100 Open Houses In 100 Days Ft Sam Walls

Welcome to the podcast. My name is Jamie Knight and I am a realtor with real broker from Cajun Country, Lafayette, Louisiana. The goal of this podcast is to add massive value by bringing insider access to our areas, top agents and from agents around the South, although we are a little bit out of the South with our guest today. Y'all, I'm so excited to welcome our guest today. Philadelphia Realtor, who is a 20 year old, first year realtor, who has closed over $10 million in his first year with a large portion of that coming from his 100 open houses in a 100 day challenge that he's on. We've got Sam walls on the podcast. How are you, my brother? - Doing great, Jamie, thank you so much for having me. - Sam, tell us a little bit about where you are and a little bit about where you came from, how you got into the real estate business. And then we're gonna jump into some really good stuff when it comes to this 100 open house challenge that you've been on. - For sure. So I've always been a entrepreneur at Harvard. I started all these businesses when I was in high school, anything from like a newsletter to a athletic sock company, which sounds crazy, like what even is that? And I'll save you the time, like I failed a lot. A lot of businesses went to college. When I was 18, I went to the University of Pittsburgh. So I'm from Philadelphia, so I went to the other side of the state. And I was there for a year. I was doing very well on paper. I had great, started the real estate club out there. I always had a love for real estate since I was 15 and red-riched at Port Ed and realized that it's a spectacular investment. So I'm at the University of Pittsburgh and doing well, my natural entrepreneur just was not happy there. And I saw a kid who was one year older than me. I said, "Kid, what was the young guy at the time?" And I saw that he was in a real estate. I was like, "How was he in real estate?" He didn't even go to college. So I sent him a message. We hopped out a call. He pretty much hooked me on the idea of becoming a realtor. It took me about a month to do all of my coursework for becoming a real estate agent. A month after that, I took my test and passed and then I came home for the summer and joined a Keller Williams Market Center in my hometown. - When did the idea for this hundred open house challenge come up with? Who sparked you? What sparked that idea, man? How did you come up with it? And what made you do it? - My first four months in the business, I didn't do a single deal. It was just brutal. I was door knocking. I was sitting one to two open houses on the weekend and I was just not having any success as the 19 year old who started with nothing and had no connections at all. I started completely from scratch. I got lucky. I got, there was a lady in my older office. She saw me hustling and she asked me to come and be a part of her Zillow Flex team. So I wasn't officially on her team but I started getting flex leads. Anyhow, I started closing a few deals from there and then I was recruited by my current team to come work for them. And that's when I started getting good open houses and then all of a sudden I started converting open houses. I had the confidence 'cause I had closed previous transactions and then that allowed me to go out and hunt on my own and pick up my own clients. And that was my very first success days from open houses. I started sitting four to six a week 'cause I was having success. I got paired up with a coach who's in Palm Springs, California. His name's Pacen Robertson. He did the 100 open house challenge in 100 days. And he did better than me. He closed 16 transactions from it. He encouraged me to do it. I started it and that's how we got here. - Yeah, absolutely. So man, even that in itself is why you're even on our podcast, right? I mean, your name came up in a mastermind training that we had done the other day and a friend said, man, you really should get Sam on the podcast, man. So he can break down a little bit of that 100 open house challenge that he was on, man. So doing big things, stepping out and doing big things even as somebody young, man, dude, that's huge. Like that's huge. It puts you on stages. It puts you in rooms that you never thought you were gonna be in, but just doing something epic, man. So I guess take us into the challenge, man. How long ago was that? And where are you now with that? Are you completed with that challenge right now? - It started like the beginning of September and then ended a few days into December. So that was the 100 day period. I obviously had to sit seven a week. I would stack days, so I was sitting two a day. Just from that challenge, I put about three million under contract from that challenge. And then that was 10 buyer clients. I signed two listing agreements which will go live in the spring. I helped one person find a rental from that challenge. That was during the 100 days. I actually have helped two more buyers go under contract since that 100 day period. It just didn't happen in the 100 days. Like they were shopping and there's still some people that I'm working with right now who had credit issues and needed more time. Gotcha, so you know, overall 12 to 15 deals from that one activity. And you said you closed how many of those? You closed 10 from that activity. - Right, correct. - Nice, dude, that is so awesome, man. So give us some little tactical things, man. What did you take away from that effort? Like what lessons did you learn from that 100 open house challenge, man? Give us a few lessons that you learned. - Number one, it's really important to show up. Even if you're not sure if anyone's going to show up to the open house because there's going to be days where you're doubting yourself, you're really tired. And you're like, you know what, this house won't have anyone show up. But there's some days that you get lucky, right? You just get lucky. And if you show up every day, you'll never miss your lucky day. The second thing I learned was that taking the right open house makes a tremendous difference in your success. Right, so going into the challenge, I was not starting open houses from scratch. I had, you know, this year I closed over 6 million of volume from open houses. And I was doing like four to six a week prior to this challenge. So I already had my systems figured out, right? And it's super, super important that you pick the right open houses. And we can get into that. So it was like focusing on quality over quantity. That was really important. And before the challenge, I was signing a client under a buyer agency or a listing agreement, every 6.5 open houses. After the challenge, it was like 7.6 open houses was one-side client. And that ratio was worse because I was focusing less on quality and more on quantity of open houses. Right, so how do you select these houses, man? How are you actually picking the ones? And I'm sure you've learned that part as a lesson in the open house thing, right? So how are you selecting the houses that you're picking to do your open houses at? The most important thing is sitting open houses that are first week on market. Those are the ones that all the buyers are flooding towards. If it's already been a market for a few weeks, the buyers have already found a way to get to that house. They hit a zillow button that said, contact realtor or they reached out to their agent. They already found a way to get there, really. Unless they just started scrolling yesterday and they need to find a way to get to the house. So number one is just picking open houses that are first week on market. Number two, you want it to be in a good price range where your client avatar is more likely to show up to that open house. So I'm pretty young. I find that I work extremely, extremely well with first-time home buyers. We have the same energy. I'm under contracted by my first place. I'm going through the process right now. We can share a lot of similar experiences. So if I'm sitting at open house like 600,000 or less in my market and it's first week on market, it's probably going to be a very good open house. - Are you doing one per day or how does the hundred, how are you hitting that goal, man? So is it one per day, is it multiple per day? What's the thought on how you're laying this out? - Right, and I documented this every day too. So anyone can feel free, go to my Instagram, go to my TikTok, Facebook. It's all under Sam Wolf's reality. And you can go and you can watch all the videos. 'Cause I did it every single day. I was posting videos of what happened open house. I sat the price range that end result. How many people do we need? Do we put someone under contract today? I posted that every single day. And usually on a Monday, 'cause they were the worst days to sit open houses. I would do like a whiteboard recap lesson where I wouldn't say like, okay, we're this many open houses in. We're this many days in. This is how many clients we've put under contract. I shared everything. And when I put someone under contract, I would share the email saying like, congrats Sam. Thanks for all your hard work, your buyers under contract. If you love the podcast, you'll love our monthly real South agents, mastermind trainings live on Zoom. This training puts you in the room with a past guest of our podcast, where we can dig deep into the strategies and tactics that they do well. You can also ask the specific questions that you want to know. We host these trainings on the first Thursday of the month and we announce the speakers and topics on our social media channels. So go follow us at real South agents on all platforms. I can't wait to spend this time together. Now, let's get back to the podcast. So I was fully transparent in that sense. Yes, I had the sit open houses on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday sometimes, but I would much rather try to sit to on Saturday and Tuesday and take off Monday and Tuesday. I would try to, but some days in open house, we'll get canceled and you know what? I'd be like, all right. I'm sitting 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday and then another one, two to 4 p.m. on Saturday. Gotcha. So you would fill in the blanks then if you weren't able to make one, one canceled, one, you couldn't make it happen on a Monday or Tuesday or whatever. You do, you double up on the weekend to make sure you could still hit your goal of a hundred and a hundred days. Gotcha. So talk to us a little bit about what days, was there anything that stood out to us for us like what days generally were like a better opportunity for yourself? Yeah, absolutely. So number one, the best day to sit at is Saturday. Number two is Sunday. Number three is Thursday. Number four is Friday. So in like in that order, those are the best days to sit open houses. And my goal now, like now that I'm done the challenge, a hundred and a hundred days is a lot less. Who's seeing a piece of content every day, sitting in the open house every day. Like I have other things that I need to do as a real, right, like doing the show wings to go and all those single appointments, writing off, like there are other daily activities. So it was hard to do that. Right now, my focus is on doing four to six open houses a week. So if you're someone who just wants to like, if you do four to six a week, you should explode your business. If you can stay consistent with that right now. And what you would do, what I would recommend doing and what I'm doing right now, this week, I'm sitting two on Saturday, two on Sunday, one on Thursday and one on Friday. And so I'm actually, I'm sitting six. So talk about times with us too. So what times are even good? Like you say Saturday, what's your favorite time on a Saturday, like the golden hour? What is the best one? Great question. So actually during this challenge, someone commented on one of my videos and like, why are you sitting two hours? Why don't you just sit one and a half? So I started trying like, all right, what if I just sit in the open house for one and a half hours? That worked pretty well. One and a half hours is actually a sweet spot. That's what I found. Typically what I would do is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Those were the two open house schedules. And that worked on Saturday very well. It also worked on Sunday very well. And you have to remember, like if it's a Friday night, the day before or Saturday night, the day before, you know, Sunday maybe people have church in the morning. 11 a.m. is kind of a sweet spot because everyone's either awake or they're leaving church. That's what I found. Man, that's huge. So you would say, if you had to pick a time, if a realtor was like, I've got one opportunity for the weekend, what time are you doing? I'd probably do 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday. That would be like the best time-- That's the golden hour. Yeah. Yeah. And then on Thursdays and Fridays, I would do usually 5 to 7 or 4 to 6, where I am, it's getting dark much quicker. So by 6, it's pitch black out. So right now I'm doing like 4 to 6 instead of 5 to 7. Got you. You're getting people when they're not at work. Yeah, you're finding that you're having some success on the Thursday Fridays as well. Yes. Gotcha. How are you marketing and advertising these things, man? How are you letting people know about them? Are you-- I know it's got to be tough with 100, right? It's probably the marketing side of it has to be tough to advertise that much. But what are you doing? You're scheduling the open house in MLS, I'm imagining. Like what else is done as far as a marketing ploy for this? Absolutely. Priority number one is scheduling the open house in the MLS, because this is going to go on to sites like Zillow, Redfin Reelder, and people are going to say, oh, there's an open house happening Saturday, 11 to 1. Let me add that to my calendar and make sure I get to that at the open house, right? That's number one. Number two, I have very big A-Frame signs. And you can find those on my social media as well, that I put out around the open house. So I put like two at the entrance of a neighborhood. They're super big. They stick out like a sore thumb in the road. And that brings a lot of people into the open house. And a lot of buyers who already go and appreciate it anyway, they're like, I couldn't find this place, but your signs were so conveniently laid out, I could find it, that's how I do it. And I also, when I'm there at the open house, I like to post a video just saying that I'm there or showing a shot of my sign with the open house in the background. I don't think that brings people in, but it creates the perception that I'm doing a lot in real estate, because people see every single day, Sam's at another open house. And perception's so important in this business. - Yeah, for sure. They're gonna perceive you as a top agent, a busy agent, even if you're not actually busy. They're gonna see you that, hey, man, he's out there doing a hundred open houses. I mean, all I see in my feed is Sam's doing open houses every weekend. That's all I see in my feed. So I love the idea that you're putting it out on social media. You're really blasting it to everybody and you're having some success with it. But, man, give us some more tangible value on the marketing side of it, man. What else are we missing, man? Like, are we missing? You're posting it beforehand before the open house. Like, what are we missing on the open house thing? Like, what else is working for you marketing-wise? - I think people focus a lot on marketing the open house for the key components, actually just picking the right open house. If you pick the open house that everyone wants to go to, then you're gonna get a ton of people through it. Like, I know some people like the door knock, I know some people like the cold call around the open house. I have done all of that. I've been through it and I personally don't do it anymore. I just focus on picking the best open house that's going to attract the most people. And then I just make sure it's in the MLS. I make sure that people who've seen it on Redfin, Real Learn Zillow know that open house is happening that day. And I put my big A-frame signs out. That's all I do. - Got you. - Got you. - You're really calling the A-frame something like that. - He is just keeping it simple. - Yeah. - Yeah, so you're not calling neighbors ahead of this thing. You're not doing anything like that to kind of promote it. You're just saying, hey, A, pick the right house. Probably B, pick the right time where people aren't working. And then just sit the open house. - Not to say that cold calling and door knocking doesn't work at all. I was already doing a lot already. And while I was doing this challenge, I was selling a lot of other houses at the same time. I just didn't really have time to go and door knock in cold call, or it would be very hard to do that. - Yeah. - And be able to execute to the level that you're executing on these open houses. - If I had to choose, it's like, okay. If I had to choose between sitting two open houses one week and then doing a ton of marketing before that, like cold calling and door knocking versus going and sitting just five open houses, I would choose the five open houses. Really, gotcha. Interesting. Well, I mean, hopefully that makes sense, at least like what I'm trying to say. - No, it does, man, it just is do the thing. I love the idea of just like doing the thing because people who do the thing are rewarded with benefits of doing the thing. And you hear a lot of people talk about it, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, just do the thing. You just did the thing and you get the opportunities. - I've seen a lot of people go and try to recreate the challenge. The reason I think I found success in why my coach was even more successful than me. We had been already sitting open houses, at least he had been in the business for a few years prior to that. So he had already closed transactions. Like I see people start this from scratch, but haven't closed any transactions yet. And I'm telling those people, you will get results from this challenge, but you shouldn't expect the same results. 'Cause we just have another level, like in Jamie, same for you, like you have another level of confidence. You've helped so many of these clients, you were warmed up on the conversations. When you come into my open house, I know exactly who you are, how to rage you. And that's from sitting hundreds of open houses prior. Just getting reps in. - Yeah, for sure, the reps are super important. So what else is it when it comes to somebody walks in the door, man, give us some strategy on how are you greeting them? Are you giving them a second to look around the house? Give us some nuggets on your experience on how best to interact with the client when they're in the open house. - Right, as salesmen, when people walk in, it's all about question-based selling. Figuring out where they're at, what problems they're currently having, and how we can help them tackle those problems and get to their main objective, which is eventually probably buying a home. - The first thing I want to know is, are you a neighbor or are you shopping around? That's literally a question I asked. Hey, welcome to the open house, I'm Sam. Are you guys neighbors or just shopping around? If they're a neighbor, okay, they're a nosy neighbor, they're a potential seller. If they're shopping around, okay, they're a buyer. Right, so already right off the bat, we know are we focusing on helping a buyer or focusing on helping a seller out of this open house? The next thing that I usually say is like after rapport building, and I don't really have like a script that I use, it's just kind of off the fly 'cause I've done this so many times. But usually, we start talking and I'll say, you know guys, like, if I'm not the listing agent, which is usually the case, 'cause I go out and purposely pick open houses. I'll be like, guys, listen, like, can I just be honest with you? I'm not the seller or the listing agent of this property. I'm actually our team's buyer specialist, and I'm just telling you that 'cause you're not hurting my feelings if you don't like this house, and they laugh. And by doing that, you disarm them, and actually increases the odds that they go and buy the house, is what I found too, which is crazy. But that's the best way to disarm them, just saying, like, listen, I'm here to help, and they generally open up to you more, and they're more likely to reveal their problems. - Yeah, for sure. I heard today on a training that I was on matter of fact, is that buyers don't want to talk to a realtor. They want to talk to that neighbor that's next door that knows everything about the neighborhood. That's what they want. They don't want to talk to a realtor. They want to talk to somebody knowledgeable about the neighborhood. And I think that's why when we're doing video content and we're doing all these different things that videos that hit better, or these type of videos that you're like, "Hey, look at the stain on this carpet." Or, "Hey, I don't know if this makes sense. What do y'all think about that?" Or, "I don't know if this is living right." - Absolutely right. - You know, instead of like saying, "Oh my God, look how beautiful and open this living room." I think most of the time, realtor shoot video, and they shoot video in the sense that they're gonna somehow text it over to a seller, and say, like, "Hey, what a beautiful job "that I do on marketing your home," right? Which is totally the wrong way, like who cares, right? Buyers want to know, "Tell me what's wrong with this house. "Tell me what I need to know about this neighborhood. "Tell me what's the crime rate. "What do I need to know?" And then that's how you build those deeper connections. - A lot of people ask about the schools too. Schools are really big here. People like to work with people that are like them. - You know, so that's why I was big on attracting the first time home buyers. Also something that I started doing is paying more attention to Philly's Force. A lot of people walking into the open house and wearing an eagle's jersey. So I'm like, "Oh, man, that game against Washington "was brutal." I mean, why did we not try to earn the second seed spot? - And then we're not even focused on the house. I'm focused on the eagle's game. That's just in my experience what I felt. That can be different for every area. - Yeah, for sure. Know something about the area. I always say too, I think another strategy tactic that I like to implement at an open house is tell them something that they can't find on realtor.com or Zillow. Whatever that is about the house. Something that they're not gonna be able to find could be like you said, something about the schools. Could be something about the elevation or the flood zone status of this thing. Could be something about maybe an insurance policy that you know, "Hey, this house has got a one-year-old roof. "That's gonna be a little bit more of a savings "on your insurance." Something that they can't find on realtor.com or Zillow. I feel like that's a great thing to have with every single open house that you host is what do I know as a realtor that they can't find by looking on realtor.com or Zillow? That's a phenomenal point and that also comes, like I said earlier, that comes with the experience. And that's why you and I doing this challenge, we're gonna have better results than someone else starting from scratch. Yeah, but taking some things like this and into the challenge is great. Like an agent could really pick this challenge up from the beginning and start from scratch and have, like you said, some success. But also too, not only are they gonna have the success and they are going to do deals from the 100 agent open house challenge. But they will learn and master that craft. Like you said, your conversations on day one, your first open house, you probably were fumbling for your words. You probably were hovering around like an eagle. You know, you probably were doing all the wrong things. And then naturally you say, like I didn't have any luck and your mentors can kind of help you. - I love the book, "The Compound Effect." - My favorite books. - My favorite books. Yeah, and you'll absolutely see it from doing a challenge like this. Something that people don't focus on. I built a lot of strong agent relationships in my marketplace. Everyone knows me as the open house guy, which is not a bad rep. Not a bad rep. It's just like, wow, that guy works really, he's young in the business, but he works very, very hard. And it's helped me win deals. It's helped me win deals over other competing parties when I bring a buyer and people know who I am. Right, that's another way that it works. Well, what I've seen happen with a lot of people is they also get a little lucky because an agent will pick up that they're working really hard and they'll offer to give them some lead. There's so many benefits to it. You also get to learn the market very quickly. When you meet someone at another open house, you can say, oh, you don't like this as a two bed. Well, I just had a three bed last weekend. This is the address. And then obviously, just building that database. - Yeah, for sure. And that's what I recommend to agents all the time, especially when you're building out your schedule, is to make sure that you're in the market every day. You are in the market. You are looking at new listings. You are looking at what sold. You're looking at what went under contract. And when you're doing this challenge, right, not only are you looking at new listings, right, because you're trying to get these open houses scheduled and pick the best ones, but you're actually going in these houses and doing the open houses. So what better activities can you do as a brand new realtor or a realtor who is looking to grow their business right now, than actually study the market, pick the houses that you'd like to do these open houses at, and then actually get in the house. How crazy is that? It's not a complicated strategy. It's just literally, what can you do to know the market and then get in houses? This is to me, one of the craziest, simplest, awesome strategies that you can do. It's like mind blowing really to me. - What I love about it, it's kind of like people walking into a car dealership and they're ready to buy a car, except you don't have to sell them that car on the law. You know, you can take them to the dealership over and be like, "Oh, this one actually works." You know, like, I really like that. And you can set up, I'm ordering a Starlink satellite. You can set up, you can make it your home office for the day. Just put your signs up. People text me all the time. They're like, "Just sell your signs." (laughs) Just sell your signs on the street. - Yeah, just sit there and do your office work. Make your calls, you know? Sit there and look for your next open house. I go to my office every single day. I'm in my office right now. I also, sometimes I just go to the open house for the day and just set up camp there and just work there. - Yeah, why not? You might as well. And then you just hold it open, or hold it open a few hours out of the day and just work the rest. - Someone walks in, you put your computer away, you introduce yourself, yeah? Might as well? - Gotcha. - So it's the same for me. - Gotcha. What kind of things did you learn from this thing? - What was the biggest challenges when it came to completing this challenge? What was the biggest obstacles that you face? - Showing up every day was the hardest part 'cause it gets pretty mentally fatiguing. I think there was probably over 20 open houses. No one showed up too. - Think about that. 20% of the time, no one showed up. And I was just sitting in empty open house. - Yeah, with your own thoughts, yeah. - Right. - And like, why am I doing this? Does this make sense? - But the idea that you're doing it no matter what, that's the thing. And that's the compound effect that you're working on right there. You talked about that being your favorite book. It's one of my favorite books. I recommend it to everybody. I buy copies and hand it out all the time. I think it's one of the most powerful books because doing the thing awards you the opportunity of getting lucky. You don't get lucky unless you do the thing, right? Anything above one compounds on itself. You just gotta continue to show up and do the thing. And then that's when you get lucky. Somebody let me look at this, your story, and say, oh, Sam just got lucky. No, he didn't, he showed up. 20% of the time, nobody showed up to the open houses but he continued to show up and put in the work no matter what happened. - You know where you get super lucky, which is rare when someone comes into the open house and they just go in and buy the open house. That happened four times in the challenge. People walked in and one time I forgot to call them back and like, not call them back, but follow up after the open house. They called me and they're like, we want to put an offer on this house. How do we do that? I was like, well, you've come to the right spot. Like, you know, it's incredible. And also two out of those four times, people were walking or driving by the open house, saw the sign, came into the open house. Didn't know what was happening. They just saw the sign and came in. Just crazy to me. Those signs paid for themselves very quickly. There you go. Well, brother, we ran through almost our whole time, man. We are almost through our whole 30 minute time. We try to go, but man, I always on every single podcast, I always ask agents, I say, Sam, speak to an agent who may have had a struggle in 2025. Maybe they're looking for a new strategy and maybe open houses is their new strategy that they want to try to implement in their business, man. Speak to that agent that's coming in there here in your story and they're discouraged, man. They're looking for something new. Speak to them and give them a little bit of encouragement for 2026, man, and then we'll close it out. Well, first of all, I understand where you're coming from. I started where you were. I started with nothing. I have no family in the business. I started with 19 with no connections. But my first few months, I sold under $2 million in real estate. This year, not even like a year later, I've sold over $10 million. And I did it by doing the unsexy thing over and over again. I didn't reinvent anything. I didn't even buy leads. I didn't move markets. I just did the same thing that worked over and over again. And Alex Homozi says the same thing. It's sometimes it's just doing more. So when I go and sit 250 open houses this year, which I did, you saw 100 and 100 days, but I sat. It was like 240. Wow. They didn't just happen. It wasn't luck. It was me doing the unsexy thing over and over and over again. Yeah, man, absolutely brother. Totally killed it, man. I'm totally rooting for you, man. You are so awesome, dude. I'm so blown away, man. 20 years old, about to be 21, dude, out there crushing a man. 250 open houses in one year, 100 and 100 days, dude. Highly impressed at what you're doing, brother. I really, really appreciate you being on the pod, man. And we're going to put some of Sam's contact information over the details of the podcast. So you guys can go connect with him, go follow him on his TikTok, go follow him on Instagram and check out what he's doing, dude. So Sam, thank you, get my brother. Appreciate it. Jamie, thank you so much for having me on. And if any of you have any questions, feel free to message me on social media, just Sam was really. Absolutely, brother. Well, Sam, man, I really, really appreciate it, dude. And look, we're going to really share this thing, man. Hopefully it motivated some people to get out there and try some things and maybe not 100 open houses, but you can set a smaller goal, 10 open houses a month. Whatever it is, man, just get out there, set the goal for 2026, allow some positive movement to compound on itself. And guys, we launch a brand new audio version of this podcast every Monday morning. We're bringing in valuable people, just like Sam, who are doing huge things in their business, man, to move the needle. So I hope that you send this podcast over to a friend. Somebody that may be interested in what Sam has built and maybe get some knowledge and some nuggets on some of the things that he's brought to the table today on the podcast. So guys, I hope that you're enjoying it. I hope that you continue to give us some positive reviews and share this episode. So guys, we really appreciate you being with us every week. And I hope that you guys have an amazing day.