Joshua Wall is a REALTOR® who loves to be a part of his clients' adventures in real estate. Each and every sale is its own journey and he takes pride in helping people start a new chapter. He's proud to be an integral part of the process -every step of the way.
Joshua is also a Brantford City Councilor for Ward 5 (Downtown/East Ward/Eagle Place). He is hyper-passionate about his hometown and can often be found loudly proclaiming what makes Brantford and its citizens so amazing. He places communication and education at the forefront of the way he wants to serve his term on Council.
Locally he also acts as a host, promoter, emcee, and/or volunteer of various events related to raising funds for community nonprofit organizations. Joshua often participates in events related to the support of arts, history, culture and heritage in Brantford/Brant.
[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:01
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello everyone! My name is Umar Hameed, I'm your host on The No Limits Selling Podcast, where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how you can become better, stronger, faster. Just before we get started, I've got a question for you, do you have a negative voice inside your head? We all do, right? I'm gonna help you remove that voice and under 30 days guaranteed, not only remove it, but transform it. So instead of the voice that sabotages you, there's one that propels you to much higher levels of performance and success. There's a link in the show notes, click on it to find out more. All right! Let's get started.
Umar Hameed 0:41
Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of The No Limits Selling Podcast where we interview leaders and how they grow their teams, themselves and make the world a better place. Before we get started today, I want to tell you about a new app we've got coming out, it's called Mindset Boosters. It lets you decide how you want to act and feel in any situation. Basically, if you've lost a big deal and you're about to be bummed out for the day, the afternoon, the week, the quarter, listen to a six-minute track and it shows you how to take charge your mindset, let go of the defeat and spark confidence burning desire to succeed in a few minutes and get on with your life. This 55 tracks and allows you to step up when you need to and chill out when you need to. And today's guest, a really special guest today is Joshua Wall. He is a realtor, also a politician. Yes, we still want to talk to him. Joshua, welcome to the program.
Joshua Wall 1:31
Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm excited.
Umar Hameed 1:35
And the thing that I found really interesting, we had a pre-show interview is that in some ways, there's no difference between you being a politician and being a realtor, because you're all about helping people and solving problems and making the world a better place. So tell me how you balance the two, what made you decide to have your foot in two camps.
Joshua Wall 1:53
Okay, so long story short, I took a job handling the marketing for a real estate company called The Crew Real Estate in Brantford, Ontario. And the mandate from the team leader, Ryan Campbell was simple. We don't want anybody in our community to not know who the crew is. And we were doing that by giving back to the community in meaningful ways. So we began reaching out to local event organizers and making sure that we were a part of their events, whether it was helping, you know, get tickets out to people or volunteering. We reached out to numerous nonprofit agencies to make sure that we were doing what we could to advocate for them. Specifically places like Habitat for Humanity. You know, being a real estate company helping people get into homes as a connector. The SPCA working with the Boys and Girls Club, Big Brothers Big Sisters, we have a local women's shelter and the shelter system in our community. Again, it was just making sure that we were interconnected with the community and helping fundraise and raise money. So in our first couple of, you know, years doing that, not only were we building a brand, but we were helping either facilitate events that were making the community a better place. But we were also helping fundraise for nonprofit organizations in our community. And it was based on a simple principle. As real estate agents, we were trying to sell the community, we were trying to tell people why they should move to Brantford and call it home. Or we were trying to get people who lived in our community to be able to sell their property to somebody else. And if you're going to be selling a community, you should be doing everything you can to make that community a better place. So it just ebbed and flowed.
Umar Hameed 3:29
Nice.
Joshua Wall 3:30
In 2018, a local city councilor who had been on council for a very long time. Also former mayor, former MP for our community, he stepped down and retired and there was a vacancy. And because I had built my reputation as being a community builder, and somebody who was active and involved in, in this, my family and my team leader and some other people in our community urged me to put my foot forward and run for city council. So I did. And I ran a campaign against love and other individuals and my message resonated with the people. And I was unbelievably blessed to be gifted with the role of being elected to City Council. So I had a bit of a runway before I'd officially started my role as a city councilor. And it occurred to me that it was going to be very difficult for me to be able to do what I was doing for The Crew, as a brand ambassador and marketing specialist and be, you know, running the city at the same time. So we decided perhaps I should pursue getting my real estate license. And we had already talked about this, I had already enrolled in the school and I was doing it but I was doing it very passively. Many people don't know this but even though the job is a full time job, you're never not a city councilor, it's 100% all of your time all day every day.
Umar Hameed 4:47
Oh, yeah.
Joshua Wall 4:47
It is a part time job on paper. So you need gainful employment to be able to afford things and I'm still very young, I mean, I'm 37 now, I was 33 when I was elected. And at the time, I mean, I wasn't financially independent, I didn't have the ability to commit to work full time on City Council and not have to have gainful employment outside of it. But doing a full time marketing job and City Council, but just not possible. So I got my real estate license and it gave me the ability to be able to provide customer service to my clients and to be able to sell homes. But it also gave me the liberty that if at two o'clock in the day, I have to be at a committee meeting, or if at 11am, I've got to meet with a constituent on their front porch, I could do both. So not to, you know, just keep talking nonstop, which is kind of my specialty. You mentioned at the beginning how complementary both of those roles are. So while the main focus, I think of a city councilor is, you know, intended to be sitting in the council chambers making decisions that guide the direction of the city along with the rest of the City Council, the actual job to me is constituent work. People in my community need help, they need guidance, they need networking, they need to be connected with the right resource at the city to deal with their issue, whether it's something to do with bylaw or building or planning or code or infrastructure or a streetlight or a sewer, a plumbing issue so is real estate. You know, yes, the job of a realtor is to sell houses or to help people buy houses or to provide expert advice in the real estate transaction. But you'd be surprised how many times we're over at somebody's house, helping them clean or helping them hire a moving company, or helping them set up you know, getting their floors done getting their bathroom renovated. Like it's all about solving problems.
Umar Hameed 6:34
So you're part of The Crew? How many realtors? How many agents in the crew?
Joshua Wall 6:38
19.
Umar Hameed 6:39
19. So don't name names, there's probably a few of the 19 that walk on water are like just like animals when it comes to doing their business. Can you think of those few people in your mind?
Joshua Wall 6:50
Absolutely, I can.
Umar Hameed 6:51
Okay, now think of probably a larger group of others that do a good job, have the capacity to be a player's but don't quite get there. Can you think of that group?
Joshua Wall 7:02
Yes.
Umar Hameed 7:03
What gets in the way because they all have went through the same training? I'm sure The Crew offers training all the time. Why do you think some people stay in the B column and never make it to the A column? What do you think gets in the way?
Joshua Wall 7:14
This is going to sound rehearsed, but it's not themselves. I find that the number one obstacle that people have to get out of the way is themselves. They have so many preconceptions of how things have to be done, or how they should be done, or they're holding themselves to a higher standard than maybe others do and it prohibits them from achieving what they need to do. Sometimes you have to get out of your own way.
Umar Hameed 7:36
Yeah, so any advice on how to best do that, because it's easier said than done. And God knows, you know, if you and I were knew each other a little bit better, I could tell you 50 ways you could be better. But when I look at myself, it's really hard to see what needs changing, and also how to change like, how can we have clarity when we look at other people, but blinders on when we look at ourselves.
Joshua Wall 7:55
So I'll share with you one piece of advice that my coach shared with me. And it has been one of the most powerful pieces of advices, that advice that I've ever received, Jeff Tibideaux is his name. And he said to me, "Josh, nobody thinks about you as much as you think that they do," and obviously, we unpack that a little bit more. But I think that many people find themselves thinking that, "Oh, I said something," or "Oh, I did something," or "Oh, I posted this on Instagram," or "I did this on Facebook," or "I made a fool out of myself or whatever it might be." And they think that other people are just spending the entire day thinking about them as if they don't have their own lives and their own jobs and their own issues and their own children and their own. Like they may think about "Oh, well that was done," or you know, for 10 seconds. But then they never think about you again. And if you sit around worrying what everybody thinks, or you think about, you know, you're worrying about how something was taken, you'll never get anything done. Sometimes you just have to remember that life is life and just go do things. And nobody thinks about you as much as you think that they do. And...
Umar Hameed 8:59
Words To Live By. Absolutely. So how long have you been a realtor?
Joshua Wall 9:03
2018.
Umar Hameed 9:04
A short time and during a trying time, but also probably one of the best markets we've ever had.
Joshua Wall 9:10
And it's been exciting.
Umar Hameed 9:11
So we're coming to an inflection point where there's going to be more sellers and buyers. So how are you preparing for that? How is The Crew preparing for that? Because it's going to be a different ballgame so to speak.
Joshua Wall 9:24
So I'm curious on how you want me to answer that. So I want to kind of answer it from super helicopter view, like a high level.
Umar Hameed 9:31
Sure. Let's do that first and then we'll dig down if we need to.
Joshua Wall 9:33
Okay, I appreciate that. So first things first, we have a mandate at our office where every person that we deal with is treated with that VIP experience. So we take on transactions that maybe other brokerages might not take on or difficult clients are different projects or difficult homes to sell. While also at the same time we do very significant advance prospecting. So we are never at a point where we are not constantly reaching out to provide our services to other people. So nothing changes is the answer to that question, we are a machine. People come to us to have their home sold and we sell their houses, people come to us to find properties, and we help them find properties. So while the strategies on how we do that may change, at the end of the day, we are a well-oiled machine, we are good at what we do. And the people who choose to work with us choose to work with us because of proven successful results. We have a meeting every day, we have a Monday meeting Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then weekends are usually for our events. But we are never not having a training session to adapt to exactly what is happening in that moment in the market. So if we're having an inventory crisis, we're working on how we can get more listings. If we find that we have too much inventory, we're working on shaking our tree and finding all those people who have been waiting for more inventory. So it's really being able to adapt and change. One thing COVID did for this entire industry, is it taught people that pivoting and adapting was not something that was optional, it was something that you had to do. And it was one of the reasons why our clients and our company thrived during COVID because we adapted and pivoted when we had to adapt and pivot. So I guess the short answer to your question is, our mandate is specifically designed around adapting to the moment, you can't go back in time.
Umar Hameed 11:28
Right.
Joshua Wall 11:29
And you have to do your best to predict what's going to happen and go with the ebb and flow of the market.
Umar Hameed 11:35
So for you, what's the next challenge for you like this will be a better version of Joshua out there somewhere? So what are you seeing right now, like, I need to be more X, or I need to do less Y like, so what's happening in the world of Joshua?
Joshua Wall 11:48
So for me, I've just our families just brought my beautiful daughter into the world, Evelyn. And my next challenge is being the very best father that I can be, I am going to be taking a step back from my role on city council, it's an election year, and I'm not planning on seeking reelection, I need to focus on you know, you can only be good at so many things. And I want to be a good provider for my family. So for me, that will be continuing to pursue my role as a real estate agent and working with my team to help as many people as I can, but also taking a step back to be there for my daughter and for my wife. Because you know, we're a team, Stephanie and I, we've worked together since we met. And you know, parenthood is the ultimate task of working together, I think. And I remember when I was a kid, I love my father, and I love my stepfather. But if there's one thing that I remember most is just how much they worked, and how much I miss them. And I'm finally at a place in my life where the job, or the career that I've chosen gives me the liberty to be able to maybe be there and to be home a little bit more. So while I fully intend on being a community advocate, and I will never stop standing up for the little guy, and I will never stop doing our fundraising in our community events, I can do that with my family.
Umar Hameed 13:05
Nice.
Joshua Wall 13:07
So the next big thing for Joshua is being the best father I can be. And I know that might sound as corny as it is. But there's nothing more important to me in the world right now than that little girl. And it's the ultimate challenge. I think. So, you know, doing that. And, you know, continuing with my career and my advocacy, and winding down my career as a city councilor.
Umar Hameed 13:29
So what's one mistake you don't want to make as a father?
Joshua Wall 13:33
Not being there. Sorry, I present. I don't want to get emotional about it. But you know, so many of my friends who are parents tell me how important it is to be there for the recital, or to be there for the soccer game, or to be there when they need you. And I don't ever want to be not just a text or a phone call away to be able to be there. And you know, to be there in person when it counts to go on adventures and to do cool things. And one of the things about my life is that, you know, every weekend, we're usually at like a charity concert, or we're at some sort of fundraiser, or we're at some sort of cool thing. And I think that Stephanie and I both really enjoy that life. And I hope that Evelyn will as well. But yeah, that's I just don't want to make the mistake of prioritizing the wrong thing. You only get one life, and... Go ahead.
Umar Hameed 14:24
And that makes perfect sense. So I'm gonna take a sharp left turn here. So being in politics, in order to get things done, you need a coalition, you can't do it on your own. And in order to get a coalition there has to be give and take and you have to give to get what you want passed for the community. So how do you balance integrity and being of service to your community because if you don't collaborate with people and collaborate on their projects, you don't get your stuff done that helps the community but also you don't want to back something that you don't agree with. So there's like a murkiness there. How did you navigate that and what are your thoughts around that? Like...
Joshua Wall 15:00
Transparency and communication, they were the forefront of my platform. I strongly believe that there is a sense of disengagement with the community and government. People are either disenfranchised with what's happening, or they're too busy to pay attention. And that's an honest to goodness, reason to not know what's going on. People have lives, they have troubles and trials and things that they're trying to get through. And, you know, they elect people like us to make the decisions that they trust us to do it. So for me, I am very active on my social media, I'm very active on Instagram, I've been documenting my life on Instagram for five years now. So every decision that I'm going in to make on City Council, I'm usually doing engagement directly with my constituents through my social media channels. I also post all of our agendas on all the different groups that are like the neighborhood association and all the different like social groups that are on social media. So you are right. When you look at politics from a different perspective than I think I do. I mean, I'm in a pretty, I don't want to say small town, but comparatively, we're about 110,000 people here in Brantford and I represent our downtown core, a neighborhood called Eagle place in a neighborhood called East ward. And I'm one of two counselors for that ward. We have five words in the city to counselors per Ward, one mayor, so 11 Members of Council, we are very collaborative, if I need stop signs, and always stop, as long as me and the other counselors see eye to eye on that. And traditionally we do. Counsel traditionally supports the word counselors and things that we bring to the table. Recently, we just got a new crossing guard for a school in our community, we're putting in an a pedestrian crossing on a streetlight, we recently had a successful splashpad installed. So our council, I would say, you know, while we do have very healthy debates, and sometimes we do get a little red in the face and yelling at Council, we traditionally support the ward councils in their endeavor. So if were to comes to us, and they say we're looking at putting up concrete barriers to stop traffic on this one road, because we're thinking about a completely isolating cutting off that road, we might say, well, how much is that going to cost? Or we may say, Well, what kind of impact is that going to have on other people who are visiting the neighborhood. But ultimately, we trust the representatives of that ward that they're making the decision that the people want to make. And I'll tell you one thing, and I know you know this, but I'm saying it because it needs to be said there is no decision that you will make that will make everyone happy. And you will always make one group happy and one group unhappy and one group indifferent. And the balancing act that you have to play is very much the wants and needs and desires of the community. Because when I put that stop, sign up, the neighborhood rejoiced. Everybody who has to drive through that neighborhood, and now stop and go and stop and go and stop and go, they all cursed my name. Something as simple as putting up a stop sign impacts 10s of 1000s of people.
Umar Hameed 18:00
So let's talk about policing. So community policing is, I would say the most effective way to police. But then you've got an agenda for the police and the agenda for the community. And how do you bridge that gap? Because ultimately, at the end of the day, they all want a safe place for people to live to thrive, to reduce crime. But sometimes one side sees the other side differently. So how did you help bridge that gap?
Joshua Wall 18:27
Community meetings with the chief of police, our city is so blessed to have such a great Chief Chief Rob Davis. He is a new guy to this role. He's been a police chief for a long time, but he's new to our community originally from here, moved away came back. He started as our police chief around the same time as this council got elected. So we had a really great collaborative effort where we were doing everything we can to revitalize our community and, you know, upgrade our infrastructure and to encourage, you know, new businesses to set up shop here to support the businesses that we're here to work with the neighborhood associations, but so was Chief Davis, because he was the new guy. We were all going around on this community tour where the new mayor because we had a brand new mayor, we had a brand new CEO of the city. We had a number of new counselors and a new chief. So we were going around meeting the presidents of the neighborhood association. We were going around doing meet and greets with the business owners and the Chamber of Commerce and all the different executive directors of the nonprofits in our community. And we were actually doing boots on the ground, like handshakes and conversation saying, What do you want to see from your police force? Most recently, in our downtown core, we started a brand new constable program. So it's a whole new team of constables who are boots on the ground. People in uniform going around patrolling the streets, no cars, no guns, they're constables. So they're not the same as like a sworn officer. And it provides a sense of safety and security, especially in our core, but it gives the officers and the detectives the ability to be responding to significant police concerns. But It gives the constables the ability to be dealing with, you know, some of the societal issues that you'll find in a downtown core. That's complemented by our downtown security team, which patrols the security properties. We have, we are a school city. So we have to post secondary education is in our core, we have Lauria and Conasauga. They have a constable program, and they have a student watch. And then we have a neighborhood watch program, which is just a bunch of neighbors who have actively agreed to like kind of collectively watch out for the neighborhood. So Branford is a great place to live and a great place to call home. But we are suffering from many of the same kind of societal issues many communities our size are facing. But when it comes to policing, and I hate to say like repeat myself, but it's transparency and communication, we have a very visible and communicative Police Chief of Police Services Board, a police association and a council that all work collaboratively together to serve the community. And I don't mean to like sugarcoat it, because yeah, of course, we have our hiccups and our concerns and, you know, but I would, I would argue that for somebody who's paying attention, transparency, and communication is key when it comes to governance and policing.
Umar Hameed 21:11
Nice before we parted company today, Joshua, I'm working on a project is called Project happiness. We, yeah, so what makes you happy?
Joshua Wall 21:20
That's such a great question. Purpose, purpose makes me happy. I surround myself with people who are doing great things. And if I find myself, the smartest person in the room, I change rooms, I want to be around people who are doing things that I either am not doing, or have chosen not to do. Because when you surround yourself with people who are doing things you're not doing can't do or don't know how to do, you suddenly will find yourself capable of doing so much more. I know what I'm good at. I know what Joshua is good at. for me. It's networking and communicating. And then that like customer service, kind of client experience, what I'm not good at is paperwork, what I'm not good at is building an Excel sheet or creating a website, what I'm not good at is doing a roof or, you know, engineering a road. So in my real estate career, I like to surround myself with people who are in, you know, skill sets and trades that I'm not. And at the city, I defer to staff, my role is to not tell the traffic department how to engineer the road, my role is to tell the traffic department what the neighborhood would like to see the road engineered as and then connect them together so they can build a road that community wants. And thank you. What makes me happy is having something to do and having a purpose. Basically knowing that every day I'm going to be bombarded with either client concerns or constituent concerns. And then actually having to figure it out. I get this thrill and this excitement out of being that conduit to help people. Gosh, that is so weird when I say it, but that's what makes me happy.
Umar Hameed 23:05
Nice. So last question of the interview. What's a mind hack that you could share with our listeners trick that you use to be more effective, more happier, more productive? What's something you'd like to share with our audience?
Joshua Wall 23:16
Do it. Just do it! Pick up the phone and make that call. Tell that person how you feel. Do the thing you've been putting aside from you know, putting aside and not doing. Get up. Get out there and do it. Stop worrying about what everybody thinks. Get out of your own way. Get out there and do it. Because if you're not going to do it, who is you can't sit around waiting for somebody else to solve your problem. You can't sit around waiting for something to work out the way that you want it to work out. If you don't like something, change it. If you want to do something, do it. Figure it out.
Umar Hameed 23:51
Brilliant. Joshua, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. enjoyed the conversation?
Joshua Wall 23:56
What an incredible opportunity. Thank you so much for having me on your show today.
Umar Hameed 24:06
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.