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Hometown Happenings
About Hometown Happenings Podcast
Welcome to Hometown Happenings, the ultimate podcast where we bring the heart and soul of North Arkansas straight to your ears! Hosted by a lively set of friends (Angela and Drea!) who know and love their community, we explore the unique stories, events, and happenings that make our hometown special.
What You Can Expect:
🏡 Local Stories: From hilarious realtor horror stories to touching tales of community spirit, we uncover the fascinating narratives behind the people and places that define our town.
🎉 Event Highlights: Stay in the loop with the latest and greatest events in North Arkansas. Whether it's a bustling new business opening, a must-attend festival, or a charity event making a difference, we've got you covered.
👩👩👧👦 Community Focus: We shine a spotlight on the incredible individuals and organizations working to make North Arkansas a better place. Hear from local entrepreneurs, community leaders, and everyday heroes who inspire us.
🌟 Fun and Engaging Conversations: Our episodes are packed with laughter, lively discussions, and plenty of surprises. We keep it real, relatable, and always entertaining.
Why Listen to Hometown Happenings?
- Stay Connected: Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the area, our podcast keeps you informed and connected to your community.
- Feel Good Stories: Enjoy heartwarming and humorous stories that showcase the best of small-town life.
- Exclusive Insights: Get insider tips on the best spots to visit, upcoming events, and hidden gems in North Arkansas.
- Join the Conversation: We love hearing from our listeners! Share your own stories, suggest topics, or just say hello – we're all about building a vibrant community together.
Tune in every other week for a fresh dose of hometown pride and discover why North Arkansas is such a special place to call home. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of Hometown Happenings!
Hometown Happenings
The Truth About Real Estate + Event Chaos
Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at our wildly successful "What a Girl Wants" event, where over 300 attendees gathered for a cause close to our hearts—Grandma's House. We'll share moments from our chaotic experience, including some social media blunders and Drea's eyebrow waxing adventure, all while celebrating the improvements made since our last gathering. Plus, we’re already buzzing with excitement as we brainstorm themes for our next fall event and invite you, our cherished listeners, to pitch in your ideas.
Switching gears, we unpack the dynamics of our real estate partnership, which thrives on proximity and a shared drive for excellence. Learn more about the essential role professional representation plays in the real estate market, including the common pitfalls unrepresented sellers face—like settling for 25 percent less than their property's worth. We wrap things up by inviting you to connect with us on social media and share topics you’d love us to tackle in future episodes. Don’t miss out on this blend of humor, heartfelt moments, and invaluable insights!
The Home Team
Angela Ballard & Drea Rogers
870-577-6754 | 870-577-0276
Weichert Market Edge
https://aundrea-rogers.weichertmarketedge.com
www.angelaballardrealtor.com
Hey, I'm Angela and I'm Drea and we are Hometown Happenings.
Speaker 2:Welcome to a new episode.
Speaker 1:How has your?
Speaker 2:week been. Uh, we've had a very busy week. What's?
Speaker 1:been so great about it.
Speaker 2:So we had an event on Saturday. It was an all-day event. The event wasn't that bad. It was lead up into it all the the.
Speaker 1:What a Girl Wants event what a Girl Wants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hot Girl Summer. Yeah, I think think it went really well.
Speaker 1:we had a little over 300 people I heard a lot of people say they heard our ad on the radio. Sorry, I know, it was kind of funny.
Speaker 2:I heard it once yeah we were very they sound all right. Yeah, we were ourselves yeah, very over the top that's pretty much you mean, like we were at the event. Should we go ahead and make an apology to everybody who was there for our loudness and erratic behavior?
Speaker 1:and all our facebook lives. We got banned from a little birdie and we upset our social media person, we're real good at doing what we want and asking for forgiveness later.
Speaker 2:I didn't ask for forgiveness.
Speaker 1:No, I didn't either Doing what we want, I guess it's called what a girl wants. We do what we want.
Speaker 2:We covered that part. I feel like the event went really well.
Speaker 1:I do too. So all of our ticket money is going to grandma's house. Yes, and we haven't added it all up yet to figure all those things out.
Speaker 2:No, the last time we did any kind of math it was somewhere a little over 300 people, so we'll get all that together and cut them a check this week. I'm pretty excited to get to deliver it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know we have one of those big checks at the office. We should write on it, make an obscene gesture and take a photo yeah scene and take a photo. Yeah, I'm cool with that. You just drag race on it and we're talking about doing another one. Yeah, in the fall, everybody really wanted a fall event, so I don't know what it'll be called, but what a girl wants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you have any ideas for a theme for the fall, what a girl wants, hit us up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or any vendors that we haven't asked that would be interested in being a part of it.
Speaker 2:Right, we're all about networking. I feel like we made some new friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like we made a lot of new friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was pretty successful. I think there was a lot of lines. They got through them faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I felt like, yes, it maybe wasn't as busy as the first one, that was done in February, but it was so crowded then. I feel like people didn't get a lot of what they wanted done, right, and so that might have affected our crowd this time, because people may have just been like I'm not going to go because I didn't get to do what I wanted the last time because it was full right, but we didn't allow pre bookings, like last time.
Speaker 1:Tab the tattoo artist yeah, I had pre book and pre booking, so by the time you got there you didn't have a chance of getting a tattoo right so this time we didn't allow for free bookings and she was busy the whole entire time.
Speaker 2:She stayed late. Yeah, again, I'll have to talk to her about fall coming back. Maybe we can get someone to do piercings next time.
Speaker 1:Hailey's Flash Lounge. She was pretty popular with all of her giveaways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she waxed my eyebrows for like the first time in six years. And she waxed your kids.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, my kid was complaining about how much money she spent at the thing.
Speaker 2:Your kid's a tightwad when she spent $30. I spent $100 on.
Speaker 1:Botox, but you said it was the best thing you've ever done.
Speaker 2:I feel like I feel they said what does it take? Two weeks? Is that what they told me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she said 14 days before you give it your final like judgment.
Speaker 2:So this is my face. We'll see how it looks on the next episode. I feel like my, my I call them parentheses. What are they?
Speaker 1:She called them 11s.
Speaker 2:They're gone, which makes me very happy. I'm glad that trusted professionals injected my face. I was running on MTS last week and then I recouped on Sunday and now we're back at it.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've recouped.
Speaker 2:Well, you better get it together, because we have another event at the end of the week, yeah, or through this week. It's several days, it's like every day. I feel like it doesn't stop. I got you your own legit microphone and you get to choose if you want the orange or the blue? Oh my god. Are you gonna have a microphone? Oh lord, no, I don't need one. I'm just gonna yell at kids when I'm ready to take their picture. But you will. Here, you wanna practice?
Speaker 1:Testing, testing. Little pageant kids, get over here.
Speaker 2:We're going to need to train you on appropriate MCing of pageants before we set you free with that.
Speaker 1:Last night I got this message that I guess there was a Diamond City Council meeting last night.
Speaker 2:There was.
Speaker 1:I got a message that they were canceling the meeting On a Monday. Yeah, we donay, yeah council meetings. So I went back and looked. You know, last week we had our regular council meeting on tuesday and it got canceled because of an emergency, yeah, and so they rescheduled it for thursday.
Speaker 1:Well, I couldn't go on thursday because that was our final t-ball game Go in a doubleheader and I needed to be there, and so I couldn't go to the council meeting. And so I went to the and I've never missed a council meeting. So I felt like, okay, like in my whole entire term, I've never missed a single meeting One. If we're really being picky.
Speaker 2:That's saying something when you compare yourself to your colleagues that sit on that council.
Speaker 1:So I Even that's saying something when you compare yourself to your colleagues that sit on that council. So I, when they do show up there and and you know, after the disrespect the last time, it's like how much more do I want to expose myself to disrespect? But anyway, so I didn't go and I guess, at like an hour into the meeting they they were discussing combining the treasurer and the recorder position into one position, since we don't have a recorder, and I don't know why they're wanting to do that. I know we've had it in the past, is it just?
Speaker 2:because we're struggling to get somebody to volunteer.
Speaker 1:I guess I don't really know, but their terms don't end at the same time and I don't think that in the middle, like this, you can just vote to combine the position. And I think we've already, like a few months ago, got brought up and got told that we couldn't do it, and then now it got brought up again at the meeting. Well, I guess they scheduled another meeting to discuss it and to maybe possibly vote on it, because it was not a workshop, it was an actual meeting and there was no public notice made about the meeting obviously because we didn't know about it and there were two council members that were not present at the meeting you and somebody else uh-huh, and I don't know if that other person was notified about this meeting yesterday or not.
Speaker 1:And then yesterday around noon I got an email saying the meeting that was supposed to be tonight has been canceled, was it canceled?
Speaker 2:It doesn't sound like it was canceled.
Speaker 1:Well, I didn't see anybody there at 6 o'clock for a meeting, so I don't think it was canceled. Or I don't think it happened, so I think it was canceled but I said something and didn't tell everybody correct because the public has to be notified to write because they're open for everybody. Yes, and there are time frames on like how the public notice has to be made.
Speaker 2:I'm just, I'm City. Get your crap together, people.
Speaker 1:It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2:The lack of support I get the whole wanting to combine those positions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we have too much that needs to be done right now, like dealt with. We have a lot of things that the recorder needs to handle. That combining the two of them is not. We're not in a place to do that right now. Not right now, no, our ducks are not in a row, but I have seen the Sheriff's Department has been frequenting Present. Oh yeah, a lot recently. They've been parked in different places. I've seen them a lot, so I've been very grateful for that. Yes, so grateful for that. I just wish that it would get better and I feel like it's not.
Speaker 2:Well, now that you've depressed me with a diamond city drama Um, I forgot to tell you about what hometown happenings is. Sponsoring at the picnic, in addition to all the other things that we have volunteered to do, we are sponsoring a scavenger hunt.
Speaker 1:I saw you sent me a bunch of stuff about a scavenger hunt.
Speaker 2:I figured I'd just fill you in later.
Speaker 1:So because you know that I'll blow up about overextending us, it's not that difficult.
Speaker 2:It's just some social media posts on our part and everyone else is gonna have to do the legwork. Four locations, first person to find all four. Two hundred fifty dollars cash.
Speaker 1:Don't tell my kid my luck.
Speaker 2:She'll win, like she did at the I told her she could put her name in the drawing because she was working the event on saturday, so I was like go ahead.
Speaker 1:She bought a ticket.
Speaker 2:She bought a ticket that's the whole point of a strays man grandma's house. So buy a ticket. That's just more money for them. It's not like she's gonna win in a jar full of 300 people anyway yeah, there were a ton of names in there, and she's the first one we drew out of the bucket so annoying.
Speaker 1:Way to kick it off they thought we were rigging the drama.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did the first one out the gate and it's your kid.
Speaker 1:What made you want to get licensed, all of you who've learned to?
Speaker 2:water. It really is fun. It really is and it allows you to express your creativity, because we have to be creative to share our listings in a different way than everybody else. Otherwise, what service are we providing, right? So it's kind of been an outlet, in the same way that taking fun pictures is.
Speaker 1:It's just a different type of an outlet for creativity we decided to form a team, but we were discussing it because we were always together.
Speaker 2:I was asking you to video me for this or take photos of this for me, and it just got kind of awkward, like because I was doing double time the work, because I was, like in any, it was hard to separate ideas like okay, well, I'm going to give you this idea and I'm going to use this idea for my own marketing. Why are we marketing double when we can market?
Speaker 1:together and offer us set skill and we're already together all the time yeah, because we live.
Speaker 2:We live in a similar, like you live. What?
Speaker 1:20 minutes from me right, which in Arkansas is not very far right well, especially out here, right, you have to come to Lead Hill for everything, and I live five minutes from you, so it just made it simpler and easier to just combine. And we have a similar work ethic and we, you mean, we're both workaholics. Well, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever gets it done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were even doing the podcast before we were, that's true, we were.
Speaker 1:And that was kind of hard Weird, yeah, yeah, because I'm like Drea is Drea and. Angela is Angela.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it makes more sense to do it this way. Plus, I do believe that there's a value to be offered in a pairing. Now we do make half the money. Yes, I feel like we make half the money because we're having to split it, but we're able to offer twice the value and we're also able to take on like towards the times of workload.
Speaker 1:Yes, because we're. Yeah, because there were two people we can. You know, essentially, yes, we're splitting the money, but we should be able to do twice the work potentially, so we should be able to handle more care too much about people and making sure that people are informed and educated, and yeah, that one's huge.
Speaker 2:That's huge. I hate I know that I put people on the spot. A lot People don't know until you tell them. Why would they know? Most people are not real estate nerds, so we have to educate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so there's just so much lack of information. I feel like that people don't know about real estate and they just think that we all take a big check and make all this money and they don't understand that we do a lot for no pay.
Speaker 2:Most of it for no pay. I mean like there should be a TikTok of our office. What's the longest you went between paychecks? Because we don't get paid unless something closes.
Speaker 1:Well, and how many people do you show to and then they change their mind?
Speaker 2:Or it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, or they decided to move somewhere else. There's a whole lot. There's a whole lot.
Speaker 1:But beyond that, you know, just the emphasis is the two of us together, both licensed agents. You offer photography background. I offer my broker's licensing background, plus other education and more experience experience I've had as an agent because you've been doing it longer and you get both of us. To me like that's a huge selling point that people have when they choose to listen to the home team, because we offer so much more when it comes to marketing your home and then, like recently, the unrepresented for sale by owner people that we just listed, so huge, hot and educated they were, and people don't realize that if you list your house, I get a good.
Speaker 1:It's a high probability that a licensed agent is going to come and bring a contract on it. Bring a buyer, yeah, and bring a buyer, and you're not. They're going to work for their buyer. That's their job.
Speaker 2:I think that most people don't think of us on the same level, but we're working with legal contracts.
Speaker 1:Right, that are written by an attorney.
Speaker 2:Yes, so if you go to court and you decide to represent yourself, well, the lawyer on the other side is going to just take you for a walk in the park because he knows all his stuff and he knows all these loopholes and you don't, because that's not your world, right? So you for sale by owner all day long and if you don't know the ins and outs, then that agent on the other side who's representing the other side owes you nothing, right, is going to take you for a walk. Do you know about inspection periods? Do you know about all the loopholes of how they can get out of a contract, about escape clauses, about all these things that the traditional person doesn't know about? And that's what we ran into with that phone call was she was asking what about this? And someone asked if I would pay for this, and she really had no idea.
Speaker 1:And they would have took her to the cleaners. They had no idea the fees associated outside of a real estate agent they had no idea that there were closing fees and things that you know how much they were has to pay. And then, on top of all of that, they had their house way undervalued. And there are statistics that show that, for sale by owner, properties tend to sell 25 percent less than if you listed with an agent.
Speaker 2:And that's not because agents are driving up prices, that's because they're worth more and you're not educated to know exactly what your house is worth but that's also something that sets us apart from everybody else is that other agents walk into your house and what do you want to list it for? I want to list it for a half a million dollars. Well, me and you know, because we run the numbers, that it may only be worth three hundred thousand dollars and it's only going to be worth what somebody's willing to pay for it. So it's going to sit on the market. You can ask what you want to ask for it, but that's where our value comes in and our honesty.
Speaker 1:I know that I can come off as kind of crude, but the directness and being honest makes the difference and don't think that just because your house like, oh, I'll list it at 500,000 in hopes to get some offers, if your house is only worth 300 and you've got it listed at 500, people aren't going to come and look at it when you're 200 hundred thousand dollars off, right. So this weekend we have the lead hill picnic, fourth of july picnic. We're gonna be in the parade, we're gonna be at the pageant.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna be singing the national anthem in front of all of you people at noon on saturday. If you want to come watch that massacre.
Speaker 1:I'll be on my boat, so let's go picnic this weekend, have a good fourth of july and soon to be planning the next what a girl wants event for the fall deets coming and research your dang real estate agents. We're all made the same and if you're interested in telling us about something you think we should talk about research, want to be on the podcast oh yeah, we're.
Speaker 2:We're open books here, folks, so tell us we want to folks, so tell us.
Speaker 1:We want to talk to you guys about what you guys want to hear about.
Speaker 2:Yep, so you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram. We're on TikTok.
Speaker 1:YouTube Yep, subscribe to us on YouTube so you can stay in the loop Hometown.
Speaker 2:Happenings Arkansas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Home Team Arkansas.
Speaker 2:Hometown Happenings and uh, we're on apple music podcast, yeah stuff, we're on all the things you listen to your podcast on you can't escape us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, find us everywhere see ya.
