or kind of loss and trying to figure things out, or someone who’s even deciding to make a switch out of their existing job is NAR National Association of REALTORS did a survey a few years ago, and they surveyed hundreds of 1000s of agents across the United States across all brokerages. And they had asked them without having another transaction, how many months could you survive with what you have in savings? And myself being super conservative? I thought the answer was gonna be like six months or a year or whatever it is. The answer was one month. And interestingly, that the AHA, the takeaway that I had is, you know, people get into our industry and say, I’m leaving my salary job or my hourly job. Because I want to be my own boss, I want to, I want to break through that glass ceiling, I want to, I don’t want anyone to put restrictions on my income and what I can earn. But what they did was they went from transaction to transaction, or they went from paycheck to paycheck to transaction to transaction and what are the things that we teach us mindset and how to look at things as a business and have a business within a business. So it’s completely different than any kind of training or education that you would get at other brokerages. Ours is. In fact, we’re the number one training and education company, as well. So
ATTILIO:
yeah, this is really independent sources, not not just saying it, you know, training magazine, don’t
CHAD:
take my word for it. Absolutely.
ATTILIO:
You know, don’t take his word for it. Take my word for it. We are Google’s word for Google’s word for it. But that’s critical what you’re saying because you know, it’s ner, the updated statistics, you know, is one month, except if Keynes had two for one coupons, then it was two months that they could last with the coupons for the three, three finger chicken special. I have a joke for you guys. If you go to canes, ask them what if they What if you said can I get the middle finger? So I said to people come and ask for that because you know, like get the three finger got the four finger? The middle? Maybe if they
only send you out with the condiment? Yeah. No chicken
for you. Ah, so, you know, you’re providing more of like a full spectrum type of you know, it’s almost like it’s almost like life coaching too. Because, you know, you think about it mindset is that like, oh, we just use it for real estate and then I go home and yell at my significant other and beat my kids. Or do we take that growth in that mindset and be a better? Whoever we are back at home?
ADRIENNE:
Yeah, the personal and business is interconnected. Yeah.
ATTILIO:
You know, profit sharing, profit sharing. Let’s go talk about that. What is that?
CHAD:
One of the unique things KW is known for a good handful of very unique things that other companies don’t offer, one of which is is something called profit share. And Gary Keller, the founder of Keller Williams is kind of like the Steve Jobs in real estate. He created profit share to basically allow real estate agents as part of the KW to feel as though they have ownership and stake in the company. And they do so if we’re profitable in a given month. Half of those profits go directly back to the agents that help bring in the agents that made us profitable to begin with. And at a very high level. There are agents that are earning well over a million dollars a year on just a profit sharing by the way. That’s passive income and we teach things that the difference between active income and passive income. Active income is what you got to do every single day you got Get up and shower and dress and go do something to earn money. Whereas passive income is a true trajectory to wealth. Because if you can do this passive income model on a higher scale, you don’t even have to leave your house or get out of bed, this thing is now making money for you. And so this is a passive income tool. And it’s not required. It’s just there as a tool that Gary Keller created for the agents benefits so that they can grow their wealth, which is amazing.
ADRIENNE:
No, Chad, this profit sharing does it go away? Like after you retire? Or how does that work? We
ATTILIO:
don’t like you. Yeah.
CHAD:
If you don’t like me, I might cut you off. It’s actually invested. So you can retire with it. You can will it to charity, or a spouse or your children? Or yeah, so it’s, it’s an actual income generating tool. And it goes on forever, it grows forever. So even if you retired, your it is absolutely possible and very likely that your passive in this profit sharing passive income will continue to grow and get larger and larger, especially as the company grows. Guys, we have almost 200,000 agents worldwide, which is really crazy. Right? We’re gonna go with our largest in the world, largest in the world, and we’re gonna and we’re expected to have a huge growth spurt because Keller Williams just announced that we’re creating a real estate school. Oh, and that school, our mission for that school is zero tuition.
ADRIENNE:
Wow. So I’m glad that you mentioned that because I know that we’re kind of getting a little bit of a kick start here in Hawaii, and we have one coming up in March, right.
A free school. That’s exactly right. So free screen also no tuition also
ATTILIO:
free. Free. How much was that again? Good. Free School. free. It’s free preschool for real estate.
ADRIENNE:
60 hours? It’s a 60 hour
ATTILIO:
course it’s a pre pre licensing, right? Preschool that you know what? That’s my marketing thing. I just gave it to you guys. Free preschool for real estate. Pre license. We can. We can issue bologna sandwich we can cut off the cross. So
ADRIENNE:
Chad to put this into perspective, typically a school like this, what are people paying to attend?
ATTILIO:
Yeah, I’ve seen a couple 100 An
CHAD:
instructor led school. This one is instructor led. So instructor led means that there’s an actual instructor teaching throughout the course where is zoom so you can attend from your conference room medsafe and COVID safe. If you have questions, you can ask those questions directly to instructor and anywhere between 800 to 1200 is what you could do with pay to another real estate school for similar instructor led course.
ATTILIO:
Yeah. And you don’t have to be like telling your boss Oh, I gotta go smoke break. I’ll be right back. Because you can just do it. Hey, where are you when he was gone for 16 hours.
ADRIENNE:
So we are having a career night on Monday. Yeah, and we’ll be talking more about this free school. And if any of our listeners want to learn more, they can’t attend the current just send us an email to info at Team Lally calm. And we will give you everything that you need to know about the free real estate course coming up.
ATTILIO:
And to register for the career now just go to Hawaii career night.com If you cannot spell that, then we we don’t want to talk to you. So Hawaii and career and.com.
ADRIENNE:
So and we, we might even see Chad Shima, he may pop on may pop on for a while. Yeah, that would be great. So um, so Chad, if we could get some success stories, examples of agents who have come to be a part of our company that are newer or seasoned and use the resources and tools? Could you to share some of those?
CHAD:
Yeah, absolutely. Let me just set the premise by saying that KW is unlike any other real estate firm or brokerage or platform model, it’s completely different. It’s totally different. And we teach you how to be not only a better real estate agent, but a better business owner. So we allow you to have a business within our business, and also how to be a better person. There’s so many classes and training for that specifically. But as an example, if everyone were to look at the top agents in any market, whether ours are in the mainland or whatever, you will notice that there are far more agents in the top percentile of productive and income earning agents. And there’s a reason for that, you know, Keller Williams allows you to be as profitable it’s the model is for the agent to be as profitable, not the brokerage to be profitable, as it would be with another firm. And with that said, there’s agents without naming them. There’s a perfect example of this. There’s an agent who was a very successful agent was producing about eight and a half million a year he’s, he’s a broker came over as an independent agent. And, by the way, a half million a year is nothing to sneeze at. That’s great production that’s definitely already at a higher side of production. He’s been with us now for about six years, and he’s going to finish the year up upwards of 80 million. And he learns everything that he you know, Everything that he, for his first secret his growth in production was as a result of the tools, models, the instruction, the coaching, everything that he implemented was from kW. So we launched you into a different stratosphere of doing business. So
ATTILIO:
I was in classes with him he was a really good student. Seriously mean that?
ADRIENNE:
And it’s yes. And it’s paid off. Yeah, completely. Yep. So be a good student. And be in front of the right teachers. And right,
ATTILIO:
so having the right attitude, you know, it’s kind of like,
ADRIENNE:
right mindset,
ATTILIO:
the right mindset and attributes and stuff like the man in black, you know, that one part where like, we were looking for the best of the best of the best. We’re not recruiting for men in black, but or, you know, there’s three characteristics humble, hungry, smart. Tell the people what Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what you’re looking for in a significant other and your kids in, you know, every person you want to be around? Yeah. Hungry, smart. What does that mean?
CHAD:
But, you know, I would love to add one more on to that, which is humble, hungry, smart and growth minded. Yes. And, and that’s certainly something that we look for. And what if you’re an agent, by the way, we’re not an open door company in that we take all comers we were very culture oriented. So I kind of think of myself as as the gatekeeper of our culture in our company. And those are the four qualities that we look for in an agent, it doesn’t matter if you’re brand new, or if you’ve been doing this for 50 years at a very high level. If you don’t possess those qualities of being humble, hungry, smart, and growth minded, might not be the right fit. But I can assure you that we will change your life for the positive. If you do possess that they don’t care about experience, we can teach you the rest.
ATTILIO:
And I know we’ve had seasoned agents, top producers that slipped under the wire, as we say, and they were signed off. What does that mean? signed off? They were ready to leave?
ADRIENNE:
I think part of the the reasoning or like the way that we can do that is because we follow the what is it the capping model? Yeah. So it doesn’t matter if you do 100 million a year up you? Yeah, like, what is the caveat? Explain that how that works. So I’ll
CHAD:
say this is the best way to explain it is we are equal opportunity, unequal results type of company. What that means is, if you’re an agent that does 6 million in production, or you’re an agent that does 600 million in production, the brokerage makes exactly the same. We make exactly so we’re going to treat both people the same. That other brokerages offer the complaints that I hear from agents that are making that switch and coming over to LA is, oh, this producer is treated differently, because they do eczema business, but I’m I do less. So I can’t get the attention of my broker, I can’t get some marketing, I can’t get this, I can’t get that. We treat everyone the same, because we literally don’t make more than a certain amount of money. And by the way, if you want more information on that, call me, and I’m happy to explain that to you and what that looks like.
ATTILIO:
Well, and we’ve experienced that firsthand, because you’ve ever heard the phrase, you know, I was treated like a redheaded stepchild. Well, Adrian has red hair. She is a stepchild, and you guys have treated her very well.
ADRIENNE:
Thank you. So Chad, what is the best number if anyone wants to learn more about what kW has to offer? How can they reach you?
CHAD:
You can call me directly on my cell phone. I am absolutely available for to answer questions, whether you’re thinking about getting into the industry, or you’re just past your pre licensing or whether you’re an experienced agent and want to have a confidential conversation about what that might look like. You call me on my cell phone at 808-754-5800 5800 5800.
ADRIENNE:
All right,
so as we’re wrapping things up, Chad, is there anything that we should have touched on that we haven’t talked about yet? Yes.
CHAD:
I would say the only thing I would say is there’s so there’s so many things coming up with with kW. There’s something called Fittler union that’s coming up that’s available virtually physically going to be on Lando. If someone is interested in you’re an agent now, reach out to me and let me know we can connect you with that. But to that point of family and that is a training conference. There’s so much training available so much. So if you’re an agent, whether you know we come from contribution, so there’s no strings attached, no cost, no obligation. If you’re interested in learning anything from us that you can apply even in your existing business with your existing firm. We are happy to help we’re happy to pour in to without the obligation of you coming over to us but I guarantee once you start seeing what we do and what we have to offer in the culture that we have here, it’s a little contagious for people not to come over
ATTILIO:
you know, we say family reunion, but it’s not a whole bunch of people walking around with T shirts that say you know the Canio peel, it says Keller Williams says Callaway, this is our it’s the name of our annual convention that we have. And because we think of each other as family, we do family and you know people like accused us of you know, well if you go over there you’re gonna have to drink the Kool Aid I will tell people right now we have upgraded to margaritas. No more Kool Aid top shelf 1800 Tequila No no no that’s that’s done on your own time and I always tell the agents when you go events and have some drinks please don’t end up in the bulletin anyway
ADRIENNE:
on social media
ATTILIO:
Yeah Did you know if you if we ever real estate magazine if you get one DUI you’re you’re you’re in the bulletin and everybody like oh I got the bulletin for the educational facts baloney we all go into the back page to go into UI we read it like Japanese pound back the backwards Yeah. Oh, also got dy Oh, too bad anyway. Um, no, we just joking around. But we have fun. I think the key you know, one of the things I like about our culture is there’s no egos here and ego stands for you know, if you’re if you’re a non religious person
ADRIENNE:
eliminating growth opportunities if you’re a religious person edging God out.
ATTILIO:
There you go. Okay to no ego, everybody. You can ask anybody hey, I need some help. I need some help, and people will help you because that, I mean, you said it earlier. I mean, typically our industry is you sign up and knock yourself out. We’ll be here when you close something. Yeah, that’s right. But you guys are you know, so much educational opportunities.
ADRIENNE:
And that’s and that’s why we’re a part of Keller Williams. A quick
ATTILIO:
reminder we’re gonna go out and help people buy and sell some homes close some deals.
ADRIENNE:
Yes. Don’t get ready to get ready do your training but you got to also Well,
ATTILIO:
yeah, this this lady she’s she’s like when stern Auntie she does productivity coaching and she kicks your call if you’re not doing your work. What are you supposed
ADRIENNE:
to do? She is a stern Auntie she gets you into production now. Get you into production? No, we love her. Lisa. Is just like Chad.
ATTILIO:
Alright, Chad. Well, we appreciate you so much being the team leader. You kind of like the the CEO, the big kahuna,
ADRIENNE:
and the principal broker and principal broker keeping us all out of trouble. Yep. following all the rules, contract negotiations, all of that think yeah,
ATTILIO:
one last kudos for Chad. I mean, seriously, I he is like he totally nerds out on the on the contracts. The all the technical aspects of real estate. If I if I was like on a debate team and real estate was the debate I would have to have. Chad would be the team captain. Yes. If I was on here, if I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, he would be my phone or friend. It was real estate.
CHAD:
I don’t know how to take that. But I’m gonna take it as a compliment. It
ADRIENNE:
is. Yeah, yes.
ATTILIO:
No, I would just I would I would pay to have you on the show. Split that proceeds with you because you would win. But thank you so much, Dan.
ADRIENNE:
Thank you, Chad. My pleasure. All right.
CHAD:
Thank you. If you
ATTILIO:
want to get a hold of Chad the number 745 5800. Again, that number is some for folks. But no, I flip flopped it seven Yeah. 754 5800 it’s right on the screen. His email Chad Shima at KW calm.
ADRIENNE:
Alright. Thanks for listening. And thank you to our sponsors. Jody and Derek of Pacific Rim mortgage Bradley with Allstate Insurance Kenji we pillar post Home Inspections John with Kilauea pest control Duke with white
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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