This week’s show delves into Google’s groundbreaking ‘AI Mode’ and its implications for the real estate industry. Discover how this innovative technology can transform the way realtors market properties, engage with clients, and streamline their workflows. We break down key features of AI Mode and provide insights on how realtors can leverage these advancements to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

#1 – What is Google AI Mode?

Traffic

Expect Even Fewer Clicks

Visibility

Analytics

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475. Today, we’re going to discuss the new Google AI mode and explore what we think it might mean for you, the Realtor, or those in real estate-related fields. Before we get into that, though, my tremendous, fantastic, pugilistic co host, I love calling him that because he used to be a boxster a million years ago, is as always, responsible for the choice, the selection, the notes, the thought that goes behind the production of the show. And I, as usual, show up and word vomit into your ear. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, let me introduce you to Jonathan Denwood. John, please take a moment to share a word or two about yourself. Yourself.

Oh, thank you so much, Robert. I’m the joint founder of mel-right.com. We’re an easy-to-use CRM with a range of lead-generating functionality included at a competitive price, starting at $49 per month, month-to-month. What more could you ask for? Back over to you, Rob.

Beautiful. And in case you don’t already know, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inboundrem.com, or Inbound Real Estate Marketing. And generally speaking, I am one of the top real estate SEO guys in the country, if not the top guy. So without any further ado, we’re going to talk about. We’re not going to talk about SEO today, though. We’re going to discuss AIO, which stands for Artificial Intelligence Optimization. So get used to hearing the term aio. It’s all that you’re going to be hearing for the next few years. Google unleashes AI Mode. What does this mean for realtors? John, why don’t you kick us off? What do you think it means? Discover how. Like, I don’t know you, you have a thing. I’m curious to know, though. Literally, what do you think it means?

It means in practical terms you’re going to get fewer clicks to your website, but those clicks if, if it’s done in the right way, should have more relevance. A significant portion of the website’s traffic was generated in bulk, or, depending on the type of SEO or the content on the website, it could be pretty shallow. What I mean is, it wasn’t going to do anything even if it got to your website, where you know, only the top five results are probably going to show in AI mode for Google. So it’s becoming even more winner-takes-all. But in reality, the top three got over 70% of all traffic anyway, so. But that’s the main thing. And these language models are becoming increasingly sophisticated, producing results that are more accurate. And Google’s in a tricky spot. But they’ve got the money and they’ve got the technology and they’ve got the data. So they’re still in a powerful position.

Interesting. So there’s two separate sides to this. When you, when you wrote the title of the article, John, I gotta tell you, I, I actually misunderstood what you meant and I usually get what you mean. So, ladies and gentlemen, who are listening, that’s unusual. That’s not common at all. What I misunderstood is I thought you wanted to talk about Gemini and it turned out that you didn’t want to talk about Gemini, that what you wanted to talk about is the new feature where you can sign up. For those that didn’t know, because I didn’t know and I specializes in this stuff. John, I’m going to take a moment and say, for those of you who didn’t know, there is an actual AI mode and you can click try it. And then the actual search experience that you’re having changes. Now. I clicked try it so long ago, I didn’t remember. And so I’m getting these AI results the whole entire time thinking that it was a standard search thing because I forgot the steps that I took to do it. But it turns out that it’s not standard. You can click it. And when you do click it, what Google is doing is they’re offering six or seven interesting AI features, but because they’re Google, they’re giving you a link to the source.

So like I did Google AI mode as a search, my AI overview has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, like 10 links in it that take you back the content. But each link is only taking you back to a single piece of content that had the best answer for detailed responses. Interactive search. It’s really fascinating the way that it’s changing. And I do not disagree with, with your summation, John, that it’s going to be less traffic but higher quality. But I do want everybody to understand why it’s going to be higher quality if you happen to be lucky enough to be one of the eight links in an AI search result that Google has presented. Google is literally saying that you’re actually the top resource for that subsection of the overall response. No longer is 1 through 10. No longer do you have to figure out who Google thinks is top. They’re telling you, I think that’s groundbreaking, personally. So AI mode Again, because number one on our list to explain here is what is it? It’s a different search experience. It’s a search experience based on artificial intelligence where you’re not going to get a list of 10 websites or you are and it’s going to be below the AI result.

So Google has just extended their search page once again, but AI gives you the option to deeply change the way that you’re consuming search. And frankly, even though this does not play out in my favor, I love it. John, what about you?

I think the elephant, I totally agree with what you just said. I think the elephant is that the the response is back is going to be much. It’s going to be customized depending on what Google knows about you and what your searches have been before. So every person is going to have a much more customized search environment and response to their searches.

And this leads to the question that you posed, which is a fascinating question. Well, how does this affect people like me who have careers or lives or websites all dedicated to SEO search engine optimization? Well, so far what we’ve seen is you’ve seen about 10 or 15% drop in traffic and I’m a leader, so that’s a big number. We do expect fewer clicks and the visibility has dropped and my analytics look not as good as they used to. So these are all ways AI has impacted my SEO. Now here’s what we’re not talking about a lot though, that and I need everybody, including you, John, to understand that I am easily one of the top 10 real estate news based, kind of like content based sites in the world at this point. Like no doubt. So when I say the following, understand that most people couldn’t replicate it. While all of the things I told all of you are true, I would say that of my last 10 leads, fully six of them were generated by AI. And what do I mean by that? My last 10 leads, when I asked people where they found me, four of them hands down were chatgpt.

The other two were questionable gray area. I’m going to assume they’re like Gemini or something similar like another type of artificial intelligence. And when I asked the question John did okay, did you do any further research? Like did you call somebody? They’re like, no. It is crazy to me how many people are just saying choppy. GPT gives you one answer, but because they’re presenting it as the best, like this is the top person, this is the best SEO guy in the country. This is the best real estate website, whatever it is, right? They just go, they’re not Questioning it at all or doing any further shopping, which is blowing my mind. Blowing my mind. So I suspect strongly that AI is going to AIO and is going to impact SEO in a very big way. I don’t think it’s like I’m not a doom person. I don’t think, John, it’s going to take us out of business or me out of business specifically. I think there’s still a big spot for SEO inside everybody’s marketing strategies. However, is that spot going to be the same size that it is now? No way. No way AIO is going to take that over.

And as a matter of fact it probably should be. Like you should immediately do 50 AIO. 50 SEO, like immediately in my opinion. What do you think?

I don’t break the two up really. I really see, I, I really see if you, you, if you’re producing some decent content and it’s bit slightly more in depth and Google actually thinks you actually know what you’re talking about and you’re producing quite a bit because I, I kind of hit it with WP Tonic, my other company. I’m terrific. You know, I’m doing two podcasts. I’ve got a channel that’s got over 10, 000 subscribers. We’re getting close to it. I’m producing content every week. I do a fair bit with the mail. Right. As well. I’ve increased what I’m doing there a bit. So hopefully I’m giving the signals to Google that. Actually, no, it’s probably Google, probably. And that’s what I think you got to do. You know, like I put on as number three, if you don’t shape the narrative, the AI will do it for you. So, so we’re gonna have a, we’re.

Gonna have a show. John, remember this and bookmark this show because, because the. There is enough data out there now that we’re starting to understand how chat, GPT and other things like at work, it’s not even remotely related to SEO. And so we should have a conversation about generative, like generative language inside your content in order to rank for artificial intelligence. Now me and my guys got very lucky in that I have so much content and so much public commentary surrounding my content that that is the reason I’m doing so well in AI models is that I had, and what’s more, I’ve had that out there for years, which meant that whenever those models were built they picked up that stuff. And I’m getting a surprise gift in the form of AI results currently. So let’s Talk a little. Let’s just officially move into. If you don’t shape the narrative, AI will do it for you. Now I think I know what you meant, but why don’t you just go ahead and illuminate it for all of us. What is your fear? What is your concern around that? John? Like what, what is your concern that AI is going to do if you don’t do it yourself?

Well, it’s getting, it’s a large language model, it’s a pattern recognization technology using very well, this is my take on it. I’m not expert but I have, I’m interested in the subject and I know a couple of people who are AI scientists and basically it’s using very sophisticated forms of mathematics and pattern recognition and a lot of data is the recognization of patterns and this is on a different league. Its ability and language is a pattern much more than we’re probably aware of. And it’s, and I think Google was, you know, you, I don’t know what your response is going to be that they were utilizing this technology in the background about two, three years ago to actually index the content that they were showing people that, you know, and my understanding is that AI and that large language models have been around since the 1950s, but it had become a kind of looking for the right term. You know, there were people still in that area, but it wasn’t a particularly very dynamic, well funded part of science. But that changed after 9, 11 because the government had enormous amounts of data. You know, it wanted to monitor people’s phone calls, email zooms and it built, and it has built a group of very large data centers where all this information is stored.

And it needed a technology that could filter through this enormous amount of data and highlight words, sentences, conversations which it feels are a danger to society and you know, terrorism. So it invested enormous amount of money in this form of science. And it, I don’t think people are aware of that actually. Robert but that because like the Internet itself, the Internet was developed by enormous government investment.

True, but my understanding like definitely the government Internet are all historical fact. So the my, my comment or thoughts to what you just said was this is one of those rare occasions in which government has actually influenced tech. Instead of tech influencing government, it’s usually the opposite way around. I agree with that, I agree with the history of it. What I can add to that conversation is the comment on Google introduced a form of a logarithm that everybody’s been copying and I am absolutely friggin Gobsmacked that of all the things that Google was doing, this is the thing that people copied. So part of the first delving into kind of like a large language model, including in front of their Gemini efforts and all their AI efforts four years ago, they’ve now gone on documentation and said the first thing that they did to say, I wonder if we can sort the relevance of somebody’s brand mentions into the actual ranking algorithm. That was their original thing, but like you just said, that required a massive, huge data filter because they’re like, we’re gonna read the Internet. All of the Internet go. How many times somebody mentioned Melrite, like all the Internet that we can get get our hands on.

When you think about that, that’s trillions upon trillions of pieces of information bytes.

It’s terabytes.

Yeah, it’s a crazy statement. When I read it originally I thought they were fucking nuts. But it turns out that no, it was Robert that was just not thinking big enough. They’ve gotten to the point where they can do that. And that is, that was the basis of like you’re saying, large language models. And it was the first application that Google applied and then they started building beyond that. They just didn’t hit mark though. They just didn’t get to market first. ChatGPT did. And ChatGPT used the data that they could find about all the development without breaking massive laws. And they basically said, okay, we know that Google’s doing X, Y and Z with brand mention, so let’s just use that inside Chat gbt. So of the large language models which, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, all work differently. The Chat GPT and Gemini are both based heavily in, in terms of their ranking, based heavily on brand mentions, not links. So major difference, John, major difference. We’re gonna go to break. When we come back, we’re gonna continue forward our conversation. We’re gonna start off with basically we’re gonna give you some moats, some things that you can do and some ways that you can, you can protect yourself and your business against the storm of AI.

Or maybe if you’re forward thinking, you can pivot to try to get in front of it. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you’re at and however you’re doing, we would really, really, really, really if you would click that like or comment button. By doing so. Our previous audience members have made us the number 86 show in the world for real estate agents. Thank you very much, we really appreciate it. And let’s keep the Momentum going like and share. Like and share. Like and share. Thank you so much. We’ll be right back. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 475 of the Mailwright Show. You have found the number 86 show. Today’s show is sponsored by mail-right.com and inboundrem.com if you are a sponsor and you would like to give John and I loads of money to have us mention you on the show, I have to tell you we are receptive to that idea. Moving on to the. At least I assume we are. I’ve never talked to John about it, but he’s never actually refused the idea of loads of money as long as it’s ethical.

So here we are, we’re going to talk about becoming super local to become really super important. Now. I have so much to say on this. So let’s start with you, John.

Yeah. Because it’s kind of linked. I don’t think I really, I gave some history but didn’t really answer the question of free but question three and four kind of linked and it’s about being active on social media. It’s about actually posting content that has value to people that’s actually looking for property in the niche. You know, we’re constantly talked about finding a niche if you can and then utilizing video. It’s giving and you mentioned brand and you know, having you on social media doing video writing content, giving those signals and then you’ve got the map placement which I think they’re also changing as part of AI mode. I didn’t delve into that you all that but I think they’re going to be changing that to some degree. But you know, being super local and is the way that as agent or a small brokerage can really compete with the big guys and it’s giving those signals. So when people are doing localized search that your content comes up in the AI snippet, isn’t it?

Yeah. So what John is saying is right. More and more and more and more focus for rank for all the things that we have traditionally come to understand such as, oh, I want to, I want to rank for SEO. Okay, great. Well now more and more and more your reputation as a realtor in your local space impacts ranking across the board. Already does with Google in traditional and has for 10 years. It just was not a massive metric. It was a small metric. But now we’re talking about AI and AI. There’s no question AI is looking at your reviews, your published online reviews. They look at them. I can verify that they do. They also look at your brand mentions. They look at both. That’s crazy. That means that your Zillow profile has added value, your Google profile has added value. Your website has added value. Every place that you house. How’s reviews? And as I have always said, the authority lies with the bigger portals. So most likely, even though you would like to think that posting your. Your, your reviews to your to directly to your website is the smarter, best idea, I’m here to tell you it’s absolutely not.

You want your reviews on, and I don’t like this website, but you want your reviews on Yelp, you want your reviews on Google, you want your reviews on Zillow, you want your reviews on realtor.com before you want them on your profile. So you pick some places or all those places, and you get your clients to post reviews about you there. Because guess what? Not only does it count for your traditional SEO results, it counts for your local SEO results now. And that’s not even counting the idea of how people are buying and selling services these days. It’s no longer like, John, I still have people call into me and say, I’ll go anywhere in California and sell a house. It’s like, dude, what year are you living in? Starting to sound antiquated to me. It’s like, number one, the person that lives in Pacoima is not calling a Los Angeles realtor. The only circumstance in which that makes sense is like, John, if you’re my cousin and you’re like, Robert, can you do me a massive, huge favor? Get licensed out here in Reno and. And then come out here and just help me with my real estate stuff?

Because I’ve just had all these terrible experiences with realtors. I’d really appreciate it. Other than that extraordinarily extreme scenario, I do not see where the logic lies in trying to get a realtor, because everybody knows John. If you had to guess, how many licensed realtors do you think there are within 10 miles of where you’re located?

Where I am? Oh, I have no idea. Basically a couple hundred at least. Yes, I would say so.

Okay. And that’s. That’s in a much smaller city. I’m In Los Angeles, 10 miles radius square from me right now. A couple thousand. Yes. Best guess, maybe more. So, couple thousand realtors, you. You think to yourself, like, within 10 miles of my house, I should be able to find one that can do a little short drive over here and do all the real estate work. Does that make sense to you? John, because it sure does make sense to me.

Yeah.

So that’s what we’re talking about when we say about local. Now I really want to get into these final subjects because they’re great and I don’t have a lot of time left. So I’m just. If John, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to fast forward into the next thing that you put on here, which is paid placement is coming. What makes you say that? I mean, I don’t disagree. I’m just curious.

Well, you know that’s, that’s like generates 80% of Google’s income or, or very, very to that level. So this has been one of their problems, isn’t it? So, but it’s coming, you know, that’s how open AI is coming, going to generate more income that they’ve been the first to get people to sign up for different paid plans. But is the main way Google plans to monetize this and keep the company one of the most profitable businesses in North America is that when it does AI snippet search, you can. I don’t know how this is going to work out with the regulators. I have no idea because it’s a bad enough situation as it is. But this is going to put it on steroids. But they’re, they’re. Some of those snippet recommendations are going to be paid for.

It’s an interesting. Yeah, I guess. I mean anytime a business monetizes, that’s going to be true. Google is currently monetizing these results the same way they always have, which is there. If you go to the higher or lower parts of the page, there’s still their traditional sponsored results. They have a page. But you are right in the sense that other people are not doing that. That gives Google a chance to potentially move in behind them and do exactly what you said. Exactly. I hadn’t even thought of it. It’s so egregiously commercial. I hadn’t even thought of it. Which is embarrassing because I think you’re right. I think, I actually think that that’s a very, very solid point that you’re probably right. Like, like wherever money can be made is generally where, where it’s going to get made. Now the AI responses that Google is doing, they allow you to save to overviews and then copy and paste to like a sheet. Currently, because of all the rules and regulations dominating Google, they’re not nearly ahead of the game as other tools are when it comes to exporting transporting information. Okay, but they are. Gemini has proven that Google has the, has the tech, they’ve got the ability to do it.

You just have to sign up for it and pay a subscription. Whereas ChatGPT does all sorts of fascinating things where it just allows you to Download, you know, PDFs and stuff like that and just like crazy what you can do. And why do I say that? Because Chappie GPT, as far as I can tell, is the biggest company at just begging for a lawsuit. A hundred of them. I don’t know how they’re not just at full stop in court. Like, I seriously don’t know. Nobody asked me or anybody that I know if they could use our information now that, now, in theory, that we put it out onto the web because we allow it to be read but not used. It’s curious they’re saying they’re reading it anyway. It’s, it’s. I agree with you, what you said, and actually I agree with you in the thing that I think is fascinating is where are we going to go with the law as it relates to all this stuff?

Because I do think, I know you’ve got to be off in a minute. Still, I believe they will have to back off a little bit, because what I mean by that is that if you’re taking people’s content and generating answers. There’s no benefit for the people who create the content; in the end, the content will dry up because I’m not getting into general intelligence. And this is about the super mind, because the. I want us to concentrate on these large language models because they’re fantastic technology, but it is only pattern recognition at an impressive scale. But if people put things behind pay walls and do not produce, because there’s no reason for them, because they’re not going to get any traffic, no benefit from it, so people will stop making it. I think they need to motivate content generation in some way. And I might be wrong about this, but it will be interesting to see how all this works out.

Robert, I couldn’t agree with you more. Motivation, like, listen, you take away all my drive, all the possibility of ranking everything. I would happily keep what I’ve got up on the Internet, but I’m going to save myself the $60,000 to $100,000 a year I spend on content. No doubt about it, no doubt about it. Starting tomorrow. And with a sigh of relief, to some degree, even though it’s my business, I love helping and producing it. But there is always the piece of my mind, John, that looks at it and goes. At least in theory, I’m breaking even on the effort. Like, I’m not just spending money to educate everybody altruistically. Like, there’s a reason you know your business. Yeah. So if you take away that. That element. Oh, I’m out, man. I’m out tomorrow. Good point. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I’m so sorry, John. I’m so sorry. Audience. I’ve had a hard day in and out today, and I apologize to everybody. It’s a real brief show. Well, it’s just no bonus content today. It’s the same length as always. My name is Robert Newman. You can find me at inboundram.com and do us a favor.

Remember that you are listening to the number 86 show in the world for real estate. We’re so grateful. If you do us a favor and hit the like button or comment button, we’d appreciate it. It does make a huge difference in our ranking. And. And it costs you nothing. Zero. Nada. John, how would you prefer people to contact you?

Yeah. You know, if you want to support the show, go to Robert’s YouTube channel, inbound marketing, and subscribe, and also go to the Mail-Right YouTube channel and subscribe to that channel. That’s the best way that you could show your support for both of us. Go to those two channels and subscribe, and that’s the best way. If you would like to contact me, please visit the Melright website and explore what we have to offer. You’re going to be blown away by the value that we’re offering. And back over to you, Rob.

And don’t remember, it’s mail hyphen. Right. When you go to John’s website, Mail-Right.com. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for giving us a little bit of your time, and I hope we provoke some thoughtful discussion amongst yourselves today. It was. I love the subject. John, keep them company. Coming. It’s on a lot of people’s minds. I hope we found that it was on our audience. Goodbye, everybody.

Are you a struggling real estate broker owner in 2025? Discover proven strategies to boost your business and thrive in today’s market.

Are you a broker owner feeling overwhelmed in the competitive landscape of 2025? This insightful video delves deeply into the challenges that struggling broker owners face today. From navigating market changes to implementing effective strategies, we explore practical solutions to help you thrive. Join us as we uncover the keys to turning your brokerage around and achieving success.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 474. And yes, that’s right. You have found the 86th most popular real estate podcast in the country. Congratulations. We’re so excited to have you today. So, before I go off on some rant, I would love to introduce you to the guy, the founder of The Myth, The Legend. He has founded numerous innovative digital programs, plans, podcasts, and businesses. I can go on and on. He has a myth in his mind. Where did you jump in? I would like to say hello to you. Thanks for that, Robert. Please feel free just to sing if you’re paying attention.

God, Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel Wright. We’re an easy-to-use CRM with a focus on lead generation. We offer a user-friendly CRM and a range of other tools at a competitive price point of slightly under $50 per month. If you pay month to month, you want to find more. Go over to Mail-Right.com, and we would love you to come on board. Back over, Hello to you, Rob.

Speaking of which, today’s show is going to talk, we’re going to be talking about broker owners who might be struggling in 2025 and some ideas to make that struggle a little easier. One of those ideas is to scrutinize your budgets and start investing a little more time in areas where you might have let money do the talking for you. Then a circumstance might be using a new tool like John’s that’s inexpensive, and where you can get some handholding. And get better results than someplace that you’ve been spending two, three, or four times as much. So this is an option. Now, it’s always unpleasant learning new things. Always. John’s tools, my tools, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. I understand it isn’t easy. But right now in this season that we’re in, if ever there’s going to be a time that you’re going to take on new stuff with the intent of trying to embrace lower costs, this is the time. So, without any further ado, are you overwhelmed in this market we’re in? A lot of people that we’re talking to, I don’t know about John, but I am indeed talking to a lot of overwhelmed people.

And the circumstances, John, that we’re talking about, I’m watching people do some shocking things, break contracts with companies that they’ve made a lot of money off of for a long time. I’m taking on some clients. I’m taking on some clients because I know this is going to be shocking to you. News flash, everyone, I’m far more expensive than John is in terms of the marketing services my company provides. However, there are many people out there who are more expensive than I am. A lot of the people that I’m talking to, John, they’re breaking big contracts with people that have PPC budgets and looking for more guerrilla ways to market themselves. I’m taking on a lot of really cool, interesting new agreements that I’ve never taken on. I’m working on a Wix site, specifically a luxury gift site, for the first time. A lot of really… I know—a lot of really unusual Wix. And everybody, I’m going to say that John did something interesting, but you’re going to have to watch the video to see it. So, go to the YouTube channel. What are you going to say, John?

Did you have to swear Wix?

Oh, my John, I’m going to say that… I’m going to toss this over to you, but you said that you thought this would be an interesting subject and that I’d have some advice. I surely do. I surely do. But why did you choose this topic for today?

I watched a couple of videos on other people’s YouTube channels, and one of them addressed this subject. It would be an interesting subject to talk about because obviously, the market is in a tough spot at the present moment. It’s been like this for over a year. None of us knows where it’s going. It’s very regionalized. There are certain areas where I’ve observed a significant decline in activity, but in other places, prices are still increasing. Can’t believe there’s more of them. It’s a very diverse landscape. But a lot of independent brokers, brokers that aren’t part of major regional and national franchises, feel they’re under attack in multiple ways that are affecting their bottom line. The amount of business out there has declined quite a lot, but it’s even more than that. It’s as if they’re being attacked from multiple vectors, from various points. I’ve spoken to a few, as most of our clientele are independent agents, and many of them are part of a brokerage or smaller boutique brokerages we assist. They feel attacked. Similarly, this is the intro, but number two is competing with eXp or Reel in terms of keeping and attracting top talent.

From the couple of videos I watched and a few conversations I’ve had, this is one of the issues that many independent, smaller boutique brokerages have been facing. I’d like your thoughts on how a brokerage, a boutique, or a smaller brokerage can retain their top producers who are attracted to eXp and the real estate industry. I’ve got strong opinions on these companies. However, I’d like to offer some advice and then share my views.

John, listen, building sales teams, keeping people employed, and retaining staff have been one of my top challenges throughout my entire career, spanning all four years. Keeping large call centers full of people on the phones is way more difficult than people realize it’s a shit job that very few people want to do. You have to get creative about keeping people in seats. And so you’ve got the standard ways that all of you’ve heard of, but I’m going to go through a couple of them: prizes, vacations, dinner with the boss, things like that. Providing personal attention to your team members promptly will foster better personal relationships. Don’t just do Zoom meetings. Take people out to lunch, and walk your dogs with your team members. Create personal relationships in a world that is drifting away from them. These are all standard tactics when you talk about management and leadership. And obviously, the Pareto principle applies. You start with your top 20% of your producers and work your way down. You just go down and create relationships. Now, that’s the easy stuff, and all of you should already be doing that. If you’re not, come on, man, do the basics.

Spend more time with people. Be a good leader. But the other bit of it is, and this is not so common, is you have to get out in front of the messaging that everybody is receiving in the world today, John, whether you want to or not. It’s a crap proposition. I am reluctantly becoming really, really versed in AI in its current state. I’m about ready. I’ve got beta tests into numerous high flotuten AI things, and I’m going to sign up for Gemini, and I can go on and on. But why am I doing it? Do I think it’s any place different than anything you and I have talked about? Not really. It’s still not going to be my business model. But I’ll tell you what has to happen. Everybody, the noise has gotten so large everywhere that you must give a nod to it and participate so that people think that they’re not being left behind by staying with you. That’s it. That’s the whole point. You have to make other people believe that you know what’s going on so that they don’t think or get attracted to something shiny somewhere else that says, We’re using AI in all of our business.

It’s going to change your life. It’s not, but your people won’t listen to you. So get involved in some AI stuff. Look at AI, some AI agents. Pay attention to what’s going on. Look at Phonely. That’s been the big one for real estate agents that I’ve been hearing about a lot lately. Look at Phonely. That’ll keep people in tune with your business. So what were you going to say, John? You said you had something to add here.

If you’re a smaller independent brokerage, and I think you should have somebody in the organization that’s a digital manager, and you should be generating leads to your agents. But your agents are subcontractors, and you I wouldn’t be upset that they do their own activities. They have their own website, and they’re doing their own marketing. But I do think as part of the brokerage, let’s say you got 10 to 20 agents, and let’s say five of them are top performers, you should have a digital platform yourself that’s generating decent leads. Needs, and they should be distributed amongst the company. I think this was also ticked off by somebody that I respect in the industry, and it’s been on the show one or two times. A while ago, So that’s Jimmy Burgess. He’s publicly said he’s become part of the real team, and he’s marketing for them and really pushing. I don’t want to fall out with Jimmy because I do respect him. I was saddened to hear of that decision. But I’ve explained this before, haven’t I, Robert? I’m English. I consider eXp and real to be glorified MLMs, which is a polite way of saying that they’re a pyramid.

They’re involved in my opinion, in a pyramid scheme, which is totally illegal in the UK, in England. If you are found guilty of being in a pyramid scheme or MLM, you go to prison in the UK. It’s straight to jail, monopoly. You go straight to jail. There’s no messing around, Robert. I don’t want anything to do with them. If I was a real estate agent, I think their focus is not about real estate. Their focus is about getting other agents to be part of the MLM.

I definitely disagree with you. I think Jimmy is one of the sharpest guys that you and I have ever had on the show inside the real estate space. I think that he understands, and the rules, what eXp is doing and real are doing are different. I think that eXp does come dangerously close to being an MLM, and I don’t think that real does. But that’s not a conversation for another… That’s a conversation for another day. If you’re listening to this show and you’re a broker owner and you’re losing people to real in guys like Jimmy, my answer to you is, of course you are, I would probably be going over to real. And the reason is so, so, so simple. Jimmy and Ricky Caruth and Kyle Handy, if you go over, they have done all the hard work that you have not done in order to learn digital marketing, and they will teach you how to successfully digital market inside your business. And that’s as simple as it gets. Jimmy is great at it. And Jimmy carries the added weight that he is really good at traditional marketing as well, and he’s not a bad salesperson.

I mean, the guy is a triple threat. I would be in terror knowing that he might be in charge of recruiting for real because he’s very good. He’s very talented. He built up a massive audience out of nothing on Inman. He did a great job at it, and he’s probably just going to a place where he can have a bigger impact, recruit more people, and make a little more money in the process.

That’s I’m not saying you’re right or wrong. I’m just explaining because of my background, my cultural background. Anything, anything to do with… But it doesn’t bother my American friends. I’ve known many people, it doesn’t bother them being part or looking at MLM. I want nothing to do with it. Which is fair.

And honestly, since the purpose of this show, which we’re going to cover a little bit more when we get back. The purpose of the show is not to scare you guys white. It’s to give you some tools and tactics to compete. So we’re going to give you a moment to chew on that. We’re going to come back and we are going to give you some tactics to compete. But I am afraid, I’m just going to be honest with everybody, this is more like it is now time to take the big ugly vitamin that you don’t like to take. That’s what you’re going to get. I usually try to really throw some sizzle out there. Today, it’s all about the… We used to have a word for it. There used to be this terrible syrup that all parents made you drink. It was God awful. I can’t remember it anymore. It’s got a weird name. You know what I’m talking That’s what we’re talking about, though. All right, anyway, when we come back- Am I the Syrup? No, the information is the Syrup in this case. Normally, yes, you are, but not this time. All right, everybody, we’re going to come back.

When we come back, wherever you’re at, this message that I used to send out, it is because of all of you that you have made the show what it is. Today’s show has been sponsored by InboundREM and Mail-Right. Check them out. Inboundrem. Com is a leader in SEO services. Mail-right is an incredibly affordable all-in-one system. Go to those websites and check them out. When we come back from break, after you’ve liked the show because we know we’re super fantastic, then we’re going to cover some more plans for some small broker owners to succeed in their businesses. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 474. We’re talking today about being a broker and owner in today’s world, competing against companies very specifically like eXp and Real. Exp and Real are taking over the digital space Because what’s happened is those models are very conducive to people like me who really know how to market because you can build large teams virtually and those teams can go out and sell real estate on their own. So it takes a few things into account. It assumes that you can already sell real estate.

It assumes that you might be weak in the digital world. And if those things are true, then real in the exp and you have somebody that’s seeking slightly higher compensation, better like an actual investment inside the company, and better return on their time in terms of learning and digital information, that’s when you might lose them to real or eXp. As I’m sure you guys can realize, based on the list I just gave you, that’s a real threat. Better compensation, better learning, more flexibility, and coaches. That’s what those models provide. It’s really dangerous to a traditional small broker owner. Real hard to compete with. How do I suggest that broker owners compete, John? Well, there’s three or four different ways. The biggest, easiest way, always, John, always, always. The way that small broker and owners can compete and trounce these systems, you know what these systems don’t do? They require you to learn stuff and do stuff on your own. Here’s where you can keep somebody locked in. Always be providing leads, good, bad, or different. Always be handing leads off to your people. All right? Always. If you have to settle for low-quality leads that they may have to work a little harder on, fine.

Yet used to being a hard ass about how your people work your leads, because let me tell you, as difficult as it is to conceive, having some lead to call, even a low-quality one, is better in like 80% of salespeople’s minds than having zero leads. They will take bad. They will argue with you and debate with you and tell you to waste of their time. I’ve heard it my entire career. They will also not leave because to them, the only thing that’s worse than having a bad lead is having no leads and having the cold call. So whatever you’re all doing, Facebook marketing, websites, capture something, give them something. Give them a plan. People want structure. They want a process and they want a system. That’s the next thing. The days in which you can just say, Oh, come work for me. I’m going to give you a desk and a phone, and I’m going to take a quarter to 1% of your commission for that. Those days are gone, ladies and gentlemen. Most people work out of their home. It’s not a good offer anymore as a broker. You can’t do it. You can give somebody a process where they get texted these bad leads, like through Five Street or any number of the good lead routing systems that are out there.

Just make it seamless Just send them something. Every day when they open up their email, give them a couple of bad leads. It’s so much better and you’ll keep your sales force. Not always, but some of the time. You’ll keep your sales force. So For those listening to this show, here’s your bad medicine, your bad juju. You’re going to have to get your bone up on your processes like you really are. You got to have processes in place. And if all of you are out there going, Well, that’s okay, Robert. I don’t need a process. I’m paying all my money to Zillow, and they send leads straight to my salespeople, and they sign us up for follow-up boss. Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the reason that Zillow is owning the process and just spent $500 million on follow-up boss is because they desperately want you to put your salespeople into their tools so that they own the entire lead generation process, including the actual nurturing and working of the leads. Because once they own your people’s understanding of process, they own your business. Full stop. They will take whatever percentage they want, and they are already doing that.

So if all of you are really determined to be in business with a marketing partner that is not consistent, then by all means, go with Zillow.

Can we quickly go get your feet, get your insight about what’s working with your own smaller brokerages that you work with? What’s the mixture that’s still getting some results? I know it’s very dependent on every local market. If the local market is totally overpriced and people, investors or the local population, can’t afford to buy the property and the investors, the outside, out-of-state investors have dried up, it is what it is. What we’re seeing in Florida and some of the cities in Texas seems to be following it. But what is the mixture of giving these leads? Is it the website and a mix of Google local adverts? What is the balance you’re finding that gets the best return?

Well, you’re right. It does depend on area. We’ve had to spend a lot more time communicating with individual clients to figure out what the secret sauce is in their specific area. But I focus on three areas, and there’s definitely an area that shines above all others right now, which is local, which is why I’m focused all my energy and time on selling local-based services. I’ve dropped my website pricing by 75 %, John, taken a massive cut. But the reason I took a massive cut was because what I’m seeing working consistently across most markets, let’s call it 85 % of them, is still ranking in Google profiles. Not only are they doing well, many of those markets are seeing increases. The way that people are, lead generation is changing. Where people are responding is changing. And so my belief is that some of the portals are losing traction, and the person that’s picking it up is Google Local Service Profiles, and I strongly believe that. And so both paid LSA ads, the hyper local, I’m seeing How about this? I think I’m pretty sure that of every 10 clients I sign up for that service, eight see positive ROI.

I mean, it’s a staggeringly large number, considering the market that we’re in, taking that into account. But what else am I seeing work? Video still works. A combination of video with local is my favorite go to, like pop one video on, edit the video, do stuff like that, because then we’re seeing the ability for somebody to get some traction on YouTube, and now we’re also talking about local. So we’re seeing a lot of traction from inbound and local. We’re seeing some benefit. There are people that I do business with that still manage larger marketing contracts. And what What I’m seeing more and more of, John, is the people that do video and stuff, they’re sending that money to more and more to video editing and SEO teams like us. I’m getting a lot more of that business. Every time I do an SEO contract these days, it includes a lot of video editing and a lot of video optimization stuff inside of it. The only reason for that, John, the only reason that makes any sense is that all those people are seeing returns, calls, inquiries, comments, There’s stuff coming in from either existing or new clients.

Last but not least, we’re seeing a shift, a huge, massive shift in that a lot of the good business that’s out there to be had is more listings than buyers, which is a weird place for me to be in because for fucking years now, it’s been nothing but let’s get in front of buyers, let’s get in front of buyers, let’s get in front of buyers. Now, I understand, and everything you said was true, John, but I got to tell you, I really feel like you have a couple of where the hot air is still escaping, and LA is one of them. But 90% of the people I’m talking to, not a smaller number, 90% are dealing with really wildly depressed markets. There’s only one consistent exception in every marketplace. If you’re lucky to have it, everybody grab a notepad. There’s two big strategies that are getting tossed around, John, amongst my and chat groups and stuff like that. One, which I believe in, is new development. Brett and other clients I have are literally raking it in, making record profits because they immediately pivoted and adapted. This is where long term clients that you’ve consulted with for years comes into play.

I’m sure you understand it and could visualize it. It’s like, I have a guy who has a well ranking site. We drifted away from buyer stuff and started talking about new developments. And now his website is three times more traffic, tons of calls, everything that we want. And we changed one major thing. We focused on builders, and we focused on builders that were building in this area. And all of a sudden, even though many of the developments we’re talking about are just like 20, 30 homes, it doesn’t matter. He’s getting all the traffic and all the calls. So if he wants to send them somewhere else or try to sell them into something else, it’s his to do. That’s one area. Now, the other area, which I’m also seeing a lot of, I got to hate it, but it’s so popular, is I’m watching agents cut their commission. There’s this program that’s out there that all of you have probably heard of that has some good case studies from advertising that they’re going to cut the buyer side commission, and they are doing well with it. Going with 2% is what I’ve seen a lot of.

And I don’t know, John. Okay, this is my multi-level marketing moment. I’ve always been a high-end commission-only salesperson. And I got to tell you, you always lose when you start cutting your commission. Always. That’s my experience. That’s my whole career’s worth of experience. The second you start making exceptions to your commission is the second that not only do you start losing money, but you have to start cutting service. Full stop. You’re a business person Just like everybody else. If you take away your money, you lose your validation for some of the things you might be doing as a salesperson to provide service to a client. Those are my thoughts.

Yeah, I think they’re very insightful. I agreed with all of them. I think our diversions in the first half of the show around real, and I think there’s more alignment when it to eXp between you and me. I’ve explained it. It’s me. It’s my cultural background. I was in England until I was 42. For television program after television program, radio program, stridently anti-MLM schemes. In In the end, it became the law in England, and it become a crinimal. It’s not civil law, it’s a crinimal law that if they can prove that you’re engaging in these business models, you go to prison, and I can’t get over that. But it doesn’t bother because it’s a totally different culture, a totally different legal situation, isn’t it, Robert?

It is indeed. So ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to lay some wisdom on all of you that says building a successful team and providing website training or providing valuable training. So I’m going to give you guys all the tips that I used to use to build teams. I have built so many top performing teams. I don’t even have words for it. Adt, MCI, AT&T, that’s been my skill the entire time, and here’s how I Get them young, get them dumb, train them in classes, train them in masses, kick them in the asses. I’ve used that analogy for my whole career, and it has never failed. You get people before they know anything, and then you teach them something. Have something to teach them. Have a process, a training program, believe in it. If you don’t know how you are successful, in my humble opinion, you probably shouldn’t be a business owner or leader. You should really retool and get to a place where you can understand how you’ve done what you’ve done. For those of you, your referral sales people who’ve just been at it for 20 years, focus on how you build relationships and then turn that into a process.

Do you call everybody? Are you a Southern Bell and never really thought about it? I’m sorry, but you guys have to think about what you do and how you do it. I’m not saying most of you, if you’re successful, you have a process, just like John does. You’re overly humble, in my opinion, John. You’ve gotten many different businesses up and off the ground. Maybe your main skill has been perseverance. I don’t know. But you do have a process. How do you persevere? I get up early in the morning. I work hard all day long. I just plug away. I read other people. That’s a process. If you guys have a process because you don’t know something, you wake up, you read a blog, that somebody that theoretically knows what they’re doing. Well, guys, get up, do that, find a couple of people that know what they’re doing, then turn that into a process for your young, dumb, but excitable trainees, and then give them those places because people never forget the ones that taught them how to fish. If you actually mentor people, you want to know it builds more loyalty than anything else, John, that I’ve ever found more than money.

Teach people a skill for the first time in their lives. Make them independent. Please provide them with the tools to add value in the marketplace. And as long as you don’t treat them like complete and utter garbage, they tend to be loyal. By waste, I mean paying them 30% less than anybody else will pay them. Once somebody is learning something from you, they tend to stay loyal to you. It’s crazy how opening the gateways of somebody’s mind changes the paradigm of the relationship between them and you. That’s why getting them young is so relevant. That’s why having a process in place, such as a training program, is essential. Suppose you need to buy somebody else’s and put your name on it, great. But my only criterion for that is to make sure that you’ve made it yours. Make sure you understand it, that you went through it, that you’ve absorbed it, that you’ve used it, and that you know it. And so when you communicate it, the belief will come through in your voice. And now, when you’re teaching somebody else something, they buy it. That’s my closing to building a successful team. And guys, if you don’t know how to find them young, go to any college.

And failing that, go to high school. Go to any place that has unemployed people. Go to your EDD office. Go to… And physically go there. You want to impress people. Show up as an employer. Go to job fairs. They still work. They’ve never failed. They never will fail. Why? Because students are already on campus, they’re not looking online. That’s one of the very few things that’s never going to change. They’re going to school, they see a job fair in progress, so they drop by to boost their chances. They’re already there. They have to be there until the day changes when school is no longer taught on a campus. This is going to be successful. We use it in the Philippines, by the way. The University of Cebu is my favorite partner there.

That’s my advice, John.

It’s fantastic. Would you like us to wrap it up now?

We shall. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, who should not be listening to this show because I curse like a sailor, we appreciate your earbuds today. We do. You have been a part of episode number 474 of the 86th top-rated podcast in the country for real estate agents. Congratulations. Pat yourself on the back. We appreciate it. If you’d like to learn more about SEO or how to implement specific marketing strategies, you can visit inboundrem for more information. Com. We also provide services, websites, and many, many other things that will change your real estate re-generation game if you’re willing to learn a thing or two. Without any further ado, let me turn it over to my cohort, who also has an incredible, excellent, it’s the very best agency in He’s in the country doing a low cost, price it as you want, pretty much, service, and you can still get him on the phone. John, how would you like people to reach out to you if they want to? You can go to the Mail-Right.com website.

Please have a look at the features that we are offering. I think you’ll be blown away. We also have a well-designed library of WordPress themes, which enables you to create a professional-looking website quickly. That can also be IDX-enabled and customized. We also offer that service, but it’s a nice package. Back over to you, Robert.

Beautiful. Once again, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of inboundrem.com, a lifelong marketer, and one of the country’s top real estate SEO experts. I’m teaching myself to be one of the country’s best real estate AI guys. If the subjects interest you, if they can help your business grow, you know where to find me. All right, everybody, thank you so much. John, take us offline.

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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 473. Today is the MailRight AI Clown Video Marketing. And once again, John is spreading his stuff that has made us, drum roll, number 86 in the world for real estate podcasts. That’s right. You have found the ’86 Most Popular Real Estate podcast. Congratulations. What we’re going to talk about today is video cloning, AI Video Clone Marketing, Video Marketing, and we’re going to talk about some real estate applications. This particular episode might have been inspired by something we were doing at InboundREM, the company I founded, and we’ve been testing video cloning. I have some stuff to say about this, and we have released an actual beta test of this product in a live fire situation with a real client. It was tough to get to the point. It takes a long time to get people on board. Took us two weeks to produce the video. I can go on and on. But anyway, we will talk about the results, not the work. It should be super exciting.

But before we do, the man behind the curtain, my own personal Oz, go ahead and introduce yourself, John, and tell the audience who you are.

I’m going to surprise Robert. I’ve got a little secret that I will tell him during the show that will surprise him. But I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are an affordable CRM, but a lot more. We give you a suite of digital tools linked to your CRM that can get you or will get you some quality online leads at a very affordable price, starting at slightly under $49 a month. Back over to you, Robert.

Beautiful. All right. For those of you who don’t know, you may not understand what we’re talking about when we say the concept of an AI clone. A clone is where you take yourself, not anybody, somebody else, just yourself, and you go, I would like to have a talking head version of myself do a video. For those of you who are old, and I’m going back farther than even John will probably remember, we’re talking about something similar to a more realistic version of Max Headroom. For those of you who are like me, who are Generation X or whatever we are, you will know exactly who I’m talking about.

I have loved Generation X for one year. Okay.

All right. All right, Boomer. No, I’m just kidding.

I’m a Generation X.

I believe you. I believe you. I know you are. I’m just screwing around. All right. So you can find out how cutting edge… Anyway, the concept of a clone has fascinated me, mainly because John, the use cases, as you know, really are deep for real estate. The number of real estate veterans I have is very similar to the actual case study I did, which is, okay, you have some different types of real estate professionals. This small broker owns his own brokerage, and he thinks he doesn’t have the time to do the video. It doesn’t matter whether he does or doesn’t, and he doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to do it, doesn’t have the time, but he’s a vet of 25 years, so he has plenty of knowledge and expertise, and he’s very typical of many of my customers. Telling him that there was a way to do him in video but have us produce it, you’d be surprised, ladies and gentlemen, how many people are excited by that. I was for sure surprised. John, so that’s the introduction. Before we go any further, though, John, I noticed you nodding, and everybody cannot hear the nods. However, they’re listening to the show.

So do me a in favor and say, answer me this, with your experience, which is a little less than mine, but you’ve now talked to a lot of realtors, do you think that you also see and understand the need that I just pointed out?

Oh, totally. Do you want a little secret, Robert?

Yeah, sure.

I looked at this over a year ago, but not in the same way you looked at it. I was in the midst of doing, for my other business, a LinkedIn business-to-business campaign. And I was looking at the possibility of a system that could clone me. But then the system I looked at could automatically introduce the client’s name in the video. So you have one video, but your lips would change for the different first names of each client. It was a system that’s on this list, Behuman. I spent much time on it with them, and it was a total, utter failure. It was one of the worst experiences with a startup company I’ve ever had. But I bought it from Sapsuma, a special deal, and that looks like they’ve continued, and I have an account with them, so I might repurchase it because I plan to do another business-to-business outreach in the next month to two months, and I would like this. But in general, I’ve just been with the research I’ve done this week, and I’ve just been blown away by how far some of these platforms have gone.

It’s just mind-boggling, Robert.

It is only a matter of time before you cannot tell. I’m very grateful that I’ve been getting so much pressure from my social circle to keep my eyes firmly locked on how and what’s happening in AI. Because I looked at it, and then I started it. I’m still, even with the video we’ve produced that we sent out to our audience, which, for those of you who are interested, you can go to youtube/aboutinboundrem. If you’re curious to see what it looks like, you will find my video of the test, essentially the generative AI video, already posted there. But I have to say that I wasn’t there, John. I’m still not there. It was a beta, but it’s the most explosive beta I’ve ever done. I didn’t tell anybody, you included, that it was ready for full-time. I’m just looking at it and trying to see what can be done. I found a client who was willing to do it with us. And then I had a whole bunch of clients message me going, Yeah, let’s do it. And I’m like, Whoa, it’s not ready. And I have to charge you.

Because here’s a few things that you may not know, John. I spent two weeks of my own time on that video. It was no joke.

Oh, he’s the process. Some of the resources that I’ve given you are other agencies that have been showing what they’re doing on YouTube. And it’s a multi-step process. A team, obviously, they will get quicker, but there’s some agencies, and I’ve given you some resources, and it’s just amazing. I’ve given you some of the tools which they’ve recommended. I don’t watch American television, so I just do research on stuff. It’s really very impressive, Robert.

Just one more small wind up, because this What is the introduction and the DIY part? Well, it is DIY. You could do it yourself, but here’s what it took for us to do it, John. Number one, we needed Hey, Jen for the deep fake, which is we’re going to review that service towards the end of this podcast. Chatgpt. John and I haven’t talked about it specifically, but certainly everybody should know who and what that is at this point. We use that for the script, which, by the way, the only complaint that we did get from the client about this product was the script. I feel like I handed this off to a team, and I felt like I didn’t oversight it very much. When the product came out, I still didn’t oversight it very much. I feel like the team made a small mistake in letting ChatGPT write the script. They certainly made a mistake in that they didn’t reach out to the client to get approval for the script because all of us were just like, Huh, wonder what we can do with this. It was really a test. Then we used Adobe Premiere Pro for compiling and editing, and that is where it took us all the time, John.

I’ve got some tools that might help you with that, Robert.

I love to hear about them. Then we used Canva for stock media and other elements that we added into the video, which once again, the very few little pieces of pushback that we had from the client were on the stock media and the elements, but that was because the client didn’t provide these things to us in advance. That is the nature of this job, which is so farging frustrating because the client was asked for the deliverables. They did not give them to us. So we went ahead with our pre-discussed project and produced him using what we could get our hands on and get the rights to in a fairly inexpensive way because it was all on my dime, not his. And then he looked at it and said, This general stuff is crap. Let me give you the real thing. And I’m like, Buddy, it was going to take me another four hours to get my video editor back in here and change this stuff for the things that we asked you for in the first place.

Obviously, Robert’s having a little bit of a day, but in fairness to Robert, You did show me the video, a bit of it. I thought you did a really great job.

Thank you. I mean, thank you. Really, all the credit goes to the teams. The credit I get is as a leader with a focus on the effort, not the actual work.

I thought your team did a great job as a beta.

Yeah, I was really impressed. Actually, my entire company was really impressed. We were all shocked about how far we got with this beta. I strongly recommend everybody listening to the show reads it. Having said all that, we’re going to jump into reviewing some tools that might do something like that for you, the people out there listening.

Well, I think we should… I’m sorry to jump in, but I think we should leave the tools for the second half. But I think what we should cover in this first half, just the end of the first half, is what are some of the major lessons that you learned in doing your own beta Is there anything that you observe, some insights that you could share?

Right now, AI, this type of AI, at least, is a long ways away from being even close to as efficient as just doing the video yourself. It was so not even a comparison. Took us weeks of work to build this beta, and it’s a ridiculous amount of effort so somebody can avoid five minutes in front of a camera. Really, that’s my… If you want I don’t know what my knee jerk was, John. I looked at two weeks worth of work and close to 50 billable hours, which we didn’t bill for, and then said, But all of this could be accomplished by one human being with a phone and five minutes? Are you kidding me? But no, there’s some people that just they want to do it the other way.

I’ve got some good news about that as well.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, which I’ll share with you the second off by my research.

Okay, well, fantastic. Fantastic. I can’t wait. I guess the other lessons that were learned were… I will say this. Part of the reason I agreed to the beta, John, and for all those listening, and this would apply to real estate agents, this applies to John, this applies to everybody. You know the reason I did the beta, because I’m sitting here griping to all of you about how much time it took me, and I knew it would be time that we didn’t have and money I didn’t want to pay, and I can go on and on because it might have been free for the client, but it was not free for me. So Why did I do it? Well, I really did think and still think that the conversation around AI, the white hot fire around you add, you say the words AI and you add anything after that, and I think there’s marketing value in that. I learned a long time ago, as much as it might frustrate me, not to fight the forced fire of people’s time and attention. Just dive in and see what you can do with it. That’s what I did with this video.

It’s proven to be A hundred % like what I thought it would be. An attention getter, a marketing leader, a thing that is getting people to respond to me when very little is right now, inside the marketing world. All the things I was hoping for was accomplished. Then there’s one thing that I have not yet been able to figure out, John, if it will or won’t accomplish me, but I decided I wanted to make sure the Inbound R. E. M. Remained at the forefront of the conversation surrounding AI, even though I have vocally and still think that we don’t want to necessarily be an AI agency. However, I do know and made the decision, when you’re having the conversation about AI as it relates to real estate marketing, I want to make sure one of the first companies that you think of. So with that, I shifted a lot of my time and attention. And this is one of my first public efforts, this video. The lesson that I learned, it worked. If you can attach something that fascinates people and use AI, right now in this very brief moment in time, you’re going to get a lot of attention focused.

Yeah, I think unless you’re dealing with that rare agent that really likes to spend time on technology, this is best to leave to a agency, folks. But I’ve got some good news, which I’m going to share with Robert in the second half. Shall we go for the second Well, for a bit.

Shell. So, ladies and gentlemen, John has been very cagey today about what he’s got to share with me. He’s got a few different little things, apparently, to tell me, which I’m deeply curious about. Hopefully, you are, too. Wherever you’re watching the show today, help propel us to number 85 by smashing that like button, by telling people about the show. If we help you, if we give you something to think about, if we re-inspire you to tackle your marketing again, anything at all Well, then do us a favor, show us a little love wherever you’re listening to the show. I didn’t even know we were being considered as one of the top 100 shows. I’m going to keep pounding away at that because now that I know there’s a list, I want to be number one. We’re a long ways away from that, but apparently what this platform does is measure by reviews and likes and things like that on wherever it is you guys are listening to this podcast. So, yeah, do us a favor. Hit the like button. It matters to us. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back. It is episode number 473, and we are talking about AI video cloning, something that we at InboundRAM have already done in the whole first half of the show was talking about that.

The second half of the show is all about John’s surprises. John, I seat belted in. Surprise me.

Yeah, I think by watching the videos of other agencies and utilizing the four platforms that we’re going to quickly go through, is that you got to upload about 3-5 minutes of video. After it’s uploaded of the original individual, it can then, depending on the platform being manipulated in multiple times. After the initial upload, the next clone video, after you got it into the system, it should be a lot quicker to make another clone video. The other factor of the two main platforms that we’re going to discuss that had the most video reviews and had conversations about both of the platforms, they said one of the area where it did fall down, and it’s very similar to podcasting and normal video, is audio quality and syncing, the lip syncing. The two leaders that we’re going to discuss by the reviews that I watched, this was a consistent problem. But The two of the reviews that I watched, they utilize a third party audio script, audio sync. And one of the main platforms we’re going to discuss enables this third-party system called 11 Labs. It utilizes 11 Labs API system, so you can integrate what 11 Labs does with the audio and the syncing with HeyGen in a very automated way.

You do have to pay for both platforms, but it makes the sound quality and the lip sync much, much better and reduces the amount of time that your team are probably having to redo things based on the videos I watched.

Well, John, all I heard you What I’m going to say is you have cool enough stuff that you’ve just mentioned that now I need the recording for the show as fast as you can get it to me so that I can send it to my people and just tell them to watch the whole damn thing, because I am terrible at remembering. I need those. This exists, by the way. Everybody was in the show.

I’ll put all the links for you.

Not for seven laps, you didn’t.

No, I put it in the calendar. Updated the calendar. So they’re all in the calendar, you invite? I’ll send them again to you.

Great.

All right.

Okay. All right. So first on the list, provided by John with all his copious, copious, copious research skills is agile AI, which we did look at and we discarded. I don’t know why, though.

It seems I might be totally wrong here because the other three I’ve done a lot more research, and one of them I’ve got a lot of experience with. But this one It does seem newer on the market. It’s got a very polished interface. I presume that your team were a little bit disappointed with the end result. It has a big jump in price. It has a starter price, which they call Classic, which is $39 month to month. But then the Pro version is $149 a month. So there seems to be a big jump from their classic starter to pro. But it did seem I couldn’t find too many reviews on it. I did watch one extensive YouTube review that was very long and it did look very polished. They didn’t really cover the clone. When you upload a bit of video and you clone the individual, they were utilizing or they were showing pre-made actors and not an individual, because a lot of these platforms have a library of clone actors, but we’re talking about a video of a real estate agent and uploading them and cloning them. But I did get the impression it’s one of the newer ones out there, so maybe that…

But it looked reasonably polished, but obviously your team were dissatisfied with the output.

For reasons I don’t know, because I can tell everybody listening to this right now that our Arial AI already. They’ve done something that a lot of AI companies didn’t take the time to do. They either have the best fake avatars. In other words, they’re real people doing real things, or they’ve edited them, they spend a lot of time editing them in such a way that they won’t anymore, that they won’t do it again. But let’s just assume that they are not doing any of that and that if it’s a real product, it’s the best-looking product that I’ve seen.

Well, the demo on the website, they got a video on the front page, the home page of this lady, and she tells you I bet this is a clone, and it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it?

Yeah, I know. It’s really impressive. You found one that’s incredibly impressive to sign up with. But here’s what I don’t like about our Argyll AI. Everything that you do on the site to try to figure out if it’s real or not drives you into a signup form. Then in the signup form, it tells you you get three days of this app without paying. Then, of course, they’re probably going to ask you for billing information. What Argyll has done, which leads me to believe it’s probably fake, is they’ve created something that’s really sexy, and then hit it, or you cannot test the sexy before you pay for it, and then they hit it behind a lockout. 99% of the time when I find companies that do that, John, it’s because there’s something sleazy or scammy on the other end of it. It doesn’t work the way it should. For everybody listening to the show, and I’m not saying that that’s true, I don’t know. I I don’t know what’s going on with Argyll. I just know what I just tried to do, and I am highly suspicious of locked out. If any of the listeners of the show feel like taking a risk and putting in some payment information and trying the tool and want to send John and I a review, I’m just going to use my email because it’s easier.

Just send it to robert@inboundrem. Com. I would be happy to. I would love to take a look at it. I just don’t want to pay for it.

On to the next one.

Yeah. Synthesia. Io. Synthesia. Io. So starter price, $29. 89, $89 per month with a greater membership. Tell us what your research… How you felt about it, John?

Yeah, it seemed to be one of the leaders, apart from the last one we’re going to talk about, which I added, which might not be in your show notes, but it’s the one that you chose. But of the two, it seems to be one of the leaders. The reviews I watched that were comparing the two, the other one was Hey, Jen, is that they were saying that if you’re a team, not an individual or a small agency, but you’re a larger team, this might be the better choice. Because it’s got more team features than what, Hey, Gill. If you’ve got a group of people working on a project, The output, they didn’t… They said, most of the reviews, and I’m just going by my memory, that Hey, Jen was slightly better. But they also They said that the HeyGen put more natural movements into the video, because one of the great things is when they were first… These solutions were first brought out, you had a very static head, a very static body. But especially with HeyGen, you get much more natural movement, which you’re not having to tell it to do. So it looks like the person leans in and out and moves the head, moves the body.

But one of the good things that Seignishes this, whatever they call it, it provides a more library where you take the clone and you could swap the clothing. You could change the clothing from one video to the other, instantaneously, which Heyjell doesn’t offer you or It doesn’t offer you so many options, where the other one, the Symphonies, it gives you a whole library where you can swap out the clothing of the video. It’s really quite amazing, really.

All these tools, whether it’s Synthesia or HeyGen, are amazing. Now, I, at a very top did a little bit of recommending on these tools. Then what I did is I had my team do the deep dive, the deep well, go down the well. In specific, I have one guy who’s very dedicated and determined. His name is Jed. He can learn pretty much anything if he really focuses. He’s the one who made the decision. But I know the guy, one of the reasons I love him is because he’s cheap as hell. If there’s the slightest price difference, like 50 cents, between one product and another, he’s going to go with the one that’s 50 percent-The high journey is a lot more…

It’s much more competitive price. Shall we go on to the next one? I’ve got some real insights about the next one. Yeah, please do it. Let’s do it. Yeah, like I was telling, about a year ago, I bought a AppSumma deal, folks. Appsumma offers some lifetime deals, and this one came up because I was looking to do a beta business campaign through LinkedIn, and I had exported a number of contacts in LinkedIn, and I was going to send them an email, and the email was going to be a video video, and like what Bombom offers, but I wanted to do it on scale. I had a couple of thousand people that I wanted to do a… Not a cold email, because they had They had agreed contact through LinkedIn, and some of them I had conversations with. But I wanted to send the email with the video, and the video for me to name them by first name. Behuman had a system where you could import a list of emails, and it would send them as batches, and it would sync the video, so it would replace the first name. All right? So hello there, Kevin.

And the next one, hello, Bill. Hello, Robert. Sure. It’s just amazing. And I was really up for it, and I spent time, and it never worked. It never worked correctly. And the support I got from this bloody company was some of the most atrocious support that I’ve ever got from a startup. I actually got to the stage, I got so worked up about it, The amount of time, they said they would come back and help me, they would email me back, blah, blah, blah, and they never did. And I had constant Zooms with them and they said, Oh, they’re fixing it, and they never bloody did. I actually emailed the founder, the CEO of this company, and I had exchange of emails with him, and they never bloody sorted the thing out. So I’ve given it up on it, but it looks like they’ve continued, and it does look like by the website that they have expanded it, and they’re still offering this LinkedIn feature, and I’ve got my AppSuma for life, and they seem to still be honoring it. So I I might give it another quick go, but the good news is there’s some other players, because they were first to market with this feature, and they did get a big response through their AppSuma deal.

But I just got disheartened with them. Like I say, it’s the worst experience. I even… It’s very rare for me to do this, Rob, because AppSumma, I know the name of the game, you’re getting it at a high discount, and they don’t promise that things will work out. That’s part of the deal. But I even complained about these people to Apsuma. The funny thing is that Apsuma didn’t listen because they had them do a second run at it, so they didn’t care either. But I complained to Apsuma about these people because I told the CEO, the founder, that I thought that this was on the verge of a rip-off. I said, You are in a sticky gray area here because this thing doesn’t work. They found me off with some generalities and said they were working on it. Let’s hope they’ve fixed it because I’m going to have… But some alternatives now don’t do what Behuman is doing, right?

Absolutely. Could you give me a second? So sorry. This is- Shall I go on to the next one? Oh, yeah.

So the next one is hanging, which is the one that Robert and his team chose. And compared to Symphonix, it’s a lot cheaper. It’s a creator plan; they got a free plan to start off with.

I do not doubt that Jed used a free plan. I’m telling you, John, this is the cheapest human I’ve ever met.

And it’s not crippled by the look of it. It’s token-based. And then the creator is $29, and the team is $39. So these are very affordable prices. And if you’re a smaller agency or a one-off real estate agent, this is the platform to go with. And it does a good job. Like I said before, the only problem is the sound quality and the mouth sinking. It’s not bad, but if you can afford to link it with 11 labs, it will be quicker, and the results are much better if you allow these 11 labs to work with hygiene.

So, ladies and gentlemen, this has been my experience in general. I’ve now done deep dives in Gumloop, Manish, and many other top, super sexy, hot, like white fire hot AI apps that are out there. And what John says about this application is similar to everything I find. Yeah, there are some cool things. You’ll have to spend a while getting good at building processes, looping them in, layering them, which is what John is talking about doing right now. There’s nothing wrong with it. Sooner than later, all of this stuff won’t be necessary. What AI can do to familiarize you with it and understand it is suitable for any business owner or service provider who’s been at it for a little while. Because either one, you can save yourself a lot of time, energy, or money, or two, expand and increase your efforts a tremendous amount by getting AI familiarity early and doing things like automating your marketing, email, and monthly market report. These are all things you can do completely. I mean completely. I’m talking about automating not merely the fact that you’re doing one, but the video, all of it.

You could automate the entire thing, including a clone of yourself doing the update. The only thing you’ll have to do, ladies and gentlemen, is still be an editor for your own stuff. But the level of time that you should be able to, is 75%, I estimate. John, this has been a fascinating show. Thank you so much for… And there’s a whole bunch of… For those listening to the show, John has included a lot. This is one of those shows you’ve got to go to the mail-write website, look up the podcast, and look up the show notes for episode 473, because he has a lot, 5-10 different links in this particular set of show notes. If you want to know all the support sites that he looked at, and you really want to know what we were using as footprints for this episode, you’ve got to go to the show notes, take a look at them. John, how would you like people to contact you with questions about the show, your service, or anything?

Yeah, thanks for that, Rob. You can go to the Mail Right.com website. We’ve done some massive improvements to the system. We’ve broken up different elements into separate product lines to reduce the main product’s price to a very competitive $49. We’ve recently massively improved the product. And go to the Mail-Right.com website, have a look at what we have to offer, the features, and everything. And then book a free chat and demo with me. I’m sure you’re going to be blown away. Back over to you, Robert.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m historically known as a real estate SEO guy for those of you who may not have known me this whole time on the podcast. But truthfully, I’m a lifetime sales and marketing guy. I’ve done many big and impressive things with many of them in traditional marketing, now in digital marketing. If you would like to learn more about me or find out the over 100 pages of dedicated materials, the eight ebooks at this point that I’ve written, all on digital marketing, all for free. They’re all on my website, inboundrem.com, and you can go to the services or about page to find out everything you need to know about us and our product. We have something super exciting coming up in the next couple of months that I’ve been working on for two years. So please stay looped into the show. I promise you it will be worth your time.

Is that the end?

Yeah, that’s the end. You can end it.

I don’t know.

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a – Speed to lead

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to one of the country’s top real estate podcasts, as you voted. It’s the Mail-Right podcast, talking all things real estate marketing. We were recently, thank you to everybody listening to this show, you voted us number 86 out of all real estate podcasts. This is on Millionpodcast.com. We’re on the same list with Tom Ferry, Mike Ferry, and many other luminaries in the real estate space. I am tickled pink. I won’t speak for John, but it’s an amazing attaboy for years of hard work and conversations that we’ve had. We got a 4, 4 out of 5 stars from 18 people who wrote us reviews. If you’re listening to the show, you’re on a platform that takes reviews. Please do us a favor, give us a five-star review, and help us bump that up even higher. I would appreciate it. Without any further ado, though, I’m going to introduce my co-host, whose name is Jonathan Denwood. Jonathan is a legend in the WordPress space, and he’s quickly becoming a notable luminary of the real estate marketing space.

He has designed and built an all-in-one system for realtors with a smaller or larger budget. Works both ways, but most likely, he’s got offers that will appeal to almost anybody with any budget starting at $50 a month. We’re going to talk about some new design directions he’s taking. If you’re listening to the show now and reach out to him soon, he might even have some new stuff to show you. Without any more ado, John, could you please introduce yourself to the audience?

Oh, thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are a CRM focusing on getting real leads for real estate agents. We’re all in one platform. At an affordable price, that starts month to month at slightly under $50, so very cheap. Back over to you, Rob.

All right, today’s show, we’re going to break out to what is the core of why most of you listen to this show. We will succinctly say how to master real estate online lead generation in 2025. Now, for those of you who’ve been long-time followers of the show, I am sure we will cover some ground we’ve already covered. But right now, right out of the gate, it’s good to say that marketing is changing incredibly fast right in front of our eyes. But it’s not so much that you’re doing different things, it’s that you’re using other tools to accomplish the same things in much easier, faster ways, making this a revolution, an evolution, an acceleration you want to be a part of. I can’t emphasize that enough. So even if you’ve heard us talk about the subject before, buckle up, put us on go while you’re on your drive. Listen to this show today. I’m super excited to dive into this. The last little piece of business here is that John is consistently the guy who does all… He calls it the donkey work. It’s he who produces the show, and he publishes the show.

I am somewhat more the guy, the talent. He’s the talent, too. But I showed up and talked about the subjects he decided on for us. So do us both a favor, check out his YouTube channel and give him a thumbs up and a like, and make sure that if you have any comments about the outlines that he’s publishing, you communicate them to him. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. Jon, why don’t you start us off with the first subject on the list that you so kindly prepared for us?

Yeah, sure, Rob. Let’s recap the essential things we covered a few times during the show. Still, I think doing an overall recap and giving some structure to what I believe, and I think you agree, of what a real estate agent should be doing in 2025, if they’re looking to be successful. I think we start with Google Local, whatever they’re calling it now, and it’s linked to the power of online reviews. What Google offers for free to real estate agents is impressive. But what’s also amazing is the number of agents that don’t take up their free offerings and concentrate on getting online reviews as well. So it’s all mixed up. This has two elements, but I was tempted to separate them. But I think they’re so interwined with what Google is looking for that I decided to keep it in one point, Robert.

Copy you. So my take on local, which I’m all over my channel, my website is hyper local. Google business profiles are one of the most relevant and exciting forms of SEO, search engine optimization that real estate agents could theoretically focus on, pay for. There is a performance-based ad system that’s connected specifically to local service ads or your hyper local profile, and it’s performance pay. In other words, you do not pay anything unless you get a call, which makes it 10 times more appealing than anything else I know of in the entire industry. Now, it’s not their traditional advertising system, which is the only thing I don’t like about it is it’s hard to sign up for, and it takes a a lot of time to understand that it’s not connected to the rest of the Google advertising ecosystem. I really wish they’d figured out a way to combine it, but they didn’t. But part of that is that for those of you that have maintained diligently a great real estate license in good working order for a long period of time, you’ll appreciate this. They actually do check the license as part of the vetting process, and not just anybody can sign up.

You do have to have some form of track record and a good license and transactions and other things that they vet during the signup process. Now, having said all that, if you can rank organically and apply these service ads, it is a one, two combo that I’ve rarely seen return anything less than 8 to 10 times ROI across the board, sometimes far more than that. It just depends on where you are and how successful, like how many people are searching for a local realtor What I love about this form of advertising, John, is that when you do get calls, they tend to be what we call on my part of the business. They’re high intent leads. They’re already looking for a realtor. Oftentimes to list a home, the number one request I’ve been getting for as long as I’ve been in this business is, Get me listings, get me listings. Well, this is a way to get listings. It makes it really compelling. The advertising expense, if you decide to hire a professional company like me, is It’s not that expensive. It’s half as much as traditional SEO. That makes it compelling as well. Less expensive, faster return on investment, a local services ad component, full trackability off the profile.

John is correct. It is not a perform in silence marketing. You do need to participate in the process, get reviews, make a post every month, focus a little bit on how your I don’t know how your profile looks and feels. But you could do worse than partnering with one of the biggest marketing companies on the planet.

I’ve got a question.

Yeah.

How would you compare it in the air of lead quality to what Zillow Premier is providing? Is it the same, based on your experience, is it the same quality of lead, or is one of them slightly higher their quality of lead?

Zillow is broken. So first of all, it’s shitty, John, that Zillow has broken their advertising offerings into five different offerings now. Zillow Premier, the service that you just listed, yes, I’d compare Google profile leads all day long and twice on Tuesday. Zillow Flex, which is where they take a piece of your deal. No, I think that Zillow is so in tune with partnering with you as an agent. They want their money so bad that you actually get every call is essentially some form of qualified. Whereas these inbound calls can be people selling to you, they could be other things. Out of every 10 calls, we get about five good ones. Right now, of those five good ones, my average close ratio for my customers is like three out of 10. So it is a reasonably high close ratio, a reasonably high quality ratio. Frankly, the one thing that you can’t argue with is It’s all inbound. In other words, it’s even more passive than Zillow Premier because Zillow sends you a lead, and oftentimes, it’s not a call transferred to you. It’s a lead. It’s like a written lead, which is the old-school way of doing it.

This is a phone call where the person actually rings you. I, personally, as a salesperson, John, I want the voice on the other end of the line every single day. Do not give me an email if I have my choice. Call me because I can do something with that almost every time. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah. On to the next one. Video marketing. What do you think about that one?

Oh, my God. So we just, eight hours ago, I e-mailed out our beta test for AI. You probably have it in your inbox. You probably haven’t opened it yet yourself.

I did, actually. I had a quick look at it just before the show.

Okay. So I’ve already got two brand new inquiries. Less than eight hours later on that service, the speed in which things are changing is staggering. We cobbled together something that I thought was usable. I’m already getting told that was 60 days ago, we started the beta test process. 60 days later, I’ve had a few people reach out to me and say, Oh, we could do much better than that just in 60 days. Maybe not using the toolkit that I used, but nonetheless, we got it to a place where we thought it was functional. Not great, but functional. Then I think that very quickly, John, very quickly, we’re going to see complete functional. Just for those people listening to the show that don’t know what we’re talking about, what we did was we used video editing and we used AI and a real live video editor, but we made a talking representation of an agent that never got on camera, ever. We just used a 30-second video file as source material, which you recorded only for the AI algorithm. Then the rest of it, we wrote scripts and basically have him talking for six minutes. And he looks a little AI, but he and other people that saw it said it was possible, which means that essentially for the countless realtors I do business with, I now have You have an option for all of you that says we can do an AI product for you that only requires a source material for 30 seconds or less.

We can’t make video marketing any easier than that. That’s it. I can write the marketing for you. I can do the research. I basically can produce it like a blog post, and now we can do video on an agent site with what’s called in the marketing world faceless marketing, which I’m saying for the audience, John knows this already. We’re doing something called faceless marketing, a faceless marketing option. And it is so relevant for everybody because one of the ways that we could use this, John, that we didn’t use it for the test cases, but I’m most excited for, is market updates, like email updates.

Yeah.

Bom BOM, stuff like that. Raw data that we wrote but is fed to the audience via video and via the client’s mouth, because How is his voice? Which is what really shocked me. They nailed that voice, John. That’s 100 % Ken Powell’s voice, even though all I had was a small…

Yeah, well, what I propose is that we Actually, you have an episode next week where we discuss what you’re doing there. But I think it’s quite exciting, and I agree with everything you’ve just said. It’s totally passable. Obviously, if you can do it yourself, that is the best. But what Robert has achieved with his team is totally… And I actually think it’s stronger than that because I gave up doing this, but for a while, Robert, I thought I was forcing people to try and do video, and we were just doing it as an experiment because it was at a price point where we weren’t making any money at it. But I literally was having a Zoom with somebody, and I asked the questions, and then we had to edit it, and we were just doing it as an experiment. But it didn’t matter how much handholding I did or how much editing we did. If they weren’t comfortable in front of the camera, we If you could do it five, six times and think that they would gradually get comfortable, they didn’t actually, Rob. Some people do. Obviously, if they like the idea and they’re committed to it, I was useless when I started doing videos in front of the camera.

I think I’m a lot better now. It’s one of the main sources of lead generation, and my other channel is growing quite rapidly. But if you really, really aren’t comfortable and you really don’t want it, there wasn’t really. I gave up because I could see that the bulk of people were not comfortable. So this is a great solution for those type of people, because trying to force them, if they’re really, really not comfortable when using video as a marketing medium, I don’t think how much handholding that you can get them up to the standard where it’s worth doing.

I agree, which is why… So here’s a funny story for everybody. John, I am not a force my team to do shit leader. I never have been. I forced my team on this. I pressed hard. Everybody was thinking I was out to lunch. They kept telling me that it was too soon. I was like, I don’t care. I want to see a representation of what’s possible. Now, once my lead operations guy got deep enough down the rabbit hole and he researched about 10 or 15 different AI services, he’s like, I don’t know. This one seems good. He gave me a teeny tiny little sample and I said, It seems possible. Then we had to go through the It was back and forth of the client and he’s like, This is so difficult because it was the client. It’s always with you and I. It’s the client. We were asking quite literally the bare minimum of the client. We were still having a little hard time.

You still get resistance, don’t you?

Yes. Even though we signed them up for beta, even though I spent, of my own money, $500 or $600 on this beta, the client didn’t pay for this. I paid for it. So And this is all at cost. Imagine how many hours we’re talking about. It’s at low cost because it’s Philippines resources and stuff like that. But nonetheless, I insisted and drove towards it. And what I got back was light years ahead of what I thought we could do. And I turned the conversation in my head instantaneously. I’m like, this for about 20% of veteran real estate agents, this is a service they will care about. And I’ve I’ve already gotten proof, John, in less than eight hours that that’s true in the form of two responses from two different new to me people that were on my list, but I’ve never talked to them, and they’re already talking to me about this. And what does that mean to you people listening to the show, all those people that we love so much. Ladies and gentlemen, do not sleep on video marketing anymore. It’s going to accelerate beyond your ability to catch it. My advice is really, truly off the bench.

You don’t even need to get in front of the camera. Not really, not anymore. You have an option, but you can’t just sit back and think that you’ll just wait. Because the people that are going to figure this out are probably going to jump out ahead of everybody else.

Shall we go for a break, Rob?

Yeah, let’s do it. There is no Timer on my version of this, just so you know, John. It says scheduled, so I can’t see the time. Anyway, we’re going to We’re going to break, ladies and gentlemen. John and I are going to tell some dirty jokes, have a little bit of fun, discuss how awesome we are. No, just kidding. But we’re going to be right back. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay tuned. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. We’re talking in very broad strokes about what’s going to work for lead generation in 2025. We covered Google Local. That was number one. We covered video marketing. That was number two. And very broadly, there’s so much more to say on video marketing. Number three, speed, patience, and persistence in lead management. A favorite topic of John’s as long as I’ve known him. Database management, lead management, persistence. So, John, this is absolutely something you’ve been talking about since the very first podcast that we ever did. So why don’t you lead us off on this on this subject?

Well, it’s speed to lead. Don’t know what lead generative system you’re using, Facebook paid leads, paid advertisement, Google local ads, Zillow. It doesn’t matter. But when you get that lead, when you get that phone call, you’ve got to respond to it. And the quicker you respond to it, the more chance it’s going to generate into an actual commission check. If you are getting lead, me and Rob, whoever you hire in the digital lead area, if their systems are getting leads, phone calls to you and you’re not available or they’re texting you and you don’t You can’t text back in less than a couple of minutes or five minutes. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing can save that lead. There’s no point in complaining to Rob or complaining to me. We’ve done our bit. We’ve done what we were supposed to do. Too many agents that seem to struggle, just struggle in general in understanding what they’re getting into. That’s what I would say, patience. Not all people are ready to sell or buy a house. They might be on a different… But they can still be marketed to if they get into your system, and there will be a time that they will be ready.

I do understand, if somebody’s paying money and it’s going out of their bank account every month, they won’t lead straight away, but you got to be realistic. Alona, it seems to be getting lead generation. And the system seems to be working, I think, and you can… I think whatever system you got to give, you got to give it at least three months and better, six months, but at least three months. And persistence. Too many agents give up. It’s a difficult one because you might be… You might be a dead horse, really, but you But I think most, as long as there’s signs that it is working, most people give up too early, and they’re not persistent. That’s what I would say, Rob.

Is a lifetime salesperson There’s no doubt that speed lead, persistence, patience, professional salespeople, there’s a reason why we’re called professionals. There’s a reason why Tom Ferry and Mike Ferry still have a job because mostly they focus on sales. And part of the sales game is building relationships, oftentimes for years. And in the luxury space, which Tom Ferry has a circle of 10 agents, all of them hyper luxury agents, I know two of the 10, and they sit and get trained by him personally. Those people, most of what they’re getting, quote, unquote, coached on, it’s the same thing as when you huddle up and you’re in the Super Bowl. It’s not like you’re going to do something different, run a different play. It’s more like, are you ready to run the best version of the play that you’ve practiced a thousand times? And are you ready to pivot and adapt for the unexpected things that will happen in any live fire situation? And a professional salesperson is exactly the same way. Number one, know your material. Number two, practice, practice, practice. I love calling people even when I know that they’re not going to be a deal that day, John, because it gives me a chance to exercise my relationship building skills.

That’s where persistence comes in. If you are a person that is lucky enough to be selling at the top of your market in terms of inventory, it makes all the sense in the world to build a list of 100 people and make sure that you are their first call, those 100 people, because you’re diligent, you send flowers on their birthday, the names of their pets. This is all stuff that a guy by the name of Harvey McKay taught me 30 years ago, how to swim with the sharks without being eaten alive. I’ve used long term database building sales My strategy is my entire career, and I’ve rarely been less than top 1%, top 5%, usually number one or two, no matter how big the sales force, because all you got to do is be willing to work hard, nurturing relationships. If you don’t have anybody new to call and you’re more of an inbound rep, fine. Call old clients. Find a reason to have a dialog. If you’re sitting at a desk, ladies and gentlemen, and you’re not on the phone with somebody that either has been a client, could be a client, or is vaguely connected to somebody that might get you to a client, then you’re not doing your job as a salesperson.

You need to be doing that. John and I have talked about this before. Sit in open houses, sit anywhere where you can meet somebody. Hell, for those of you who are fans of movies, sit in a bar. There’s an old sales movie about a guy that makes all these sales in a bar, and it’s really famous. It has a couple of really famous lines in it. And one of those lines is, You can win the Mercedes, or you can win the steak knives.

I encapsulate it in one phrase, actually, Robert. I say to people, real estate is a discussion business.

Yeah, absolutely. So number four, and I love this one, become the clear market local expert. I’ll John, I’m going to put my spin on this subject.

Yeah, because you’ve been very passionate about this. This is one of the things that you’ve consistently talked about, isn’t it?

Yes, because if you have a question about your local real estate market, lifestyle, pricing, quality of the market, crime, you name it, you want to be the person that’s been having those discussions in so many ways in so many places that people are inclined to ask the question to you. You need to be non-threatening and you need to be have a high level of expertise. And you need to define the market that you’re working in because there’s no… Where I live in the valley, in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California, the San Fernando Valley is hundreds of thousands of people deep, and there’s no human being that could keep up to speed with even two of the cities. Never. So specialize. Make sure that you have subjects that you talk about over and over again. And the in Our marketing part is when you are giving out the information, the hard one expertise that you’ve got, and find a way to have expertise. Go to City Hall planning meetings. Make sure that you are up to snuff on zoning rules. Can you do an AU on a property? Know every single rule of your own city, which is what you do in major metro areas, because having that unparalleled expertise is going to, one, is going to give you something to talk about.

Number two is going to make sure that when you have your 30 seconds to meet a new customer, you impress beyond all other people. All you need to do is display your expertise in what is is what concerns locals. I discovered a new thing. The owner of my property doesn’t know if there’s a limit on how big of a shit I can build out back. They literally sent me to the city to get an answer I would think there should be a real estate agent I could call who can answer that question for me, for crying out loud.

Yeah, I think passion is over I’ve used a bit. Maybe I’m getting too old for passion. But I don’t like using the word passion. But I think if you’re going to be a successful real estate agent, I honestly think you’ve got to be really interested in property, in real estate. It’d be like you might have a hobby, golf, and for some reason you got to pay a lot of golf, but you’re not You don’t really like playing golf. I think you can get by, but I never, without that real interest or love or whatever term you want to use, I think you generally got to have a real… If you’re going to be really good at real estate, and you might disagree, Rob, and other people, it’s just my opinion, I really do think you got to be interested in property. But I don’t think that’s a big ask, because if you’re interested in business or you’re interested in deals, I’m that type of individual, I’m interested in business in general. I think being involved in properties is a great… It’s almost like having a job as a hobby, having your hobby as a job.

That’s what I meant. If you’re the right type of person, it’s hard, but it’s never as hard as other people are finding it. Is this making sense, Rob?

It is, but I have a question for you, John. So secretly, I haven’t asked you or called this out in years on the show, but it is a thing that you revealed to me a long time ago, and I’ve always found it to be fascinating about you, Which is John, in his own right, is a real estate investor, for real. I am not, to draw a clear delineation between the two of us. John owns and manages a property, at least one, maybe more now, but certainly back in the day, one. You have a very specific insight that I don’t have because I haven’t actually owned property. I’ve stayed away from it for personal reasons, not investment reasons. It’s one of the best investments that a person can make, so please don’t anybody read into it. I’m a weird dude. But, John, I have a question for you that plays into this whole idea that you have invested in real estate for reals. If you were going to have a niche yourself, if you’re going to say, If I was a real estate agent, licensed and all that stuff, and you had to focus on a niche in the same city that you’re in right now, which is Reno, Nevada, what would that be?

It’s actually Carson City, actually.

Carson City, my bad. What would that be?

I think it would be horse ranches. The type of clientele I would hope with the client. It’s not… There are some enormously wealthy people. It would be… I’m going to try and muscle into the late time market unless you knew the right people and you were prepared to be the second for a experienced agent in or you were extremely attractive or very outgoing individual, you might be able to muscle into the late time luxury market. I think Horse Ranches is an area where the competition isn’t quite so intense, and you could find in out about That particular market, I think you could get some traction and it would be on a higher price point. And a lot of people move into Northern Nevada and they’re into horses and horse ranches.

I believe it. I believe it. I never would have guessed, John, in a million years, I’m glad I asked the question.

And I got a bag of carrots for the horses, Well, you got to have a love of animals if you’re going to focus on that.

I do. I mean, honestly, you pick something that would halfway tempt me to be a real estate salesperson. Certainly, if I decide to move out somewhere distant and rural, but I’m probably never going to stop working. I don’t want to stop working.

I can’t. But it’d be quite truthful. I’m looking to give up. I’m never going to retire because I’ll be bored to death. But I hope in about five years, if I’m still healthy, that I can reduce a bit. I should be able to do that, but I’m never going to give up because I think I’ve known loads of people retire, and they’ve got into some bad habits. I’ve known loads of people, Oh, I’m going to do this, ‘ and then they were dead a year later. Yeah.

I know. I think that most people have been conditioned into a type of life and lifestyle that doesn’t actually suit them, and that a lack of passion or vision will kill you faster than anything else, which is why I don’t ever intend to not work. Working for me, I already do something I enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed anything else in my career. I actually enjoy this more than I enjoyed looking at Naked Ladies when I worked over when I ran Girls Gone Wild. But the… What? I love that that amused you so much. It did, actually.

It really did.

Yeah, so the thing on our list was find a niche. And if it was me, I’d probably… And I still lived in the same place and I’m still the same human. For me, it would be apartment buildings because Van Oze has so many of them, and I like apartment buildings. What’s more important than the apartment buildings, I happen to like my clientele. I like investors. I like small business owners, and I like people like me who are always driven to do something the way that they want to do it. Most apartment buildings, not all, are owned in small groups by individual investors. Every once in a while, you come across a huge conglomerate. Somebody owns 20, 30, 40 buildings and has hundreds upon hundreds of units. But most of the time, you find apartment buildings getting passed down from family to family. It’s crazy when you know, and I want to talk to those people. I want to know what’s going on. I I want to talk about improving the building the unit. I want to talk to people where this single transaction is worth 15 million, whatever it’s going to be, way more than normal.

And it’s a long sales process because I am best, me personally as human, I’m best when I can focus all my energy on building a handful of really meaningful relationships. I’m going to focus on where those people are, 20 or 30 investments, investment groups, home offices, stuff like that. I will focus my effort there and build the relationships with those people so that when they are ready to buy, sell, or whatever, liquidate, I’ll be their guy. That would be my niche. All right. John, you didn’t put any bullet points. I have my own thoughts about this, but keep your sales generation process personal. What did you mean by that?

Well, it’s been accelerated with AI, and I love AI. It’s made a big difference over the last year. It’s made a lot more efficient, and I really love it. But there’s a downside, and it’s the way that some people in the marketing space are selling it. These trends were there anyway, Robert. It’s just put gasoline on the fire. You can have an AI agent and it will automate the whole process and it’s You will just get the check, the commission check in your bank, and it will literally deal with the whole process and this, that, and the other. Like I said earlier, I see real estate as a compensation business. And what digital marketing or more one-to-one marketing, whatever you want to call it, it’s really about trust, building having trust and having conversations with somebody that’s identified that they need your service in a timeline that can be turned into a commission check, and you’ve got the skills to give them what they’re looking for. I love AI and lead general, but you’ve got to keep it personal. This idea that it will just be It’s totally automated. I’ve got problems with that, Robert.

I agree with the… Now that I understand the way you were taking this, I have said this many times, I agree with it. You can’t outsource A conversation with somebody. The second you outsource the relationship to somebody else, it’s the second that you’ve outsourced the entire business. All of us, everybody in real estate is in a service business. So whoever’s providing the The service wins. That’s it. If a machine is providing the service, it wins. And so you don’t want to outsource that. You can outsource all the mechanics of starting a conversation. I believe in that. Sure. You can outsource a lot of your marketing. You can’t outsource certain types of personal bits, though. This is a conversation I have with people who are going to sign up for the video AI service. It’s like you’ve got to be present and conscious enough to focus on the channels that have these videos. Somewhere at some point, there needs to be a live human beings participating in the conversation, somebody that has buy-in to the brand, not just a service person. Having said that, I think that the definition of personal is going to change a lot.

I really do. I think that personal is going to become like we’re going to see a massive rush towards in-personal faceless texting, writing. But I think that over time, maybe a couple of years from now, you’re going to see a rebound and one-to-one conversations between two live human beings is going to become even more cherished than it already is today. I get so much gratitude sometimes, John. The level of gratitude that I’m getting from people that I talk to on the phone is growing and rapidly. I’m not doing anything different, but the fact that they can get me on the phone and I still have a consultation is like, holy cow. Speaking of which, if somebody wanted to get you on the phone, and everybody listening to the show, please, for the love of God, avail yourself of John and have a good conversation about WordPress websites, what he’s done for real estate, see if it can help you because it’s at $50 a month, you can’t beat it. Now, I, if you have a larger investment or you want to focus on more verticals for SEO, organic marketing, you can have a conversation with me, But if you’re just starting out or your budget is smaller or you have some WordPress questions, every single thing I just listed, John is an expert at.

So, John, how would somebody reach out to you if they were so inclined?

Oh, that’s great. Thanks, Rob. Just go over to mel-right. Com and have a look at what we got to offer. We’re having some more upgrades in the near future that I will be able to talk about. We’ve already We spent more money this year on upgrading things, and it’s a great platform. You can go on to the top navigation and you can book a chat with me, a free Zoom, and we can have a quick chat, and we can see how we could help you. Back over to you, Rob.

And if anybody listening to this show is inclined to talk to the crazy maestro whose voice you’ve been hearing over the It’s not…

I’m sorry to interrupt, Rob, but I’ve been very good, I think. I haven’t interrupted you too much. But actually, it’s not him, folks. This has to be the AI person that we’ve been using. He’s not here.

No, people are going to believe you. You can go to inboundrem. Com, look at our services or About page. I highly recommend that you check out our portfolio. We are getting ready. John and I, completely coincidentally, happen to be updating our in the same year, which is what you do when you own an agency and things are slower. We are also upgrading the design. I am so hot on our product line currently. I think we’re going to have one of the best websites, one of the best SEO products with one of the fastest rates of return of any company you can call or look at. We’re not as inexpensive as John, news flash, but we have some other compelling offers for if you have a a small to medium-sized marketing budget. So inboundrem. Com, About Services page, Portfolio. All right. Oh, one last thing for everybody. And then John, I’m going to have you take us offline. Please, I am so thrilled, so tickled pink, that you guys made us one of the top 100 real estate podcast because it was all you. John and I didn’t even know we were submitted. We wasn’t even on my radar, it wasn’t on John’s radar.

They tweeted it to me, John. They messaged me on Twitter and notified me that way that we had won, not even that we were nominated, that we won. I just, wow. Thank you, everybody. Like, share the show. Please continue it on. I want to be, now that I know there’s a list, I want to be higher on it.

You’re so American, aren’t you, really? Americans love these type of things, don’t they? It It’s fascinating to watch, actually.

We’re competitive, John. I didn’t even know that there was a list, but now that I know there’s a list- I’m competitive, but I’m competitive in a very English way.

A lot of Americans think I’m not competitive, but I am. I just do it in a very English way.

Okay. I don’t even know what you mean by that, but you can tell me after you turn the show off. Thank you for tuning in, everybody. I’ve been Robert. My co-host has been John. We appreciate your patronage. Thank you for making us number 86 out of 100 podcasters. We really appreciate it.

I enjoyed that. It was a good show. All right, but we’re not done, you and I.

So let’s talk about this list that you e-mailed over to me.

Yeah, what do you reckon?

Well, I only like It’s one of the designs, so it’s an easy conversation to have. I looked at all of them. The same point was sticking with me on every single one of these except for number one, which is WP tonic,, the edu, cdnalpha. Com. I guess it’s… No, they’re all alpha. I’m going to open these up just to refresh my memory here. But I remember that in all of these, you had a space for real estate stats. And I feel like that is a thing that is died off, that whole, let’s put something on the home page that fills space but says something, whatever. I just I don’t think it’s relevant anymore. And all of the designs that you sent over, except for one, feature that heavily. The one that didn’t was Alcor. That was the name of the design was Alcor. And Alcor is much more where I think that all the Webby awards, all the top 100 Tom Ferry, they’re all similar to Alcor. Minimalistic, spatial, focusing on images. I loved Alcor. I really did. I thought it was a very sexy design and a very limited amount of space being taken up, and most of it was iconography, not.

There was only one place that was our specialization, and then it was like comfortable homes, modern design, convenient location. But I did think that the filtered way of doing that, if you can make an IDX work in a way that was like that matched this, then I thought it was very fascinating.

They’re not really… I wanted to discuss with you. I I would rather we come to some deal that you make a little bit money from it, but hopefully you do me… If they want IDX integration, I would like your team to do it, really, if possible. I want to get out. I had some people in India I was using, and they’re being okay because my normal development team are pretty good, but they don’t want I didn’t get involved with IDX, so I had to use somebody from India that had experience. And the experience wasn’t terrible, but it was also similar to what you were saying about Indian people. But I haven’t got a client at the present moment that wants IDX integration. There might be one coming up in a month’s time, and they’re looking at IDX broker, and that’s what you use. So But these were for people that are using my 49, and it does come with a website, but we only had one design. When When I’ve got it integrated, I’ll show it to you, and they will have a little library with all these themes, and we’re going to add two more to this.

That should be done by the next week. So they have a little library of not a dozen, but more than six, be it eight, maybe eight themes, and they’d be able to switch over from this with one button click. So I wanted a group of looks that were a bit different in color. But they’re not really designed for… They’re not designed for IDX optimization, and that side. It’s for that lesser market. Does that make sense, Robert? Yeah.

All right, so you covered a lot of ground, so let me reverse. I’m comfortable doing IDX outsourcing or at least entertaining the conversation as long as it’s IDX broker. We’re definitely very confident at that. All other IDXs usually require a learning curve to learn how to do. We could do it, but I’d have to charge you at the point that you’re paying me for a learning curve. I don’t know that it makes sense. On IDX Broker, if I’m going to implement IDX Broker, which I’d be very willing to entertain if the following is met, IDX Broker allows you to assign a client either under their own code or your code, like it’s a subcontracting arrangement. You get $30 a month, roughly, to manage an IDX account on the ongoing basis with IDX Broker. I would certainly be willing to install IDX Broker if I got the recurring revenue on it.

Yeah, it sounds okay. We can have a talk about it. That doesn’t sound outrageous.

Okay. Because what we do is we provide a website But if they want IDX, we say you got to go to a higher hosting plan, and I normally manage it through WP tonic.

But if you want that fee, we can give them a package. Yeah, that’s fine. And not at the present moment, but I might want you… Because I think we can run the Facebook campaigns. We got a couple of people we’re doing that for, but I don’t really We’ve got it advertised on one of the subpages, but we don’t actually want to get in it, is to run these Google Local campaigns. So if we get somebody, we send them your way. And maybe if you’re prepared, give us a small cut. But we don’t actually want to run the Google Local campaigns. It’s just too much work. But you’ve got all these people in the Philippines, haven’t you?

I’ve got somebody that’s very good at it, that we’ve trained up to be an expert, but she’s working for me full-time. All my guys work for me exclusively. She, so far, has been able to manage our workload. We’re charging $100 a month to manage the campaigns on an ongoing basis once they’re set up. I’d have to create a special price to you because honestly, that price is based on the fact that it’s an add-on for us where we’ve got $500 that we’re charging already. So to say, go from five to six is… We’re not… Whylopo is charging their clients 200, okay? So everybody’s charging more. We decided not to charge more because we didn’t want to make people feel like we were nickel and diming them. If I’m going to take a referral client and give you a piece that it’s…

Yeah, I can do that. Oh, well, it might be the otherwise best. You just give me a flat rate and I’ll just put my mark up on it and you just manage it. That’s probably better then, hasn’t it?

$100. Give you the same rate I give everybody else. $100. Manage the campaign.

Okay? That sounds good. What’s your minimum? Is there a set up for you and do you have a minimum contract?

So the way that I’ve been working it right now, John, is 12 months. Contracts are really loose. There’s no penalty if they cancel. So yes, it’s a contract. It’s a written agreement that I send somebody, but I don’t charge somebody to cancel. I mostly do reputation protection. So if I’m signing up with somebody, I’m still going to do that. Reputation protection is we inform you of these things as you sign this agreement because real estate agents are not great when it’s said, Oh, you said this to me. No, I really didn’t I really didn’t. That’s what pisses me off. I have people sign agreements that are like that, John. I told you these things, you’re signing something before we even- It’s not any real estate agent, Rob.

It’s everybody.

Well, it drives me crazy, John. That’s what I make people sign. So yes, I have a twelve-month agreement. It’s month-to-month, really. Seven days cancelation notice for the agreements that I have. What was the minimum?

It was by What’s basically happened is I haven’t totally fallen out with Adam, but he’s had to take a corporate job. He actually has got quite a good gig, and he’s still part of Melright, but he can’t spend as much because he was doing his own marketing agency, he specialized in video using drones, and he had quite a few real estate clients, but in the Bend area, Oregon. And he’s had to to get a corporate job because he had one before it for a mortgage brokerage. I can’t remember. You’ve seen something else, actually. So he’s having to cut down on his own work for his own agency, and he can’t commit so much time for me either. He wasn’t too keen on the Google stuff anyway. He’s okay with the Facebook and video editing. I I want a more automated, and that’s what we’ve got now. So if I can… Yeah, that should work. All right?

So here’s my offer/ counter proposal, whatever. I’m going to give you the world’s best deal with PPC. If you ever have anybody talk to you about PPC, I don’t even want to… Listen, I could theoretically outsource that, but I’m going to give you the same thing I do. I have an outsourced resource who has grown from one person to in Turkey. His name is. I’ll simply give you his name. He charges me, I think it comes out to be about $100 account per month somewhere in that neighborhood. I don’t want a piece of this. So whatever he charges me, I’m going to ask him to charge you the same thing, and you get to put your profit on top of it. All I’ll tell you is he’s extremely good.

I will commit to that. Oh, yeah, it’s great, because I don’t think Adam wants to do it. So if you can send those details. If you’re not Don’t have to do it this week if you’re too busy, but if you just send an outline of some of the prices you’ve quoted me. Obviously, the IDX broker, it’s on what we have to discuss is what level of information that you require from me, so you can give me a quote. So we got to discuss that. The Google the $100 sounds fine. And if you just send me the resources of this Turkish guy. Because like I said, I haven’t fallen out Adam, and he’s done a lot of free work, and he’s really helped me, and he still can help me on the Facebook side, but he won’t have the bandwidth to help me on this other stuff. I’m too busy with WP Tonic Thank God. I don’t want to give up on Mel, because I’ve invested quite a bit of money in that. I have spent more money on it the past four months, and we’re doing these websites, so you But I can see that I’m still investing money into it.

Hold on one second. I’m finishing out this.

When I’ve got it all set up, I’ll show you the back-end because we’re doing improvements. It’ll be a nice system. The main problem is The main problem, what we’re building, Rob, is that, and I’m prepared to do it, is that we have to spend too much time showing them how it works, and it doesn’t seem to register. So it’s like we’re getting a few people that want to spend the $50, but they want us to manage it for $50, and it ain’t going to happen.

Sure.

But I get people that sign up for my hosting at WP Tonic, and they get a white onboarding call, and we spend more time giving them a more customized hosting experience. And if they pay yearly, it’s $35 a month. Month to month, it’s 55. And they get a load of plug-ins. But still, a lot of them think that we’re going to build a whole website out for them, a whole learning management system. It’s quite amazing, really, Rob.

Believe me, I understand the difference between Gucci wishes and Walmart budgets.

Yeah, that’s it.

I’ve sent you that email. The next time you want to walk me through the system, I’m down for it. But, John, I’m going to say the same thing that I’ve been saying to you for a long-ass time. To get me involved, to get some opinion, to get anything from you, really, you need my technology partner. If you don’t want to show us code or give us access, great. But if you want to do a walkthrough by video, I got to have this guy there. I got to. In order to have an opinion, to have anything like long term conversations between you and I, we started to build an all in one platform that wasn’t going to be owned. We’ve been on it silently in the background. Nobody knows this for two years because he wanted me to start another brand with him. He’s been doing it on his own dime. He wanted me to start another brand with him because he wants to have something that he can sell, which Iron was never designed that way. I’m not building a technology company that’s easy to sell at all. I built it as a dream of my own.

He wanted something different, and I because he is overqualified and over talented for what I use him for. I agreed that I would market the hell out of it and maybe even start a second company as long as he finished it. Now, he’s been working on it for years, and unfortunately, what he wants to do and what’s realistic is crazy different because he had these massive visions for this thing. Anyway, I would need to have him Just to see at least what you’ve built, see if he has a vision for it from technology, or if he even thinks he could pick up the… Like he could do something with it at some point, if ever that conversation happens between you and me.

I think I totally understand where you’re coming from, and it’s what you said before. Let me think about it, but at the time being, if you can not help me because you’re… But I don’t want to do the IDX integrations. My team doesn’t want to do it. Sure. Like I said, I was using these Indian people. They were okay, but I had to keep… They’re not up to the standard of my own normal team. When we looked at their code and some of their work, we had to clean it up a little bit, and my team really didn’t want to do it. I just wanted to see if you I’m going to give me a quote, and I’ll let you do it because you’ve got experience in it. But we have to work out what information I’ve got to gather from the client to give to you.

Listen, I’m going to make this simple for both of us. John, it’s going to be difficult for me to answer process-based questions from an outside source. I usually take over customer relationships entirely. What I’m going to tell you that would make sense, probably for both of us, is you find somebody who’s interested, and we schedule a core Zoom, and we’ll all record it. I will come away from that with a better understanding, better process, the ability to quote you. All these IDX integration, like in integration conversations, they happen at different quote rates. When I’m charging just a flat rate for my guy, the guy that can do it all, it’s $150 an hour. But obviously, you know as well as I do that there’s a whole bunch of grunt works, creating save links, stuff like that. We don’t do that with him. The guys that do do it for me, they charge me like… It comes out to be like $5 a link, maybe even less, something ridiculously underpriced. However, you occasionally have a realtor who calls into you and they literally, and with no visible change in their face, they go, Well, I think I have like a thousand pages on my website.

You’re like, So a thousand saved links, if I have to recreate them, even it, let’s just call it $2. 50 a link because it takes 10 minutes to create a link. Now, all of a sudden, you’re talking about… I’m just doing the math. It’s like $2,500.

I understand where you’re coming from. It’s so broad and that. Yeah, I totally understand where you’re coming from. But we get the things and then, yeah, sure, I don’t mind showing your guy if you wanted to be part of it. I’m just looking for us to do a little bit of business. I’m not giving up on Mel, right? It’s just I do. I had to improve it or give up on it, and we have spent a bit more money, and there’s a little bit more work Because I’m also using it. I’ve also taken a copy of it, the core of it, and I plan to offer it as part of my hosting package for WP tonic as well. So I’m going to use elements with my hosting package with WP tonic because I offer a library of plugins, and some of them I’ve got lifetime unlimited website licenses. Others, I’m getting close. It’s not scalable. So by offering what Melright offers, I can duplicate what we’re offering without having to buy more licenses for the plugins. We’ve done that, and in the next few months, that will be more public.

Have you checked out GPO vault?

I chose to go to… Because I have relationships with all these people. I chose to go, and they gave me some really good deals, and some of them lifetime deals. I do use it on individual properties that I own, but only very occasionally, if I’m trying something out. Because it’s not illegal, it’s totally under the license. But I didn’t want to upset the relationships that I’ve got in the WordPress community by doing that.

Yeah, I wouldn’t just casually tell you I’m a coke smuggler, and do you want me to hook you off with my smuggle? I know it’s not illegal. It can be, depending on what worlds you walk in, it can be unethical. To be honest with you, there’s no way in the world for me to do what I do using what I use on websites and pay the licensing fees. None. Real estate agents don’t want to pay a one-time fee of $80 for Yoast, let alone the yearly updates and all the other things that go along with it, because it is a, You use this tool, and they don’t want to do that. It’s all out of the question. It’s just absolutely out of the question. Either you’re going to self-manage it, and the only way for me to self-manage at a reasonable price is GPL vault.

Yeah, I totally understand, but I chose, and a lot, the that we offer as part of our hosting packages. They’re fully licensed, all of them. And there’s about three or four that they didn’t give me unlimited lifetime. They gave me a certain amount of websites. Most of them are between 100 and 200, but it’s only about three on the list that I have that deal. But we’re getting close to going beyond that. And I want something I think that’s truly scalable. We’re going to use what I built with Melright as part of what we’re offering as our hosting package, aimed at membership and learning management system. So even… And the Melright is ticking over, it’s doing right. It provides about one-fourth of my income. The bulk of my income comes from WP tonic. I But I’m not prepared to give up on it because it’s been a learning exercise. Unfortunately, I’m a bit maybe too old for learning. But I think you’ve seen that I’ve educated myself, and hopefully you would say I’m a much stronger marketer than I was a few years ago.

I’ve definitely noticed a shift in a different sense. Just to circle back around to something that perhaps I wasn’t clear on, I understand full well that all you’ve asked me for is the possibility of a partnership that you’re not giving up on mail rate. I am in no way inferred by anything you said before. No, you didn’t. But I did have it in the back of my mind The sooner I can have a look at this technology, the more I know how to have a conversation with you in the future about how to frame it. It could be just something I never want to talk about.

Let me think about it, and I would ask you to sign a non non-compet. The thing is, you’re building this other thing. So I would have to think, because I probably would ask you to sign a non-compet, and you’d probably say, I thought… Oh, you would, right? So that should be okay then. But let me think about it.

I’m not trying to copy anything that you’re building, what I’m trying to figure out is if at some point in the future there’s a possibility of me licensing or acquiring it.

Can I tell you a little story before you go? Sure. I don’t know if you do. I get all All my subcontractors to sign non-compet, that if they’re working on a client’s project, they can’t work on that client’s project outside of WP tonic for two years.

Sure.

I had a quite major client. I told you I had a rough week last week. Yes. And this client, she got an employee. She was part of the call in the background because they put it on speaker phone She denies it because I had to have a very difficult come to Jesus discussion with her, which she didn’t like. She doesn’t really like me, but I don’t really care. I just want the money. They tried to poach one of my main project managers, tried to poach him.

Sure.

It’s unbelievable. But he signed Everybody, he signed a non… He’s totally straight. He told me straight away what they said. They worded it. They worded it that they wanted to hire him. They’ve got a contract with me until October, and it’s a lot of money, and they’ve told me they’re not going to renew it. She says that she doesn’t like me, but basically, they’re looking for cheaper alternatives. That’s what it’s It’s always about money, isn’t it? And they said, Oh, we want to hire you after October for another project. It was worded that, but… So it’s worded very carefully, but I know what’s going on. But the thing is, he makes a lot of money out of me, and he’s my co-host on my other podcast, the WP Tonic, and we’re pretty friendly. Obviously, I can’t say we’re true friends because he’s making money from me. So that relationship, you can’t say somebody’s a total friend, because But we get on. And I think he’s a pretty honest guy, and I’ve done him favors, and he’s done me favors, and he told me straight away. And the funny thing, he hates them more than I do.

He hates her. He absolutely hates her, and he absolutely hates the member of staff that we’re working with. He’s the one that works with them, but I think he’s lovely. But he gets me on the owner of the business, so I have to do the dirty work. I have to tell him the realities. So they think he’s Saint Jesus walking on water, but he hates them. He’s constantly they complained about. It’s really strange, isn’t it, Robert?

There’s nothing more befuddling than a human being. But, John, before we lose track of it, I will sign whatever you want me to sign. I’m not interested in copying anything from you. I’m interested in evaluating any long-term potential that might exist in a tool, especially if at some point you do fold up shop. I will be transparent about what my motivation is. If you decide at some point fold up the shop and I happen to be doing better than what I’m doing right now, maybe I buy it on the cheap. Who knows? I’m a transparent dude. Love me or hate me, I am usually going to tell you what direction I’m coming from.

Totally understandable, Rob. There’s nothing more with that. No, there isn’t. I would like to…

Yeah. So yeah, sure. You just think about whether or not you even want to mess with that. In the meantime, though, if there’s some cross purposes with the IDX stuff, happy to help. I see you the prices for the other things that you asked about. I see you the name to my guy. There’s nothing- That’s really appreciative, Rob, because I haven’t got the bandwidth.

As you said, the main problem with many of these real estate agents is that they’ve got Gucci tastes and a Walmart budget. I’m doing better with WP Tonic. I’ve I managed to get some good… A lot of them… I’ve got a good spread of a lot of small and about three or four large clients. I’m looking for medium ones, but I have a nice spread. But it’s amazing human beings, just mind, you want to get a gun and shoot. I was talking to the owner of Lifter LMS, and he’s got about 20 people working for him, native and offshore. And he’s got a very… He’s a nice guy, Chris, and he gave me a lifetime license for Lifter LMS Infinity. I also promote him a lot through my podcasting and videos. And he said he’s a nice guy. He’s no idiot, but he comes across nicely. And he said, I get tons of abuse from my clientele. I get it constantly. And they give a lot to their plugin buyers. And he said, Oh, yeah, we get abuse all the time from a minority.

Blissfully, John, there’s a considerable price I pay to get this result, but I don’t get a lot of abuse. But that’s because I spend, which will blow your mind, because it’s a real number. I spend about three hours with every person who calls me about IRIUMN, three hours. When I finish the call, I have a good idea of who they are. We get demanding clients. We do. We’ve got a difficult one working through the system right now. But the thing about the difficult ones in my space, if they’re that difficult, boy, oh, boy, have I quoted them something to accommodate the difficulty. I have done that with the person walking through the system right now. We’re $40,000 in with the real estate agent. Now, they are incredibly, insanely hard to deal with. I’ve had to open a Slack channel to my leading developer because it’s hard to explain, but they’re insistent with their request. Their expectations are insanely high. They’ve never dealt with developers. They have no understanding that you don’t get developer-type resources just on fucking speed dial answering all your questions.

Wow. But blissfully, I have charged them up with a wazoo to get that service, and they are floating like… They’re like 5% of my revenue right now.

Yeah, it’s around 40 grand for this woman I’m talking about. I think she’s got a personality disorder. Honestly, she is semi-paranoid all the time, and it is really… She is a handful. And she’s a gaslighter, supremo. You have a conversation with her and think you’re losing your mind.

I’ve noticed it is an insane thing to me, John. It’s taught me a lot about business, and I know that there are a fair number of people out there who make a fair amount of money but don’t do it nicely or well. They do it. I have learned in the hardest way possible, it’s like, well, I wish there was a world in which you could be a total and utter shit heel and not make money. I hope that wasn’t. It’s possible. But the squeaky wheel, the complainers, the loud people, the fucking people to get in your face, friendly people tend to go, Jesus Christ, you’re a lot. I’m going to give you whatever you want. Go away. It is nutty to me how many people with personality disorders you see who make a lot of money. You know where you see it the most in the real estate space? It’s absolutely in the luxury space—no doubt about it. Jake Mills and Joyce Ray are lovely ladies. They both have personality disorders, though. Jade Mills has been begged by her family, her kids, her husband, and everybody to retire, and she won’t do it.

She is obsessed with work, which is great for her clients and fucking shitty for every other human in her life. She can’t drop the small details, though, at all. I mean, at all.

This woman is a control freak, a supremo as well, and also. But he is what he is, isn’t he, Rob? We move forward, don’t we?

We do.

All right. I’ll be seeing you later then. Bye. Later, buddy.

Ciao.

Real Estate Professionals content marketing: It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Discover the secrets to long-term success and sustainable growth in your content strategy. Learn more now.

In this insightful show, we explore the long-term nature of content marketing, emphasizing that success is not achieved overnight. Learn why patience and persistence are crucial in building a sustainable strategy that fosters audience trust and engagement. We’ll share practical tips on creating valuable content that resonates over time. Don’t miss out on these essential insights—watch the video now to elevate your content marketing game.

It’s just that I’m half asleep. I got to fake it till I make it. Here we go. We’re live. All right. It’s episode 469. Hard for me to forget that number. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 469. I’ve been up all night and into the day because it’s been a crazy couple of days, and I’m overly caffeinated and carrying on the show. John will have to be the voice of reason in today’s podcast. Are you ready for that, John?

Well, that’s what the show finished.

Well, for those who don’t know, my English co-host is Jonathan Dinwood. Jonathan is a long-time veteran of being an entrepreneur and designing and developing on WordPress. He owns or is the founder of a creative lead of a podcast that talks a lot about this. He created a second service specifically for realtors, and he’s been maneuvering this second service to try to find the magic sweet spot with real estate agents, and he may have done it. I don’t know. But right now, we’re much happier where we are.

Much happier.

Currently, he’s got an interesting… I just wanted to let you finish because I’m trying to sizzle you up here.

Sizzle, sizzle.

Yeah. John has an interesting thing going on, and he’s decided to take the opposite approach and offer an almost unbeatable doorway into a service. It’s $50?

Did I get that right? $49 a month.

$49. It’s not unbeatable, but engaging with anything in today’s market is a reasonable price point. So he’s taking a nod to things being a little more complicated for all of you. And it’s a marketing and all-in-one service with a website attack. Anyway, without any further ado, though, John, why don’t you introduce yourself to the audience? Based on your performance during today’s show, they can decide if they want to call you.

All right. There’s no pressure. Thanks for that, Rob. That’s no pressure. Cheers. All right, folks, I’m the joint founder of Mel-Right. We’re a CRM and a lead generation platform. We offer an excellent service. Like I say, it starts at $49 a month. For that, the value is fantastic. If that’s piqued your interest, go to Mail-Right.com. Please look at the feature page and what we’re offering, and then maybe book a demo and chat with me. We would love you to come on board. Back over to you, Rob.

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Robert Newman, and today we’re going to dig deep into one of the areas that I do consider to be one of my core competencies, both as a person and as the founder of a company. I found Rob, put no pressure on Rob.

Rob is a well-known expert on content marketing. So if you don’t get real value, complain to him.

I open my door. We’re going to talk about content marketing, which is always a cornerstone of most inbound marketing strategies, because inbound is oftentimes about educating or giving out knowledge, and a very popular way to give out knowledge is through the written word or content. It’s also often done through video and other methods. Content could be a term that covers many different things. However, one way or the other, Jonathan selected this topic today. It’s content marketing. It’s a marathon, John, not a sprint. Love the title. So on board for today’s show. Without any more ado, I think we should be able to get into it. Well, let me give a little more credit where credit is due. John has done, once again, the outline. He’s got seven different places where he collected some information. You would do yourself to look at his show notes and find, I guess, our show notes, at this point, and find out what he’s got to say, where he looked, and so on. I do that some of the time myself. He’s picked two of our mutual competitors, Sierra Interactive and Luxury Presence.

It is on this list. So he’s been very, very fair and even-handed. I loved his view on that because another thing the inbound marketers and the content marketers do is that to be valuable to users, you must be equitable and separate yourself from any personal interest. So, without digressing even more, how do you build your real estate content marketing strategy, John?

Yeah, I just want a quick comment before observation. I just want to see if you agree with this, Rob. As I was doing the research for this show and I was looking at the results that I have sent to you, I observed this. I’ve heard the information is very high tier, very high level, or it seemed to me very 101, very basic, and they didn’t seem much in the middle that really would give much value to a real estate agent that wanted to learn a bit more than 101. Or like the video link I gave you, that conversation was very high level. It’s just something I observed. It didn’t seem to be that much in the middle. How would you respond to that?

I think there’s probably some truth to that. You’ve got two camps, and both camps are right. On the one hand, you’ve got 80% of the real estate industry are absolutely extremely novice marketers, many of whom I run across, John, who have never even heard the term content market. So when you haven’t even heard the term and you look at some of these posts, I consider them to be quite good, like the one on Luxury Presence. It tells you what content marketing is. If you’re looking for any type of actual, well, how do I do it? No way. It’s so basic. No, you’re not… Anybody like me or anybody who even took a marketing class in school is going to be like, No, this is super basic. I could have answered these questions myself, and thus this content for me is a waste of time. I really That middle ground person you’re talking about, like that, I’ve been doing it for a year or two and just want a little help. I don’t know anybody writes for that guy or girl.

No. So to get back to your original question, I I think it’s having some pre-planned strategy on a one page. It doesn’t have to be something really detailed. I think the reason why this is so important subject is that if you’re a real estate agent in a local market where you can still be very effective by going super local, but through your website content, and especially through using social media platforms, being super local is still a very effective strategy to counter platforms like Zillow, reata. Com, some of the big regional real estate brokerages, franchise, you can get still some of very effective results, but you do need a plan of action, not just push stuff out when you got a spare moment. What do you reckon, Rob?

Well, your number one thing on here is how to build a content marketing strategy. And I think that if it was me and we weren’t worried about making our content, your content, understandable and more broad, because to me, that title is broad. Why? Because every content marketing should actually be this. How do I figure out what I’m going to talk about? How do I know what I want to talk about? And I’ve always… The way I coach my clients and the way I coach myself is I just desperately… I really try to stick to things I want to talk about. Before the show, Ladies and gentlemen, I briefly wanted this rift about this stuff happening with Zillow, and I’m going to talk about it later on my own YouTube channel. And is it going to be the best thing to talk about from traffic perspective, keyword perspective? I have no idea. I just know I’m hot under the collar about it and I have something to say, so I’m going to say it. This is the same thing I recommend, and it does fall within the category of stuff that I talk about broadly. It does.

I really recommend that people find That’s something that they’re passionate about, John. I took a call earlier today. I’ve been on a lot of calls in the last two days, and the call I took earlier today was one gentleman who is really mystified about where he wants to focus on in the Miami area. Just two hours of conversation later, we discovered that he has a love of mid-century modern homes, that there is a small but select amount of that inventory inside the areas he services. He had never really decided to talk on it because the price point is lower and everybody’s interested in condos where he’s at. Well, I was like, but we started talking about mid-century modern homes, and it was the first time in that conversation with him where he perked up, enthusiasm, lit his tone up. He was obviously passionate about the inventory. And because all of a sudden it became clear that he was really excited about that particular inventory, I was like, Dude, this is what you talk about. It doesn’t matter that it’s less inventory or the price point 30% less where you live. Talk about mid-century modern. You obviously love it.

Now you have a category in a home type that’s very specific. Since the inventory is limited where you’re at, you also actually have a very defined target. That’s how you develop, how I would develop a content marketing strategy. We’re going to give tips about how to do this, by the way. That’s going to be what we talk about next. But, John, for me, the first things first would be, how do I figure out what I want to talk about? That’s it.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. A couple of other things, especially when it comes to social media, that I think you’ve really got to understand. Number one, especially in my other business and around the WordPress crowd, as I call them, there’s a lot of spiteful comments and engagement because the community in that area is very passionate. But I’ve kept out of it because I adhere to these two things, Robert. Would I want my mother to read something? Secondly, if I was the end user, would I find it useful? And they’re the two things I appear to. Would I want my mother to read this and then talk? If I read this or on social media, on TikTok, on YouTube, would it be of any use to the target audience Would they find it useful? And if it doesn’t, so much of the canned stuff that comes from brokerages and templates and whatever, it’s not very useful. It’s It’s not very educational. It’s not very useful. I think the first point probably does… I think the first point is I’ll be very reluctant unless I’ve really done it on purpose. And I do know a couple of agents in Las Vegas that have gone down this road in purpose is not to go down politics.

Do not engage in comments in a political element. But I do know a couple of agents that done it on purpose in Los Angeles. I would advise normally, unless you’re really conscious you’re going down that route to keep off that I feel like this is a little off topic, and we should have its own show on social media, like actual social media philosophy.

I’m just going to add this.

I see it as all content as well.

All content. Okay, well, here’s what I will say about online, both for better or for worse. Anything you say is going to be there forever. And I think that people should really think about that. Whatever you say will be there 10 years from now, 20 years from now. You have to understand, if you type it on a keyboard these days, it’s in a server somewhere for sure, no doubt. So be careful. We’re going to go on in number two. We’re going to give you some tips for creating real estate content marketing strategies. And John, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to jump in here and take the lead on this one. For me, tips in creating content is, once I know broadly what I want to talk about, there’s all sorts of ways to refine that strategy and make it easier to understand. I use VidIQ and I look at YouTube strategies, and usually I’ve got… If it’s a subject, right now, I might very well go on to VidIQ and go Zillow. I just might put in the broad keyword Zillow and see what VidIQ or other tools spit out because they’ll rip off the things that people are creating or keywords people are searching.

And the same thing is true with Google, except their Google search trends, which is part of their algorithm. You can go in there and list keywords, and you can see in a very broad way what keywords are going up or down. Once I have some I have some signals, some smoke signals is what I call them that I like, I like the way the smoke signals are going. They match something that I want to talk about. I then use more specific tools like Ubersuggest or Semrush or AREFs to find out what the keyword subgroups are that I might cover that have volume. All of this gets into SEO strategy, but a better way to think about it for all of you listening to the show is imagine this. Google is going to give you points for telling a good story, and you want to make sure your story is really answering people’s questions. You want to make sure that you’re being helpful. So the way to make sure you’re being helpful is to find out what people are searching for and make sure that you answer those things as if somebody has asked a question.

So like, Homes for Sale in Tacoma. Well, make sure that you answer some questions about Homes for Sale in Tacoma. Just treat every keyword like it’s a question. And then make sure that you talk about it in the large group that falls under your main subject. So for me, it’s going to be Izzillo the enemy. That’s the name of my… That’s the title of my video, which is all I figured out so far for today, John. But I’m going to talk about… Before I go in and turn on the camera and my assistant is here, I’m going to make sure I know some subgroups. That’s how I’m going to do it. I’m going to look at subgroups, and then I’m going to talk about those subgroups, and I’m going to do actual keyword research to make sure that I understand what I’m talking about. That’s how I would do tips for creating killer real estate content. Now, that’s only killer. The tips I’m giving everybody right now is tips to make your shit rank and make sure that people are engaging with it. It’s not necessarily… It depends on what your definition of killer is, John, because a lot of stuff you could do that’s killer, that’s a lot of sizzle.

And that’s never been me. I’m always informationally great. But sizzle, like sexy, with little robots.

I don’t agree with that, Rob. You’re a sexy beast.

How would you do it? What’s your tips? What tips would you offer? Because you do a lot of content now. You’ve upped your content game so much in the last couple of years.

Shall we go for a break and then I’ll answer that question in a second?

Yeah, so we’re going to come back and John’s going John’s going to knock my delicately served question straight out of the park. So everybody, stay tuned. I’m putting so much pressure on him today. I’m going to hear it after the show It was over. We’re going to go to break. We’ll be right back wherever you’re at, however your listening is. Do us a favor. Give us a thumbs up. Give us a little attaboy. We always love that. Talk to you. We’ll be right back. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. John is still wiping the tears off his eyes. He was shaking and crying. I put so much pressure on him. We’re talking about content marketing, and John, who I just have let everybody know, he’s really increased his volume and attention to content in the last couple of years since I’ve been paying attention to his output. I feel like you’re going to have some great things to tell the audience.

Yeah. Well, I, because of AI and other factors, rejected the traditional SEO model of looking at particular keywords and trying to rank for those keywords. What I’ve adopted is a bottom of funnel approach. I tend to select using certain SEO research tools and see what other people rank, what their most popular posts and pages are, and they’re making a determination, are they bottom of funnel? What do I mean that bottom of funnel? Terms and information that people are probably searching that are close to a buying decision. That’s what I mean by bottom of funnel. So I I tend to select topics which are probably connected to the two companies that I run that are looking at competitors, that have probably done some research and doing some other research around a buying action. So that’s what I concentrate on. And then I utilize a bit of skyscraper when I’m looking at the competition. And skyscraper came from a guy called Brian Dean. That’s well known.

Actually, it’s Bruce Clay.

I thought it came from Brian, the original. All right, there we go.

Brian, everybody, myself included, all rifted from Bruce Clay, who’s a local guy to me here in California. He’s the guy who created and invented the term skyscraper, but it’s not… He came up with a brand It’s like whoever created the term evergreen content, which is just ridiculous that it’s so popular. Same thing with skyscraper. It just means looking at something that somebody already did and making it better. That’s it.

I use a bit of that. What that means is you look at the competition for a subject, like I say, bottom of funnel, and you just make it a bit better by adding video, by having a podcast, by whatever what mythology ‘same’ you think would add a bit more value to it. And I just repeat and rinse, repeat and rinse, repeat and rinse, and I just keep at it. But I don’t… Some of the top terms are… I just couldn’t compete. The only way I compete is to what the term, it’s not a real word. I just made it up nicheify. It should be a real word, shouldn’t it, Rob? Nishify. I just find a niche, and I just concentrate on that niche. And it’s exactly the same process that I suggest that you should do if you’re listening to this podcast. What do you reckon, Rob?

I love the nicheify, I love the skyscraper. These are solid, solid strategies. I don’t have much to say about that.

We’re going to-I hope you’re impressed, Rob.

I am very impressed. I’m very, very impressed. We’re going to talk about John’s next item, which is finding the smaller wins within the larger goal. I got to tell you, of all the things on this list, where I’m impressed, John, is that you picked up on, and remember to put this in here, because the number one challenge with content marketing, especially in real estate, it’s a long term strategy. It’s very, very rare that you do some amazing informational video and then everybody starts calling you the next day. It really doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way for me. It probably doesn’t work that way for John, just a guess. It really doesn’t work that way for real estate agents. It takes time. You have to figure out some smaller, more achievable benchmarks that are going to give you a dopamine hit to keep you in the game. John talks about that that’s on the list, and I am just so impressed that you finding the smaller wins within the larger goal. For me, smaller wins, John, are checking, ranking, finding keywords that are starting to rank. Visibility is one of my main markers of a smaller goal.

Like, are we getting visibility? My next smaller win is looking at engagement. I really pay attention to engagement. That’s actually my benchmark, my hallmark for everything is, are people engaging? How much do they watch of it? How long do I keep them on this video? I look at how many minutes are consumed on my YouTube channel every month. And these things are more important to me than views and other metrics that a lot of other people follow. I barely follow them. I barely even look at them.

I think that’s the right thing because I think people… Unless you’ve got a very large website and you’ve got a large volume and you’re up against some really serious competition, I think it’s best to just have some key things that you’re monitoring and being consistent in just monitoring 2-3 things because that’s all the bandwidth you’re going to have. And the more things you’re monitoring, the harder it is to be consistent.

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. And that is like a I really enjoy the benchmarks that I look at. I really like… They’re almost as sweet to me as… By the time I get the result of somebody calling me John, honest to God, I am so enthused about so many other small wins that I’ve gotten before that moment. It allows me to not be overpressured by the rarity of calls with content marketing. I think I’m working on… I’ve had seven or eight inquiries so far this month, and only two have actually showed up for the call, which is pretty rare for me. They almost always keep the appointment, not this month. But the two people that have kept the appointment have been incredible, really great. But I’ve walked into the call super relaxed and super ready to engage, mainly because the small win of how engaged they were with the content and all the other things that they said that were nice. I already walked into the call thinking it was going to be a win, a victory, because of how well they consumed all of the content. And then one last note on this, everybody.

Something that 30 years of being a salesperson and 30 years of being a top salesperson has taught me is you scale your goals to the season, to the era, to the time. Really, really super aggressive salespeople always try to push themselves, and I appreciate that, but I’ve never done it that way. The way I do it is I look at where we’re at with the industry. I look at the people that are taking the calls with me. And I go, my God, I’ve had a huge victory this month because while everybody’s running for the mountains, I’ve still got people, not many, but a few, that are aiming for the sky. No, they’re not running into a cave.

They’re really-Well, I thought last week, I thought you said something that really stuck in my memory banks about really good quality sells people in do better in a difficult market because the competitions days and they’ve got a book of business and they’re just good at it. I haven’t got precisely what you said, but the drift of it is still there. And I thought that was so insightful, Rob.

It is absolutely a true thing that professionals Excel twice as fast inside their business. What I was saying last week was you keep up your ground game because you’re making twice as much progress even if you don’t see it. That’s what I said. You keep up as a marketer, as a salesperson, because honestly, most people are running for the hills, folding up their tents, acting with half the energy on the call. And when things are rougher is when you actually have to really kick everything into high gear. It’s crazy, and it works really beautifully. Did you have something like… How did you want to… Did you want to talk about smaller wins?

No, let’s go on to the next one.

Are you appealing… I’m going to let you… Let’s let you take this one.

Yeah, well, it’s It’s a bit linked to what you said about content takes time. Well, this is the other thing, which I think a lot of people don’t understand, and it’s, are you appealing to all stages of the buying or buying buying or selling process? We’ve gone on about this consistently during this podcast, haven’t we, Rob? Is that people are at different stages of the buying or selling process. It’s very… Unless you got a a lot of volume and you’re paying for paid traffic, you’re going to pay for traffic organically or not. It all costs time and money, folks. Social media, organic, website traffic, paid traffic. In one way or another, it costs money and time. But these people, unless you’ve got an enormous amount of volume of traffic coming in, only a very small percentage of those people are going to be selling and buying the house there and then. But it’s getting them on an email list. It’s getting them to sign up to social media, your YouTube channel, TikTok, it doesn’t matter what it is. So you can keep in front of them. So when they are ready to buy or sell, you get the phone call, not the competition.

And I don’t know what it is, but there’s a lot of real estate agents that don’t grasp this concept, Robert. They find it very hard.

And that is, I think, just a lack of education on a lot of realtors’ parts. And to be fair to those realtors, so 80 % of all realtors are basically referral realtors working off something called the circle of influence, which we’ve talked about countless times. When we do, you generally bring up some of your people that have influenced you more, which is the Bafinis. I think he’s legit.

That’s why I think they’re It’s legit, people.

No argument. You mentioned them quite a bit, which is fair because they are legit, in my opinion. I happen to agree with you. The thing about that is, though, 80% And of all, realtors do their business off referrals or life cycle or circle of influence. In other words, they’re not really influencing. You can’t really influence. Hear me on this, everybody. It is very difficult to really influence a decision as major as real estate, no matter how good your sales skills are. What you’re really trying to do is be a better fisherman with a better net with less holes, catch more fish than the other guys. That’s what you’re really trying to do. The ones that are out there that are already in the pool, already swimming around and there to be caught. Are you really creating the fish, nurturing them like a hatchery? Not generally. What you’re doing is you’re really wanting to make sure that you just acquire, capture people’s attention. Then hopefully, if you’re a really incredible realtor, staying in touch with them and staying top of mind for the 10 years between home purchases. Because if you’re a good realtor, you get them the first time.

If you’re a great realtor, you get them the second time. If you’re a one-of-a-kind realtor, you get them for a lifetime. Joyce Ray talks about that quite a bit. She acquires clients for a lifetime. When you think about your customer relationship in perspective of a 50-year career. Now, all of a sudden, John, if that once every 10 years is correct, one client is worth five transactions. Now, if we say the first transaction was 1 million, second was five million, third was 10 million, which is Joyce’s math. By the time everything is said and done, that one client is worth $50 million. What people don’t realize, though, is that if you want to catch them, market to them, capture them, you’re trying to capture them somewhere in that 10-year life cycle. The conversation around real estate changes a tremendous amount depending on where you are in that 10 years. If you just bought a new home where you’re going to capture somebody who’s talking about home improvements, in the middle of their cycle, you can start to capture their interest with how much their home is worth because they’ve had it for five years, they have a little equity, and now they care.

Then if you’re at the end of the cycle, you can stay at home improvement all the way. Because now it’s about capturing maximum value out of your investment as you get ready to leave it and move into the next thing. You want as much rocket as you can get to launch you into your next part of your real estate trajectory. That’s what people don’t understand, John. Are you appealing to all stages of the buying process? Think about what I just said. It’s 10 years of that. Ten years. Are you even trying to have a conversation with somebody who’s not within a year of buying or selling? Probably not. And you should be, in my opinion.

You should be if- I think it’s even more important. That’s pretty bold, but I just put this, and I’m not sure if you’re going to I agree. If you are giving really good service to your customers and you keep in contact with them, it’s that when that person is asked, Do you know our agent ‘Do you know an agent? Do you know somebody that can help me? ‘ That person is going to recommend you. But if you don’t keep yourself in the top of their mind to some degree, they’re going to forget And that’s how it’s also the building up this free referral network that’s outside of this really close group that Perfini goes on about. But it’s a concept. I can see by your reaction that I’m not off target here, but it’s something that a lot of agents or a lot of online resources don’t talk about, do they?

That Yeah, they don’t. They don’t, and they should because the actual best sales strategy that you can ever give a realtor is actually building the skills to maintain somebody properly for a lifetime. For that, I’d recommend for those who are looking for tips, there’s one book that’s head and shoulders above all others, and it’s not a real estate book. Even John will be surprised. I’ve never dropped this on the show before, ever. It’s Harvey McKay, How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive. It is the best book on relationship and network and referral selling that I’ve ever read because it deals with the mechanics of building up a long, very deep relationship-based connection to somebody. It is technical. Harvey McKay is one of the best salespeople that ever walked the face of the planet as it relates very specific Specifically to long term account development. And that’s what makes it so good for realtors is that you should be thinking of, John, if I was your realtor, I’d be looking you at… Yes, you’re an older dude. Who knows? Are you going to move? Maybe not. But I don’t know that you’ve moved two or three times.

You are an investor. If I’m looking at you, the possible upside far outweighs any downside to me trying to develop a robust relationship with you. Far outweighs it. I want to build up that relationship. I want to know when your birthday is. I want to send you a card. I want to know what your alma mater is. I want to send you a joke about fugilists every once in a while. I want to do all of that while inviting you to go to a place that I have a lot of information about, let’s just call it improving your home’s value, what real estate investors are maybe paying attention to today, right now in 2025, It’s shit that you might be curious about. Maybe, maybe. I’d send you there so that you were looking at me and going, I’m top of mind. If you’re thinking about another investment at some point, you’re at least going to call me and ask me some questions. That’s how I would view it. A lifetime client. That’s more valuable to you than new clients, new client acquisition. John has some great… God, everybody could tell, including John, I’m just so into this subject.

Are you accurately tracking all stages of the lead life cycle? Do you actually track your leads, John, or do you think that’s something specifically for realtors?

No, because I’m not in I’m not into the high figures. Some of the clients, we got… Some of my clients are very big, and they’re on big retainers. It’s my other business. I’m aiming in the male right at a smaller figure individuals. We have built some websites, but I’m purposely aiming it at the not so much handholding because I’m on the brink. I’m a bit pushed, producing all the content in my other business and blah, blah, blah. I think it’s linked to the things that you said it monitored. Keep it simple, but keep it sustainable. Have some measures that you religiously monitor, but you don’t have to go enormously complicated, because I see some things online, YouTube, aimed at real estate agents. And the training is ridiculous as far as I’m concerned, because it would be fine if you got a brokerage and you got somebody in in-house as the analytical Marketing Manager or whatever, and that’s their full-time job. But I think most agents just haven’t got the bandwidth, so it’s better just I would look at 2-3 things.

I agree with that. I’m going to do two things. Say how I do it right now, and then how I apply this to real estate. Right now, I do it with Inbound R EM because I have a conversation with somebody, and my entire lead generation strategy is inbound. I make no efforts whatsoever to have any pre-conversation with anybody. I take appointments that are scheduled through a calendar. Once I’ve talked to somebody, they get no follow-up, no email threads, and nothing from me. They get added to my company’s newsletter mailing list, to which we often spend as long as a year building out a single piece of content, doing things like case studies and deep client studies that we then pass that data along to all the people on that list. They care or they don’t. But we spend a lot of time doing the work. If somebody reads it and is interested, they will find something valuable. Then I have my team scrub all the people who didn’t call me back or touch me once a year. Some people on my team run through the list and call everybody.

The only thing they’re saying when they’re calling is, Do you want to have another conversation with Robert? That’s it. That’s the whole pitch. Nothing else. No sales, not really. More like diligent follow-up. That’s it. That’s how I do it for Iram. How I would do it if I were a real estate agent is that I would do it quite differently. I would do a very robust lifestyle email list. I would manage and monitor text messaging, and I would be very event-focused if I were a real estate agent. I would send people to events and text message invites to events I found interesting, especially ones that I was going to be at personally and that had a lot of value—wine tastings, golfing events, things that were really relevant. I’ll give you one last example, and then we’ll move on. I live in Vanuys. It’s not a very sexy city at all, but there is a high school near me, and now and again, I hear this high school going insane with, like, they’re having big football games. It’s a massive racket in terms of bands.

I can hear the drums like they’re right next door. I would invite people to these games, mainly if I worked in my neighborhood. Hey, will you be at the game? I’ll be there. I’m going to do a tailgate party. I’m going to grill some hamburgers, grill some dogs. Please feel free to join me if you like. When I was there and talking to these people, I would not be salesy. I would just be building relationships because if they were on my list and they met me there in the first place, shook my hand, and said, You invited me, I’d already know they’re qualified. That’s it. I don’t need to know anything else. I would say, Lovely to have you here. Do you like mustard or ketchup? That would be it. So, here are the last few of my final thoughts. John, do you want to lead us off, or do you want me to do it?

My final thought is that we’ve provided great value in this podcast.

I think that we have, too. And for those, again, John has done an incredible job of going out and finding some good content marketers that have done to varying degrees, simple stuff or high-end stuff in the content marketing space. And I strongly recommend that you check them out. Now, whether or not you… And failing that, you can check either one of our websites, Mail-Right.com or inboundrem. Com. We both have some great examples of what we feel is good content marketing because we do it on our sites. But I like this list, mainly because John and I constantly plug on this podcast. This list is complete of people that we don’t plug. So you should check it out if you’re trying to get value for your time. I’ve been Robert Newman. If you’d like to contact me at all, you can do so at inboundram. Com. You can check out the services or About page if you’d like to dive deeper into who I am and why you should read my blog. Or John, how would you want people to do that same research with you?

Just go over to the Mail-Right.com website and look at our feature page. We’re going to be putting up some video. I got close to finishing the final part of our revamp of the system. We’re close to adding a library of starter websites. When we get that done, I’ll be putting some video walkthroughs of the product, and we’ll revamp the interface of the basic system and increase the speed. I’d love you to go there and book a demo, and I’ll walk through the system with you.

Beautiful. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. John, take us offline. It’s been a great show. Could you let me know if I can get off?

Hang.

Redfin bought by Rocket Mortgage: Uncover the implications of this major acquisition and how it could revolutionize the home-buying process.

In this show, we delve into the significant acquisition of Redfin by Rocket Mortgage and explore its implications for the real estate market. What does this merger mean for homebuyers, real estate agents, and the broader industry? We break down the key details of the deal and analyze how it could reshape how we buy and sell homes. Don’t miss out—watch the video to stay informed.

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Today’s episode is number 468. As you can tell, by my somber tone, we will talk about serious stuff today. We’re going to discuss Red Fin being bought by Rocket Mortgage. We will discuss some of Open Door’s growing problems if we have time. We’re excited to get into this conversation. Before we start, though, we’ll be sure to introduce you if you happen to be a listener who hasn’t met me or Jonathan Denwood. My partner in this podcast, Jonathan, is a long-time entrepreneur. He’s an import from the UK, and I talked decades ago about him. It’s not like this has been recent.

I’m going to be tarred pretty soon.

They’ve got a lot of rules there that aren’t the same as ours. He’s always had a bit of a feather related to Redfin in his cap. I have some things to say about yet another large portal acquired by another conglomerate. Before we go any further, John, why don’t you give people a little bit of your summary about who you are? Let’s continue to wind up towards the main event. Thanks.

Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mail-Right.com, Mel-right. We’re CRM, a lead generative platform with a website and load functionality, and we start month to month at $49. We’re affordable, and it’s just a great platform with a load of functionality. Go over to the website, read what we offer, be blown away, and book a chat with me. Back over to you, Robert.

All right. My name is Robert Newman. I’m a lifetime sales guy, lifetime storyteller, and multiple founder, and I have started several companies. InboundREM, which I started nine years ago, is a nod to some things I saw in the real estate industry that needed to be addressed. A company that was SEO-first, inbound, Trading First, affordable in comparison to other SEO companies, and a few different things. But if you want to learn about real estate, part of inbound marketing is giving away as much of your knowledge as possible for free. And I’ve done that. Thirty-five years of experience, 16 of them in the real estate world, go to my website. I guarantee you will learn something you need to know about digital marketing. All right, without any further ado, we can walk into our main topic today: the acquisition of Open Door by Rocket Mortgage. My guy, John, has always done an incredible job on show notes. If any of you are listening to the show and thinking that there’s no value to going to somewhere where you’re writing, you’re wrong. You should see what John has written and where he got his research.

We will start with the history of Redfern and its founders, David O’Reacher, Michael Dauery, and David Saling. If you can do me a favor, John, I didn’t do the research. I have some knowledge, but I didn’t read up on this if you could start us off and give us your thoughts on these three founders in this company, in a summary way.

Well, a lot of them come from Stanford University. They were into tech. They built some functionality when they started Redfin. You could pass and comment about some of that tech, some like the Mac feature, and some other semi-revolutionary, I think, or semi-better than what was offered. Then they brought on a good old Glenn into the mix, who has been the President and CEO of Red Fin and the public face for quite a long time. I call him the laughing Harina myself. He’s always got a grin. And that’s it—Techie people who provided some great tech and a very flawed business model.

Yeah. So I agree with most of that. So Redfin has always been… A group of tech guys started it. Here’s my hot take. Started by a group of tech guys. They correctly said there was a huge hole in the real estate market for services. And the guy you mentioned said, ” Oh, hey, you can add more. He was a data mining guy. And so he probably thought correctly that data could be used so much better. He also thought that because he had come from Amazon, data could most likely be collected and used for the betterment of the brand much better, and that he saw very few people doing that correctly with real estate. Unfortunately for him, a couple of other guys have these really big ideas that have been tried inside real estate countless times and have never really worked. That is the idea that real estate agents can be very salary compensated salespeople with a single standard of service across every marketplace for people who are buying and selling homes. And that might have worked if the idea of buying and selling homes hadn’t been established so well inside the market as an open field of opportunity for top sales reps.

And why does that matter? Anytime you give many markets, are actually dominated by small businesses. We just don’t think of it that way, John. We don’t look at it that way, but I’ll give you an example. There are a couple of fields of sales here in LA, in Beverly Hills, specifically, that have been dominated by some incredibly aggressive, talented, organized small business owners. We know them by their name. We think of them as agents like Joyce Ray. Joyce Ray has a staff of 13 people that support her. She is a small business owner. When one of her clients calls her, her team of 13 goes into action. You’re not going to take away her business based on a 1% model. There’s nobody that can match the speed, style, privacy that her team offers the right client. And therein we run into the challenges with these one % models. Everybody’s seeing… There are tons of agents out there that say, I can do the same service for one % of your commission instead of three, and the client will save that 2%, and since they’re getting the same service, they’ll love me. It’s just not true.

It’s just not true, unfortunately, for those one % You need profit to add value to your business mechanism, or at least great salespeople, great business owners do that. They take the money that they make and reinvest it into the business. Sound familiar, John?

Yes.

Okay. And so for some reason, everybody, the second you start treating a service like a commodity, flat rate it, you’re going to get a service that is a commodity. And Redfin, nobody figured out that model yet. And so there’s a lot of brokenness inside the model. Doesn’t surprise me that Redfin has been acquired for 1. 75 billion? It’s basically, which is a pittance in today’s world. It’s a pittance. Red Fin has been raising money, doing, flipping, doing all this different stuff for years. So 1. 57 billion, it would be the baby of all the deals that we’re going to see as the real estate industry continues to consolidate. I don’t have much to comment on, except that I use Rocket for my finances. Rocket is a very smart tech-driven company. I think this deal is great for Rocket and completely terrible for anybody and everybody that’s ever been involved with Redfin.

That’s my- Well, they haven’t done too bad in the sales. The major stockholders, and I’m sure Glenn’s done, and some of the founders have done okay. I just think that they were having problems with their business model from day one. The website, you’d probably be better off. I think there’s the figure of 50 million uniques to the website, but their business model, it was failing. So then they got into wholesaling, didn’t they? They got into the same craze as we’re going to be talking about, Open Door and Zillow got in iBuyer. They all pulled in on the COVID years into wholesaling, and They were doing really great because everybody that palled into wholesaling were doing nice. But when the damn broke, they’d been slaughter, basically, because it’s back again to a broken business model, as you so clearly outlined. They had nowhere to go, really. Their hope was that interest rate were going to be slashed, and it was back to a boomy market that would… And they could go back to their old wholesaling days. It looked like it’s not happening. And Glenn, Mr. Smiley, as I call him, always got a grin on his face as he’s cutting your throat.

It’s just a really broken business model. But maybe we can discuss in the second half Really a totally different company. Both Red Fin had a broken business model. Rocket has had its ups and downs with the regulators. But obviously, Glenn wasn’t a founder, but they couldn’t, in my mind, be two different individuals than Glenn and Dan Gilbert. But whatever you think of Dan, and I have different thoughts about Dan Gilbert, he didn’t start with nothing, but my God, he didn’t start with much. To say that he achieved a lot in his lifetime, he’s still alive. I still think he’s reasonably active in the business to some extent. It’s a story that could only happen in America, really. But he’s a very controversial businessman, isn’t he?

Yeah.

But you got to respect him in some ways, don’t you?

You do indeed. We’re going to open up the subject. We’re going to stop a few minutes into it, but we’re going to talk a little bit about what went wrong with Redfin’s business model, which is a The topic that John has included as part of the show notes, but guys, I got to tell you, everybody that’s listening in the show, this is a controversial opinion. The reason that I have this opinion, you can summarize everything that I thought was wrong with Redfin by the last and closing sentence on Glenn Kalman’s LinkedIn profile, which is basically, I’ve done everything there is to do at startups except for be in sales. That is on his It’s his own LinkedIn profile. And it shows people that hate salespeople are the people that create models that are one percenters. And the reason that they always do it is because they don’t understand sales. It’s very similar between democracy and commercialism and communism. And unfortunately, it doesn’t work. That’s the problem because great salespeople want to be compensated in great ways. The minute you figure out that you’re great or that you’re working five times as hard as the other sales guys on the same lot, you’re going to leave.

That is the problem. You can’t keep great salespeople in flat business models, and you want the great salespeople servicing your customers. Let’s talk a little bit about your hot take You linked an article that was what went wrong with Redfin Rocket Mortgage Acquisition. It was an article on HousingWire, which can occasionally be behind a paywall.

Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Sometimes it’s under the firewall, and sometimes it isn’t, is it?

Yeah, but why don’t you share your thoughts on this?

Start us off, please. Well, I can understand. What I would like to get your input from is that you I can understand why Rocket has bought it because of the traffic they’re getting. I’m surprised, even though Rocket is the second largest mortgage company in the US, I’m ongoing by my research and my memory, it’s still only got 4% of the market. It’s still a very diverse market. I’m going to say something, I’m not totally sure I’m correct, but normally them buying something like Redfin, and they’re going to get into the government is going to get heavy quick with them. But in the present political environment, I don’t think that’s going to happen for the foreseeable future. I don’t see the heat coming on Rocket that hard. So I can see the logic for Rocket doing this, because whatever you think of Dan Gilbert and his team, they’re not idiots. They’re far from it. I don’t think… I think what you’ve just said about Redfin and the attitude, the President and the CEO is correct, but they’re not They’re not idiots, but I think they fed on their own dog food, as I would put it.

The thing with Rocket, Rocket has had its problems, hasn’t it? It’s had its brush in. A lot of mortgage companies have had their brush with the government and the organizations of government. They look at the numbers that hit the website, and they think they can do something with Redfin, and Redfin’s agents will recommend Rocket as their mortgage company. I think Red Finns’ business model is so awful I’m not too sure about that. I’ll just be interested in your thoughts about that.

I’m going to share them when we come back from break. So ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take a short break here. And when we come back, I’m going to go through some of the statistics and some of the things that this HousingWire article, which I just sped read as we were on the show. But full transparency, the article said what I basically said just in more detail and gave more numbers, more stats. Some of the stats I found to be really revelatory I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the stats. I knew the business model brokenness, but it led to some really interesting numbers. So stay tuned and we’re going to walk through those. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 486. Is that right?

Something. It’s 468.

468, sorry. Mental dyslexia. 468. And we’re talking This was about this acquisition of Redfin by Rocket Mortgage. Before we went to break, I was saying that I would cover some numbers. The article in HousingWire basically agreed with me. They said that effectively that this model was broken. Now, that model being broken led to some very interesting numbers. In 2021, Red Finns’ age and count fell by 22. 5% In the same year, the real brokerage went up by 11, 173%, Fathom Realty by 136%, Compass by 78%, eXp by 64%. All of these are newer companies in growth in the middle of their growth phase. But honestly, the number one reason that was listed by top performers at Red Fin for leaving was they felt like their income was capped. Exactly what I just said. And so they lost not just agents, they lost their best agents. That’s a problem for any sales organization. When you’re doing large scale sales, if you can’t keep your best people, that’s an antithesis for a mediocre company at best, if not just a downright massive failure. Another thing about their model was since everybody was on W2s, they created a much higher cost that had nothing to do with production.

The header for the way that this article says that there was no room for error, financially speaking. But honestly, compensation based on performance business models mean that all of your salespeople take the hit when the economy is slow. Generally, John, because I’ve done nothing but sales my entire life, you lose your top, your lower 80% sales agents. You keep your top 20%. So then you think about that because The top 20% figure out a way to produce. They take a hit in their income, but they do figure out a way to produce, which means both the business and the agents succeed. And you’re not pressuring the agents to stay. They are looking at the career that they built for themselves and saying, I can still make some money. And so they go out and they do it. The lower 80% can’t make money because they were never great salespeople and weren’t hustling to start with. So they leave and they really impact the business very little. So the thing that the business does by itself with these compensation models is it stays in operation, it loses its money, but its top salespeople stay. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

W2 models Don’t do that. And they’ve got to support the cost of lower performing salespeople in bad marketplaces. And that’s what happened with Redfin. According to this article, and I agree, that’s what it basically said. Last Last but not least, and this is probably the most important part that the HousingWire article covers, lower commissions meant little to clients. I’m going to say that again. I know you know this, John, so it’s really for the people in the back seats of this podcast. Lower commission made very little difference to clients. That means at the end of the day, the 1-2% that clients saved did not mean very much to them, especially when it started to come into elements of service. But why? For that 1-2 % you’re paying a top salesperson, your experience could be as much as 80 % better. John and people like us break our fucking asses for your five-star review. We do, and it bothers us. It intellectually grabs us because we care. Whereas poor salespeople or even average for people either don’t pay attention, that I’m being kind, or they don’t care, and now I’m not being kind. And it doesn’t matter because somebody who’s vested in their business cares a lot.

John, Do you care? You’ve done crazy things for five-star reviews, right? I have. Have you?

I’ve written a pony for a five-star.

I’ve eaten thousands of dollars worth of business operating expenses to either get, keep, or maintain a good review profile. There’s no level, which means that the client who was legitimately unhappy or thought that they deserve something, they never would have gotten it from me if I hadn’t been paying attention to my online reputation. And this is the difference between maybe an average company or a low-performing company and a high-performing company. And it does make a difference to the customer.

So can we get on? Why do you think… It’s obvious. Why do you think Rocket bolts it? Because they’re not idiots, Dan and his crew. Obviously, they’re synergy, but also, I might be totally wrong. They think that in the articles I’ve read, they think they can cut the cost base down enormously as well.

Oh, they will.

But do you think they also feel, because they’ve done it in the mortgage, so they’ve managed to get people to buy mortgages online. I think they might also think that they can do something with the fundamental model. And then you can’t discount them, because if they didn’t got away from the particular restraints of the particular business model with Redfin, they do have the experience and ability, I would have thought, to do something.

Now, what I’m saying about Redfin, which is basically, listen, you’ve talked about it a lot. I’m going to give these guys the error of margin, just a margin of error. These entrepreneurs just started that were just inexperienced, didn’t know what the hell they were doing. I’m just going to say that they were woefully underskilled for the thing that they did. They still, they brought it to life and they did something, and that’s more than most people do. So I say that with a grain of salt. But the guy that runs Rocket is a beast of a different color. He knows exactly what he’s doing. I have a lot to say about Rocket that is all good.

Can I just interrupt? There’s a term in North London for people like Dan Gilbert. We Monster Mashes. He’s a Monster Mash. That’s a North London. It’s the endearment. It means that he’s a monster. He’s somebody that if you go up against him, you don’t really want to do you do it? You got to really think serious before you go up against Dan Gilbert.

There’s a few different things. Number Rocketbot in a perfectly-timed market acquisition. Let’s not ignore that fact. Redfin was in the middle of absorbing losses due to yet another massive shift in the real estate market, eating it, taking it on the chin. They had made some changes in the business that are likely we’re going to continue to see benefit from, such as Redfinnext, which is them going back to a traditional compensation model. The problem is you’ve got 12 years of history however long it’s been where they built a company up under a different model. And once you’ve got that pace, the only way to really shake things up is to start another brand or let somebody acquire you. That’s exactly what happened here. Rocket acquired the company is going to rebrand and probably drop everything into a regular compensation model. But on top of all of that, they got the company to steal, John. 1. 75 billion, are you joking me? Compass raised seven billion out of the gate. This is ridiculous. It’s a pittance. They bought the company with that pittance, and they now have a search portal. They now have a Salesforce. They now have market synergies with their mortgage company.

It was a brilliant move by Rocket. Brilliant. It’s going to add so much value, not to mention, I don’t know that anybody else has noticed this, but the logo and branding between Rocket and Redfin is already similar. It was just a genius move on Rocket’s part. Then gives these guys like Glenn and other people like him, they can gracefully sunset out and become like all the other second-tier players in the tech space. I have half a billion dollars. Let me throw it into other things and maybe they’ll get lucky because they’re not, which is what happened to the guys, the PayPal Mafia. There’s a lot of second-tier entrepreneurs, and then there’s Elon Musk, who is truly driving innovation, no matter what you say about him, driving innovation, things like that. Glenn Kalman needs to be retired because he swings and misses a lot. So let the guy retire. Veroon needs some room to run, and he’s going to get it. That’s my overall opinion. He’s really going to get his room to run.

I think the other That’s great. I think the only important thing is regulation because I think Rocket with lending the two businesses, but it’s still a very fragmented business. So their market share But I think they would have some normally. But I think in the present climate, they’re not going to get it. Shall we finish off with Open Door? Another great success story.

This has been our primary podcast. We’re going to give you some bonus content today. John did. We had a lot to say about Redfin. For those of you who are watching this on YouTube, do us a favor, take a moment, take a beat, take a breath, and give us a thumbs up on if you liked what we’ve done, if you like John’s content, if you like the research, the show notes, all the things that we did, trying to just give you a little bit of information to apply here. Now, we’re going to talk about OpenDore. I actually know a lot more about OpenDore because I’m a member of the Motley Fool, and Motley Fool talks about OpenDore all the time. I’m much more familiar with what’s going on with OpenDore than I was with Redfin. If you’d like to reach out to you, though, John, how would you like people to do that?

I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com website, have a look what we got, you’d be blown away, and just book a chat with me, and I’d love to show you what MailRight offers.

Back over to you, Rob. If you’d like to know more about SEO long-form, like inbound strategies where people passively come to you, if you’re interested in to see how I think marketing is being shifted in the information age, Go to inboundrem. Com. Read any of our articles, or if you really have liked what you heard on the show today, if you want to just gab about these real estate portals, go ahead and schedule a call with me. I’d be happy to share my thoughts in more detail. We’re going to move on to OpenDore, which if for those of you that don’t know, is a company that simply acquisition homes and then sold them on a platform. That’s the really basic part of Opendoor. Everybody loved the business model so much, they jumped in on it, including Redfin, including Zillow, and then everybody, for the most part, has retreated out of that industry except for OpenDore, which is the biggest one. There’s still a couple of other players, but OpenDore is the biggest player. So with that opening, let’s get into, John, why did you even include them at the end of the podcast?

Well, I just thought it was just insightful. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had little comments about Redfin, haven’t I? I’ve been diligent in my kicking of them, haven’t I? But open door, every mother, I was going to swear there, has got into this model, wholesaling, where you got the convenience, but people, their biggest purchase, most people’s biggest purchase, do they really want to give you 30 plus of their equity in one of their biggest assets of their life. Unless they’re forced to, or it’s a secondary asset, they’re probably not, are they? But if the market’s going up every month by 2, 3%, you don’t need so much margin, do you? Unless something fundamental changes in the economy, which you can’t In the interesting times that we live in, you can have a discount. I really don’t see things fundamentally getting better for opened door. What do you think?

All right, transparently, everybody I own is some shares of OpenDore. All right, this is not investment advice. I think it was a disruptive business model. I think that there’s space for it. I think this is just a horrible time for OpenDore to be around. It higher interest rates, an uncertain market, inventory problems. If you’re looking for the highest priced car on the lot, John, of course, you don’t buy it off a website. Or if you do, you want to walk into it and look at it. When interest rates are this high, real estate is not commoditized, wow, do you ever… Even a crappy home in my neighborhood costs so much money. I can’t buy it off a website. There’s certain markets where you could maybe still, not many, though, Virginia, West Virginia, we could still buy something for $150,000. Sure, maybe OpenDore would there, but where most markets are so incredibly overpriced. However, having said all that, what do I think? I think there’s room, space, and I think just like everything else, I think that homes will be bought off a website as technology catches up. I think that virtual tours with headsets and things like that, I think we’re walking into an age where a lot of people want to buy sight-unseen or at least use, and if OpenDore really had Some forward-thinking members there.

They would do open-door showrooms where you could walk in and use these headsets and basically create a mechanism in which you could buy a lot of inventory online. I do think that And I think the model is there, and I think open-door is the leader. I don’t know that they’re going to survive. The reason I bought them is they’re dirt cheap and they have some momentum. I’m not even saying that it’s an endorsement. It’s probably one of the riskiest proposals for the I have vested like that, that I have in my entire portfolio because they also could announce it going out of business tomorrow. And I wouldn’t be surprised.

You’re a good salesperson because you always sold it to me. I follow the logic and admire your sales ability because I want to kick it in. I think it’s a race as we would say in London. It’s a rabid dog. It needs to be put it down.

I understand. I understand the thoughts. I know where it’s at, but I disagree with the… If it’s not them, it will be someone else. I believe that with all of my heart, John, or I wouldn’t say it on the podcast.

I would never buy a house unless I saw it. I would even consider it. But a lot of people, you’re right. You’re right. I wouldn’t do it, but I’m just an old geezer, so what do I know?

Well, age and wisdom tend to say that one of the most critical decisions you’ll make, you’ve got to do it. But you know what? Great salespeople always overcome those objections, such as a sometimes rock-solid guarantee, and if you don’t like it, you can give it back to us. We offer you $5,000 for the inconvenience. I can go on and on. There’s always a way to overcome somebody’s reluctance if you have deep enough pockets and are sure about your investment. I’m certain that the people running Open Door have some of that going on. But ultimately speaking, Open Door is probably something that most people, except for those of you who are most, whether it’s on the investment side or whether it’s on the I need to buy a house side. If you are a bleeding edge person with plenty of room for risk inside your home purchase or investment life, then this, I don’t know, maybe you do, look at it. I have plenty of room for risk, John, on both sides of my life. I don’t have a deep…

Depending on how low the thing is trading, there’s a 30 or 40 % chance that this is a 100 times investment. Regarding the real estate market, we only need one big upset, and the open door will be back. Like all we need. We need mortgage rates to come down. We need a little bit of it. We need the inventory to continue to spike up. And all of a sudden, anything that pressures people to buy homes, which we haven’t had since the pandemic, we’re seeing the natural deflation of need based upon an overinflation of need a few years ago. And so we’ll see, and we have a wild card running policy in the US.

That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it, Rob.

Are you looking to go into politics, Rob?

No.

Oh, no.

That was very much.

I love the fact that you put it here. For those of you listening and watching this show, listen, come on, man, everybody, engage with John and me. Could you call us up? I’d love to hear what you think about Open Door. For those of you who are listening to this show, you can’t go wrong with John’s offer. Call John if you’re looking to move inside your marketing and your budget has reduced, but you still want a competent provider on the other end of the equation. Call him, please, because you can’t go wrong with the offer he’s built for you. He’s built an offer and changed his offer for the market at large. For those of you who are more veterans and looking to shift your budget from things that are no longer working, such as direct marketing and advertising, InboundREM is a good place to look. And you can go to inboundrem.com and schedule a call with me. Having said all that, John, this is a good place to wrap it up for me. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

I’d come out with a good one-line as Monster Mash, Raby Dog. I thought it was exciting to Tatey.

Hey, you did it at the perfect time. I introduced you as English in this show.

We’ll see you later, folks. Bye.

Bye.

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Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 467. Today, we will talk about the best real estate software for agents in 2025, or otherwise known as Jonathan Dinwood talking about software for real estate agents he thinks will be helpful, and me taking pot shots.

I found some new stuff to talk about. You get a bit hunk if we repeat ourselves too much. So I found some new stuff.

He did. He did find some new stuff. He found seven things I’ve never even heard of. So it’s going to be really fun today. We’re going to talk about a lot of stuff that nobody’s heard of because if I haven’t heard of it, I can guarantee you that a lot of our audience hasn’t heard of it. But before we get started, before we get the show going, before we throw some coal in the fire, John, tell everybody who you are and why they should listen to you.

Thanks, Robert. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are CRM, a lead generation platform, and much more. We’ve a starting. It’s a closing price of $49 a month. If you pay month to month, it’s just a fantastic value. Over to you, Rob.

Beautiful. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound R-E-M. I’ve been doing online marketing consulting with real estate agents for 16 years, and I’ve built out sales teams and built my own company, Inbound R-E-M, with people. And what we do is educate agents. We do SEO, and we make real estate websites. Effectively, if you want to know about online marketing of the organic style, the inbound style, you go to my website, inboundram. Com, and check us out. Inbound marketing is all about giving away a lot of stuff for free. So, go there and get all the information you need to build your business using online tools. All right, without any further ado, we’re going to jump right into this list. The first one, which has got to be one of the most interesting names for service I’ve ever heard, is Coffee & Contracts, an interesting, exciting name with marketing templates. So, John, why don’t you dive into this for us and tell us why this made your list?

Well, its founder is Hayley Ingram. Is she related to the founder of Ingram? I did some research on that. I couldn’t find a definite answer to that particular question. They supply all leaflets and digital content you can use on social media, your website, and flyers. She, or they, they provide it through a membership website. They’re using WordPress, and they have a library of content. In some ways, it’s similar to MailRight because that’s the side we’ve built out more ourselves. Everything is editable in Canva. Most of what they supply is editable in Canva. It starts at $74 if you’re a single agent; if you’re in teams, it goes down to about $54 monthly. It looks okay to me. It’s something that I plan to expand in Melright as well, but we have recently developed that side of our offering as well.

Very cool.

Could you let me know what you think? I’m looking at their SEO analytics, which are mediocre. Still, they do have some traffic coming into their homepage off a lot of interesting keywords, over a thousand of them, to be specific.

Many of them have to do with marketing for real estate, which is how you probably found them because they’re number five for that keyword.

So this is something- No, I didn’t actually. I just looked at my list of resources that I check over for ideas, and they were in… One of my online resources had written an article, and they were listed in the article.

Got you. Okay, well, for marketing for real estate, they come up number four, actually, above the close. Housing wire and luxury presence are doing slightly better for those keywords, and that’s Those are the big companies doing slightly better for those keywords. Reddit and rock content. In any way, what do I think? I think that I think that there’s a lot that’s already out there with AI that’s going to make this obsolete fairly quickly. But I think that if you’re a beginning marketer who doesn’t want to spend any money on a service like Fiverr or you want to have a Fiverr agent use a very specific type of workflow, coffee and contracts could have a place inside your marketing. I like the pricing, that’s for sure. I like the idea of having a place to go that’s going to give you a lot of ideas because it’s templates. I think that’s probably the important part of template providers these days is to give people ideas to start off their marketing process. If that’s what you’re looking for, then I do think that this website has a few hundred ideas. And if it’s worth $74 a month for those ideas, then it’s a great deal.

I see where she’s coming from, though, because obviously, I’m in this business myself. But I think somebody that can’t afford a company like yours, Robert, but who is okay in using Canva and has some computer skills, and it’s got the great reassurance that you’re not using other people’s copyright materials because there’s a lot of people that get in problems when they’re using imaging or materials that you don’t have the commercial copyright to reuse, and you can get into a real mess really quickly. And there’s a set of companies, and their business model is to sue people or ask ask, send threatening letters and ask for, not enormous sums of money, but thousands of dollars because you use their image or something, and it’s the ease of use as well. So for the price, for what it gets, I can… If you go to the website, it is really aimed at the female agent agent in the style of the website and the copy and their pitch, basically.

Copy you. Listen, I think for most services, including this one, if somebody built it, they probably had an agent archetype in their mind when they built it. I feel like that’s probably the case here, too. I’m certainly thinking that there’s an agent of a certain place in their career or maybe a part-time agent where this service would be really useful and for a very long period of time. So Caffe & Contracts, I love the name. That I will tell you over and over again. It’s really unusual and it’s certainly memorable, and it got them to be number four for a major keyword, which is not easy to do, and they’re only a four-year-old company. So they’ve got something going on there. Check them out, everybody. All right, number two on the list, Agent Crate. Why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?

Yeah, looked over their website, looked at some demos on YouTube and that. It’s doing… They’ve expanded. They provide a social media calendar, so does Mailright. Also, they’ve got a service where they actually post for you using their social media calendar. Melright does that as well, additional service. But they’ve expanded. They’ve expanded into the same area as coffee and contracts. And also they’re providing websites, which is what Melright does. We provide a list of templated WordPress-based websites using Gutenberg technology. They’re using their own priority software. I put the wrong price on the list. That was on… It actually starts at $89, but they’ve expanded. One of the things that I noticed, I did do a search on their website to confirm this, but it didn’t come up with any useful information, is they provide content, but they provide their own editor. It’s not linked to Canva, like coffee and contracts. And that can be a drawback because some of the reviews that I watched, they were having problems in actually customizing the content that they provide because there were some browser conflicts. But the last review that I watched was about six months ago, so they could have fixed that problem.

But they provide an editor themselves. It’s a bigger library of content Plus they got this scheduler, this social media scheduler. So they’re offering more functionality than coffee and contracts. But the name isn’t so good, is it? That’s what really matters, if you got the name, doesn’t it?

Right. Yeah, absolutely.

You should have laughed more on that one. That was a good one.

Okay, well.

Because you’re not being well, are You’re not being well, sir.

I’ve not been well. Listen, there is no doubt that there is a deep need inside the real estate space for social media tools. And of all the service-based professions that are out there, one of the service-based professions that gets the most value out of social media is absolutely real estate agents. There’s no doubt. And all the controversies that relates to real estate, whether the market’s heating up or slowing down, plays well into social media feeds. You can really leverage that, which makes these auto-posting tools really interesting to look at. I’ve been looking at a service called Hero Post lately. They’ve been through many phases of development, but they’re the only social media service that seems to have their eye on trying to actually post to just about every popular platform at the same time. And that’s what I’m interested in personally.

I want to be able to-That’s all right, does that?

No, I doubt it. Because I’m talking about Reddit LinkedIn, everything.

We just concentrate on the ones that are relevant to real estate agents. But they say they got 20,000 agents on their website, trusted by over 20,000.

Are you talking about Agent Crate? I have no idea. I’m looking in here trying to figure out what platform- That’s what they’re saying on their homepage, trusted by over 20,000 agents. This is a very hard tool to develop. Now I’m going to… And John, you’ve developed one. So one of the things that… And I don’t know how you cracked the metric for Instagram. You cracked it, though, right?

Well, linking it to Instagram.

Not linking, posting, because they update their actual core tool and they break code for auto-posting services. And then you have to go in and basically reactivate your token every 15 to 20 days with Instagram. We have never figured out a crack for that. It just always breaks. All the automated tools break with Instagram. Did you solve for that?

No, we haven’t. You have to go in and read. We can’t do the impossible. I doubt if these people have done it as well.

Okay.

All right. I’ll be very surprised because all these social media. Our one works for Facebook, Instagram, but you are correct. You have to go in and reconnect.

Okay. Well, we haven’t figured it out either, John.

I don’t think we can.

If anybody ever does figure it out, I think that they’re going to make a lot of money.

I don’t think it’s working it out. I think it’s more to do Instagram. It doesn’t want to bar these optimization tools, these schedulers, but it doesn’t want to encourage them too much either.

I agree with that. I agree with that assessment. Anyway, so that leaves interesting ideas. But ladies and gentlemen, if you have a really good assistant and you have a strong person handling your social, I think that something like Agent Create will automatically post your content is probably really cool. And I love the price. The price at $39 is really, really, really sure.

It doesn’t start. I was wrong on that. I was taking that from a couple of online resources, but when I checked the website, it starts. They got about three to four different plans, and the basic plan seems to start at 89, but I might be wrong. But I did check over the website, and the cheapest price I could find started at $89.

Copy you. All right, well…

But I could be wrong. It could be 39 because there’s a big difference between 39 and 89, isn’t it?

Very, very, very big difference. Well, okay, copy you.

I presume the 39 is like with our MailRight system. We provide the calendar and the functionality, but you have to do the posting, set up the posts, and you can store them in a library so you can reuse them. But we offer an additional service where we will post for you, but they seem be offering that at $1,99 per month. That’s a similar price to what we charge. I presume the $89 is for the self-service. That’s what I’m presuming.

Those prices start to get into the realm of prices that I’ve looked at with Hero Post and Hootsuite and all the rest. What I’m interested in, basically, which Hero comes the closest to, is an automated social calendar function that literally breaks into every single major platform, Pinterest, all of them, like 15 to 20 all at once, so that you can go to one social calendar and push content everywhere that is relevant. Now, what’s relevant for SEO and what’s relevant for a real estate agent who’s not doing SEO are two different things entirely. That’s where John and I are coming at this at cross purposes, because I look at all the platforms that allow you to read content. That’s like Reddit. And John is looking at places where you want to post for branding and things like that. And that is more like Facebook and Instagram. So anyway.

Thanks for saying that. I was a bit puzzled, but now I totally understand. So thanks.

Okay, so number three, Catalyze AI, Predictive Analytics. I’ve never even heard of these guys, John.

No. So please. They’re on the list. I watched an interview from one of their cofounders, Ryan Foults, F-O-L-T-S, Foults. It seems interesting. The price I I found it’s 1400 for the year. I have no idea if it works, but this idea of using AI to monitor, I presume it works with certain CRMs, and it monitors changes that might be occurring in the people in your CRM. And then it it, like when somebody dies, that’s a big event, or other life events, and then it notifies you. I I can actually… I follow the logic, and in a way, I see it’s an interesting way how AI could actually help a real estate professional. I don’t know if this particular setup actually works, because I did a bit of research on them, and I listened to a interview by one of the joint founders about a year ago, but I can’t I can’t really say if it actually worked. I did do a search trying to find reviews, and I couldn’t really find that much, to be honest with you, Robert.

I got you.

It is interesting, isn’t it?

Yeah, I’m doing some very, very basic research right now. And so the guy that they’ve got on the real estate professional that they have on their actual website is deep into AI. He’s got a website built on AI. He’s doing a lot of coaching having to do with AI. He’s using a lot of AI. So it doesn’t surprise me that he is really building, and he’s building all his websites using AI, and all these things look relevant. If he found a tool, and what this tool is saying that they’re doing is using AI to identify when properties are being inherited, which is a thing that you track. You could do that, John. You could do that in an automated way if you built out the AI in the right way.

One thing I found a little bit, I wouldn’t say disturbing, but put me off a little bit. When you go to their website, you click Prices. It takes you to a slightly different website. So if you go to their website and you click the price button, it’s taken to, I presume it’s their parent company, and this seems to It’s not really just a division of another parent of the main company.

Like I said, when you can create anything you want with AI and do it in a click of a few buttons, including websites, John, I think you It’s a bit weird shit like this, and I don’t think it inspires trust at all.

It didn’t with me. So you agree? I thought it was a bit odd myself.

So Wealth feed, the primary company that we’re talking about right here, Wealth feed, is a Okay, a money in motion event. So Wealth feed is basically like a data analytics company that tracks individuals and people, and it’s mostly for really, really high-end real estate markets like California, where your average sales price, tracking an individual, let’s say my neighbor here, who bought a home literally 40 years ago for 50,000. But when they die, it’s going to be a million-dollar transaction. So does it make sense to track that client in that area? The answer is it does, if you can do it cheaply. This tool, Wealth feed, is 13. 99 per year, but it only gives you a thousand monitored contacts, which is crazy. What the AI tool seems to be doing is proactively looking for events inside a zip code. Now, if it works as it’s advertised, that could be really productive. But if you’re only doing a zip code that, let’s say, has a thousand people, how many wealth events would there be in a year? Probably two. So you better have a conversion when you call them. You’re paying 13. 99 for a zip code per year.

It’s not an enormous price for most lead generation, but considering the fact that you are passively sitting there and waiting for somebody to essentially die. I don’t know, John. I would say everybody who’s listening to the podcast, I would say, do your own research and take it with a grain of salt. I like the idea. I don’t know that it’s ready for prime time as I feel about a lot of things that we see and get pitched as it relates to AI. We’re going to go to our break. We’re going to be right back. When we come back, John is going to walk us through the rest of the list. For those of you that like a cheat code, we’re going to be talking about virtual staging, property showings, and a little bit of coaching and goal setting. We’re hoping that we’re going to give you some great ideas. John has once again put together the list and done the grunt work. If you like what you heard, you like what you’ve seen, make sure that you message John. What email are we using for you these days?

It’s Jonathan, J-O-N-T-H-A-N@mail-right. Com.

Make sure you email John there, especially if you have something that you’d like to see him work on for us as a team. We would love to hear your thoughts about, do you want us to deep dive into something that you’re curious about? Let us know. As long as it’s related to real estate marketing, we’ll do it. All right. Without any further ado, we’ll be right back. Okay, dokey. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 467. John and I are talking about the best real estate software. I think that My opinion, John, please forgive me. I don’t know the title, Best Real Estate Software, but I think interesting real estate software for agents. I was pushing it a little bit.

I was just trying to become more enthusiastic like you.

Yeah. I think interesting is a really good way.

Well, that’s what I would have said a year ago, but I’m becoming more American. I think you’re rubbing off on me, Rob. I think in the last couple of years, I’ve become a much more effective market than I used to be.

I think that’s true. I’ve seen a lot of improvements in a lot of your marketing. You’re doing a lot of really cool things. And if I’m not mistaken, since I think I’m still connected to the Mailright calendar, I feel like you’ve been seeing results. I see a lot more calls in your calendar these days from real estate people.

Is that-Yeah, I think the other business is doing… I had a very good year last year. The Mailright thing, it’s going the right direction. It’s been very painful, but I don’t think until Still recently, I had any real idea of market fit, really. So that’s a bit of a problem. But I think it’s much better than that. Can we go on to the next thing?

Dialed odd, man. I’m looking at it. Hit me with it. I mean, I’m I’ve never even heard of this again. Here’s the opening line to the-I thought you would like this one because you’ve mentioned about virtual staging a couple of times in previous episodes recently, haven’t you? Yeah. Empowering MLSs 2, remain central to agents and brokerages, proactively reduce mediations, unlock new revenue, enrich listing data.

Can I tell you what I didn’t like about this?

Yeah, please.

I like the concept, but if you look a bit further on the website, Rob, you realize they’ve gone into a bit of everything, which I know it’s hilarious because that’s what Melright does. But I think if you scroll down, they can make a website for you, they can do video content for you, they can do this, they can do that, they can do the other. And that put me off a little bit because I actually want them to concentrate on the virtual staging, if you understand. Can you understand my logic there a little bit?

Yep. Well, I only see one name associated with this guy by the name of Todd Carpenter. And as with so many other people, he appears to be a real estate agent turned tech entrepreneur. I love it when real estate agents do attempt to provide stuff that they feel like they see the profession and they need. But most real estate agents have never really run a business. And this website, for sure, the StyleDod website, it’s lacking any bit of depth to it. I’m still looking at it going, I think I understand what they do.

I should have kept my mouth shut because I jumped in, but we are on the same prayer sheet in this episode. I think there’s a lot of agreement. Yeah, it’s funny. We got the same impression.

So Stalad also links to another website called reimaginhome. Ai, which is virtual staging, impure space, redesigned furniture rooms, landscaping. It’s a much bigger, much more in-depth website than StyleDot is. It’s got all sorts of stuff here. It’s got pricing, it’s got resources. I understand what it does. It ranges from $14 to $99 a month. It’s at the bottom of the site when you click on AI solutions, but it only takes you to a single place. The S implies it’s going to give you more than one service. It doesn’t. It would appear to me that style. Is serviced almost entirely by this reimaginahome. Ai. This is, once again, another one of these guys that seems to be able to build a website using AI in a heartbeat and then just links to a better website that actually has YouTube videos and you know what they’re doing. I don’t know. That’s my 10 cents, 20 cents, a dollar’s worth.

Can we go to the next one, dude?

Sure. Show Show me. Show me?

Show me.

Okay. Show me. Property showings. Let’s talk about that.

I don’t want to influence you, really, because I’ve got some strong feelings about this.

You want me to go first?

Give me what your impression is of it first.

Well, I’ll say this. This is very different than all the other services so far that you put up here. Number one, the website is deep. It has 30, 40 pages connected to it. So there’s a lot of information here, and I, once again, haven’t heard of these guys. So what I am noticing is that it seems to be a showing agent website where you can get agents to show your property. That seems to be what it is. Our paper showing system makes it easy to pay for completed requests. And then you put in price per showing a tip. I would say, here’s what my thought is, John, as a professional salesperson. I could see maybe a very, very, very, very, very set professional actually getting value out of this. And it would have to be somebody super specific because in general, we’ve got all these people basically trying to take the salesperson out of the sales process. I’ve never understood it. I never will. The idea behind sales, man, is you put me in front of a customer and I’m going to sell them. I’m going to build a relationship up and I’m going to sell them.

This It’s just literally saying, Hey, I want you to go show my inventory, but there’s going to be no salesperson. And it’s the same thing as with certain car dealerships. You name your price, you set your price, buy through an app, blah, blah, blah. Take the salesperson out of the process. So that the consumer, theoretically, doesn’t have a bad experience, right? What a terrible idea.

Yeah, we’re on the same thing. The founder is Matthew Kutcher, K-U-C-H-A-R.

Okay.

Whoever does his online market, they know what they’re doing. If you go on YouTube, you go online, they have done a blitz of videos. You try and find a third-party review, good luck to you, because they’ve pushed any negative review with their own stuff. So who’s ever doing his YouTube or his social media marketing? They know what they’re doing. I think the idea is terrible myself. It’s basically they got their internal review, you get points if you do a good showing. I I know a lot of agents, when the money is coming in, they don’t want to do showings, they think blah, blah, blah. But I just think the whole thing is a terrible idea. I just think it’s shocking. I think it’s shocking that he might be getting traction. A couple of YouTube reviews, they We were sponsoring a couple of major influencers, one guy based in Miami, a top producer. He was saying great things about it. I just think it, like you, it’s like you. It’s just a terrible idea. But who do I know? What do I know, Robert?

I think that there are… Listen, he’s been a real estate person for a lot of years, and he has been a Since 2010, and his founding story for this service is being on the ski slopes and somebody calling him to do a show in the next day and being forced into a decision to alter or adjust his vacation based on the fact that he had to show a property. In that one very specific situation, I agree a thousand %. You can have somebody step into you for part-time because he was calling team members in his brokerage to go show property. I don’t disagree with that story, and I think that there is a very specific niche that this could theoretically fill. Is it a big niche? Is it consistent? Is it running in line with where technology is going? No, it’s not. But could it serve a need in a very specific set of circumstances? Yes. For all you and I both know, might it this be one of the more exciting startups? Because it’s been around for eight years Yeah, it’s totally possible, I suppose. All right, we’re down to the bottom of the list now.

This is number 6, the last thing on the list. It’s called agently. Com. It’s the only thing that I had heard of on the entire list, really, that I’d actually seen, stumbled across.

I think I will. I found stuff that Robert Newman doesn’t know much about. I think that is a five-star compliment, actually.

It is. It really is. Tell us a little bit about what you thought about agently.

I don’t get it. I honestly don’t get it. It starts at 39 to 459. I think a lot of coaching platform, I understand it. They are like the Perthini, I think they’re very credible. I think Tom has credibility I think there are mentorship, coaching organizations and individuals that can make a difference. I think a lot of it is mediocre. I think It’s not in my opinion. Please don’t send the poison emails. Send it to Robert. Robert knows how to deal with it. I don’t get it. I just don’t But what do you think?

I think that understanding sales at a brute force level, listen, this is basically somebody who’s taken the idea of train them in classes, train them in masses, kick them in the asses, and turned it into a today’s-age service. And what it effectively comes down to is the numbers for real estate are absolutely staggeringly ridiculous. Just in the last three months, we’ve lost 300,000 licensed agents. But that means that there were 300,000 agents out there, John, that were barely maintaining their license to start with. The numbers that I’m seeing for professional real estate agents in 2024 is dumb. I heard an actual quoted figure that says 85% of agents with a license sold zero properties in 2024. If that number is true, which I’m not saying that it is, but if that data was actually accurate, that would mean that if you put 10 agents in a room, something like seven or eight of them didn’t do squat for an entire year. If that’s true, there’s an epidemic of a lack of sales understanding, basic sales understanding, because I hate to say this, John, but I don’t care who you are. You can be a bad salesperson.

If you went out every single day and knocked on doors every single day, I guarantee you that even a bad salesperson would stumble into a deal eventually because somebody would say, I’m glad you’re here at my door. My parents just died and I now own this house and I have some questions. There’s no way that you wouldn’t eventually stumble into a deal. But why do we not do that? Because people who get real estate licenses for whatever reason have zero understanding of how sales actually works. When that is the case, and they don’t have $600 to $1,000 a month to pay Tom Ferry or Mike Ferry or whoever, yeah, a service like Agently might be good. Digital assistance where you can coach online, tell them what to do, tell them maybe what to do in groups and classes.

I totally… You’ve put it really well. The only thing I would say is this is why it’s important when you’re starting your career to choose the right brokerage. Choose a brokerage that has that cares something about their agents, that will put you under their wing, will provide good training, a principle. There are too many brokerages, especially digital, I won’t name names. And it’s not only digital agents, brokerages, but this applies to the more brick and mortar, larger ones. Kelly Williams, I I think it depends on the region, but I think they still believe in training. I think it’s really finding the right brok, and too many brokerages don’t have the right attitude, in my opinion.

I agree. Listen, at the end of the day, the best real estate sales operations are still manned and helmed by old-school salespeople like me that understand that sales is a numbers game, that you got to get on the phone, knock on a door, do something. Marketing, which is what John and I do, is a great way to apply maybe a few years into your career. And if you If you find something like John where it’s inexpensive and you can learn, then by all means, do it sooner or later.

It has become harder, isn’t it? Because just ringing up, if it’s not on my contact list and they don’t leave a voice ‘s message, ‘ I’m not picking the phone up. If you go around knocking on doors in parts of Reno and certain parts of the Washoe Valley, and you just go around knocking on door, I think it’s a good chance you’re going to get shot. That’s a bit tonne-in-cheek, but it’s not totally, because there are… Yeah, I think you are putting yourself at risk a little bit. I think it’s just got a little bit harder using the general… I think a few years ago, what you were saying, it was correct. You just need to get on the phone or you need to go around knocking on doors. I’m not saying that’s totally wrong. I just think it’s got a bit harder myself.

Yeah, I agree. We’re going through a challenging real estate period right now. One of the things that I agree with that Agent lead definitely epitomizes is, listen, John, when we are going through hard markets, we examine our basic skills and offers, and I’m doing the same thing for inbound REN. Then if everything else fails, you can go old school. I’m considering starting up a phone room right now, and I’ve avoided that. I’m an inbound marketing company. I didn’t want to be back to being a telemarketing company. But you know what? I know it works. There’s no doubt it works. If you reach out to enough people, you can sell stuff. That’s it. You It may take more effort. I agree with you a thousand %. But to say that it doesn’t work at all is a fallacy. It just takes more effort. And all great entrepreneurship, great businesses, great wealthy people. It started somewhere somehow with somebody having a lot of determination to do the basic thing. And it will still work if you decide to- But on the other hand, being what I call the invisible agent won’t help you.

I think not just ramming cards in people’s hands, but going to as many free events as you’re capable of going to and just telling people, and just knowing your local real estate market, really knowing it well, educating yourself, using all the resources of a good brokerage provides, immersing yourself in your local market, and then going to everything, doing as many open homes. If there’s open homes, you do it and you’re rock reliable and you build your data list, talking, going to any event, that’s looking for a speaker and just talking about your… Doing all that, that is to me, the plausible way of not becoming the invisible agent, becoming a real visible agent in your local market.

I agree with that a thousand %. I mean, the first thing to get people to want to contact you these days is to let people know you. And you’ve got a couple of ways to do it. You can do it with big, broad messaging tools like social media. And you can also do it the way that we’ve been talking about on this call, which is you can also just simply knock on a door, walk up to somebody, shake their hand, go to meetings, go to PTA meetings. If you’re a parent, go to every single thing that every other person in your social circle invites you to. I get invited to all sorts of weird stuff, barbecues and event announcements and other people launching businesses, and I can go on and on. The Rotary Club has tons of those. If you go to places where there are meetings that you are part of a membership or invited to, you have a natural reason to be there, and thus a natural reason to talk to every single person in the room, giving you a prime opportunity, if you wanted to, to introduce yourself, tell a compelling story about who you are and what you do, and try to drum up enough of a relationship that even if the person in front of you can’t do some business with you, then somebody else in the room can.

Brian Surhunt talks about this shit all the time. He’s I’ve invented it. It’s dumb. New York is just a place where you go out and have drinks with your friends. I’ve been there, I’ve lived there for a while. You do.

But on the other hand, and I find a lot of agents struggle with this, they’re going to check over your website. If you just got a crappy one page or a website that your brokerage provides, I just don’t think that does it for you. Do you need straight away a fully powered IDX, fully customized? Probably not. But you do need a good website presence, and you do need a presence on social media, even if you’re doing all this other stuff that you’ve just described, because people will check you out, and they They will connect through the website and through your social media. So you need a combined strategy, and I find a lot of agents don’t have a combined strategy.

I want to add a new thought here. Combined strategies I agree with. Multi-platform strategies, I agree with. And I agree very strongly that most data is collected on other platforms. So a brand new agent could probably get away with Instagram, YouTube, and a Google business profile page and I don’t need necessarily need a website, which is shocking because I want to be clear with everybody, I sell websites. I make them. I am literally telling you that there are times that, let’s just pretend, John, that I gave my websites away for free. I would still say there are times and places in which an agent, depending on where they are in their career, may not need one. Where you do need an omnichannel website is when you are slightly established in your career and things are taking off and now you need a single place that talks just about you with no distractions. And in that circumstance, all of a sudden, my advice changes and I go, You absolutely need a website. You need a destination point that connects all the folks that we’ve just talked about, like the YouTube and the Google profile and the Zillow profile and the Active Reign profile and the Medium profile and all those places.

You need a singular place where somebody can learn just about you. And then if they I want to, search for properties. I also think that IDX has changed in terms of priority, like do you need it and what’s it supposed to do? I think that really, honestly, most people only use an agent IDX when they have a relationship with the IDX. That’s what I’m seeing. I’m not saying that strangers don’t do it. They do do it. I’m just saying that I’m watching a shift in user behavior as we speak and that it is definitely changing, in my opinion, and that agents should just be aware of it.

That’s I’m not saying you’re on because it’s just an opinion. I do disagree with you. I think when you are starting, you do need a website presence that you have full control over, and it just needs a good homepage, a good About Us page, good for some decent photos of you, and contact details, just the bare minimum I’m not talking about going crazy, but it’s just an honest difference of opinion. But I think in general, we do agree.

We agree on most things. This is one of the That’s one of the things that we may not necessarily agree on. But you know what, guys, for all those people listening to the show, this is the challenge that you always have when you’re seeking marketing advice. Even experts oftentimes don’t necessarily agree with one another. So my advice is always the same. Get to know the people that you’re taking your advice from and take what works for you personally as a human being and discard the rest, including anything I say, including anything John says.

You want to listen to Robert more than me.

Including anything Tom Ferry says. Could you just figure out what works for you, stick with that, and let the rest go? While we may know more than you on a subject, Tom may know more about mindset and motivating people. He knows a lot about it. He’s very good at it. But how long has it been since he sold a piece of property? Fucking years, decades. So, take it with a grain of salt. All right, we’ve put on a great show. John, you’ve shown up, and you are the expert in the research and all these questions about new services. If anybody had questions, he would be a great guy to go to. Even if John sold you something, he lowered his monthly service price to $49. You can’t beat it. How would people reach out to you?

Thanks, Robert. Just go over to the mail-right. Visit the com website and have a look at what we have to offer. You’ll be impressed with the package we’ve got. We’ve broken it up so the core is more affordable, and then we have other services you can hire us for if you get to that stage. Just look, and then you can book a free chat with me on the website. Back over to you, Rob.

And go to inboundrem. Com if you’re interested in learning how to market yourself in an ever-turbulent market. And all my stuff is free. I do a lot of videos. I’ve done 150 videos to educate realtors on what’s working for SEO.

It’s one of the biggest websites. It’s just got a ton of information on your website now.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. I, too, have been trying to build everything out slowly but surely. We talked about postcards. If it’s marketing for realtors, we probably have it on there.

It’s one of the best resources on the internet regarding general information about marketing for real estate. You have invested a lot of time and energy in it.

Can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate that, John. Thank you very much. So inboundrm. Com is the place. You can go to the About Our Services page to learn what we sell and how much it costs. But if you want to learn stuff, go to the blog. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. I’ve been Robert Newman, and my partner has been Jonathan Dinwood. He is the master of all things mail-right. Com, and we appreciate you listening to the show.

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#6 – Final Thoughts

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the Mail-Right podcast. We are going to be doing live straight from California and Reno. We’re doing episode number 466 today. If you are looking for specific data on how to do videos or get leads from videos, this is the episode for you today. It will be how to make your first YouTube video for Real Estate in 2025. As usual, you’ve got two pilots for this episode before we get into the episode. Both of us are entrepreneurs experienced in marketing, and each has a different background. I’m SEO, and John tends to be WordPress, but we have developed products and services specifically for real estate agents. Before I go any further into the show, John, why don’t you give everybody a brief wind-up to who you are and what you do?

Well, thanks, Rob. I’ve been struggling, haven’t I, Rob? Folks, I can’t even get into my own Google account. It’s been resisting my efforts for the past 45 minutes, folks, but I managed to overcome it. So I’m flustered, folks, but I’ll calm down. But I’m the joint founder of Melright, mel-right. Com. We’re a fabulous platform. We’re a CRM and a lead generation platform all rolled into one. And we start, if you pay month to month, at only $49. What more could you ask for, my beloved real estate professionals? Back over to you, Rob.

All right, beautiful. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here we go. We’re going to jump right into this. What content do your leads watch and like on YouTube? Before you get started on video, the first thing you need to do, and John is correct, is figure out what video you will make. And you don’t just sit here, devise a clever idea, and do the video. That’s not the way that I do it. That’s not the way that most professional marketers do it. We go on to tools like VidIQ or TooBuddy or AREFs or any number of research tools that we generally either have a free account for or spend some money on. We research subjects that people are currently looking for in our market. First-time homebuyers are people with listings that haven’t sold and people in distressed homes trying to get out. What are they searching for? That’s how I would do it. John, how would you come up with a subject for a video?

Well, there’s the free way, and you mentioned some paid services. One of the free methodologies is to use YouTube search and type in some topics, and then it will drop down some suggestions, which are pretty keyed on. Another free mythology is the guy from Backlinko. It’s Brian Dean. Brian Dean. He’s got a free interface if you go to batlin’co. com and then type in how to get a YouTube subscriber. I’ll make sure the links are in the show notes, folks. He’s offering a free interface that you can also use to type in keywords, and it will come in. It will come out with a list of suggestions. Then you mentioned the ones you can use: TurbBuddy or VidIQ, which has good SEO search-suggestion functionality.

Beautiful. Well, understanding subjects is usually pretty easy to do, especially if you’re using a small set of tools. Okay, go on to YouTube, and if you’re going to use a tool like VidIQ, you go in, you put a general topic, and then it takes a few minutes of looking at videos and seeing how much traffic those videos have. And when you find a subject area that is getting a high level of engagement from people on the platform you’re looking at, you decide to say, Do I have something valuable that I can add to this particular subject? If the answer is yes, we will finally start to narrow down what video you can do. What video makes sense for you to produce? All right. So that’s number one. What content do your leads like to watch, and what content do they like on YouTube? And I cannot emphasize this enough. When looking at this, make sure that whatever you find, whatever subject you’re looking at, you are willing to spend 10 or 15 minutes watching some videos.

If you’re not willing. When you do that, you’re looking in the wrong category. This is my favorite subject because it’s so misunderstood and poorly known. Video optimization. You You listed two sites here. You listed Canva, you listed VidIQ, you broke the subject into categories, you said traffic, thumbnail, title, so on and so forth. John, you put a lot into this, so why don’t you start us off?

Yeah, I think we’ve covered the traffic part, or you have. I think I do some SEO research, see a video that if you’re using one of these paid tools that we’ve mentioned, they’re not that expensive, but they will give you an estimate about how competitive and how much traffic a particular video topic is getting, and then you can use It’s a tool to make a judgment. The other thing is the thumbnail. The thumbnail is important. It’s one of the key factors that will lead to your video being watched. Canva is a great tool. They’ve got a library. They’ve got the free version. I think the paid version is worth investing in, folks. It’s about $110 a year, I think. It’s not ridiculously expensive, and it comes with a load of predesigned thumbnail templates that are reasonably easy to adapt. Another Another thing, give you another tip, I’ve used this myself, is you’re going to need some pictures of yourself. It’s best to use headshots. Now, if you go to a photographer, it can be quite expensive. I got about a year ago some revamped photos. I went to a local photographer. I had about two hours at the time.

I went to their studio. I bought about five headshots from a number of photographs that they took. They charged me, it was a package deal, but it still cost me around $500. But then if you wanted to buy any additional photographs, it was like $50, $90, $80 per photograph. But what I did was I uploaded those photos, and then I took some photos using my iPhone, and I uploaded them to an AI service. You got to upload a certain amount of photos to it, and then it makes headshots from what you’ve uploaded in different backgrounds, different poses, and it provided over 100 different images of me. I know this sounds renders because I’m not the most attractive person, but it did a reasonable job. I’ll try and remember and put it in the show notes for you, folks. But it did a good time, and that would have me, and they were quite good what it did. It did take a couple of hours mucking around, trying to upload enough photos for it to make this batch of additional headshot But he did a great job. Actually, I was really impressed, Robert.

I think that… It’s funny because clients ask me all the time ideas for videos, stuff like that. And what we’ve done at InboundRM is we have a master account on VidIQ. I just give people a login. And when my people get asked, we just generate an idea using VidIQ IQ because the biggest trouble with agents is that they’ve already been inundated with ideas about tools that they can use, and they’re tired of it. Most real estate agents just want to go out and sell real estate. So my team uses With transparency, just uses AI, just generates a couple of ideas, and when a client says, Hey, can you give me a script? Sure, no problem. Here’s a script. Just generate it.

It can generate the The thumbnails. I haven’t used it. I’ve just used Canva, but it can generate the thumbnails, can’t it? It also can generate the headline, the tagline, the top- Yeah, it does it all. And the script, can’t it?

Yes, it does it all. The only Everything that it’s not doing very well is its customization feature on your channel. It’s not that great. Excuse me, John. I’m still getting over being sick.

Yeah, he’s been ill, folks. He’s a trooper coming on the show, really. That’s all good.

So anyway, optimizing a video, though, is a different thing. So optimizing a video is definitely something where it’s like there’s 13 things that we do when we optimize a video. We’re optimizing the text inside the video. You’ve got your footer or your… Here’s a few things about optimizing videos. You want to put it in a description. You You want to use tags, you want to use a title, you want to use a location, you want to do all of these things. It takes us longer to optimize a video than it does to shoot the video by far. These categoric things that you’re doing allow Google to categorize, understand the video much faster with a lot more clarity, and they are far more likely to rank the video once you’ve optimized it correctly on your channel. The main thing that I find is a real game changer is doing high effort activities such as manually closed captioning the video and indexing the video. These two things most people don’t like to do. They don’t because they’re time consuming, and it’s understandable why they wouldn’t do them. You can do a closed caption, automated closed caption in about one second.

But Google can and does understand when you’re using automated tools to close caption a video, they give you extra credit when you manually do it. There’s all sorts of things that we do inside the video optimizing process. We have an almost unbroken 100% track record on ranking videos. And that is because most of this manual stuff that I’m describing to you, nobody does. There’s so many automated tools out there, but unfortunately, nobody has yet created the automated tool that does any of this with 100% accuracy. That’s the problem. So people who spend time giving 100% accuracy, Google can generally sense it. Not 100% of the time, but like 98, they get it right. When they get it right, you give yourself a 10, 20, 30, 40% ranking bonus for just uploading the video and optimizing it correctly. It just takes time. That’s the only problem with it. But cool thumbnails, getting easier and easier to make. More and more tools out there to just input a picture of you and then use these thumbnail optimization tools, just like John already said. I haven’t played with them that much, but that’s because VidIQ is really getting to be incredibly good.

It’s always been decent. It’s becoming excellent. It’s so easy to use. Anybody that’s out there, just go out there and use it. If you get sold on the idea of manually optimizing videos, then you need to call a company like mine. But instead of You’re spending $10 a month, you’re going to spend $150 a video easy. There’s a huge price difference, massive. Just so everybody’s clear between doing it yourself and having other people do the 100% route. In my experience.

Shall we go for a break?

Yes, and I can cough in private. All right, we’ll be right back, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for tuning in.

Oh, dear.

I’m so sorry, John. No. I thought it was better. I thought it was getting better.

I appreciate you doing it, Rob. Honestly, I do, if you’re not feeling 100%.

All right, let me just take it I’ll just sip here and then…

Yeah, bash it out.

I try. All right. I actually need the break this time. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and It is episode number 466. I’m here with my co-host, John, and we’re talking about how to get started with YouTube in 2025 and what you need to do. We’ve covered optimizing videos and how to get content ideas. And once again, because I’ve been coughing up a storm here, I’m going to ask John to give his ideas about getting a number three, getting a professional video introduction done for you. John, take your way.

I’ve done it. I’ve got one for Melright and for my other company. I went to Fiverr and I worked with a guy and I checked him over, and he was like a five-star rating. I think for these small Pacific jobs, I think Fiverr, and using Fiverr, I think they got what they call Fiverr professional. It’s their more expensive service. I think it’s worthwhile and then checking and going with the best rated person that’s got a lot of previous examples and looking at them. I think it does make a difference. I’m not sure how much Google and YouTube sees it, but I think it’s worth the invest because you’re not talking about ridiculous money. It might cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get somebody that that can do a good intro animation and a voiceover. But I think for that money, it’s worth the investment. What do you reckon, Rob?

Couldn’t agree with you more. You’ve done the route that I would recommend for everybody, even over the route that I took. I have a professional in-house videographer, and after many months, they produced a decent intro from the company. If you looked at what I paid, thousands of dollars, and all the time getting to know that person versus a couple of hundred bucks that John’s talking about, perceived value on intros is high. Everybody assumes that you spend a ton of money. I did spend a ton of money, so it’s a reasonable assumption. But when you look at… I’m so sorry, John.

No, it’s all right. Shall I go on to the next one? Please. Tips on video recording audio. Well, we’ve covered this, so I’m not going to go into a lot a lot of detail. We’ve got some past shows that if you listen to, go in. We’ve got a couple of Pacific shows that go into this in a lot of detail. But if you’re going to record, I’ve If you’re going to record on your camera or your iPhone or your Android, you can use Zoom or Loom to actually it will record the video, and it will record it in 4K. If you got the Pro version of Zoom, which is about 150 bucks a year, and a lot of real estate agents do, or you can use Loom. A lot of these inexpensive conference, they’re more about one-to-one conferences or small groups. They actually do record quite well. There are web-based tools. We use one here to record this podcast and make video. We use StreamYard, and there’s half a dozen. They’re more expensive, but you can use Zoom, Basically, if you’re looking for the most easiest way to edit the video and do a rough edit, I think some of these AI tools that are out there, Even Canva has a video editor.

It’s not bad, actually. But one that’s interesting is Descript because it’s like a word processor. You can actually move. It does a transcript of the video and you can just move the words around and that does the editing for you. It’s quite an impressive interface and it’s much more simpler to use. But I think the main thing, folks, it’s not intuitive. The main thing is to sort your sound out, is to just get a half decent USB mic or lapel mic if you’re using your phone, but you can just get… There’s some reasonably good USB mics, around $50. The one I’m using is about $250, but you don’t have to go there. Just look up the reviews on Amazon and you’ll be well off. But you got to sort your audio. But there’s a lot of There’s some expensive choices out there, folks, that can get you going. You don’t have to lay out a lot of money. What do you reckon, Rob?

I agree with John 100 %. So I am not the best example of this because I tend to buy my equipment, keep it, and never update it. The only place I have professional studio equipment is in my actual studio, and I had other resources, other people that knew a lot more about that stuff, use my money and buy the stuff they said we needed. My computer set up, I’m using a Plantronics headset that is still mostly what I use for my calls. I’ve used Plantronics for 30 years now, and so I’m familiar with the equipment and I’m using a $35 Logitech camera to shoot my video on. I did, based on a podcast that John and I did long ago, buy myself a Blue Eyes microphone and discovered that I rarely use it because of the way that it stands on my desk. It interfered with my space. I ended up dropping it. But John is correct in the sense of, what do you invest in? How do you invest? I think it comes down to what your personal brand is. My personal brand in terms of my image is always a little sloppy because I’m a little sloppy.

However, I know my subject matter very, very well. And so when you’re looking at who you are as a person, decide what the most important factors are. And if for some of you, you think that the better equipment, slightly better sounds, slightly better visuals, really, really, really impact your your particular brand. If you walk out to real estate appointments in a three-piece suit or a Chanel dress, whatever it is, then obviously spending a couple of hundred extra dollars on visual or audio equipment makes all the sense in the world for you. If you’re like me, where you’re like a mad scientist, it’s like, I don’t give a damn. If you want the best information that’s available in the real estate industry, you come to my channel. If you want the best-looking whatever person, you don’t come to my channel. I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I strongly recommend that all of you just take that into account. But what John said about equipment cost everything I agree 100%, about Loom, agree 100%, There’s lots of great video editing stuff out there. It’s getting better and better all the time. Ai is making it better and better.

The entry level for video is actually getting more and easier easier and easier to do because so much of the support work that’s being done on video is going to be absorbed by AI, which just means that more of you should be getting into this now and learning the basic tools because it’s just going to get easier. You’ve already covered video recording and editing. No, did you? Yeah.

We got the final thoughts. I think it’s a really good resource is back to Linnco and Brian Dean because he moved his channel, really, from general SEO advice to advice around YouTube. I think some of it’s really good. The one area, and it’s not I disagree with him, but I think it’s stage two, because one of the other major elements that will determine the success of your YouTube channel is how long people view your videos. It seems to have gone into two different directions. Obviously, YouTube has given a lot of emphasis to short form video as a competitor to TikTok and other platforms. But if you go to Brian’s site, he actually says, When you look at the analytical data, it’s more long form video, video that’s over 10 minutes long between 10 to 20 minutes long. Then he strongly advises that you do a lot more editing. I don’t do it on my videos, but My other channel, the Melright channel has grown quite a bit recently, and my other channel has grown quite considerably, but I just do a lot of videos, and I do some editing, but he’s talking about getting them professionally, or spending a lot more time on the video in having two cameras, having graphics, having animation, and that takes up a lot of time if you’re doing it yourself.

I would have probably advise you to get an editor, but even if you’re doing it offshore, that work does cost a lot more money. I think he’s right, but I think you can get 80 % by doing everything we’ve discussed previously, and I think the last 30 to 20 % is about upgrading your camera, your lighting, and really employing an editor. But I definitely wouldn’t go down that route initially. What do you reckon, Rob?

I think that Brian Dean is probably right. I think that the future of most marketing, as we know it, call and response marketing is on video, which we’ve been talking about for a long time. And call and response marketing for just a talking head video, which is mostly what I do, is getting harder. It is. You have to be really deeply knowledgeable to get a result. And Brian Dean is talking to the world’s best marketers on his channel. That’s who follows by me. When you start taking all that into account and saying, What are you going to do with video? I agree with him. Animations, using AI. I’m following a guy by the name of Michael Weis, who’s doing a lot of AI videos. He’s doing a lot of really cool things with video. Do I think what we want for real estate? I think If you look at the future in real estate as it relates to video and clever implementations is using video AI as part of a listing presentation that you’re doing where you use an edit that switches the decoration inside a room as part of your video listing edit, stuff like that.

I think that whatever realtors get to that baseline first are going to see massive explosive differences in their business because a good video editor could actually do that with relative ease. You just have to suggest it to them because the tools are already out there. They’re already fixed.

I think you, on my understanding, it’s the initial We’ll get in an edit template developed between you and the editor and get in a particular style and having two cameras. You have two cameras depending on the software using Zoom or StreamYard. There’s a device called StreamDec. I’ve actually got one, but I haven’t used it yet. But I do have a two cameras set up and you and pre-programmed Streamdecks. They do a microversion, which is 12 buttons, or they do the next version, which is 16 buttons. You just click a button, then it can change cameras, or it can do an effect or it can do audio effects as well. It’s quite neat. The actual one I’ve got, it’s only a couple of hundred dollars. I think the bigger version is just under 400. It’s not mega money. But I think working with editor and working out a structure, how the videos are going to be edit is the initial cost. I think after you’ve sorted that out and worked with the editor and modified that, then I think the costs go down a bit because the editor knows what you’re looking for on each video.

Interesting. You’ve introduced me to something I haven’t seen yet, and I’m going to check it out because of you, Stream Deck. That sounded very interesting to me. Ladies and gentlemen, one way or the other, this This stuff is going to get easier. Most real estate agents, either through an agency or through their own resources, one of the most valuable tools that you can get is somebody overseas or somebody local to you, a young person who knows how to use these tools. Instead of throwing yourself down every rabbit hole like what John and I do, I’m going to suggest that you find somebody who will throw themselves down the rabbit hole for you. And then you just come up with things that you want to say, content ideas. That’s how I’m going to leverage it is find people that are able to do the mechanics, but I am going to continue to come up with the overall global ideas on content. I think this has been a great show. I apologize to our audience. I apologize to you, John. I thought it was a little bit better.

No, you can’t be playing. He’s a trooper turning up, folks. So give him some love because he had been nil. He has been nil the past few weeks, haven’t you, Rob?

Yeah, it’s been hard to shake. We’re going to wrap this up. John, if somebody wanted to reach out to you and take advantage of this amazing new pricing on your amazing and your upgraded platform, how would they reach out to you to do that?

That’s fantastic, Rob. But go to the Melright website, have a look over the website, and then you can book a free chat with me and I can do a live demo with you, show the key parts of the functionality, and then you can make your mind up if you want to join the Melright family. We have modulised it. We offer other elements to the package, but we decided to provide the core element on a cost-effective basis. Then, we split the different parts into separate modules that are still available if you require them, like IDX or paid Facebook campaigns. But our package is great. We updated it a few weeks ago. We’ve added some new functionality, which I will discuss in the next few weeks. It’s significantly improved, and I would love to show it to you. Back over to you, Rob.

Beautiful. All right. Well, it’s hard to go wrong with the starting cost of $50, ladies and gentlemen, in this spot. We’re living in a cost-budget conscious world. That’s a great doorway into a WordPress website focusing on real estate. It’s a great toolkit, so take a look at it. If you are interested in doing something bespoke or that is more involved for both price and also focuses on slightly different areas such as Google, local, video SEO, things like that. You’re going to want to go to inboundrem. com and check out my services and About page and contact me personally. I’m Robert at inboundrem. Com. We appreciate you tuning into the show. Thank you very much. We hope you got something from it. It thumbs us up, sends us a comment, all the good stuff. Until next time. The next time, I was Robert Newman, and my co-host was Jonathan Deneuve.

With Special Guest Dave Kimbough

Are you grappling with the shift from traditional marketing to digital strategies? This video addresses the numerous challenges that companies encounter during this transition. We cover everything from shifting consumer behaviors to the need for real-time data analysis. Learn how to navigate these hurdles and embrace innovative approaches that resonate with today’s audience. Tune in and transform your marketing approach—watch the video now.

Moving away from traditional marketing? I’d appreciate it if you could uncover the challenges and find practical solutions to modernize your approach.

Welcome back to episode 465 of The Mailright Show, ladies and gentlemen. We are super excited. After a long hiatus with guests, we have a guest on the show today. The amazing, esteemed Dave Kimbrough is with us this afternoon. And, of course, I have my old pugilistic English partner, Jonathan Dinwood, who I’ve had for a long time.

What’s that word?

I’ve used to meet you before, and you always push back. Pugilistic.

What the hell does that mean?

It means you’re a fighter, dude.

Oh, Putinistic. There you go. I looked that one up. Thanks, Rob.

You’re welcome. And Dave, that’s a true fact. Back in his youth, Jonathan used to box.

I did.

That’s right. How did you guys meet?

We met because he had a previous podcasting partner who was doing the show. That partner found me and asked John if it would be okay if he brought me on as a guest. John said, Yes. That other guy was already John’s hanging his way out of the podcast. John asked me if I wanted to do it. I said, Sure. I thought it would be a lark, and that was three years ago and something ridiculous. It may have been longer. We’ve done 200 shows together; we’re approaching that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Very cool.

Dave, well, before we get started, I’m going to let John go first, and then I’m going to circle back around to you. But, John, why don’t you quickly give people an overview of who you are in your own words without just my little pugilistic intro there?

All right. Thanks, Rob. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com. We are a CRM and marketing platform for real estate agents, and we’ve just done an extensive upgrade to all our systems, and what we offer is much improved. Just go to the Melright website and find some more. And we’ve also got a new pricing structure, and you’d be amazed at the value that we are offering. Back over to you, Bob.

Beautiful. And for those of you who are catching the show for the first time via video, John has done something different with his hair today. So, if you look at our old episodes, you’ll see that he’s either coiffed or uncoiffed. I don’t know which. All right. So now, let’s move on to our special guest, Dave. Why don’t you introduce yourself to both me And the audience about who you are?

My name is Dave Kimber. I’m a RE/MAX agent team leader in Grand Junction, Colorado. For those of you who don’t know where Grand Junction is, it’s about four hours due west of Denver. We’re located about 20 miles off the Utah border, 4 hours from Denver, and five hours from Salt Lake City. Cool.

For those of you who may or may not know me, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of Inbound or Unbound Real Estate Marketing. I am the most experienced online marketing consultant and the most experienced real estate SEO guy in the United States. So, without any further ado, let’s jump into the conversation; before you give us a brief detail, I’d like to know your real estate trajectory: who, what, when, where, and why. How long have you been doing it? What What made you a team member? We both know managing people gets harder and harder. So, give us a five-minute summary of who you are and why you do what you do.

So, I can do that. I got into real estate back in 2002. In 1999, my first wife was diagnosed with brain cancer, and unfortunately, she passed away in 2001. At the time, I was working in pharmaceutical sales and had a completely different career. I had many other careers then and just needed a new gig. I needed a new start. Life had dealt me a lot of cards, and I just needed to try something different. So, The guy I hired to sell my house, I was going back to Atlanta because we’re from the South. I went to the University of Alabama. My parents are from Birmingham and Gadson, Alabama. So I was living in the West, and we’re just for Southern people. So, I was going to move back to Atlanta.

I’m sorry, Dave. I’m sorry for all of us. Go ahead.

So, yeah, don’t hold it against me. So I was going to move back to Atlanta to go to work for another pharmaceutical industry or another company, a biotech company as a district manager. The guy who I hired to sell my house is a long time family friend. And he said, hey, I think you could do great at real estate. He’s like, you should give it a try. And I thought, well, that might be one of the dumbest things anybody’s ever told me because I’ve got a great career, right? I mean, I had a really strong career in the pharmaceutical industry and I enjoyed it. I was good at it. But thought about it and prayed about it and got peaceful about it. And I thought, you know what? I’m going to give it a whirl. So he took me under his wing, and that’s how I got started in the business. It was a lot by intent. I thought I would get into the real estate business and drop my handicap from a seven to a three and sell a dozen houses a year. And that’s just not exactly the way it’s played itself out.

But that’s why we do it. You never know what you’re going to get. That’s how I got started in real estate, fairly serendipitous the way it began.

Beautiful. I want to ask a very brief follow-up question, which John did not include on his list, but it’s an easy question I promise. Why did you agree to come on the podcast?

We have, like I said, been in the business for 23 years, and we have just finished in the last couple of months a new coaching program called Expectation Selling. And so we’ve just launched that here in the past month. And so we’re doing… We’re thankful to have some invites to do some podcast based on the expectation selling platform. And so that’s why I agree to do it. I’ve never done podcasts before. You guys are like my third podcast ever. I appreciate it. I’m almost a podcast virgin.

Well, I don’t know about John, but I’m always happy to take a chair or two. No, I’m just kidding. I appreciate that. That’s terrible. That was terrible.

That was terrible. That was terrible. That was a couple of weeks ago.

Okay. Well, thank you for the incredible introduction, by the way. I know that I appreciate it. I’m sure the audience appreciated it. Once again, John, I’m going to take this next question, and I’m going to change it slightly. John asked the question, and we wrote down for you in the show notes. We wanted to know what the biggest challenge has been for you in 12 months. But now that I know that you have a 22-year history in real estate, and this is not the most challenging real estate market, if you’ve been in it that long, that you’ve ever seen, I want to change the question slightly and say, what is the biggest challenge you have ever faced in your real estate career as far as the market is concerned? Not like a personal challenge, and I’m very sorry to hear about your first wife, by the way, but not a personal challenge, but like a professional challenge related to the industry and the circumstances surrounding it.

2009, ’10, ’11. That’s easy answer.

Okay.

For us, it was where we I think the rest of the Great Depression, whatever they called it back then. 2007, a lot of the nation was having a really tough time. The real estate markets cratered, housing prices cratered, all that stuff. Well, in 2007, 2008, we were still setting records because we were about 30, 40 miles north of where we live is a huge natural gas reserve. So we had a huge energy boom happening here. So we would go to a seminar ours, and we’d go to coaching and all these other things, and everybody be like, oh, my God, we’re getting killed. We’re like, what are you guys talking about? We’re killing it. And lo and behold, we were two years behind everybody else. In 2009, this thing completely flipped, and we were losing a % to a % and a half a month. Buyers and sellers, we lost tons of traditional sellers, and we ended up with a ton of have to sellers, distressed. And you lost your traditional buyer, most of them, a lot of them, and replaced those buyers with distress buyers. People who are buying distress properties, flipping them, fixing them, doing whatever.

That was a very, very difficult market for Yes. It was a lot of foreclosures. We made the intentional decision not to seek or chase foreclosures or short-sale business. It didn’t mean we didn’t do them. That just wasn’t the lion’s share of what we did. We decided stay the course, do traditional real estate. If you chose to stay the course and do traditional real estate back in our market in those times, you were choosing the most difficult path possible.

John, that begs a follow-up question, but you should ask it.

I think I’ll go on to the next one, actually. This is what he’s like.

This is what he’s like, Dave.

If you want to do a follow-up for your question, You’re several.

Yes. Why? In the good Lord’s name, why would you choose the hardest road?

Because it’s what we knew. Just being honest with you, it’s what we knew. We knew how to do it. We were good at it. We were number one in the marketplace at the time, and it was going to have to be a complete revamping of our business and everything we did to take on distress sellers. So it was just my sister. So my sister works with me on our team, and at the time it was just the two of us and one assistant. I think there might have been one more buyer’s agent we had. And we just decided we were just going to stay the course and do exactly what we did. Was it a good decision? I don’t know. I don’t know whether it’s a good decision or not. And it was a hell of a hard time. But we also survived it. We got better, we got stronger, we made our systems tighter. Everything we did when we came out in 2012 was infinitely better because we didn’t just tread water. We spent those three years of getting our ass kicked, but also making our business better. So we came out the other side.

We poured money into advertising. We poured money into everything when everybody else was pulling it back. So did I make much money? No, I did not during those years, that’s for sure. But did we set the groundwork to come out of that thing like a bullet? We did. But it was a really hard I’ve given this advice to so many entrepreneurs and business owners.

It’s ridiculous. But Dave, I’m super glad that you set it on your own. When everybody else runs for the hills, you’ve got a lot of tough decisions. You can pull up stakes or you can invest, thinking, knowing you’ll come out the other side with more momentum than anybody can catch. And it sounds like that’s what happened for you.

That has been our motto whenever anything has gotten tough, it’s pedaled to the metal. I mean, The old stock adage is you buy when people are selling, you sell when they’re buying. For us, like you said, when they’re pulling back, we’re pushing forward. And it’s just harder, stronger, faster. That was our take. And It was our mantra at the time, and that’s what we did for three years. But let me tell you, bro, it was hard.

Believe me, we’re going through a bit of hard on the marketing side right now ourselves. But before we digress, John, finally, Finally, you can ask the next question.

Thank you so much. So Dave, apart from recommendations from your previous clients, I’m sure you get a ton of recommendations and repeat customers.

We can always use more.

Yeah. Apart from that, what are some of the other biggest and successful lead generation methodologies that you and your team uses to attract people to your brokerage?

Well, I mean, nowadays, now or earlier in my career, Please say in the last year, 18 months, what are being some of the methodologies that you feel have worked for you and your team? There’s no question. I mean, the biggest thing for us is new construction. We do a lot of construction. We work very diligently with our builders on our development side, new construction. So that’s a huge one for us. We probably sell more of new construction homes in our market than anybody does. Our leads come in largely website leads for new buyer leads that aren’t referral-based. And a lot of those come from new construction because we have a lot of it, and also residential resale. I mean, between new construction and residential Resale will sell somewhere between 125 and 180 houses a year between those two with a pretty even split between, well, probably a little bit more resale than the new construction, but it’s still a large portion of new construction. And also, too, we do a lot of radio. I know a lot of people think, hey, radio, radio sucks and whatnot. But in our market, again, when you realize we’re four hours from Denver and we’re five hours from Salt Lake City, we literally If you look at a map, we’re about one of the most isolated towns of 150,000 people you’re going to find in this country.

So radio really works here. Yes, people do podcasts. Yes, it’s a splintered and fragmented world. All of these things are so true. But terrestrial radio still does work very well for us, especially AM radio, talk radio. It’s a captive audience. My background was in radio. I was a disk jockey back in the early ’90s, and we found radio to be a very positive thing as well.

I’m not surprised, actually, when I was watching a couple of your early Virgin interviews, I sense that you had some professional training because you are quite a good communicator, Dave.

Well, I don’t know about the professional part of it, John. You’re being very kind.

No, but you understand what I mean. Some people It is difficult to talk on a podcast. Some people get very nervous, but you seem to be able to get your points across without the nerves affecting you.

Yeah, well, I think part of that, again, it’s very kind, and I appreciate that. I think part of it is because I spent a portion of my life behind a microphone in radio. But also even here when I talk about radio, we did a radio talk show. I did a talk show for Oh, my gosh, 13 years on Saturday mornings. And that was a really robust thing for me. And I also do newspaper ads and articles. I do a lot of writing. So we just do a lot of diverse things that we find really work for us, and we really like it. Our focus is always about quality over quantity. I’ll happily pay more for a quality lead than less for a whole bunch of quantity, right? So We’ve always been very focused on what’s the quality of our lead.

All right. Beautiful. All right. Thanks. So I’m to go for a break, Rob. Yeah.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in the podcast in any of the many places that we post this podcast Sure. If you’re watching us on YouTube, forgive us. We’re sorry. We’re easier to listen to than look at. But other than that, we really appreciate you all. Most of our audience, Dave, are actually other realtors like you. I’m sure that like me, they appreciate a good story that relates to real estate. And I think that our audience is going to love the fact that you happened into real estate because about 80% of the people I talk to say the same thing. So with no further ado, give us a thumbs up, give us a like wherever you’re seeing or listening to us, and we’ll be right back. We’re going to ask Dave three more questions, and I’ll try really hard to vaguely stick to the format that we handed him before the show. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It is episode number 465. I shouldn’t know that. I just said it a few minutes ago. I had already forgotten. Welcome to the land of ADHD. We’re here with Dave Kim Burrow and Jonathan Dinwood.

We’re super excited to have John co-host the show with me and Dave be on the show. We have now discovered that he is a radio personality, so he should actually be putting John an eye to shame.

He’s putting one of us to shine. That’s for sure. All right.

So John and I focus a lot on the show, and we each have companies that we end up having a lot of discussions with people about lead generation, specifically real estate agents, realtors, brokers, mortgage brokers, if anything in the real estate vertical. And I’ve been doing it for 16 years, and John has been doing it for eight now. And so we’ve got this conversation always It happens. Always, always, always, every single person. I would love it if you would share with the audience some of your specifically marketing challenges and failures, things that you’ve learned from. We all know that failures is just a way to learn and grow and get better, and I understand that. But at the same time, there has to be things on the road that you tried that you just didn’t work for you.

Yeah, I just want to cut in. Maybe a couple of things that you were sold that looked you thought they were going to really work, and somebody sold you a plan, a platform, and the reality, it didn’t pan out, Dave.

Yeah, I mean, where do I start? How long is it? That’s not a joke, right? I mean, it’s the gospel. I mean, I think the biggest thing for me over the years is I have found around real estate in particular, but not just real estate, the world in particular. It has a way of sucking you in and mesmerizing you with the sexy lure of more. More. You got to have more. As real estate agents, I mean, every single day… John, don’t fall asleep there, bud.

I’m I’m very almost like listening to you, Dave.

I’m just kidding you. I’m giving you a hard time. We get sucked in, every day on my email. I don’t know how many emails a day I get somebody selling me something, somebody calling me, getting text on my phone. All they’re trying to do is suck me in to buy something, to follow the money. Everything is about selling you something as a real estate agent. And you are constantly have this feel. At least I did. Maybe I’m the only guy in the world who ever did, but it was always I need more. I need more buyers. I need more sellers. I need more this. I need more that. And I’ll pay for it. I make good money. It’s just one check away. Hey, Dave, it’s only $1,300 a month. If you close two deals in your market, an average market of $500,000, that’s $30,000. You’re going to make $12,000. You know what I mean? You’ve all done it. And you can justify it right into the poor house. And it has happened to me. So my biggest failure is that. My biggest failure is buying- But give Don’t name names, Dave, because we don’t want to be sued.

But give us a couple that- We can’t get sued if he has an opinion about a company he did business with, John. I’ve got enough Let us see.

You’re just tired of the angry letters I generate for you.

Yes, that’s all I have.

I volunteer these opinions, Dave. I see these guys are second rate, and then he gets the emails.

I get the heat done. I get the heat Dave. That’s what I get. So Dave, there must be a couple that have stuck in your memory banks.

I’m going to caramane them.

Go ahead and name them if you want to name them. If you don’t mind sharing one or two, give us a If you can give us that sticking, that sounded really good, but it didn’t pan out, though.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, I’ve done things with a company called Lion Desk. You guys ever heard of that?

Oh, yeah.

I thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever. I tell you what, here’s the other thing about that. Sorry, I just have to do a qualifier with this.

When you’re in a market- These are Dave’s opinions, I want to point out.

Yeah, and it just didn’t work because what happens is a lot of times these things are built and can be very successful in big markets. When you’re in a market of three million people, and people are calling you unsolicited, I mean, on stuff, they don’t know who it is or may not know who you are or whatever. When you’re in a town of It’s 150,000, it’s 150,000, but it’s still a very small town. People know everybody who works for me. I would get calls from people and say, Hey, who’s Julia? She doesn’t work for you. I’m like, No, she doesn’t. So there Where’s that? I mean, any online lead deal, I mean, where you’re- What was the specifics of what happened with Line Desk that didn’t work for you? Yeah, it didn’t work because it was a really hard bridge to gap in a market my size where people were cold calling or calling database or calling people on your behalf, and the people knew it wasn’t you. They knew that Julia didn’t work for me because they were calling… A lot of people know who works for us. There are pictures in the newspaper, there are pictures our pictures on billboards, our pictures everywhere.

They know a lot of them knew that Julie wasn’t there. So it’s really hard to outsource that stuff in a lot of instances, because if they run across anybody who knows anything about our team, it’s a really difficult thing in a smaller market. So some of these things where if it’s a bigger market where there’s a lot more anonymity, we’re a pretty high profile team here in our marketplace. So it’s a lot harder to slide that stuff under the door, just to be frank. And so it just- So to So just a quick follow-through.

Was it really the fit between you and Linedesk? Was it more that they didn’t really understand? Do you feel it was an understandable misalignment because you were too small, a too niche market? Or do you think you’ve brought them up, so it must have left a bad taste in your mouth. So do you feel that they were aware that it probably wasn’t going to work in your particular market?

Yeah, it didn’t really leave a bad taste in my mouth, right? I mean, it doesn’t. What works for me may not work for somebody else. What works for somebody else may not work for me. I have the extensive knowledge of my marketplace being here for 22 years and being the top agent team in this market for a really long time. We understand the dynamics of our market. If you come from outside of our market, it’s really difficult to understand what those dynamics are. And so it’s a niche market, like you said. And so it’s not a bad taste. It’s just like it was an epic failure because I got a lot of people who called and texted, and put to stop It. Knock it off. Stop texting me. Why are you texting me? And I’m the easiest guy in this town to get a hold of. If you want my phone number, it’s not hard to find, right? So when people are texting people unsolicited and they’re not expecting to get something from me, all they got to do is, Hey, this is Dave Kimbrough with what a blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden they’re like, Hey, dude, stop it.

Knock it off. Why are you texting me? What’s the problem here? I thought you were a market leader. I’m like, Holy crap, dude. Just stop. It’s okay. Let’s dial this thing back. I don’t think it was necessarily, Hey, this doesn’t work. It’s just when you’re in a smaller town, people are less receptive of that stuff. There’s a reason why you lived 4 hours from Denver and 5 hours from Soleil.

The tool was a bad fit.

Bad fit, yeah. It’s not a bad… I’m not saying it’s a bad product. I can’t say because I talked to other agents who did it before me, and they’re like, Yeah, this thing works. This works great for us. It was just a bad fit for my marketplace. It just didn’t fit for our or what I was looking for at the time. It didn’t fit.

We could have a whole episode. Honestly, Dave, the details that most other real estate people want from us is they probably… That’s why John just drilled in so deeply is that we get calls, both of us do, from team leaders, brokers, owners, you name it. And generally speaking, their biggest frustration is similar to something that you’ve just vocalized where they’ve already spent tons of time, energy, and money on tool. It failed because they weren’t able to get a good enough view of the tool before they actually purchased it. And by the time you’re in it, you’re in it. And so the frustration is no, but seriously, will it really work? Now, we get a lot more people spending a lot more time researching, which there’s been no other iteration of the real estate market where that’s ever been the case. Real estate agents love to buy the newest, shiniest thing, which you pointed out. But you get burned a couple of times, and I think that changes, or at least it does for some people. All right, but let’s move on before we run out of time here. Do you use any AI tools? And if you do, what AI tools are you using in your business currently?

We’re pretty limited, honestly, on AI tools. We’re looking at doing some website stuff with changing up our website to where they use a more AI-generated chatbot type scenario, much more authentic seeming interface for the client. I mean, I’ve read a lot of stuff about really exciting stuff that seems to be coming that we haven’t seen. I mean, I know there’s disruption happening that I don’t see. I know there’s disruption going to happen. But at this juncture, we use it for the same stuff. We use it for Asking for coming up with marketing plans for Instagram, videos that are current and things that we can do to make it simple stuff like that. But nothing… I’ve heard and read about things that are just mind-blowing and amazing. If they ever show up, we’ll be the first ones to jump on board if we can. But I think most of it for me, it seems to be more conceptual than it does in actual practice. So we don’t. A lot of people on our market, they use it for copywriting. We use it for copywriting too on stuff, and we need to pound stuff out pretty quick.

They use it for property descriptions, graphic generators. We use some of that stuff as well, but there’s nothing that I would say, oh, my gosh, look what Aon is making a huge impact on our business yet. It’s not.

I have a follow-up question. It’s personal, wasn’t on the list.

Okay, great.

A vendor that I do business with, a lot of business, is getting ready to introduce a room. It’s like a dream room concept, but this is already out there, but it’s not really out there with IDX yet, which is where you get to take a listing and redecorate the room inside the actual search functionality itself, actually within an IDX. It’s brand I knew. I haven’t seen it, so I’m not asking any questions about performance. I’m asking you the thought. What’s your thought about a tool that could do that? Do you think people would use it?

I think they would. I I think if they would, it would be impactful because I’ve always been one of those. The longer I can keep them on a page, the longer I can keep them interacting on a site, the better my chances are making contact with them and then being quality. So Everything we do from picture arrangement, write up, whatever it may be, is can we keep them there as long as humanly possible on each and every property that we have? Because the longer we can keep them, the higher the likelihood is they’ll contact us or see us as a valuable resource.

Couldn’t agree more. All right, number six.

Can I ask that question, Robert?

All right, H. G. Wells, go for it.

So Dave, if you had your own time machine and you could go back in time and maybe mentor your sofa 10 minutes at the start of your real estate career, what would you tell yourself? What little tip, what little bit of advice would you tell yourself at the beginning of your journey in real estate, Dave?

I mean, it’s going to sound super cliché and super stupid, but I don’t think I’d give myself any advice that I wouldn’t want it. I wouldn’t trade the journey that I’ve had. My career has been far greater and far better than anything I ever dreamed it could be with the ups and the downs and the this and the that and every bit of learning. I know we talked a little bit about it earlier. Every bit of learning we’ve done from bad mistakes or things we’ve done, we should have done differently or whatever, we have learned from that. We are learners. We are not fool me once, fool me twice. That’s it, right? I mean, We’re going to fix it. And so I think that the journey that we’ve been on as a team and I’ve been on as a singular agent and team lead or whatever, I wouldn’t trade any of it. And I wouldn’t want some advice to cloud the judgment I came in with, because certainly If there’s anything, I would have maybe said, well, I mean, no, no, there isn’t. I mean, I look back on it, I don’t have any regrets.

I got no regrets, and I got nothing on here that I would read. Okay, one thing, billboards. I would not run billboards. I have pissed away. I have pissed away more money on billboards, trying to get billboards to work for me. And I just am done. I’m done with that. I Somebody saved me a couple of hundred grand over 23 years by telling me, Dave, don’t ever do billboards.

So one other thing. So you mentioned about it, and you’ve been a fabulous guest, Dave. I’ve really enjoyed the interview, and you must come back. I’ve really enjoyed this discussion. So you mentioned this course that you’ve developed. Can you give us a quick outline what that’s about?

Yeah, quick outline is it’s a complete mind shift. It’s a complete mind shift. We’ve taken 23 years of experience. So myself and my sister and my partner, her name is Jan, and my partner Mason have created this expectation selling. One of the biggest myths in real estate is that you can’t have massive production and work-life balance. You can’t have life balance and do massive volume. That’s not true. It’s absolutely not true. So what we’ve done is put together a course to help agents get their time back in their day and get their focus, get their work done efficiently and get more balance in their life by systemizing everything they do. And I mean, it’s a crazy process for those who are willing to go through it and implement the system, because I’m here to tell you, two years ago, I sold 159 listings with one system, right? I still coach football. I still eat dinner at home every night. My wife still loves me, I think.

I’m sure she does.

I’m sure she does. But the whole gist around this thing is if we can find a way to give back what we’ve been able to learn over the last 23 years and the systems we’ve got in order to churn the volume we do with still having a work-life balance, and my kids love me, and my wife loves me, and I spend time with friends and all that stuff. It’s the number one thing that happens to real estate agents. We’re addicted to a hustle culture, and you don’t have to be addicted to the hustle culture.

Where can I get this course, Dave?

You can go to www. Expectationselling.com or follow us on any social media outlet at expectationselling.com.

I will ensure the links are in the show notes, which you can find on the MailRight website. Back over to you, Rob.

Well, we’re going to wrap up the show. I’m going to second what John has said. Dave, you’ve been a lot of fun. I hope you keep podcasting. You’ve got a talent for it. You’ve got a knack for it. But I suspect you probably have talent and knacks for everything else. If you haven’t already looked into it deeply, I suggest you look into both local and video because you are built for it. You would be wildly successful.

You’re perfect. I don’t have a face for video, bro. You do.

It could be worse, though, if you could have my advice. Good point.

I wasn’t going to say it. No, I’m just kidding. I’m just joking. No, in all seriousness, Middle-aged white men do fine on video. Please be sure to trust me on that. All right. Without any further ado, though, if anybody wanted to reach out to you personally, I think it’s expectations selling. We appreciate it. I hope that some people check it out. I strongly recommend that they do. If there’s anything I love about inbound marketing, it’s the same conversation you’re trying to have, which is to get back your time while still doing huge business. How would somebody reach out to you? Assuming you even want them to. How would they do?

I do. I’m open to it. Please feel free to contact me anytime. It’s dave@expectationselling. Com. That’s my email. Could you just drop me an email? I live on it. It doesn’t go off my email inbox until it’s done. I’m happy to chat and talk to whoever.

If anybody would like to check out the new, upgraded, incredibly fancy, snazzy system that Jonathan is using, it’s worth it.

It’s a lot better. It’s massively improved.

Because we’ve just gone through hammering all the real estate marketing companies, but no, seriously, we’ve got something you should look at. But anyway, Jonathan, how would you like to? Our system starts at $49 monthly, so it won’t bankrupt you.

So go to the mail-right. Com website and book a call with me. And I will, or a team member will show you the Mail-Right system. Like I say, it starts at $49 a month. Go and have a look, folks.

Beautiful. Well, that’s a big reduction. All right, ladies and gentlemen, if anybody has enjoyed the hustle that I have displayed on this podcast, you can find me at inboundrem. Com. You can go to my About or Services page, either or, and book a call with me directly if you would like, or you can learn everything you’d ever want to know about real estate marketing on my website. Detailed guides, PDFs, graphs, charts, videos, you name it, it’s all there. All right. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. We appreciate it. Once again, Dave, we appreciate you coming on the show. It’s been magnificent and a lot of fun.

Love it. Thank you, guys.

All right.

Take us off. Bye.

In “Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025,” we delve into creating a powerful brand that stands out. This show provides practical tips on leveraging social media, building a personal narrative, and enhancing client engagement. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting, understanding branding is crucial for success. Tune in now to gain valuable insights and advance your real estate career.

#1 – Who is your target audience?

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 464 of The Mailright Show today. We’re going to do Branding 101 for Real Estate Agents for 2025. We’re starting off with the basics. So discovering audiences, developing a message, that’s what we’re going to cover today. But before we get going, in case you are new or newish to this podcast, we want to make sure that you hear our names so many times that you get sick of hearing them. With no further ado, John, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to anybody that may be new to the show or just within the first few times of listening to the show.

Thanks, Rob. I’m Jonathan Denwood. I’m the joint founder of Mel-right. Com, Mel-right. We’re a CRM lead generative website platform aimed at real estate agents. Go and have a look and book a consultancy with me. Back over to you, Rob.

All right. My name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of InboundREM. That’s the word InboundRE at rabbitedwardmichael. Com. Check me out if you are impressed with all this knowledge. I’m about ready to lay on you with my partner. All right, let’s get into it. Who, ladies and gentlemen, is your target audience, and how do you figure that out? John, do you want to start us off? Or do you want me to start us off?

No, you go off. Go on. You have a go. That’s it.

Okay. With real estate agents, it’s a very, very good to do a little bit of city, state, and local research on who lives in the area that you are trying to serve. So if you can’t figure out who your target audience is, if you don’t automatically know that it’s older immigrants or older Asians or anything in that category, what you’ll do is you’ll go to either the state or local registrar’s office, which is usually in your city buildings, and you will ask them for what publicly available city data can you take a look at. Sometimes they have books, sometimes they have demographic stuff. And failing that because it’s the second best source, usually the city is actually the best place to grab data for who actually lives there. Second best source would be a search like this. Vanuise, Demographic. I live in Vanuise, California. And then it’s Hispanic, 63%, white, 21%, Asian, 8%, and two other races. So then I can also do demographic and age. Then now I’m going to get 18 to 17-year-old is 99. 5%, 22 to 34 is 24%, 75 years or older, 3. 2 So now you know age, gender, and basic demographic.

Now, here’s the last piece of advice that I have. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t already, as your burgeoning career and figuring out what your brand is, you haven’t figured out a way to go out and meet the people that you intend to sell to or serve. That is probably the biggest mistake I see new salespeople make. Go to school meetings, PPA meetings, just as long as they’re in the city and the location you’re interested in servicing, and meet people, talk to them. Say, Are you ever going to buy a house? Did you buy a house? What are your primary concerns? Get to know your audience and get to know what they’re thinking. That is a very, very good way to understand what your first set of objections and your first set of concerns are going to be. All right, that’s it. Who’s your target audience? John, you go.

Yeah, I agree with what you outlined. I think also, if you look at Northern Nevada, which is Reno, Lake Tahoe, Truckee, a lot of the people that you’re going to be selling or dealing with are out of state. Northern Nevada really relies on California to Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada, Las Vegas. It really depends on the state people It’s really going to be the type of people that are attracted to the various different areas of Nevada that you’ve got to really understand their wants, needs, and you’ve got to really pitch yourself to what these possible clients require, and really understand why people sell, upgrade, or move out of the state, why people move. It’s really understanding and finding a niche, something that stands you out a little bit in a crowded market, basically. But it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It just needs something which you’re target audience actually cares about.

Copy you. We’re going to move on to number two, which I’ve always, ever since I’ve read books about branding, have struggled with the generality of this statement. It’s person or lifestyle brand. Are you a lifestyle brand? Do you surf? Do you ski? You know, stuff like that as a realtor. Person is like, what human are you? Are you really religious? Do you have some tried and true philosophies that you absolutely live your life by and run your business by? What person, lifestyle, brand, blah, blah, blah? I have put out a video called The Death of Real Estate Branding because I think that most branding is informational, and informational ends up being very specific to the human being imparting the information. Over the years that John and I have done this show, we’ve discovered that he’s dyslexic, seasoned entrepreneur, and I have so much data on myself out there. It’s not even worth trying to shake a stick at. I’ve got stuff about my personal life that most people wouldn’t put online, and I’ve got hundreds of clients from having put myself out there because the people that would normally just treat me like another real estate marketer connected deeply into certain parts of my message that have nothing to do with what I do for a living, like the fact that I’m sober as an example.

I think that that is an informational brand that goes beyond personal lifestyle, personally. I don’t think that one or the other really apply. I think it’s just a combination of everything. I do strongly recommend that if you feel comfortable with it, that That you put yourself out there, that you let people know who you are because it will become part of your brand. You can also have a little fun with it. Take your dog with you everywhere. I have two of my clients that make over a million dollars a year in real estate. They’ve become synonymous. Their branding is synonymous with their two little dogs that they take everywhere, including real estate appointments.

Do they do the negotiation for the agent?

I’m sorry?

Do the dogs do the negotiation for the agent?

No, but apparently, they provide great distraction and comfort.

All right, there you go.

And they’re not alone. Betsey Graham tells a story about how relating to a client dog got our $23 million sale. So it’s not even by themselves. All right, John, what’s your version of personal or lifestyle brand?

I think the other part of this with the research I did is a few of the people I was watching and reading, they were saying, You got to make… Some put the argument that they They thought it was a mistake that they went with a personal brand because they turned into a team, and they didn’t want so much to be the public face of the brand, and they felt that was a mistake. I see where they’re coming from, but I don’t see it as black And I’m not saying why. I think you can still be the public face of a regional local brand, but they say, and I think you’ve remarked that you struggled with this a little bit because sometimes you feel that you have to be available a little bit more than you would hope to be. But you are the public face of your brand, so people want to talk to you. So it can be a problem, can’t it? I don’t know if you’ve got any reflections about how you would have dealt with that a bit better or if it is a problem at all.

I mean, I’ve always… First of all, it is a challenge that I’ve mentioned that is true. It is your accurate from my perception to your statement. And at times, it’s very uncomfortable for me. There’s all sorts of boundaries. John, I just indicated when the podcast started how tired I am. Between the time we started the podcast in this very second, I closed my calendar off yesterday. Somebody booked another call with me, something to talk about, broadly enough, more like transitioning their business. Do I have to be more forward-facing than I would like? Yes, I do. But when I started this business, I had, I think, $15,000. I I don’t remember exactly anymore. That number, I may have said something different in different places. I had no advertising budget. None, zero. The way I intended to get my clients was blog on Active Rains and blog on a website, and I had some existing clients that were basically keeping the lights on. It was just a few thousand dollars a month is all I was making them. I mean, we’re talking just a very small handful of clients. I decided in that moment that I could advertise or I could put myself out there.

And I put myself out there, and it was successful, John. I crossed the the the the the bridge between complete unknown and I have a brand. And I got a lot of other people to hire me, like Guailopo and other companies like that. And I did it all with the power of video, so it was successful. Nine years into it now and 200 clients, do I regret my decision? No, because I don’t think I’d be here a day without it. Do I wish for certain things that they might be different? Yes, I do. I do wish that I had a little more of my time and a little more animinity. But in order to get that on another business I build, I need millions and millions of dollars like Elon Musk or somebody else has. It’s like, Give me $10 million and ask me if I do it the same way. Hell no, John. No way. I would not be the public face of anything. I’d let other people do it. I’d hire a CEO, whatever it was. I would not do that again. But do I have any problems with how I bootstrap the business?

Zero. I’m super grateful it worked at all because it was a gamble. Does that answer the question?

Yeah, it certainly does.

What are your core values? I love this one. You know I love this one. Do you want to go first or do you want me to?

Well, I’ll put a quick pennies in. I think a A lot of real estate advertising, obviously, this is a difficult one because you don’t really want to rub people really up the wrong way, so you can take this to the extreme. But on the other hand, a lot of real estate advertising promotion is very bland, very unmemorable. And I think you’ve got to identify some core values that’s relevant to your target audience that you actually believe in, and you need to really talk about those and promote those quite effectively.

And core values is one of those I use I use core values all the time in my marketing because real estate, holy cow, there is not a week that goes by that I don’t have just nightmare stories told to me by agents. If an agent is calling me, they tend to be a little bit driven and a little bit disciplined. The nutty thing is that I’d say from what I hear and everything I’ve heard on the phone for nine straight years, I feel like 70% of the profession are not those things. They’re not disciplined, they’re not driven, they don’t treat their business like a business. I was just on the phone, literally within the last day of taking calls, John, and an agent was telling me how they made a showing appointment with a seller’s agent. They were supposed to meet the seller at the client’s house. There was no lockbox on the door. They got into a car with a buyer from out of town, drove to the house on a Saturday. No agent. Call the agent. No response. Texted the agent. No response. A hundred % no for a viable client from out of town.

I was just like, you got to be kidding me. Any other profession, you no-show somebody potentially with money in their pocket? I mean, man, I can’t even… I can’t fathom, John. None of the sales careers I’ve been in, if I started no showing clients, are you joking me? I would have been fired so fast. It’s not even funny. So core values. What are your core values? And I’m so sorry, John, but it’s got to be more than fucking money. It’s just got to be. You got to have core values like, I don’t flake, I try hard. I’m late all the time, but I try hard not to flake on you, really hard. I move shit around in my calendar not to flake on this show, not because of anything related to a business transaction or finances, but because I have given you my word that I will be here at 2: 00. And so I try to be here at 2: 00 You have kept your commitment rock solid.

You hardly have ever missed anything. I gather from that that when you do commit to something, you’re totally focused on it because you’ve proven that.

That is the idea behind core values, ladies and gentlemen. What is it that you value which will allow people to understand what you expect? I value people, I value My opinions, my reviews are stellar. I treat everybody the same. Well, not 100% the same. Clients get certain allotments of both time and energy that other people don’t. But for the most part, I treat people basically the same. Certainly with the same set of core values. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about how to create a unique offer, what is a unique offer, being consistent. We’re going to wrap up with some final thoughts about brand that John Ron and I are going to share through the lens of two entrepreneurs who’ve done brands, both of us consulted with lots and lots of real estate agents. We’re going to come back and we’re going to share those thoughts with you. Stay tuned. All right. Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 464 of the Mailright Show. Today, we’re talking about branding, and we’re sticking with Branding 101, and we’re talking about it specifically for the year 2025.

This is not going to be an evergreen piece of We’re going to talk about branding from the perspective of today’s agent. Leading back in, I’m going to toss this first question coming back from the break to John. John, how would you go about crafting or how would you go about advising to craft a unique offer?

Well, it’s not easy in a very competitive, congested market. But on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be something enormous. It is quite linked to knowing your target audience, isn’t it? Number one, and some of the other points that we discussed in the first half of the show. If you understand your target audience and you understand and you dived in to the uniqueness of what those particular segment of the market requires, you’re probably going to then be able to identify an element that could be part of your unique offer. So it’s not jet science, is it? But on the other hand, with my other business, I’ve done it because we focus on membership learning management systems and community-focused website using the WordPress platform. But on the other hand, that entails quite a lot of subsets. So there’s associations, nonprofits, colleges that are using learning management systems. And then you’ve got the whole individual entrepreneur market where it’s individuals or a few people trying to build actual business in the e-learning space. So it encapsulates quite a few subsets. But I pitched it at that because it’s very difficult to identify which market I should have…

So it’s worked out for me. And that’s what you really got to think about when you’re a real estate agent, isn’t it?

And yeah, and you know what? It’s interesting because it’s funny. I ask this unique selling proposition question to agents all the time, What unique selling proposition? I’m going to negotiate. I’m a really good negotiator. Well, I do a list of services. Like I say, what list of services do real estate agents provide? John, would you take a crack at what the basic list is from the web? How many items do you think are on the list? 10, 20, 30, 10? Just 20, just right out of the gate. Okay. So home inspection, negotiating offers, negotiating with buyers on your behalf, marketing and advertising, showing properties, providing advice, education, educating people, communicating. There’s two different sides of real estate. There’s listing and buying agents. This thing says listing agent specific stuff and has other things. I opened up the listing agent-specific thing and I immediately find a blog post from Balz Mara Realty that says 184 things that real estate agents do. 184 four things. And I have just done a quick look at that list. It’s legit. So when you’re saying unique selling proposition, and there are people out there that are blogging that can figure out 184 different things that an agent does in the buying and selling process, please don’t tell me that there’s nothing in that 184 list that you can’t do better than other people.

If you You can’t look at a list of things and go, I’m pretty good at that. Like John and I have, John is pretty good at WordPress. He has experience in it. I am pretty good at marketing. I have experience in it. I could look at a list and go, I’m probably better than other people in this one little category. It’s not arrogance. It’s just, do you think you work out it harder than other people? If the answer is yes, you’re probably better. And it drives me nuts, John, that I can usually not get an agent who’s supposed to be a sales person to admit that they might be better out of one out of a couple of hundred things. It’s like, really? So figure out what your unique offer should reflect on your values, your skills, who you want to serve? What’s your unique offer to that person? In Beverly Hills right now, there’s this dearth, this proliferation of concierge agents. I will say this, of the concierge agents that I know the three that are wildly successful, 20, 30 years careers in real estate, all of them, they’re really never off. They don’t take time off.

Not really, because when they have a high enough value client come into town, since they’re only dealing with three or four transactions a year, max. They drop everything. And so they’re out all weekend. They’re taking people to parties. They’re going to movie premieres, selling somebody in the lifestyle and the experience of buying a property at the same time. But barring that, when it comes to what your unique offer is, and even that is not unique, any of the top four agents can do that with you. They all have that ability. You start to go, Well, what is the exception above and beyond that? Well, I’ll tell you what, one of the three, head and shoulders above the others, has a better support team around them, and I’m not going to say which. I’m just going to say they have four qualified people to help with the management of a very challenging client, and they’re all really good, world-class in their own way. So one could say the support system was their unique sales offer, and I think that they should. That would be the unique proposition I’m willing to give out some of the work to some of my subordinates because some of these agents are not.

That would be something I would look at in an actual Beverly Hills. Now, this is a favorite subject and one that John is a master at. I’m going to play you up and then I’m going to hand it off to you. I’ve dealt with a lot of people over time, and I think we should always look at each other and go, this is our honest opinion. Well, I’ll tell you one thing about John Denwood. He is one of the most consistent marketing partners I’ve ever had. He is consistent. He walks his talk. He also shows up. He also keeps pushing forward with his businesses. He consistently does not one podcast, but many. I mean, take everything else away and say, Is this person consistent and reliable? I’m going to say 100% in my experience so far, yes, no doubt about it. Consistency is a really great thing to have as part of your brand. Consistency, just one, John, a testimonial for me that doesn’t give out many, and I’ve given out a few for John over the years. It’s important that you deliver that what you want. You show up when people want you. If you say you’re going to show up, show up.

That’s my opinion about consistency. It’s just you have to… I also block hours out of my calendar, John, and I’m religious about not letting anybody get in them because I would go insane if I didn’t do that. That’s how I manage consistency. In the time that I have allotted, yes, I’m going to show up unless I’m in the hospital. What is your views on number five?

Well, it’s difficult in the real estate industry, especially when you’re starting out and you haven’t got the money to hire a team or have a good assistant. You got a lot of balls and you got to be available, fundamentally, you got to be available seven days a week. But if you can’t manage to be consistent as a real estate agent I think you’re going to have a hard job. A lot of people, it has a reputation, and you pointed out to earlier on in this episode, somebody that wasn’t very consistent. They did turn up and they ghosted a possible sell. Consistent of all the things we’ve talked about, if you want to be successful as a real estate agent, I think you got to be pretty consistent consistent.

Yeah. I think that part of the challenge, John, is the million dollar mindset idea, which is what I’m seeing is that right now, finally, after many years, by the way, we’re watching home prices go, sales are down. We’ve got a 9. 0 inventory availability inside the real estate market, which is higher than it’s been in a long-ass time. We’ve got all these factors that are… We have inventory, it’s just priced out of people’s price range right now. Agents are still having to work twice as hard for half as much. That’s where the million-dollar mindset comes in. Lots and lots of agents are just going, No, I’m not going to work that hard. They’re sitting on the income that they’ve earned over the last few years in what has absolutely been a cold market. They’ve made a lot more money than they could or they should. When they can make half as much and work harder, are they going to do it? The answer is a lot of real estate agents won’t, and the real pros will because they know that while they’re working harder, they’re also making market share that other people won’t make. We’re going to close out the show, ladies and gentlemen.

I’m going to have John share his final thoughts, or I’m going to ask John to share his final thoughts. And I’m going to say, I’m going to think through mine because I’m not 100 % sure how I want to close this episode down. So what are your final thoughts about branding?

Well, it’s a garage subject, isn’t it? Building a brand. But I think we’re given a good outline here and put some thoughts in people’s minds, because I think a lot of agents really fell on this, and it’s understandable because it’s vague. But if you can plan some strategy, and it doesn’t have to be I think complicated, but you got to use the steps that we’ve outlined in this episode, and then put a bit of thought into it, and then stick to it, and be consistent Which number five, which I think is not only consistent about turning up and doing the stuff that you got to do, but being consistent around the idea of building a brand, And on the other hand, there’s a lot of people out there that make it like it’s jet science, and it’s over complicated. You got to keep it simple because you haven’t got the budget and you haven’t got the bandwidth, and you got to keep it simple, but keep it consistent. That’s what I would say, Rob.

And I would say that branding is an overused subject. I’ve always felt this way, still feel this way. You’ll hear top agents or luxury agents, and I’ll talk about brand, brand, brand. Really, what most people are establishing these days is an informational brand. Like an informational subject brand. Occasionally, realtors have a glamorous lifestyle outside of being an agent. They go to big parties and things like that. Some of their customers are rich and famous in very rare cases, but it It does happen. And so they, by extension, become rich and famous to a degree. But most of the agents I know when you brush that away, it is a lot more… That is the marketing. That is the sizz, not the steak. The steak is showing up when you’ve taken on a listing before the team that you hired to even stage it shows up, being ready, walking the property, being there an hour earlier than anybody else, and making sure that you know the outs of everything so that when the staging team comes, you’ve got a lot of input from them. You’ve looked in every nook and every cranny, staying late after that team leaves.

I’ve seen Christoff like a sleep in a chair at a mansion that he was doing a little day in the life of thing a long time ago. It really impressed me because he was there long after everybody else was. It was probably an insanely long day, 14 or 15 hour day to make sure that you had three videos done, all when the client wanted to leave the property available, all when all the production teams could get there, and all with you managing every detail. Now, what is that? Is that skill? I would argue that that’s simply hard work and discipline. I would argue that that consistency, just like John said, is one of the big things because you only get good at doing something by doing it many times. You practice, drill and rehearse. You practice when there is no blood on the ground so that when there is, you still do the thing with a high degree of skill. I still take Take sales calls because I believe it’s important to still talk to customers. That’s really what it comes down to. It is important that you get in the trenches and actually bleed with the clients, at least every once in a while, so that you understand exactly what’s going on.

I cannot tell you how strongly I feel about that particular sentiment. As a founder or a business owner, you don’t have to do it often, I don’t think. I don’t think you have to do it four times a day like I do, but once or twice every single week, making that you’re talking to one of your actual customers, yes, I think that’s important. And that’s a discipline. That’s consistency. That’s building a brand. That’s an informational brand that leads to reviews. And when you brush everything away, somebody is attracted by the spark of some part of your offer. But nine times out of 10 these days in the market that we live in, they are pulling the trigger because of your reviews, case studies, deeper knowledge that you’ve given about your products and services, the amount of money that your clients They’re looking at the actual mechanics of what you do and making decisions based on more than just a service-facing brand. That’s what I’ve got. But No further ado. John, thank you for putting this together. As always, I’ve emailed you a link to the 184 thing most agents do. If you feel inclined, maybe put it in the show notes since I did mention it.

And if people want to find you, follow up with you, get a consultation from you, talk to you about the MailRight marketing system, how would they go about doing that?

I’ll just go to the mail-right. Com website and in the top navigation, you can book a chat with me.

Okay. And you could do the same with me at inboundrem. Com on the About or Services pages. You’ll find links to my calendar. Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in to the show. John and I are so grateful that you give us a little bit of your time and your mind space. We really appreciate it. Until next time. We’re going to sign off.