JCSells 1

Joe Cunningham, also known as "What's up Yep," explains how he got his nickname "Mr. Northeast" and his background growing up in Kensington and Tarsdale. He discusses his journey into real estate, starting in Florida and later moving back to Philadelphia. Joe emphasizes the importance of having a mentor and being genuine in the real estate industry. He also shares the story behind his catchphrase "We did it again" and the significance of staying positive. Lastly, Joe mentions his interest in teaching financial literacy to young people. Joe Cunningham aka What's up Yep, so we'll start off with that. Why do they call you north mr. Northeast? Where did that come from? I get it all the time as Northeast jr. Here. So please explain what that means Funny story I was doing a radio show years ago probably like a decade ago and There was a bunch of heavy hitters real estate guys from the suburbs like and the main line and Center City and The hosts would always come back to me and be like, all right, let's get the real deal Let's get the dirt on the street from mr. Northeast and I was like, yeah, I like that. So I kept it Cool. Yeah, my first day here. I should ask you. Um, so what neighborhood you from? All right, well I was born in in Kensington K&A and We moved up to Tarsdale when I was two years old in the 60s. Yeah, I'm that old and then I went to school and did most of my running around as a kid at st. Catherine's and TBC Tarsdale Boys Club I went to st. Joseph's prep the carpe diem, baby Big St. Joseph's prep guy a lot of my brothers. I'm the only I'm the only judge guy here All my brothers went to prep. So I'm actually going there Friday. We got a game and stuff Well, this will be coming out Sunday. So hopefully a prep can pull it off. They're playing Ryan So it should be a good game, but uh, just to keep the train going here So one thing like where'd you get into real estate? When did that become like a realistic thing for your career and what you thought kind of? Okay. Well, I actually got licensed to For real estate in Florida when I was living in Key West I sold timeshares down there and then when I moved back to Philly I was involved with my boy Ray Lloyd shout out At Chrysler Financial and I was involved in customer service So at that time I was looking for a house and I noticed that I didn't get a lot of good customer service When I was out there looking for a home and I thought I could do a good job so in 2005 I Jumped right in quit my job and started my own real estate practice picked a hell of a time, right? Yeah, it's a good time for those you didn't know that's in the market crash but stuck through so yeah kind of to go off that obviously I became Join the team did the real estate thing a little different dynamic considering I have you as a mentor But like for someone that was thinking about the idea of doing real estate or getting into it Like what would be your kind of advice for somebody starting off? Well, first of all, you need to get a license Actually, we can help you with that here at Keller Williams We can get you a license for free But you want to probably go and talk to somebody see, you know Shadow it come up to the office or whoever you have that's a mentor and kind of see what exactly we do because I think it looks a little bit more glamorous than It actually is behind the scenes. There's a lot of a lot of hard work that goes into this business Yeah, I think it kind of shadows everything else on social media these days It's kind of like a highlight reel of all the good things. You don't see all the other things one funny thing I always hear like people will say real estate like oh, I just go in and pick up checks Right, so well people say a lot of times I love houses and I love people And I just think I would be great. There's just a little bit in there. Listen, there's just a few things out there Behind the scenes. That's yeah, I think at least if you're asking me the question I think one of the most important things you could do is just kind of like a mentor and Anyone could have a mentor or an office, but I think it's really important like someone that just genuinely like wants to see you succeed They don't look at you as like plus or minus from an asset standpoint But just someone that's committed to you someone that you could ask questions to I mean, I've been lucky enough throughout my career I obviously have you as a mentor But I have so many people that like when I have a dumb question that I just need to hear the answer for I'll be Able to ask and be like hey, does this make sense or have you ever dealt with this and the cool thing? At least I like about real estate is the landscapes ever-changing like I never feel like I know everything like every year I feel like I'm better than the year before that. So that's one of the things I really like about it myself but and any kind of sales what you're doing is someone comes to you with the need either the buyer to sell a home and You have to help them fulfill that need and make them as comfortable as possible throughout the process Because there's a lot of different steps and we hit some bumps in the road and that's what you have us here for the experience Yeah, just being genuine. I think in any job any sales thing. That's the most important I mean at the end of the day Like one thing I always tell my clients is but I'm not here to make a decision like people will come to me like well What do you think we should do? Um, that's not like my goal kinda. I want to help you have options You know, I mean like hey, you could do this you could do that And then I let you do whatever you think is best for you and your family Like I always tell people I'm not gonna be living here You know, I mean, so it's ultimately your choice like what you want to do where you want to live But my goal is to try to help you Facilitate that and make sure the transaction goes and kind of works great from start to finish But uh, yeah keep going on So I know a lot of people always tell me this at least I go out to the bar like we did it again We did it again. Where did that come from? Well the we did it again thing like many great ideas, uh in real estate. I stole from somebody else I was in a class I want to say for my broker's license maybe dozen years ago, and it was a guy from south philly forget me Uh, I don't remember his name But he's like you got to separate yourself. You got to put it out there You know, uh people got to know who you are and uh, he's like you put on the sold sign I did it again Or joe did it again and I was like, uh, I don't know I like the idea but I kind of like it more as we did it again. It's a it's a group effort It wasn't just to beat your chest on that and uh I tried to actually do it for our whole office at my previous office, but I met some resistance there And I just decided to do it on my own and then it just you know took off and then we Put it in a lot of different. I've been thinking people come up to me all the time Like we did it again I'm thinking of like getting it how funny it'd be if I got it tatted like right here Have you ever seen the santa at the chamonix? I know people said it but it says like merry christmas or something like that But imagine all the settlement picks I had like we did it again right here I know I was really hoping that uh, the birds would have held it up last year. I know when they got something on that That's the cheapest marketing in the world by the way Like something like you and travis kelsey and terrence with or something like that Is there and there's so many agents that do that stuff? But uh to keep going forward so one thing that you always tell me like stay positive stay positive asking for a friend Not for myself, but where did that kind of develop? Like did somebody put you onto that or you always have been just this jolly and uh, And positive person or where did that come from? um Well, I just do a lot of reading and uh most successful people that I see out there one of their messages is not only to be successful in your career, but To have success in your life and that's to be happy, right? Um is to try to be as positive as possible And uh gratitude is something that I try to it's very fleeting gratitude It's a feeling that you have overwhelming and then it'll be gone Uh five minutes later, so you just got to keep reminding you how lucky we are Uh in our lives to have our families and our community and live in this country um, I just feel like Um, the more positive you are more good things happen yeah, I think that's one kind of message that at least we take across like like I coach football at calvary and Basketball and you coach football for a long time a couple years I always hear him saying like yo There's so much bad press and negative stuff out there Like it's our job to teach the kids like To be positive and when I was a kid I used to think it was like the corniest thing in the world like go team like we were being but the older I get like I really do see the value of just like If it's coming if the message from the top is that things are going to work out It definitely helps things and I think facilitate it actually going more smoothly winners never quit Quitters never win. We had that i'll photoshop the sign in if I could find it But we used to have that at our house like literally leaving the door and it was like the notre dame sign when you like leave the game you'd smack it and be like All right, quitters never win or I would be like grounded or something and i'd have i'd point to the sign like yeah something something funny but Um, keep going forward The one thing I wanted to talk about for sure today and kind of ask everybody if you made it this far in the video So one thing that we've been doing that I want to kind of expand is like our classes on financial literacy So we've been doing stuff like with nazareth. We went to judge um all these schools where we kind of want to teach kids and going off of what we're talking about earlier is to be Blunt like I don't think people teach enough about financial literacy like credit things of that Like I just got my taxes done and I didn't know half the stuff that's going on Like I feel like it's like a what are taxes for dummies? Like i'm asking these questions and I don't know nothing about it But I could tell you like how to do like like the what's it called pythagorean theorem Like when I never use that, you know, I mean so Kind of like what do you think we could do and where we could expand our financial literacy? And like what do you think about that sort of stuff in those classes that we did? Well, i'm really hoping that they make it a curriculum sooner or later in the schools But listen if you're listening out there and you have any pull at any of the schools out there Um, we would love to come and talk to the kids. I'd like to put a positive message out there to them um, and if you know, it is important to learn about um, checking accounts financing how how does uh, How do commissions work how do you get paid stuff like just a lot of different things that kids just don't know you know balancing checkbooks and uh You know just talking about basic finances Yeah, I think credit's a huge thing Like I don't think most people know about credit and the more I learn about the more I kind of figure out like the system Is literally designed to target People who are younger not necessarily high school kids but college younger people that don't really Have an idea of what it is and it's just oh I can spend this x amount of money and it's like well I repay it, but how am I getting penalized? What's my like my rates and things of that nature? so right and one other thing on that I try to To put out to these kids as like the positive message that we talk about Is that right now there's more opportunity in this country right now Than ever than there ever has been even though the media will not make it look like that Yeah, everybody wants to say that there's not and I just tell them listen if you work hard That you have a great opportunity Yeah, I think i'm going to do like a new little Like series sort of thing on fridays or i'm just going to talk about articles that I find in the news that make no sense like because I see them all the time like the market's going to crash and i'm like like and then I pulled the article the one I saw it was like It cited the phoenix like a suburb of phoenix and the title was like us market is crashing I'm, like how are we going to like cite this one little thing, but it's all about the title So it's neither here nor there But uh the one other thing I wanted to ask you and this is one of the questions kind of people were telling me Um, hold on. We'll start that again Are we not on this one? All right, because we should probably try not to get so I should try not to get too sidetracked on certain things, you know You can always cut it up Yes, I mean i'll cut this one off but All right. Sorry about that one of my cameras cut out there wanted to reclick it but To go forward I wanted to ask you a question. Um, so Someone asked me like what's your favorite part about working with your dad? so I wanted to reciprocate that to you, but I guess i'll go go first but uh so one of my things I think is like kind of sort of how we just have been like like a team like from the beginning it was kind of just like I didn't really know what was going on and Ironically like one of my I thought about and I was like well I've been really like working with my dad since I was literally a kid like I can't imagine like how many events and things we went to and Kind of going off of the quitters never win thing but one thing you would always say to us that like really resonates with me now is like Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right and I used to think again I thought I was like a corny saying and then the more I thought about I would think like oh like you can do it either way, but now I really like Put more of an emphasis on the think part like I if you think you could do it You're gonna have so much more of a belief like I used to never think I could do this or that and I always like Have a memory of when I used to play football The only person like I played my junior year and I played a little bit But like my dad would be asking questions like where do you want to go? And I'd be like, what do you mean where do I go? Like I stink like i'm not that good And he would be like where do you want to go? And then eventually I was just like I want to try to do it You know what I mean? And I thought I could and then I tried more and more and then I ended up going to college and like literally before I even Thought about I could you you basically like instill to me that you could and that like one Situation always makes me think like whenever I have any troubles now, like I think like oh man, like I can get through it You know what? I mean? So that makes that's my favorite. I think kind of memory of us working together. So what would be yours? Uh just have so many matt so many good times man. Um, of course all the events and everything but I think uh One of my old clients that i've been working with a lot of years and it was a dear friend, uh came up to me the one time when you had helped them with uh, I believe you helped their son do something and uh get a house and Um, they just said hey, you know what your son is really a hard-working kid, but more than anything he really cares um about you know about what he's doing and and about us and that makes us feel really good and uh, I was just really proud because at the end of the day That's all you are right from your kids Yeah, and that's all we want to try to do like I try to treat all my clients like they'd be my own family You know, I mean like how I want to be treated. So that's kind of exactly how we do it But you got any other questions for me here? Uh, I think that's it wrap it up first one. All right. Um next week i'm gonna have jimmy ross from huntington valley So he's gonna come on. He's our lender. He's our boy. He's done a ton of deals. How many deals you think you've done with jimmy? hundreds a ton Yeah, so he's gonna come on i'm gonna have him asking all kinds of like basically lending questions grants programs How do you buy a house with little jimmy ross thing like that? But all right, I appreciate it if you made it this long Hopefully the next ones aren't this bad I'm gonna get a little better at the editing thing and kind of getting all these sorted But I appreciate everybody that uh watched and talk to you soon. We did it again, baby All right