Keeping It Real Podcast • Secrets Of Top 1% REALTORS ® • Interviews With Real Estate Brokers & Agents

In our April episode of Monday Market Minute, Carrie McCormick from @properties, talks about the financial crisis due to the bankruptcy of a large bank in the US. Carrie emphasizes the importance of starting to talk to buyers and listening to their concerns while learning about their lifestyle. Carrie also discusses the inventory shortage and how to find creative ways to help people move. Last, Carrie gives some advice to find rentals that are on the market without landlords living in it.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Carrie can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 312.961.4612.

Please follow Carrie on Instagram by clicking here.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
How have the recent bank failures affected the real estate market? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

Welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast made for real estate agents and buy real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I am your guide and host through the show today is our monthly series called The Monday market minute. It’s not Monday today when we’re recording it but that’s okay. The Monday market minute with Carrie McCormick from the Carey McCormick Real Estate Group with at properties here in Chicago. Now let me tell you about Carrie Carrie is a superstar top 1% producer here in Chicago with over 20 years of experience helping buyers, sellers and investors. In fact, in the past 12 months out of 47,000 real estate agents in the Chicagoland area Carrie is in the top 15 Not 15% Literally the top 15 out of so it’s like top 99.999% of all realtors in the area. She’s a true superstar whose cows cow you know, I’m gonna count one of these days, I’m going to actually have that number because I want to know just how amazing you are as far as rank not that it’s that important. But I am so honored to have you on the show. But anyway, Kerry’s a true superstar. She’s an expert in everything from first time homebuyers, veteran investors, luxury properties. And also she works with a ton of developers the place I live right now is one of Karis developments. So I am so such a big fan of Carrie, she’s been with our show, since the very beginning. I want everybody to follow her on Instagram. We were just talking about this beforehand, because I need some help with my Instagram. And Carrie was like, Can you believe I do all of that myself. And she does. So check out her on Instagram, Carrie McCormack real estate, we’ll have a link to that in the show notes. And also check out our website Kerry McCormick rt e.com. Carrie, welcome once again to the show.

Carrie McCormick 3:08
Thank you. I love that introduction. It makes me

D.J. Paris 3:12
Don’t we all need like an introduction like that, like all of us need one friend in our life that just, you know, maybe once in a while goes, let me tell you about all the great things about you that would be that would be that would actually be a fun way to start a start a morning. But I’m glad I get to start my morning with you today. You are an incredible superstar and I am always will I always take the temperature of the market by talking to you because you are the market in the way I think about it. So how are you feeling right now? It’s it’s we’re at the end of March. It’s been a goofy couple of weeks banks have failed. There’s been some weird stuff happening. But how is how are things going?

Carrie McCormick 3:52
Yeah, it’s it’s actually not doing too bad here in Chicago, you know, and I do agree like I’m in the market. 24/7. Right, I’m always in it. So from talking with buyers and sellers from all different age groups from all different, you know, income brackets, and I listen. And that is I will tell you, one of my biggest strengths, of being successful in the business is, is listening to people and when you listen to people, you learn so much about them and about the market and how they’re feeling. There’s a lot of funky stuff going in the market, but things are moving here. So but what I wanted to talk about was his inventory and everyone hears this word and you know, I’m sick of hearing it to have you know, there’s no inventory in the market. So, you know, instead of talking about it, let’s do something about it. How do we get more inventory in the market because I think in this spring and summer market that the folks that are the listing agents are going to be the winners in this market. So we need to find creative ways to get people to move. And one thing that has been difficult to get Get people to move are two big two big reasons. One, that there is no inventories like, where are they going to move to? Right? So they don’t want to sell their house. And two is their interest rates. So they did lock into an interest rate, you know, ones, twos, 3% interest rates, and they’re like, gosh, if I, if I move, I’m going to give up my interest rate, where am I going to move to, and I’m going to be stuck with a five or 6% interest rate, then you know, so we’ve got is, and I get it. So you know, put a credit to at properties Christie’s international because they a podcast to talking about inventory, and they had some great tips. And so I’m going to talk about those tips for all of us to use. And number one, is think about the rentals that are in the market. Right now, the landlords that own these rentals, the landlords obviously don’t live there. So that’s not their primary residence, they may have a higher interest rate on that property. And they’re not that emotionally tied to that property. So find those landlords, maybe they want to sell it, maybe they want to do a 1031 exchange, which means they trade the property, basically, they sell the one property, and then they identify another property. So you can get two deals out of that one person. So again, you can look in the MLS of properties that have been rented for years and try to find those landlords, especially if those leases were up, you can see that, you know, if you look at the history of properties, rented every March, let’s say or April, so you know that either they just signed a lease, and then maybe put them on your schedule, here, and and reach out to them. There’s so many ways to find these owners, right? How do you

D.J. Paris 6:53
find the owner? So that’s a good question. So we could go through the MLS and see especially like luxury buildings, people who have condos, were renting them out. Obviously, they’re already working with an agent, maybe the agent didn’t do a good job, we don’t know. But how would we then source the owner? What would you recommend there?

Carrie McCormick 7:11
Well, the internet’s a fun thing these days, right? So you can look in tax records, you know, the tax bill, and usually on that tax bill, that bills not coming to the investment property, the tax bills going to their home. So that, you know, look at the tax records, you can find them there. The white pages, actually, there’s something called been verified. Social media, you know, you can find them on social media, there’s just, it’s really kind of a little bit of detective work. And that’s kind of the fun part about it is of course, when you find I’ve actually there’s one property that a client of mine wanted to acquire, I could not find the owner could not find the owner, I actually went to the property and spoke to the tenant knocked on the door and spoke to the tenant and gave the tenant my information said, you know, I’m wanting to get in touch with your landlord. And the tenant passed along the information to their landlord, the landlord called me. So sometimes, again, it’s is having that, that drive to, you know, to find the people, but that’s what sets you apart because other agents won’t do that.

D.J. Paris 8:22
Reminds me of the story. I asked you a long time ago about how you started to work with developers, you’re like, Oh, I walked over to a development. And from downtown, I think you walked all the way from downtown to the development and said, Hi, I’m an I’m a new real estate agent, what’s going on here, and then that that is how you. So that’s a really good idea. If you can’t find somebody knock on the door, and say, Hey, I just wanted to pass this over to the landlord. Brilliant. Oh, I love that. And the other thing, too, is you can even partner up with management companies as well. property management companies, who are you know, you could build good relationships with them a lot of property management company. The property managers themselves aren’t necessarily practicing agents. So this is another great opportunity like, hey, when your owner is ready to sell, I would you know, and you can develop a little sort of back and forth kind of reciprocal thing going on. And you can refer does this to them and they can refer to you.

Carrie McCormick 9:21
Absolutely. So it’s, you know, it’s again, thinking out of the box. So rentals are a great source to find inventory. The other one isn’t, I’ve got a really great success story on this one is, you know, there’s a lot of people moving just on the move, right, in general, they’re moving out of Chicago, they’re moving to Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, wherever it is, and there’s just there’s mobility in the United States right now. In and out of so, obviously connecting with an agent in another city. So for example, I had was in Arizona and I flew out to meet with an agent and I you know, introduced who I am what I’m doing and she’s like, Oh, my client out here, she’s like, I think they have a house in Illinois in Chicago. She talked to them. And she’s like, Oh, my clients aren’t using their condo in Chicago anymore. And she talked to them. And they wanted, they’re like, Yeah, let’s just sell it. So I was able to find inventory of place that’s sitting here vacant, that people live in Arizona. And I connected with a broker who had a great relationship with those people. And she convinced she convinced them to sell the Chicago place. So again, it’s just it’s networking with other with your peers and networking with other brokers. Because, again, if you no broker in Montana, sold a client a home, and they’re done with a transaction, but I call that or any of your clients have places in Chicago that they’re willing to sell, I’m happy to give you a referral fee, if you just put that message out to your clients out there. And they’re gonna get a call. And, you know, it’s, they’re not using their place here in Chicago, and you’re gonna get another listing out of that. So, again, all of this is putting a little effort and work and digging into it, making those phone calls, taking the time and the effort. But that’s what it’s gonna take to get some more inventory in this market.

D.J. Paris 11:16
You know, what’s so funny, I was thinking about this, because I live in a development that you represent it and I love it. And I will hope to be there for quite some time. But you know, what would be kind of an interesting marketing idea is I’ve never had this happen. And all the years of homeownership, and I’ve rented and I’ve owned, and I’ve never received this in any way, ready for your next like some sort of marketing message that’s like ready for your next home. You know, something to the effect of like, the condo I purchased probably won’t be my forever home. So I think that people who buy condos typically, you know, I don’t know what the amount of time that they average American spends in a condo. But if you’re in a condo, odds are, if you’re not a retiree who’s looking to downsize, odds are you’re probably looking to upsize at some point to a more traditional style home. I think this would be a great opportunity to start talking to condo owners about what are your plans? What’s the plans right now? You know, do you want to live in the city for the rest of your life, especially if you’re in an urban area? Most people move out of the city at some point, right? Most people move out, they want more space they have maybe children get in the way they want, you know, more education opportunities, things like that. So I think there’s there I have yet to really see anyone talking about, you know, that transition from city to suburbs or and then returning sometimes people as they retire, come back to the city. But curious if you’ve kind of explored or seen any trends there?

Carrie McCormick 12:50
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s, that’s why I’m saying is that there’s all this movement, and, you know, part of our job as a real estate broker is to be, you know, consult with them. Because, you know, where are they going with it? You know, are they staying in this condo for five years? What’s their next step? And how can we get them to, you know, their next step, and that was gonna be my last tip about inventory is kind of being a matchmaker. I had a meeting the other day, or it was a couple of weeks ago, actually, with a dating matchmaker, not for myself, but she you know, she’s a very well known matchmaker and just kind of learning about her business and how she does it. And it just made it dawned on me of that’s what we do. I mean, we match people with the right lifestyle with the right house. And it was soon after that meeting, where I have a client of mine that lives in the Gold Coast here in Chicago, and they really aren’t unhappy with their house because I didn’t sell it to him. But because they there’s not enough light in there. It’s really dark, and it makes them depressed. And I was in another house that had a lot of light. And I called him and I said, Listen, I know that you’re not looking to move, but I know you hate your house because it doesn’t have a light enough light in there. Come see this home. It sits on a corner lot. It’s got south facing windows, they fell in love with the house. So again, I just started putting two and two together. I’m like, Oh my gosh, like that was just my client didn’t want to move. But you know, just knowing what people want in their life and where they’re going and what’s important to them and presenting an opportunity to them. Yeah, we’re a matchmaker.

D.J. Paris 14:29
I think that is such a such a good point. Because you know, when when I bought my most recent condo, one of your development opportunities, which which I’m thrilled the these years later, I I wasn’t specifically looking but as soon as I walked in, I was like, Okay, this is the one I want. And I was lucky enough to get it and I was also lucky enough timing wise to have with the current rates at that time were very low. So I have I have kind of, I’m disincentivized to move however, knowing my if you knew my why or what I was looking to do in my life, and eventually I probably will, at some point go out to the suburbs, I’m sure like everyone else. At some point, I’m going to make that transition anyway. And the rates are going to be what the rates are like, I won’t have any choice over it, just like I didn’t have any choice over it. Anytime I’ve ever gotten a loan, it just is what it is. I don’t think I think as Realtors we tend to focus on the rates, because it’s so interesting. It’s a, it’s a very tangible number that we can use as a reason for why things are the way they are. But when people need to move, they will date the rate, the new rate, and then they’ll refi. And so rates aren’t that much of a stopper. But I’m curious how you talk about that with your clients? Like, how do you sue the client that’s like, Oh, I missed out on the 3% days? And?

Carrie McCormick 16:03
Well, I mean, the reality is, they did miss out on it. You know, I mean, there’s, there’s nothing that we can do, you know, so I think sometimes people just want to be heard, or they just, you know, they just want to complain about it. But the reality is, it’s gone. But also when those rates were high, pricing was a little bit different, you know, so you know, they people were buying houses at higher prices, they were waiving inspections, they were waiving appraisal contingencies, now we’re in a more stabilized market where they can negotiate the home to some degree. And again, rates will change, just like everything, you know, its rates are not going to stay at 6% or 7%, they’re gonna end up coming down briefly, and then they’ll pop back up. And it’s just, it’s, it’s the market, but I always tell people to I mean, a house is so important of where you live, don’t stop your life, just because the rates at 6% I mean, it’s, it’s going to adjust and it’s going to change. And if someone is truly that concerned about their finances, and every point, interest rate point, then we probably should be looking at a less expensive property where they’re comfortable. So again, it just becomes of a consultant to them of what’s the right, fit and match for them.

D.J. Paris 17:15
Yeah, I I just I’m, I’m around so many agents these days. And all they talk about are rates, rates, rates, rates. And yes, that stops some people who don’t have to move maybe from from making a choice. It does block some people, but I don’t really think it blocks motivated buyers and sellers alike, it made my bum them out a little that they’re not getting quite the same rate that they could have gotten years before. But what if the human race is very resilient, right? Like, we deal with what’s in front of us, we don’t have an option. But what I was what I was getting to was, I could be incentivized to move even with a 3% rate going to a 6% rate. If it made sense for my why? Why would I do that. If it if it ticked off enough boxes, it would absolutely be the right move. And I would just have to get comfortable with that. So the idea is, I think realtors can start learning how to coach their clients. It’s kind of like, kind of like when you go to buy a new TV, and you do all this research. And then, you know, you spend months looking at this waiting for these TVs to go on sale, and you pick the perfect one. And then and then it just becomes your TV after like a week you don’t even think about it again. It’s just your TV. So it’s one of those things where we get fixated on, you know, comparing and contrasting and rates and blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the day, what’s most important is how does the person feel in their home? What do they really want? And, and that that tends to override the financial part of it.

Carrie McCormick 18:51
Yeah, but there’s some people that just they want the win or they want it, they want the win, you know, so it’s, I love what I do. I truly do. I love consulting with clients and talking with them about this. And it’s like being a coach, you know, a real estate coach with them, you know, of what to do and how to do it. So it’s it’s the best job in the world.

D.J. Paris 19:15
Yeah, be a coach. I like that coach consultant. That’s, I mean, we have those for, you know, our finances, we have those for legal matters. We have those for, you know, working out, you know, dietary stuff. It’s like why not have a real estate coach as well. I think if you position yourself as a coach, I think our audience could really benefit from that really thinking of yourself as like, Hey, before you make a real estate decision, talk to me, I can give you some some guidance, right? Because I do think that most people make real estate decisions on their own with and use a realtor to make the decision, but I don’t think a lot of real I don’t think a lot of can Zoomers really go to the realtor and say I need you to help me find x or or help me sell X, Y or Z. I think most people tend to want to do it on their own. And this, we’re a realtor who’s really comprehensive can come in and say, I’m going to be your guide throughout the entire process, right?

Carrie McCormick 20:19
There’s so much involved in it. So, and I don’t think they know that

D.J. Paris 20:23
they don’t. And this is an opportunity for the agent to step up. Now my marketing tip of the week. So I’ll just kind of peel back the curtain a little bit. So we at our company, here, we have two companies, we have a holding company for agents that are exiting the business want to keep their license active. And we have seen an incredible spike. In signups to that company, we’ve been doing the same marketing for that company since we started. So it’s not like we’re doing anything different. But all of a sudden, in the last third, 90 days, so it’s been since the beginning of this year, we’ve seen 100 Realtors join our holding company, which is normally we would see maybe 30 to 40 realtors. So we’re seeing a pretty sick significant increase. And what does this mean? These are agents that are leaving the industry. So what does that mean to you the listener who is not leaving the industry? Well, it’s kind of a good news, bad news thing. Good news is people are leaving the industry. So there’s market share up for sale, the bad news is, it’s still hard to get that market share. Here’s what I would recommend doing, I think now is the time to start offering as people are now coming back to work, I have a few suggestions. We are starting to see some companies are mandating in house working, or in office working mandates. So if you have clients, people in your sphere, that are going in back into the office that weren’t before, I would reach out to those those clients and ask them to introduce you to their HR department. If it’s a large enough company, and say, Hey, I’d love to come in and talk about, you know, the current state of the market, renting, buying, selling, etc, I’ll bring in, you know, sandwiches or whatever, I can do a little presentation. HR departments love this, because it makes them look like they’re putting on something for their agents. Obviously, you can get a lender to help pay for that, or an attorney or title company. So it doesn’t have to cost you anything. So that’s one suggestion is find out where everybody works, and say, Hey, can I talk to your HR department, maybe I can come do a little webinar or seminar. Another idea I have is back to the basics. This is something that everyone can do, and everyone should do, which is you should have at least a five data points for every single contact that you have in your database. So what I mean by that is I’m going to give you the five that I recommend that you have, obviously, I’m going to assume you already have somebody’s name, their email, their phone number, so we’re going to assume that, but I want you to know everybody’s birthday, I want you to know, their if they have a spouse, the spouse is birthday, of course the name as well. If they have children, I want you to know the children’s birthdays. I also want you to know where the parents or the the adults work, what name of those companies and their home buying or selling anniversary and or rental anniversary will say. So basically what you’re going to know is their birthdays, where they work and their work, their buying and selling and or renting anniversaries. If you know this, by the way, called just go down a list in your database. This will give you opportunities to reach out all throughout the year to say hey, I know it’s your son’s birthday today just wanted to wish so and so happy birthday. You can also set up Google Alerts. So once you know the name of the company that your friends work for, or your clients work for you, you can put those in Google Alerts and have it send you notifications when anything substantial happens at that particular company. That way you can reach out say Hey, I just saw you guys acquired this or you were just in the news for that or, and even better go into LinkedIn. LinkedIn will show you once. I would go every day, but you could do it once a week and look to see all the people that have had job promotions, all the people have changed careers. All of those kinds of things give you reasons to reach out. So again, we haven’t said one thing about real estate but I’ve given now you you know, many, many reasons to reach out throughout the year. And I don’t think I’m going to carry I’m going to ask you one last one question to round out the show. Do you ask for business? Yes. Ah, tell us how you do that.

Carrie McCormick 24:46
I’m pretty blunt.

D.J. Paris 24:50
will just say hey, DJ, do you need to? Like if how would you ask me for

Carrie McCormick 24:56
years to do that? I will tell you it’s Anyone that really knows me knows that I do not have an ego. I’m actually a pretty shy person. And I don’t like to talk about myself, I really don’t. And I don’t like to be photographed, believe that or not, I do not like to be photographed. But it took me feel comfortable with just asking people the straight question, and I learned to ask it around a purpose. And the purpose of it is kind of, like you said, is like, What’s your why don’t ask that specific, but what’s important to them? And have you ever considered moving, you know, like, you know, whatever the conversation leads to, and, you know, I’d love an opportunity to talk to you about that. Because Because of XY and Z, or because the markets doing this, and, you know, wrapping the whole question around the reason of why they should move or should sell, and make it more conversational. And, you know, some people say, no, or I appreciate it, but no, thank you, or whatever it is, it’s, you know, it’s usually a very nice comment. And then I’ll say, Well, can I follow up with you in a year from now, because life changes, you know, and I just, I’m not shy about that, you know, you know, I’m, I’ve got very thick skin, and I can take no for an answer. And actually, someone texted me the other day, and he said, You are the most persistent realtor I’ve ever. And he said, but you’re very professional. And I appreciate that. He’s like, why don’t you come over on the ninth. And I’m like, I mean, this is someone I’ve kept asking and asking and asking in a nice way, and I provide value, I provide information. And it was nice that he recognized it’s all very professionally done and persistent. And now I’m gonna go meet with him on the ninth. So we’ll see what happens

D.J. Paris 26:55
persistency wins the game. It just does. I, I had a similar thing where I kept reaching out to expand our podcast, I kept reaching out to real estate schools, because I want to do get real estate students who are entering the business hooked on our podcast, that would be a good thing for the show. And so I reached out to all these different schools, and I said, Hey, I would love to do these free. Here’s what I learned after interviewing lots of top realtors, like webinars for your students so that they know what they’re getting into. And I kept hitting this one particular school for two years, basically. And finally, they were like, Yes, look, we’re ready. Let’s do it. So sometimes things take time. If you just keep dripping on people in consistently adding value, that’s, that’s that’s the key, right? Like consistently giving, giving, giving, giving, and just hope, hopeful, but then asking, I love the idea of asking. I asked what like some people say you shouldn’t ask for business. Others say you should. I was having was at a presentation. Actually, Carrie, you were not at. But you have somebody you know, Stephen NATO, who’s a Chicago agent here who said, somebody asked him do you ask for business? And he says, not until recently. He said for the first like 10 years of his business, he never asked, right? Because he’s like an introvert. He just kind of likes to you know, he’s not an extrovert. And so he said, and you carry your your, your your introverted as well, pretty much aren’t you? Are you Would you consider yourself an introvert?

Carrie McCormick 28:35
I am. I am. Yeah, yeah.

D.J. Paris 28:38
Me too. Me too. Believe it or not, I am as well. Introverts can can do really well in this industry. And he goes, I never used to ask for business. He goes the worst. And he was saying, but he goes, he said, I started asking for business because he wanted to see like all these Beyonce shows this year. So he goes, guys, I’m not going to be able to go see all these Beyonce shows if I don’t have enough sales, and he just made a joke, made a joke about it. And he said, people really responded well to that. They were like, no, we want you to be successful. And he’s, of course is very successful. But I thought he goes I guess I flipped the script on asking. He goes, I totally asked now. He’s like, there’s no reason not to ask, right? It’s uncomfortable, but you have to do it. And you’ll get you’ll get some nose and

Carrie McCormick 29:23
yeah, you have to know the appropriate time to do it. You can’t just, you know, barge into a room and do that. But it’s it’s a it’s an art form. So

D.J. Paris 29:33
what, how? Give us one thing, one last final tip about social media, like what’s been working for you recently? Anything that or it’s something that you have or something not to do? Have you learned anything I

Carrie McCormick 29:49
don’t know about not to do? Because my tip is honestly is to be your own brand ambassador and be organic with your content. Um, you know, I think the reason, my and I don’t have millions of followers, you know, I feel like I’ve got a good following and my social media, but I think it’s because it’s truly me. You know, it’s, it’s, I try to curate each of my videos I, I’m the one that writes the scripts, I’m the one that comes up with the, the storyboard if you will, of them. And it’s, it’s truly who I am. So I think that’s, and I think if everyone when you do your own social media, and you are you’re true to yourself and your brand. So what I say is be your own brand ambassador, don’t when you start copying other people, I’m inspired by a lot of other people that are out there, and you take that inspiration and turn it into your own. So I think that’s important.

D.J. Paris 30:55
Yeah, it’s great tip authenticity, consistency. Yeah, let’s, let’s, let’s make this year, the year of doing more video to for all of our listeners do more live videos. And each time you’re at a showing, if you have a minute or so show something interesting about the house, hey, I want to show you guys this, people love to see those little short form videos of look at this really cool thing. Every house has some cool feature feature in your videos. Carrie, I think that brings us to the end of another Monday market minute. The I guess the lesson for today is get creative, get creative, to get more listings, get creative in your marketing. And don’t worry too much about rates just go out there and people still need to move. So get out there and talk to people find out their why’s. And also hopefully with the marketing tips I gave give you a reason to reach out just celebrate people this year. This is the year you know, it’s so funny, I will say this as one final thing. I’ve done so many of these episodes. And at the end of the are usually at the beginning of the episode. It’s almost clockwork, when I read somebody’s intro, which is you know, a list of their accomplishments and why they’re important and why we’re having them on the show. And they always go Gosh, I wish you could read it like almost every time so because gosh, I wish like you could see it in their face, they get so excited to hear and maybe slightly embarrassed. But it’s one of those things that you can really make people’s day by paying attention to their accomplishments. So, so obviously, in a podcast, we can, you know, there’s a structure for that. But as a realtor, you can do that through some of those marketing suggestions I gave, which is pay attention to other people’s accomplishments because not everyone gets to be on a podcast. And if you call them up and just say, Hey, I saw your company just won this big account. That’s, that is gonna go a long way with people. So anyway, pay attention to what your your your sphere of influence is doing and celebrate their successes with them. Everybody should be following Carrie McCormack on Instagram. So go to Instagram Carrie McCormack RTE link to that in the show notes. She does it all herself. She has an incredible social media following and she wants you to follow her as well. So check her out there also Kerry McCormack rt e.com For everything if you have clients, luxury clients, any any type of client that is moving the Chicagoland area that wants to work with a top real estate agent here in the area. Carrie is our recommendation. So if you’re a broker from another state, another area you have clients moving here, consider passing those over to introducing them to Carrie, Carrie, what’s the best way that an agent can reach out to you

Carrie McCormick 33:46
always call me 312-961-4612? I pick up my phone all the time.

D.J. Paris 33:54
Awesome. Well, thank you Carrie. Once again, on behalf of our listeners, you are amazing. We love having you on every month and on behalf of Carrie and myself. Thank you to the audience. Please tell a friend about our show. Think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this episode and send them a link over to our website. Keeping it real pod.com Every episode can be streamed right from our browser or any podcast app has our show as well. Carrie, thank you so much. We will see everybody on the next next episode. Thank you

Russ Cofano the CEO at Collabra Technology talks about his long experience with law school background working in a law firm legal hotline. Russ discussed the importance of eXp model and how the timing is incredibly valuable to effectiveness of this model. Next, he talks about a tool that his company has developed with the purpose to help agents build their digital marketing part of the job. Last, he explains why sales without marketing and branding is only half of the equation of digital marketing.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a tool that existed that measured all of your social media channels and effectiveness and engagement and compared it among the top Realtors in your marketplace and then told you what to do to get to their level? Well, stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris. I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with Ruska Fano about his new venture sphere builder.io. Before we get to Russ, just a couple of quick reminders. As always the best two ways that you can help support our podcast. Number one, support our sponsors, check out what our sponsors are offering we love our sponsors, they pay the bills, and please check out their products and services and to tell a friend about the show. Tell one other realtor that you know you gotta listen to this episode. Specifically today we’re going to be talking about how to measure your social media presence against all the top producers in your marketplace. Very very cool stuff. So tell someone else about our show. That’s always the best way that you can help us keep going. But guys let’s get right to it my conversation with Ruska Fano?

Right, today our guest is Russ confido With Collabra technology. Let me tell you more about Russ now. Ruska. Fido is the CEO of Collabra technology, a digital marketing technology and analytics firm, which operates sphere builder, a comprehensive digital marketing platform that instantly provides comparative ranking and personalized insights about an agent’s online presence. Now Cabano has more than 30 years of senior leadership experience in nearly all facets of the real estate industry including brokerage technology, MLS associations and affiliated businesses go find his previous roles include President and General Counsel of EXP world holdings, Senior Vice President of industry relations at move dot inc, which is the owner of realtor.com By the way, I always thought realtor.com was owned by the National Association of REALTORS not not so anymore move dot move dot inc sorry moved attic move Inc owns and Russ is also was the Vice President and General Counsel at John L. Scott real estate and CEO of the Missouri Realtors Association. Kobato holds a Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctor from the University of Washington. Welcome Russ to the show. By the way, before we welcome Russ, everyone, I want you to go to sphere builder.io Sphere builder.io. And I want you to put in your information to download their white paper, specifically referencing and this is an incredible white paper about digital marketing use cases for real estate agents, you’re going to see what top agents are currently doing to expand their digital presence and engagement and improve their business. Russ, welcome to the show.

Russ Cofano 4:31
Thank you, DJ, thanks for having me. And looking forward to a great discussion about marketing for real estate agents.

D.J. Paris 4:37
Yeah, let’s let’s let’s dive into it normally, I mean, you’ve done you’ve done everything in this industry. You’ve been on really all different sides of the business. I’d actually I’d love to first before we get into marketing. We’d love to learn a little bit about your journey, sort of how did you get involved in real estate? Obviously, you know, you you’re an attorney, you’ve run Businesses and also worked in various aspects of real estate. So just walk us through kind of how you got involved

Russ Cofano 5:07
by at complete accident. So after law school, I was a lawyer that went into and my, I really wanted to be a developer. That was where my thought my calling was, I felt I, I, as a young boy, I really enjoyed going on vacations, my family, you know, was a middle class family. And so, you know, we would go on on car trips, and a lot of plane trips, and occasionally, we would stay at, you know, a decent hotel, never real luxury stuff that was not within my family’s means. And, and I wanted to build hotels, I thought that was really cold people like love going into hotels, and I thought it would be great to be a developer of some luxury hotels. And it the time I got out of law school, the commercial real estate industry was, you know, interest rates were, you know, hovering around 20%, it was just not a great time to be in the building business. And so got some great advices and you want to go be a lawyer and, and help developers from a legal side and then learn the business. And then once the market gets better, then you can, you know, actually move to the business side, I never intended to be a lawyer long term ever. And I got into this law firm, and by chance, a pure by chance, they were in a really good real estate specialty. And that’s what I wanted to do. They operated the legal hotline for the Washington Association of Realtors. And, you know, for those agents that watch, they know that in many states, there’s a legal hotline where you can call and get, you know, answers to your questions, etc. And so this law firm, basically had the contract for providing the Legal Hotline. And as the newbie, I that became part of my job,

D.J. Paris 7:05
you got to be the guy that answered the phones, I got to be the guy that answer

Russ Cofano 7:08
the phones. And so And initially, I thought, come on this is this is not I’m not building hotels here, I’m, I’m talking to realtors, right. And yet, I fell in love with I fell in love with, with the people in the industry. They are people that are glass half full people they have to be because it’s such a tough job. And they were so appreciative of of information that we gave them, I would get calls many times before they would call their broker, but they didn’t want their broker to know that they sold the house twice. Or, or, you know, other really challenging scenarios. And, and I just fell in love with the business, I fell in love with the people, all those things. And so that was sort of an entree sort of diverted the path. And then this law firm also did a lot of work representing realtor associations and multiple listing services, and brokerage companies. And I just, my my career just fell into that path. And that’s through sort of it just, you know, sometimes you get into a stream, and it takes you downstream and you don’t really decide to go there. It just takes you there. And I’m really fortunate that I’ve had a wonderful career that didn’t end up being a hotel developer. And, and I practice law for about 10 years. And then I during the the time when the internet actually became something of a commercial medium. I was became fascinated. I had a brother who was very much on the technology side and he kept on sending me things and I just I couldn’t get enough of where I thought this thing called the internet was going to be the 90s Right. And I started developing a specialty around data licensing and it was what at the time when multiple listing services. So realtor.com started you know, it came on to the scene homes.com Cyber homes if people remember that I mean just arrived the initial portals and and they were going to the MLS is and seeking to license data and MLS at the time. And many of them were still operating off literally computers and big rooms as opposed to the PC. Right. And so this was, you know, a long time ago, relatively speaking, and they didn’t really understand IP intellectual property and what it meant to date licensed data and all that and so I became that guy I started doing work for MLS across the country and helping them live Since their data, and I remember I was at one of the very first inland conferences, late 90s. And I was doing a speech on data and IP and real estate. And there were some guys in the audience that were running a little startup company in Seattle, they had gone down to San Francisco. And they heard me talk. And when I got back, I got a phone call from them. They said, hey, you know, we’re some extra Microsoft developers. We’re building this new application, it was one of the very first virtual tour applications. And they, they said, we need, we need some help, right? We know how to build great technology, but we don’t really understand this real estate world. And so I started being their lawyer. And then shortly thereafter, I got so enamored with what they were doing, and the opportunity to build some really cool technology that I jumped for my law firm became CEO of this little startup company, and we did the whole startup thing and eventually failed. You know, we, we almost got bought by one of the big players, but NASDAQ and the crash of NASDAQ really took the sales out of that process and learned a ton about technology development, learned a ton about bringing product to this industry. Some great lessons learned even though we ended up failing as a startup, wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s helping me today, learning going through the things we went back literally 20 years ago. And, and I don’t know all the right answers. But one thing that experience does is it tells you what alleys not to go down, right? And because if you go down that alley, you’re gonna get beat up, right? So the wisdom that I learned is what not to do. There’s still a lot of learnings about what to do in a very dynamic environment. From there, I went back into the brokerage side and my career ventually took me into organized real estate with the Missouri Association of Realtors, and and then back in 2014. Zillow was really making some headway against realtor.com Real Talk comm went from the number one portal to the number three portal I remember. Yeah, behind Zillow and Trulia. And, and some major execs left Zillow, and went or left realtor.com and went to Zillow. And that opened up a spot to come in and, and so I joined realtor.com. And at a time when they were going through some changes and being acquired by Rupert Murdoch, and and, and that organization and learned a lot again from from a technology portal standpoint, leads and all that and then left realtor.com and got the chance to, to help exp in the initial growth phase with the company, which was tremendously exciting and interesting. exp is a great company. You know, bringing a new model to real estate and the challenges around that. Again, another great learning opportunity and eventually left them and took some time off and got rejuvenated and then got this opportunity to come to collaborate and build what we think is a is a truly groundbreaking application for helping real estate agents be better marketers.

D.J. Paris 13:35
I’m really excited to dive into that I did want to touch since you you were, you know, part of EXP and helping them in really in their growth phase, which seems like they’re always in growth phase and they have just been skyrocketing. But that is a true success story. I mean, I am We’re an independent brokerage here in Chicago, so we’re not affiliated with anyone but we have about 800 agents or so here. And I know how long it took us to build that and I if I had one regret it was boy I wish I would have come up with the EXP model before exp because boy, are they just taking the ball and running with it. Basically the way I understand exp model is they took what Keller Williams had attempted to do in the past but didn’t quite have it fleshed out in the same sort of program, this idea of having a downline and having agents kind of underneath you and really just leaning into that model and realizing what exp realized I think that no other brokerage realized is that they leaned into this whole influencer kind of idea where people can build these online presences on YouTube on tick tock and really become this broker that or agent that other agents follow. And then that draws people in. I mean, I’ve interviewed some exp agents. I’ve had them on my show who have like 1000 Plus team members, because they’re a real popular or a person online and they provide all this value to other agents and then agents sign up is really an incredible thing that sort of caught fire. And I’ve always thought exp is really a b2b brand a business to business and not really a b2c brand. I don’t think I don’t think they care that much about the consumer because they focus all of their effort for their marketing on the b2b side, which again, it’s just such a brilliant idea. My hats, my hat’s off to them. I think exp does some really, really neat things. And they’ve really caught lightning in a bottle. I think very, very impressively.

Russ Cofano 15:33
Yeah, you know, the, the model, what, what exp is a perfect example of is how timing is so incredibly important to the effectiveness of a model. So Glen actually started exp in 2009. I think 2008 2009. And I met Glenn, when I [email protected], I ran what was called our broker advisory board. And Glenn was on that that board, which was kind of weird, because not that Glenn’s not a smart guy, but but we had, you know, the biggest companies in the country on our brokerage doors, and we had this at exp, which was at the time at 500 agents in a kind of an odd model. Nobody got Yeah, nobody really understood it. Yeah, it stood it right. And so exp really kind of bumped around for about six, seven years. Before a variety of things came together and and the model took off and it was Right Place Right Time. For that model to come to the industry when the industry was looking for an alternative to agents were looking for an alternative with can be multiple streams of income, give me autonomy, it’s not about your brand is about my brand, my brand new agent. All those things leveraging a digital environment there exp world as and using the savings from that to be able to fund these alternatives, streams of income better, you know, revenue share model versus profit share model of kW stock you know, all those things were were groundbreaking right, Brett groundbreaking and, and it was just a perfect storm, in a good way. Good storm for the for the folks at exp that really got it going and continue to do quite well.

D.J. Paris 17:31
It’s funny, you say that the timing thing. So we’re at our brokerage here in Chicago. And I know we’re getting a little into the weeds. But just for people, I think this is kind of interesting for them to hear. And then we’ll dive really deep into marketing and branding. But we’re 100% firm, which which just means we have a transaction fee versus splits for our brokers. And we’ve made friends with pretty much all the big 100% firms all over the country. And we sort of do a lot of these mastermind meetings. And what we found funny enough from talking to all these, these big 100% firms is that usually almost in almost every case, they were first to market, they were just happened to be the first one in their city to do it. And so you’re right. And same with us. I would love to say that we are so brilliant that we had this thought and we executed it and the reality of it was it was perfect timing. We just got we got lucky. And you know, it’s well

Russ Cofano 18:23
yeah, I wouldn’t say you got lucky. I say you I mean I think luck is a is a function of of strategy, right that effort and effort you put your you make your luck. And so congrats. 100%. Agree,

D.J. Paris 18:42
I just need the timing was very fortunate. Had we done it six months before, after it might have had a different result. So sometimes the timing, timing works out. But you’re right, it’s ultimately it’s a marathon, not a sprint. But anyway, let’s talk about sphere builder because I am a big believer, and I’m quoting one of our frequent guests on our show Ryan de April, I don’t want to steal his words. But it’s probably not probably not even his initial words. But he’s something he professes to all of his agents, which is your network, your net worth is or your network is your net worth, right. So the idea that your sphere is really where you’re going to build your business, maintain your business, that is your asset. And so this idea of deep, sort of figuring out how to further deepen those relationships, create more bonds, more connection is only going to help grow the business. But you need help to do that. And that’s what you guys do. So let’s talk about sphere builder.

Russ Cofano 19:43
So, sphere builder is a we’ll talk about the application. But I want to talk more about sort of this, this movement that we’re trying to create around this idea of building a digital sphere. And it’s got sort of multifaceted to it. The first is that as to your point. Agents, when you go into a room, if you say to a group of agents, do you have a sphere? One out? They all they all say yes, I’ve got Yeah. And they know what it is right. And they know it is because it’s so important to their business and, and, you know, just this last week, some data came out. Zillow now owns 50% of the search market. And, and when you look at 98% of search is owned by big portals and by some large brokerage companies, only 2% is owned by the rest of the the entire rest of the industry, right? It used to be that and what is search search is today’s version of the Sunday paper from 20 years ago, that acted as a place where people could get outreach to or from, and so the industry, whether it’s right or wrong, lost the search battle, it’s gone. It’s now owned by other people that, you know, the traditional industry view is non traditionalist. So the question is, does that mean that the industry is subservient to those folks? And the answer is no, because the sphere, who agents know, in their local communities, their local presence, cannot be matched by a portal. And, and it’s that group of people that know like, and we talked about this all the time that know like and trust the agent, you’re walking down the street, you’re in your local environment, and and you’re the expert. You’re the influencer in your local community. And, and yet, when we talk about spheres of influence, most agents are really able to talk about how that sphere works in real life, you know, the 100, or 200 people that are in their quote, unquote Rolodex, or a CRM, that if they walked down the street and bumped into him, they could have a conversation. But what we’ve seen is that today, with the emergence of the digital world, social channels, Google, all those things, there is another sphere of influence. And that’s what we call the digital sphere of influence. And we believe, and our data shows that the tools and strategies and tactics used to build your sphere in real life, where you are engaged, your personality comes out, all those things are different than the tools and tactics and strategies that are that are necessary to build your digital sphere. And yet that digital sphere, the breadth, and the scope of that sphere can be 10 101,000x, the number of people that can be in your real life sphere. And and can do this by can do the same thing. It can create that know like trust relationship, that that is not reliant on search engines or portals or paid lead gen or all that to generate great word of mouth referrals. And at the end of the day, the best and most sustainable businesses in real estate, operate off those word of mouth referrals and repeat business.

D.J. Paris 23:37
So if I just to recap what you said, because you said a lot, and I want to make sure that I caught it correctly. This idea of having a digital sphere will say is can get the same results as a in person sphere, we’ll call it we’ll just I’ll just use in person and digital as as opposites. And in person sphere, we know we understand that we understand the value of that we also know that there’s a value to the digital sphere. What what I guess the distinction we’re making is that both can get you incredible results. But with the digital side number one, your reach is exponential, because of course, the way that technology connects us via social is obviously apparent to everyone but also the techniques or the practices to cultivate the digital sphere is going to be a different set of practices or some degree different than what you might do in person to develop those relationships.

Russ Cofano 24:36
That’s correct. And, and most agents today do a very poor job of being a digital marketer. Now I want to I want to, and it’s not because they’re not able to, I mean, they’re certainly capable. They just haven’t learned the tools and the techniques in order to do that.

D.J. Paris 24:56
Right. I was laughing because I put myself in the poor digital mode. I couldn’t category as well. So I am one of one I am one of, I am just like the listeners,

Russ Cofano 25:07
and you have lots of friends. So don’t don’t feel alone in that in that category. And it’s important that one thing that we were one of our mantras is this in, in every organization, there is a sales function, there’s a sales department, and there’s a marketing department. And they’re different. They’re they’re managed by different talent sets, the the deliverables are different sales is about lead gen and conversion, and the driving of revenue. And marketing is about positioning and branding. And, and creating a fertile ground for the salespeople to to work off of, they work synergistically and collectively together toward the same result. But they’re fundamentally different functions in any organization. A real estate agent is an organization, it’s a business, right? And, and what we believe is that, and it’s, it’s a sales business. So the people that come into it, tend to be great on the sales side, they know how to lead generate, they’re good at it. It’s, you know, the technology tools that have been built today are focused on lead generation, if you go to any Facebook group, and you talk about you throw out the word lead, Gen, you’ve got people from a variety of different perspectives, talking about the best, the next, the coolest, the newest lead generation scenario, big companies talk about the leverage of lead gen lead gen lead gen, all great. But lead gen without marketing. Sales without marketing is only half of the equation. And, and so our perspective, and our technology is designed to help agents not be better lead generators, there’s plenty of stuff out there to be lead generators, but actually help agents be better digital marketers. And that’s what we’re trying to solve a sphere builder. Because we want the business to come to agents through building of great spheres, as opposed to an agent having to go cultivate that business, your lead generation.

D.J. Paris 27:18
Interesting. So how do you do that?

Russ Cofano 27:21
Well, first of all, the cool thing about the digital sphere, and a digital agents online presence is it’s measurable with data, we can actually look and we have a tool called sphere index. It’s the first tool of its kind, it’s groundbreaking. It’s a real time analytics tool, where an agent will come in and provide to us their social handles their Google business profile, their Zillow review page variety of places where they show up online, they give us those public profiles, and then we have an application that goes out and essentially crawls those sites, takes looks at the at the publicly accessible data, we don’t look at private stuff, we’re just looking at what anybody would see. If I went to your, your Facebook page or Instagram page, we have a we have a way to look at that we capture it. And then we run it through an algorithm that basically measures and puts different I’ll call it emphasis on certain activities. And then we come up with a score. And that’s what we call our sphere index score. It takes about three minutes. It’s free. And it’s it’s the first like I said, real time scoring mechanism of an agent’s digital presence. It’s important that when you begin a digital marketing journey, you begin with a baseline, because what happens what’s happening in the industry today, agents will go to a conference or they’ll see something on Facebook or they’ll go to the watch somebody somewhere they say you should do this. And so they’ll throw that piece of spaghetti at the wall, and then it will generate immediate results. They go, Oh, that didn’t work. And then they’ll go see somebody else saying something else and they go, they’ll take that other piece of an Italian guy, so you know, the it won’t be spaghetti. It’ll be rigatoni. They’ll throw rigatoni at the wall. Right? And, and that didn’t work, right, that didn’t produce a lead, oh, shoot, then they’ll see somebody else. And they’ll say, Well, that’s some vermicelli and then throw those vermicelli at the wall. And and, and so they’re constantly throwing things at the wall. We want to get them off of that of that treadmill and say look at let’s look at where you are. Let’s measure it. Let’s measure it against a benchmark. And this is the cool thing that we developed. We have what’s called a local pro benchmark. And the idea is that and if you go to our site, you’ll see We We essentially create a score of zero to 100 as to how effective an agent is in their digital marketing presence. But if we just said to you DJ, your score is 45, you’re gonna go, great. What does that mean? Well, honestly, it means nothing because there’s no relevancy to it. There’s no comparison to it. So what we do when we go into a local market, and we launched this application first and in Denver in Huntsville, just a couple of weeks ago, and it’s going to be going nationwide. We go into create, we actually look at top producers. So in Denver in Huntsville, we went out and collected data around the top 5% of agents in those two market areas by volume production, these are the agents that are doing production, right. And we ran all those agents through our algorithm. And we then developed a score that reflects how those agents are doing digital marketing. What is their what are their Facebook profiles look like? What does their Instagram profiles look like? How do they show up on on Zillow? How many reviews? Do they have? All those things? Do they have a Google profile? What’s on their Google profile? What are their reviews in Google or Facebook or Instagram? A massive amount of data and we created a score that basically is this benchmark that says if you’re a top producer in these markets, your marketing looks like a 72. Okay, now, when I say to DJ, you’re 45. Yeah, you say, Okay, I’m gonna 45 compared to people that are the top 5% of the industry doing 72. And we want you to the next question to be, how do I get better? How do I actually get from 45 to 72. And we patterned the application off of a very popular consumer application called Credit Karma. I’m not sure if you’re using Credit Karma, but we love it. And Credit Karma basically gives consumers a credit score. And, and says, Okay, you’re a 675. Right? Well, good, you need to get to 700 to be good. And if you want to get to excellent, maybe you want to be to 800. And then they take you through this prescriptive journey in doing things to help you have a better credit score. And as you do those things, when you go back to credit, karma, your 675 just became 700. And then it became 725 became 750. And now you have this, this scoring incentive around your credit score that helps you go through this, this journey, right, because it’s not a 90 day, get fit, quick scenario. It’s a journey, it’s a long term approach. And so we say, credit, karma is for consumers on their credit journey, as sphere builder is for real estate agents on their digital marketing journey. So we start with a score. And then we create what we call recommendation cards. And we help agents based on their data, not other people’s data, their data, how they can improve their profiles, how they can create content, both non listing and listing content, to create more engagement, more followers to build it. And over time, as we re measure them, that’s that four year 45 will become a 50, and a 55 and a 60. And all of a sudden, you’re going to be at 70, which is similar to a benchmark. And we’ve seen a tight correlation between digital marketing activities and production.

D.J. Paris 33:33
So as there’s a positive correlation, then between the score as it rises, you’re seeing income, production volume increase, as a result of tightening up some of the practices. You know, this is, this is very, very interesting, because it’s, it’s, it’s so it’s so interesting. So I know talking about measuring, and we don’t really measure social engagement as a whole, or sorry, I just say, digital marketing, we’ll just say, we don’t really measure it, we measure it in little silos, right? We say, Well, we did this one post, and here’s, here’s the results. And I like it, or I don’t like it, or here’s what I need to fix for the next time. And then over time, you can maybe start to see some trends in videos that are produced or static images that you’re throwing up on Instagram, Facebook, tick tock even. And you can start to start to figure out what your audience is into. But what what you guys have done is actually say, we’re going to actually, we’re going to actually benchmark the most successful agents in your area and kind of show you what they’re doing and guide you from where you are today. Almost like a Credit Karma repairing your credit score repairing your social media credit score over time, and as you increase, we’re going to be checking to make sure it’s going up and you’re just going to do these Several things that we’re going to suggest to you, and then you’re going to get the results of that. I mean, it’s it’s a very simple idea. But it is it is brilliant in a way, because it really does. It’s like, you know, I can step on the scale every day. And it will tell me how what my actual weight is. And it might also tell me my body fat and whatever metrics it measures. But if I only look at that weight measurement, I don’t really know what that tells me, right? It tells me what my overall weight is. But it’s not particularly helpful to to know if I’m healthy or not. I mean, yes, it would tell me if I’m overweight or underweight. But other than that, it’s kind of like, what do you do with that? And what do you want it to be? And that’s where people then go to personal trainers or dieticians or people that can actually make sense of this, this information, and say, Here’s where you really want to be. And here’s how to get there. I love the fact that you guys are like a prescriptive kind of service where it’s like, hey, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, you’re gonna go see the doctor, we’re gonna give you your weight. And then we’re gonna tell you what you need to do to, to get to get, you know, more fit, so to speak, in the digital marketing space. Super exciting. And I don’t, to my knowledge, I don’t know of any company that’s that’s currently doing that for realtors.

Russ Cofano 36:08
No, we’re, we are the first we won’t be the last. I mean, we every good idea has other folks that want to replicate it, but we are the first real time analytics and and marketing platform that, you know, there are some things that we do that other people do, nobody has put the package together. And what we’ve found is that Realtors don’t, they want easy, and they want things to be very intuitive. And one thing we’ve done in the design process is try to put everything in one platform. So an agent, you know, is not having to navigate from one platform to another platform to log in, log out Log In Log Out. The hope is that this becomes their digital marketing platform. You know, we have content creation opportunities, it’s, it’s very Canva. Like in from a content creation standpoint, we connect to an MLS. And so the moment an agent takes a listing, that listing shows up in our in our in our application, so an agent can then create marketing materials around that listing. We have an both an organic sharing function so we can take content, and seamlessly. If you’ve got multiple social channels with one click share that content out in one click in a very effective way. And we also have an advertising platform. Obviously, organic sharing is great because it helps your current followers know that you’re doing things. But if you want to grow your sphere, you’ve got to advertise, you’ve got to reach new people with new content. And, and so our system essentially replace replaces Facebook Ads Manager, which is for most agents a nightmare. And now you could take content that’s created in the platform, and with a couple of clicks get advertising campaigns created. So it’s designed to be kind of a one stop shop that begins it’s wrapped around data and analytics. And that’s the thing that we as we’re iterating around the idea, we actually went out to this industry called martec marketing technology. It’s a $500 billion worldwide industry. And we looked at martec applications outside of the real estate industry. So now what real estate was doing, but what other b2b and b2c companies were doing with Mar tech. And the two things we found that really kind of drove how we ideated around the technology was one automation was critical, right. And today, automation is very possible. And quite frankly, it’s going to become even more interesting with the chat GPT stuff. And then analytics, analytics were interwoven with all of the automation and drove with with data and machine learning the ability to be smart automators. And so we’re bringing those two things together. In an application, the the metaphor that we use internally is we built an iceberg. We want agents to see the tip top of it above the water that’s beautiful, and easy and to navigate around. But underneath it is a massive amount of of application data and tools that the agent will never see, but we’ll help them be better at at this marketing game.

D.J. Paris 39:52
I think that’s great. This idea of just getting a score. There used to be a social score, sir So that was popular about 15 years ago, and I can’t recall the name of that cloud clouds. Yes. With a K. With a K. Yeah. And thank you, that is a thank you. And if anyone who’s listening remembers cloud, you would get a score, and you wouldn’t know what to do with it, you would see it, and you would go, Okay, I’m a 77, or whatever it was, and you’re like, I don’t know what that means. And they, and they never figured out what to do with the number. And I don’t know if clouds still around or not. But but but yeah, they, they had a really neat idea, the metric of it, and then they weren’t able to sort of say, well, here’s, here’s how to improve that score. That’s what you guys are essentially doing, and which I absolutely love. So what are some of the lessons you’ve learned from studying some of these top producers in the various markets that you guys have explored? What are some of the things they’re doing well on on social or digital marketing? So any suggestions, just overall suggestions that you are or even mistakes that you see agents making?

Russ Cofano 41:09
Well, we talked about the mistakes, let’s talk about the successes, because it’s a far more positive thing, right? We actually, as we were building the application, we said, you know, there’s, there’s a bunch, there’s people out there that are being successful in this digital marketing endeavors. And we need to go out and find them and do some research around them and, and bring their stories to the rest of the industry. And so we spent months researching and writing a industry paper that you mentioned, thank you at the beginning of the show, you can you can go to it at sphere builder.io. and navigate to the paper and download it. It’s about an 18 page. It’s not it’s not a two pager, it’s it’s a very in depth paper at the end, it’s a deep

D.J. Paris 41:57
dive, and it’s a it’s a worthy read, it’s everybody should go to sphere builder.io and scroll to the bottom or you’ll see it’s actually right at the top, put in your information, you you’re going to want to read this.

Russ Cofano 42:12
And we found me there’s we found many we can only highlight for Nikki Beauchamp, Stacy Stob, Pinky Benson, Brad Allen, a couple of folks run brokerage companies, some are individual agents, different parts of the country, doing things all incredibly successful, all very successful, but doing things differently. And so the first learning is that there, there is no one size fits all approach. And we don’t, when we talk about being prescriptive, we don’t tell agents, this is who you need to be online, that the thing that stood out with all of these folks, and I think if you were if they were your guests, they would say there’s an authenticity that comes through in who they purport to be online. Because, again, think about this, in this in the sphere building in real life, you meet somebody in your church group, or your kids soccer team, or whatever environment and and it’s you and them and your personality and who you are, is coming through. Well, now you’ve got to replicate that in an online digital environment where you’ve got to provide snippets of information about who you are, and what makes you you and, and everybody is different and unique. And so what we found is that they all approached both the platforms that they used, that they relied on, some were heavy, YouTube, others heavy Instagram, others, heavy Facebook, some Twitter, others combination of all the all of the above and more Tiktok. Find the platforms that you really want to excel on, that matches who you are, and the method and that you want to share content. And then the second piece is be consistent. And over time, because this is not a 90 day diet, you’re not going to become a successful digital marketer. By approaching it with a 90 day lead gen mentality. You won’t so you might as well not do it. It’s like It’s like going on, you know, a 90 day diet, you may lose weight, right and then 90 day diet, but guess what, if you don’t change your lifestyle, that weights gonna come right back on. Yeah, you can, you can fix your credit score. And yet, if you go back to the same spending patterns, your credit score is gonna go right back to where it is. And the same analogy holds true for digital marketing. If you don’t build a sustainable approach Due to developing the know, like trust persona, online, then you you may make short term inroads, but long term if you’re in this business for the long term, and that’s who our customer is what we’re not. And you know, I hate to say this, but we really don’t want to serve agents who are in the business to make a quick buck. That’s not who we’re marketing to. We want agents that are serious about being real estate professionals. A lot of quick buck agents are leaving the business because it’s not as easy to make that quick buck anymore, right. And so we want to help those agents that truly love this business, are professionals do great service for their clients, and need help being better marketers. And the four people that we highlighted in the paper, I think, are great lessons for agents in your, in your watching this podcast to go and read about how they’re approaching this marketing approach and being very successful and in different ways.

D.J. Paris 46:01
Yeah, so So walk me through. So let’s say I sign up, I submit my my social channels to you guys, you start, which by the way you can do for free, you can go to the website, again, also to check out the white paper, sphere. builder.io is where you can go to do this. But anyway, let’s say I sign up, I submit my my social accounts to you to your team, you start to analyze it, you assign me a social score relative to the you know, an agent in my agents in my market, who are who are have a strong digital presence as well as a strong business. And so now I know where I’m at, where some people I might aspire to be or at, then how do you help get me from here to there.

Russ Cofano 46:49
So we have these recommendation cards. And so we’ve analyzed your data. And for example, we will analyze your social profiles, there’s a ton of information on your social profiles, that it’s important to be consistent in how you provide that information. And a lot of agents are not consistent, the first thing I will tell you is that we asked you whether you have a Google business profile, if you do not have a Google business profile, you will not score well in our in our system. Because if you don’t have a Google Business Profile Google in Google Search, how somebody’s going to find you. They punish you, right in from a search algorithm standpoint. So the very first thing we will say is get your Google profile, and we provide a link to go do that. We also analyze the data that’s on your profile. So if you don’t have a website, link there, if you don’t have a phone number, if the information is not consistent, we we show that to you, again, lots of agents, maybe got their Google profile Google Business Profile three years ago, and then move brokerage companies. Well, guess what, they probably still have some of their same, they haven’t updated it. So there’s somebody who goes or Google profile Google business profile, sees broken information from three years ago, well, well, that’s not good, right. And, and so consumers are smart, especially the younger consumers, they They stalk agents, right? Before they make that phone call reach out, they’re looking at your online presence. And if they see inconsistent profile information, that’s a sign that you are not on top of how you present yourself to them. How well are you going to be on top of presenting their property and a listing? Right? It means something to consumers today. So we go through that process. And then we start analyzing, you know, what is your follower base? How engaged are your followers? How often are you posting? What are those posts doing for you, and then we help you get better at that through content, both listing content, not listing content, it’s, it’s not hard, it’s just something that requires a bit of training. And we want to make it fun at the same time, right. So hopefully, the fun comes in. And in seeing that score, tick up as you do these things, and hopefully generate some business in the, in the context. And you can see this, this, we call a virtuous cycle of, of feedback that breeds activity, more good feedback, more good activity. It’s like getting I mean, your analogy to stepping on the scale. If you if you’re if you’re trying to lose weight, and you step on the scale in the morning, and you see that you’re two pounds lighter, you’re gonna be psyched to go on that evening run. Right? That’s true. And that’s what we want to create that that measurement over time is that dopamine hit that we want to deliver to the agent to keep them on the train down this path.

D.J. Paris 49:50
I think that is so well said it really you’re a coaching company of sorts, but in a different way. You’re a digital coaching company, in the sense that and an analytics company I don’t I don’t want to lump you in with with all the other coaching programs out there because that’s not really what you do. But in a sense, you are a consulting firm, I guess maybe that’s a better way to say it. Because what you’re doing is you say, give us all your dad, not all your data, but all your social channels so we can analyze the data. And we can take a look and see what works, what isn’t working, where there’s room for improvement, and then come back and say, Hey, by the way, we noticed your LinkedIn hasn’t been updated in three years. And it’s still showing you with your previous firm. By the way, your your Zillow, you have three different Zillow profiles, they’re all over the place, we need to get all of this working cohesively because we don’t know where someone’s going to look for information for you. But certainly Google, you know, is is Google My Business, for example, is a place that that, you know, people don’t think about. But of course, we all utilize when we’re searching for local things. So the idea is you guys are going to give suggestions and not just the top 10 things to do to get your digital marketing health in order, but really saying very prescriptively. Here’s based on what you’re currently doing, and we’ve analyzed everything, here’s what the exact steps you Mr. or Mrs. Agent need to take?

Russ Cofano 51:11
Yeah, so two things I want to I want to clarify one is, is we are not, we’re a SaaS technology company. So we don’t provide managed services, we don’t charge agents for talking to a human that is that’s not what we’re about. In fact, we, we want to support coaching organizations, our application would be a great I mean, if you’re a coaching organization, you should call us. And here’s why. Because today, you have zero ability, because I don’t think you have our tool, it took us a long time and a lot of engineering to build the tool that we have, we can help you help your clients, if you’re a coach, understand their their digital presence and manage it over time. To the extent that there’s specific things that a coaching organization is helping their agents or their clients do, we don’t want to replace that. We want to augment that right? And so really, there’s a place there’s a really synergistic place for us to work with coaching organizations because of the approach that we take to data analytics. So that’s that’s number one. And and number two is you know, in terms of of right now we’re I want to make sure that we’re clear with your your viewers. We’re in Denver in Huntsville. Today, we’re going to be doing a national launch in the next quarter and available to agents around the country. So there’s a place on our website that if you’re interested in this technology, you can let us know. And part of of us developing why it’s so slowly roll out is we need MLS data, right and, and MLS working with MLS is they’re great to work with, but they’re not the speediest organizations in the world. And so we’d love if there’s an MLS, listening to this, we’d love to talk with you. Because these are this is the kind of application that we’re the partnership with MLS, we can bring it to all your agents and get them going on the application. And then finally, the third thing I will say is, we’ve had really great conversations with brokerage companies who want to integrate the application as a productivity tool. We’re being told by brokerage executives that agents, especially today are looking for ways to build market share. And you know, back to my old business school days, there was this old adage that in at the top of the cycle, you drive revenue, that’s when you you put you put your foot on the gas pedal, and you make as much money as you possibly can. And at the bottom of the cycle, you drive market share. People are going out of business, you capture their market share so that when the cycle recovers, you can step on the gas pedal. And so now is absolutely in our opinion, and we’re hearing from brokerage companies, executives as well is that we’re in a down cycle. Nobody can change that right and we know it will get better and the cycle will wrap up again. Now is when smart brokerage companies and smart agents will be building market share and there’s no better way to do it than traditional marketing.

D.J. Paris 54:34
Yeah, this is the year to capture market share it is we get as Russ said, we know there’s been an exodus started already. We also have a holding company for agents that don’t actively practice and now it’s the weirdest thing I never thought I would say this but our holding company actually has more agents that are actively producing company. They’re not related. They’re separate entities but, but we we never thought that This little holding company that we created would now have like 900 agents it’s because the conditions of the market have changed and people are the onesie twosie agents, the the part timers are starting to exit and sunset out. And it’s a great time for agents to pick up market share this year. So this is a good time to get your digital marketing health in order. And and you know, again, I always I have this fantasy recite, it’s so funny because what you guys, what you do in real estate is kind of the always the fantasy I have around the service providers in my life. So like my accountant, all I mean, I want my accountant to keep me out of prison, and to make sure that I’m not being audited. Of course, yes, that’s that’s the job of the accountant. But I would I would, my fantasy is that my accountant goes, I have a few ideas for you this year. Right? My accountant doesn’t do that. And I’m not I’m not disparage, I’m not trying to say anything pejorative towards towards my account, I love BioCarbon. But that would you know, those are what, what I would be looking for, I would like to know, you know, here’s what you could do to, you know, this next year to really increase you know, your, or decrease your tax exposure or whatever. So basically, you guys are a prescriptive service. And I love that and you’re utilizing technology. And really, you’re not reinventing the wheel, you’re not saying, Well, this is what we think works, you’re literally just going market by market and say, here’s what the people in your market are doing. And that and I understand, also, the challenge of connecting to all the MLS is to get this data, I can appreciate that all the MLS has have different API’s, it’s gotta be a nightmare. I can’t imagine what your engineers have to deal with there. But this is something that you definitely want to be on the waiting list for because once they do open up in your market place, the top agents are going to subscribe to this service, because it’s the only one that exists out there. So now’s a great time to learn about it. Also learn some best practices, if you read the white paper, they have four case studies that are just incredible reads of really successful agents and for different markets, what they’re doing digitally. And they’re doing things a little differently, as Russ said, and you can take some of their, the their suggestions and actually apply it to your own business. But I want to know my digital marketing score as well. So if you go to sphere builder.io, you can see the white paper you can get on their waiting lists to see if when they open up in your your market. And by the way, if you’re in Huntsville, Alabama or Denver, and we have listeners, I’m sure in both of those markets, we should reach out because they are basically almost good to go there. So they are ready to launch. Russ, is there anything else that that we should know about what the tool does?

Russ Cofano 57:47
Know I think this has been a great conversation DJ and I think we’ve we’ve covered right place right time for a new piece of technology. You know, we we know that agents are inundated today with people looking for their attention. And, and so this is something that is worth a few minutes of agent’s time to come in and investigate just the white paper in and of itself is, is worthy of spending an hour with and reading it and, and it will generate ideas for you. Even if you never use our technology or ever become a subscriber, you’ll get some great ideas. And, you know, we’re a company that is built with people who have been around the industry for a long time who support the industry. We’re not about disintermediating the realtor in fact, we’re about empowering the realtor i i As I said in the beginning, I fell in love with the industry and the people in the industry 30 years ago and I think that the United States needs effective Realtors helping consumers and this is just one way that we can help that process.

D.J. Paris 59:10
I agree. So everyone who is listening, please visit sphere builder.io By the way, we’ll have a link to that in our show notes. So you can just scroll there and click and get read the white paper get on their waitlist, continue to follow collabora which again is the company that that is putting out these products and see if it would be a good fit for your brokerage. And by the way, if you volunteer or work at the local state or national association level, great conversation to have at your next meetings with whatever committees you might be with to say, hey, this might be something we would want to bring to an association or in MLS directly as well. So I imagined that that could happen for you guys. So that’s very exciting.

Russ Cofano 59:56
Well, we are all heirs and DJ thanks for having me on today really appreciate the conversation. And hopefully some of this has been helpful to your listeners.

D.J. Paris 1:00:06
Definitely. And so before everyone leaves, just a couple of quick reminders, please help us continue to grow by just telling a friend about one friend about this episode, maybe somebody who’s struggling with their digital marketing in your office, somebody you know who’s an agent that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Ross, send them a link to our website, which is keeping it real pod.com. Or if they’re a podcast person, just pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real, hit that subscribe button. And also, please leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show that helps us continue to improve and grow as well. On behalf of the audience want to thank Russ for his time. Amazing conversation. Russ, thank you so much. On behalf of Russ and myself. We also want to thank the audience for continuing to support also, by the way support our sponsors. We love our sponsors. So please continue to listen to the show support us let us know we can do to help keep making the show better for you. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks Ross.

Russ Cofano 1:01:03
Thanks, TJ. Talk to you soon.

Ivan Estrada with Ivan Estrada Property Team explains that he understood that real estate was his passion while completing his Bachelor’s Degree in Finance & Accounting at the University of Southern California. Ivan discusses the importance of transparency with the client and using communication techniques like creating a weekly marketing calendar or making content videos helps strengthen relationships with clients. Last, Ivan emphasized commitment to a client is the key to a great bonding with clients.

Check out Ivan’s course “Brand With Video” and get 25% off using the code “REAL”.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Ivan Estrada can be reached at [email protected] and 323.574.2317.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
What are the strategies to market and effectively sell a 1020 $30 million home? And can you use those same strategies for all of your clients? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris, I have your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with top Beverly Hills luxury agent, Ivan Estrada. Before we get to Ivan, however, just a couple of quick items to mention. First, thank you for continuing to listen and support our show, please check out our sponsors what they offer and provide we only work with brands that are going to help you grow your real estate business. So please support them because they support us and also tell a friend, think of one other agent specifically, this episode is going to be a lot about branding and marketing. So gosh, we all know agents that could use a boost in their in those efforts. So please send this episode over to them to send them over to our website, keeping it real pod.com. Obviously, we’re on every major podcast platform as well just search for keeping it real, hit that like and subscribe button, we appreciate it. And also just a quick sneak preview, I am going to or our team rather is going to start clipping our episodes and finding the best moments from each episode and start promoting that or pushing that content out via our various social channels. This will include tick tock Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, said Instagram twice, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of the major social channels are going to start receiving this content. So this way, whatever is your preferred social channel of choice, you can start getting regular content from us. Our goal is to push out a couple of these a day with little short 30 to 62nd clips. So stay tuned. We’re not quite ready for that couple of weeks, but this way, you’ll get regular daily tips and advice from the top agents in the country super excited to do that. And really the only reason we’re able to do that is because our listenership and viewership has increased so much that we now have a bigger budget to spend on these kinds of efforts. So thank you, thank you, thank you to our sponsors. Thank you to our listeners. But let’s get to the main event my conversation with Ivan Estrada.

Today on the show, my guest is Ivan Estrada. He’s a top 1% Realtor author and what you know and he does a lot of things. So I want to talk to you about Ivan here. So just to give you some more information. Ivan Estrada is a highly successful real estate agent in Los Angeles with over 14 years of experience, and this is an incredible and more than half a billion dollars in sales. He has a degree in finance and accounting from USC as well as a CPA and broker’s license. Ivan’s tailored approach to each client and expertise in business, finance and marketing has allowed him to work with a diverse range of clientele from luxury sellers and buyers to international investors. And of course, first time homebuyers. He’s a branding expert for high end luxury homes, and he has been featured in numerous news outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox 11 News. Ivan is a frequent speaker communicator and panelists for various organizations has established himself as a mentor of I’m sorry, a member of several boards, and has received numerous accolades. Oney is a mentor as well. He’s also the author of the book brand with purpose which you can find on Amazon. Also, we have a link to that in the show notes and he’s also got a video course called brand with which has 15 modules to help you take your business from video clueless to video prowess. Visit Brand with.com and use the promo code real for 25% off. But to learn about everything Ivan’s doing, go to go to his website, that’s probably there’s two websites, and we’re gonna link to both of them. One is Ivan estrada.com. So that’s IV anestrada.com. And also brand with.com. But Ivan estrada.com is a great hub for everything, Ivan, what a such a pleasure to have you, thank you for being on the show.

Ivan Estrada 5:27
No, thank you for thank you for having me. It’s, I’m ready to have some fun, let’s have some fun,

D.J. Paris 5:33
let’s have some fun. And there’s not there’s not enough fun in real estate, I think so that you can always use more fun, and I love talking to marketing and branding people because that’s my background. My sister, I only have one sister, she’s a brand branding person, a CMO outside of real estate. And so this is what I live for. I love talking to agents who specifically are really involved in their branding and marketing. And you You’ve not only you’re involved with it for yourself and your clients, but you also teach this to other realtors and other businesses, as well. But before we get into the meat of everything you know, and your expertise around video and branding and social media, I would love to learn a little bit more about you. Do you mind going all the way back to the beginning of the story for how you decided to get into real estate?

Ivan Estrada 6:20
Absolutely. So for me, I was born raised in Los Angeles. parents immigrated here from Mexico. And so the American dream is to go to college, right, which I did, I ended up going to USC, here in Los Angeles, majored in finance and accounting, worked at a big firm, got the CPA license, did what you were supposed to do, to work up your you know, to for the American dream, and, you know, about three years into it. I just realized, I think I made a mistake. Like, this was not what I thought it was going to be. And don’t get me wrong, I’m great with numbers. I’m great with people, but it wasn’t my purpose. It just was not my purpose. And a friend at the time, it was Season One of Million Dollar Listing and he said, I was watching the show, and why don’t you should do you should get into real estate. And I thought you’re absolutely nuts. Like that is definitely not my thing. I’m not in sales. I you know that that was a complete opposite of what I went to go to school for, right. And of course, that little, you planted a seed in my head, I read I think about 33 or 34 books on real estate, I went to Barnes and Noble. I went to the library, I just got a bunch of books, educated myself, and I thought, You know what, I think this could be my thing. You know, my guy. I love networking. I love business. I love branding. I love people, I love real estate, especially here in Los Angeles. And then I just decided, I left the accounting world behind me and jumped into real estate. And it’s been the most incredible, challenging, amazing, scary, and life growing to the, to the degree that it’s completely changed my life. And I mean, I’m so grateful for real estate for the life that it’s given me. And for what it’s allowed me to do. I’m literally living my purpose and my passion.

D.J. Paris 8:17
Wow. While you just said you said quite a bit. And we just heard heard some of your why that you know what’s interesting too is you have these these very to it, you know, the way I’m thinking about it, these sort of diametrically opposite skill sets with the CPA hard objective number driven, an analytical mind. And then you also have this incredible creative mind, which, which allows you to, you know, produce content and really have fun with your branding and, and be very intentional about sort of, you know, the messaging you’re putting out there. And where those two worlds meet is a really nice center, because usually agents are good at one or the other. Right? They’re either good at the analytics or they’re good at the people side of things or the marketing side. You sort of have both of that. So I love the fact that you’re teaching people who don’t have maybe both of those skill sets fully fleshed out that they can develop them over to absolutely

Ivan Estrada 9:13
you can absolutely develop them because I’ve heard this before. Well, I’m not good at numbers. I’m not good at planning. I’m not creative. But I’m like Baloney, you definitely are. We just have to find your creativity. We have to figure out okay, so you’re not good with numbers. That’s fine. What are you comfortable with? Are you good with planning? Oh, yeah, I can plan and then kind of figuring out how to kind of find those holes in their business and trying to fill them with something that’s going to create an incredible brand incredible real estate brand. I mean, that’s why we’re here and an incredible future no matter the recession, inflation doesn’t matter. Build a really solid business. That’s recession inflation proof.

D.J. Paris 9:52
Yeah, I agree. And everything is skills, right. And there’s certain predilections people have where they’re going to take certain skills more easily than others. But, you know, video, I think thank goodness technology has maybe maybe one of the best parts about technology is that it’s moved so quickly that it’s enabled, even the least savvy of us with respect to creating, you know, content, you know, maybe some of us aren’t people who have ever had to light a set, or had to worry about, you know, which camera angles to use for a particular shoot, right. Most Realtors probably don’t deal with a lot of that they’re probably hiring other firms to do the photos when they have listings. But I am so interested in, in, you know, the fact that now technology has allowed it so that agents can really can do this at any any level, they can create video content, we all have these phones, you know, attached to us almost like an umbilical cord that are as powerful as some of the equipment that you know, 10 years ago was was 1000s and 1000s of dollars. So it’s really been more, it’s probably never been more accessible and more easy to get into creating video content, even if your skill sets low.

Ivan Estrada 11:05
Oh, absolutely. I mean, when I started 14 years ago, I was lugging around one of those Sony handycams shirt, the big tripod, with the microphone that was not wireless, that you had to like, you know, I had to make sure I got like a nice 15 foot wire, wire microphone. And there was no lighting because it was too expensive. We didn’t have like those light rings that now you can put on your phone and right and just as a tripod and take it anywhere with battery operated. And so it was a lot harder back then, you know, in order to create content to do editing in order to come up with concepts, right. That was I think the hardest thing for a lot of people was like, What do I talk about? You can go on Google. And I was probably the number two agent who started using video that I know of, because no one else was doing it. And so there was like no instruction, there was no manual. But nowadays I tell agents, I said, just like what you said, we all have a phone, we all have. I don’t know if we’re going to talk about chat GPT. But if you don’t know what to talk about chat GPT will let you know exactly what to talk about. It’s the easiest way to come up with content, we’ve actually been using it for blogs and other marketing materials. And it’s absolutely amazing. But there’s literally no excuse, there is no excuse for not creating content, there’s no excuse for not using it and building your brand. And building your real estate portfolio. Because these days, buyers and sellers, regardless of what generation they’re from, they are Googling and they are looking for videos. And if you do not have videos, at least one that introduces yourself of who you are, what you doing the business, they’re gonna think this person’s not credible. Next,

D.J. Paris 12:48
well, and let’s talk about what an introductory video does for the consumer. So we you know, I think this is something that, that agents probably do want to be very intentional about if you’re creating a welcome or an introductory video of not a specific one to a client. But if you have a general one, that one you probably do want to think through I’m assuming, and that’s if that’s going to be somebody’s first impression of you, for example, if it’s on your website, you know, I assume that when we want, we want sort of to look a little bit better than some of the more quick form videos that we might do that are more throw away based on you know, something going on in the market today, we might do a little video there. But if we’re doing an introductory video, what’s your sort of advice on how to how to think about putting that together?

Ivan Estrada 13:34
So I would create both two videos, one for buyers and one for sellers, right? Because we’re both doing different things. So I would start there two different videos, one for buyer and one for a buyer and one for a seller. And then get in, get into the shoes of a buyer and a seller. And think to yourself, I would write down notes. If I was looking to buy a home. What would I want to hear from an agent? Like what are the things that are going to trigger me to call that agent amongst the ocean of realtors. Same thing for sellers. And the thing is that we have to be very careful. They don’t care about our awards. They don’t care about your achievements. They don’t care about any of that they care about. Are you a good negotiator, right? How long have you been in the business? And what are your results? Do you have any case studies? How do you differentiate yourself? Right? What type of branding and marketing do you do for the listings? Let’s say this is for a seller. That is that’s different from other realtors in your neighborhood. Are you part of a team? And if you are, why is that of a benefit to a buyer or a seller? So trying to talk to them instead of I’ve you know been 14 Like for example me? I’ve been 14 years the business like now it’s like 600 million in sales people are gonna be like I don’t care. Like what can you do for me? Like why should I work with you? I want to make sure at the end of the day They want to know, as a seller, I was able to get as much money as possible for my listing. And it was as easy as possible to get through the process. And for a buyer, I was able to get the best deal with a seamless process that was painless as possible.

D.J. Paris 15:18
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I was thinking what while you were talking about this, that I just was hearing objections from our audience, which, of course, are not live now. But I was hearing. And I was and I had an answer to this. So I heard an objection, I came up with an answer, I want to give you the answer. And I want you to tell me what you would say it whether you would agree or disagree. So you had said, mate, you know, if you’re making this value proposition, I’m gonna make a video for buyers video for sellers, where you’re going to say, here’s what I do for you this is, this is what I have done for people in the past very specific stuff, here’s what I will do for you, here’s been my results. Now, which is great. I love all of that. What happens if you’re a brand new broker where you’re not going to have that track record? And, and and you might not have, you know, hey, I’m only been in the business six months? And I was my aunt, my thought of an answer and want to get your answer to that is I always like the it’s an old marketing principle. And I don’t know if it’s still as relevant it used to be, but it was called, if you can’t fix it, feature it. And so I always love that. So I know if I was newer, I might say, hey, just so you know, I am newer to the industry, but are and here’s why I actually think that might be a benefit to you, because I’m going to devote all of my time to you, because I don’t have as many clients as you know, somebody has been the business. Also, I work for a company that’s been around for 80 years, or whatever that might be, and I have a team there that’s going to work with me, blah, blah, blah, I would I would have I would address that. And I don’t maybe I wouldn’t step on it quite that hard. But I would do something to say, hey, here’s why I knew and here’s why it’s not a problem. I’m curious on what you might do.

Ivan Estrada 16:53
Absolutely. Because there’s no way with the way that that we have that we run the web and social media, they’re gonna know if you’re green or not, they’re gonna know, right, so might as well just tell them, and like what you just said, this is why it’s of a benefit to you, you know, I’m not working with as many clients, so you will have my full attention, right? I am hungry, I am the eager, right, I’m here to make sure you are part of, I’ll tell you what I tell my clients, you’re helping me build my business. And I want to make sure that you are going to be so, so happy with me that you’re gonna want to refer your friends, your brothers, your sisters, your minister, your priest, whoever. And then the other thing that I would also include in that video is a lot of new agents have been in other businesses where they have acquired skills that are complementary to our real estate business. By the way, this is what I did prior right? It could have been a teacher or a paralegal or whatever. And what are the skills that you learned there in that business? That that just absolutely make you shine in real estate and bring those out. Because at the end of the day, it’s real estate, we have mentors, right? We have people that especially if you’re a new agent, you’re part of a team, you can always showcase your team. But peep, every real estate agent is not the same, right? We’re all very different. We all it’s the same business, but how we market ourselves and how we actually provide the service is very different. Right? And, and so showcasing some of your previous experiences and how that’s going to help your buyer seller is incredibly important.

D.J. Paris 18:30
Yeah, I agree. I you work on a lot of very high end luxury homes, kind of in the ultra high net worth space, which is always so interesting to me, of course, because it’s such an unusual event, you know, these these big massive sort of compounds. In the West Coast, of course, all over the country. You’re in the West Coast, you’re in Los Angeles area, but Beverly Hills, specifically. I am curious, what what is different about marketing a luxury property versus a non luxury property? As far as how you think about the marketing the overall marketing strategy? How is it how is it different from a, like a $20 million property, something, you know, really on the high end, high net worth side to a, you know, three to $500,000 property? Is it the same strategy, or are there different techniques curious on what you’re doing? They’re completely

Ivan Estrada 19:21
different strategy. So when you’re dealing with people of that price echelon, a lot of them may be busy business men or women themselves. They have business managers, they have lawyers, I mean, these are people who, who have a lot of wealth and how they’ve gotten there was with the plan. And so if you are their real estate agent and you want to list their property, they’re going to say great, I would love to see your marketing proposal, and they want to see what you’re going to be doing daily, weekly, monthly. And if this is a really big property, let’s say it’s a one or two year con attract what is going to happen yearly. And they want to see a written plan and a written commitment from you saying, Okay, for the first month, we are going to be on this magazine, this magazine is going to be advertised here. Here is I’ve had people ask, I need to see the marketing budget for the first month, okay. 50 Doubt, whatever it might be, depending on the size of the property. Sure. $10,000 $5,000, I know that there’s agents in my office who have spent hundreds of 1000s, the first week of the launch of the property. And so those sellers, they want to know that you are committed with the plan with the marketing budget. And trust me, they will be checking if it’s if it’s not them personally, there people will be checking that it was on that magazine, that it was advertised that sometimes it gets a little invasive sometimes where they’ve said, Oh, you did spend $10,000, or $5,000. Great, we’d love to see the invoice. Right? Sure, it sometimes gets to that point. And so I think with a smaller property, it doesn’t get as intense than as a much larger property and keeping in mind that sometimes these larger properties do not sell, it might be the second third or the fourth agent that sells the property. But the marketing budgets are very high for these.

D.J. Paris 21:21
Yeah, and, you know, are there some lessons that agents who don’t play in the ultra high net worth space could learn from agents that do in other words, things that they could bring from from these, you know, these massive sort of marketing proposals that the high net worth clientele expected, and their teams maybe more even than they expect? Because they might not even be reviewing it? It might be their their advisors, their, you know, agents that are attorneys or their accountants. But I’m curious if there are some things that we could extract from from those high net worth proposals that we could bring in to the the lower end, I don’t even say lower price property, because they’re not lower priced properties, but more average price properties? Are there things that agents could do that would actually make it easier for them to win even more modestly priced property? Yes,

Ivan Estrada 22:12
absolutely. I mean, the marketing proposal that we talked about, for example, we create marketing calendars for all of our clients, it doesn’t matter the price point, will daily, weekly, monthly. And we commit to what we’re doing. And at the end of the end of the week, we send them a report of everything that was done. And why that is so important. I feel transparency in our business, especially with our clients, regardless of price point, is very important, especially when it comes to the marketing because, you know, for example, I I like to do a lot of research and I look at other people’s listing proposals and reports. And, you know, they’ll say we’re going to do photography, and it’ll be on Zillow and you know, kind of line item everything through. But then that’s it, right? They’ll tell you what, like, some people will say, Okay, well, you just told me everything that you’re doing, but show me on how you’re going to do all of that for my property. So there’s been times when we will, upfront in a listing appointment, depending on the property, we’ll run everything as if it were already our listing, right. And this is a report that you’re going to be getting weekly, like let’s say it’s week one, this is report that you got, this is what the marketing proposal looks like, this is the marketing calendar that you’re going to get every month that the property is on the market. And these are all the things that are going to be checked off. And so I think that’s incredibly important. Because the more transparency you have with your clients, the less they have to worry about, and the more that they’re going to feel comfortable during the whole process. And if you have a client who’s comfortable, let’s say it’s been on the market for three or four months, right? As long as they know that you’re doing everything on the list saying, hey, this was what we did this week, hey, this is what we did this week, you’re probably going to get an extension instead of you know, it’s been sitting on the market for two or three months. And I’ve had people in the past say, I haven’t heard from my agent and like, whole month, I don’t know what they’re doing. And so the less that you can, the less worry that you can provide to a client, the more they’re going to feel comfortable with you. And then we referrals, right? You want to make sure that that’s going to lead to future referrals.

D.J. Paris 24:20
I mean, I just I’m just thinking that any anybody who is selling a property, the friends, or the Friends of that seller, everybody knows they’re in the process of selling, they’ve probably told their friends and family of course, you know, maybe they’re even posting about it on social media. So people know, the home is is in the process of being up for sale. And as a result, friends are going to ask how’s it going, how’s the home sell going? Right? And imagine if every realtor on the planet who had a listing contacted their client in some fashion every single week, in your case, you you know, you have a report that’s here’s what we’ve done for you this week. Eat. And then here are the results. There’s what’s happened. Imagine if every real I mean, I’m almost sort of chuckling because 99% of Realtors do not do this, right? They’re not or I’m making that number up, but it’s probably close to accurate. Where it’s low. Yeah, it’s single digits, probably. But, but the top agents do. And it’s funny, it reminded me of I had a top one of the very top agents here in Chicago, we’ve got about 47,000 agents here. And she’s in the top 10, like, literally the top 10. And I asked her, How do you think why do you think you’re in the top 10? And obviously, everyone else really isn’t. And she goes, I hate to see because this is gonna sound really stupid. But I call every single person that’s a client of mine every single week, and say, here’s everything that’s going on. Here’s what I did. Here’s so very similar to sort of your approach a different way that she does it. And I go, and what what else? She’s like, Yeah, that’s kind of it. And she’s like, it’s a lot of work. But she goes this idea of of staying in touch with them, letting them know, imagine, you know, I’m at a cocktail party, hey, DJ, how’s your home sale going? Well, I can tell you, because my guy sends me a thing every single week telling me exactly what he did. And like, it’d be like he did, like no one else has that experience. So it’s such a great way to even just get noticed among that person’s friends and family, because they’re gonna be bragging about that.

Ivan Estrada 26:12
Exactly. And if when it comes to let’s say, you have to do a price cut, right? We’re in a different market. They’re going to know well, we you’ve done everything that you said you were going to do, and then some so the only thing we can left we have left to do is cut the price.

D.J. Paris 26:27
Yeah. I love that. What are some of the mistakes that agents make? With video on social media? Because we’re talking about video, so much video, I think we associate that with social media content more digestible. Here today gone tomorrow content? We see agents making videos all the time, what what do you think when you see good examples of this versus examples where you say I would have done that differently?

Ivan Estrada 26:55
So I mean, for anyone who’s just doing video, it doesn’t matter the quality or the, you know, just the time or whatever. Good for you. Because that’s a step. One thing that I would say that is not benefiting a lot of agents is they’ll do videos when they feel like it. Right? Let’s say they get super busy for two or three weeks. Well, I didn’t do any videos this week. So I’m not going to put anything on social media. Consistency in the video game is key. Having a marketing plan for your videos is key. Since I started producing content, there hasn’t been one week, maybe here and there, right? Maybe during a holiday week, where I didn’t have at least one video posted. on all my social media, we actually have I believe it’s three videos that go out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, different content, different style, different audience. But we have a set schedule that goes out every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, on social media. Just producing one video, every once in a while for a listing or market report is not going to work. So having a set schedule of this is what I’m going to produce my content. And this is what I’m going to put it out there. Because even with Facebook, like Facebook Studio, you could put all your videos in there and schedule them to go out during certain times of the week at a certain time. And so consistency in the video game is what’s going to create results, not just on the fly videos every once in a while.

D.J. Paris 28:33
Well, I can I can attest to that here, just with my podcast. We, you know, we started out there was we didn’t do video at all, it was only audio. And it took a full year. Before we got any real traction. I used to have to fudge the numbers when people would ask how’s the show doing? And I’m like, you know, we would have 60 people that listened. And I’d say we had 100 I don’t have to do that anymore. So I apologize for those that I’ve liked in the past. But the point was is is that it did actually work because I focused and I’m not here to say of the best podcast on the planet for realtors. But thankfully, we have a lot of people that do appreciate it. And thank you for that. But it was just focusing on meeting the audience’s needs. I’m not particularly gifted at being a talk show host or a radio host. But I just thought gosh, if I were a new agent, what would I want to know from top producers? And and that also is probably a good way in a similar way to actually get content. So I’ve been you had mentioned chat GBT and I thought this is so interesting, because, you know, we worry a lot about chat GBT and what it’s going to do to you know, sort of jobs and so all of us it’s, it’s going to affect everything but but one really, really great way to use it is to use it to to create content. So, you know, if I was an agent, and you know, you were saying, Hey, you got to post regular video content you were doing let’s say you’re doing two videos a week and by the way, these can be 62nd videos, they don’t have to have a certain amount of time. It’s all about, you know, the the quality of the content. And if you’re thinking well, right, yeah, and I was I did this earlier today because I found I have to create a deck, I need to create a PowerPoint presentation for this thing. And I went to an AI powered up like, PowerPoint building company where you literally type in a question to that you would type into chat GBT and then it creates a slide based on the answers really cool. But anyway, so I had written a question I had written in there, you know, what are what are the do’s and don’ts of conducting an open house and I got about 50 different answers. And I thought this could be a 10 different videos, you know, because you can make these videos okay, if you’re doing an open house and by the way, you could send these to other you know, other agents or again, I work on the more the b2b side, so I would be doing content for other realtors. But it could be for for you know, people buyer’s or seller’s maybe a seller’s here’s how to get your home ready for an open house. And you could literally use chat GBT to get a whole list of of answers there. And, you know, just kind of saves you time.

Ivan Estrada 31:12
Oh, absolutely. And then if you want if you really want to get traction, because like Chachi Beatty can give you like a set of questions that you could ask that are pretty standard to real estate. But if you really want to do something timely, I always ask I asked my friends. Hey, quick question. What are some questions you have about real estate right now? Like, right right now in this moment, and then create a video about it. That’s timely because, right like with what’s happening with what happened with SPV bank? I had clients asking me, yeah, how does that affect me? How does that Okay, great. Let me go do some research and figure it out. And let me do a one minute video, maybe two minute video, put it on Instagram, and make sure you put that in the caption and I promise you that will get a lot more hits, then here are some rules for open houses, even though those are great. Those are great. Yeah, right. Those are evergreen videos. More evergreen. Yeah. But something it’s very timely is what’s going to go what they say viral, or you’ll get a lot of hits and a lot of traction. And it also shows you as a knowledge broker who really knows their stuff.

D.J. Paris 32:19
1,000,000,000,000% could not agree more. And I would be talking about well, the Fed just raised rates again, for the ninth time, consecutive time last week, right? They raised at 25 basis points. That was in the news, you know, the euro, everyone who’s listening, if even if you didn’t know it, your clients saw that. And if anyone is in the process of buying or selling, they may be wondering what does that mean for lending rates? And that could be a video. And my suggestion is to find a lending partner that sends you the agent weekly information about here’s what you as an agent need to know about the three banks that collapsed? What’s going on with Credit Suisse? What’s going on with, with the Fed raising rates, like get information from your partners, convert that into video content and make short form content that, you know, you know, yeah, chat, GBT isn’t going to give you really reliable answers to things like that. But that’s where you would then go and and find that information yourself, which takes maybe five minutes of reading about it online, or ask one of your lending partners, hey, what’s going on? What do agents need to know about this? Or what is one of my clients needs?

Ivan Estrada 33:25
100% 100%.

D.J. Paris 33:27
I love that one. So we let’s talk about so the idea of finding video content is actually we just came up with some ideas. If you want more evergreen content, maybe there isn’t much going on. Right now. When you’re thinking about creating content, then you can go back to your sort of, you know, whatever your clients are regularly asking you about over the years, you can just put those in a little folder and say, what about this or in Illinois, we have transfer tax and like I don’t I still don’t understand how it works. But anyway, that’s sort of thing that that people get confused about? And how do I how do I choose certain? How do I determine like, what schools are in what, you know, what areas what districts? I mean, there’s a million evergreen things that people are always going to want to know, you know, where? How do you know like, this could be a good one, you know, I’m just sort of having fun with these. But it could be like, Hey, should you go see your home that you’re about to buy at night on a Friday at 1030? It just to see what the neighborhood is like, especially if you’re in like an urban environment? What’s the noise level? You know, there’s like little tips and tricks that are evergreen things that you can just put in a spreadsheet and then whenever you’re like, I don’t know what I’m going to do today for a video. Just go to one of those. Anytime your client asks you a question, write it down and just go that’s going to be a video or find out what’s going on in the market or in the industry. That moment right now. High rates, right, low, low inventory. Those are the two big things people are curious about. I would be making videos about that all day long. Exactly. Let’s talk about Got your video course? Because you are a branding expert. We didn’t really talk too much about branding. Well, let’s let’s define what is let’s just define what branding is for real estate agents? Like, how would you think about branding when you’re talking about realtor stuff?

Ivan Estrada 35:16
So the easiest way I could put branding is, I always tell agents think about, what are people saying about you, when you’re not in the room? That’s your brand. And that could be positive, or it might not be positive. And so figuring out who you are on a foundational level, and what separates you from on a business, if we’re talking about business, what separates you from everyone else as an agent, right? Like, what why are people going to go to you, instead of anyone else. And I think that’s probably a part of, that’s the most important for a real estate agent, when they’re building their brand is really diving, it’s, it’s like personal, it’s personal development, right? It’s really diving deep into who you are. And and this is something we do in the course, to figuring out, okay, what makes you special? Like, what are the things that you want people to say about you, when it comes to your service, when it comes to your product, when it comes to your social media? When it comes to your delivery? When it comes to your website? When it comes to every every perspective about you as a brand? What do you want people to say? And then we work our way backwards, right? How do you want to make people feel, oh, I want to make them feel like this? Okay, great. These are the things that you’re going to have to do in the next six months to a year in order to get that, that that to that finish line. And so when building a brand, I tell people, Look, we’re all brands, believe it or not, even you know, the single mom with a three year old child, she’s a brand, she doesn’t know it, but she’s a brand. And so really understanding who you are as a brand is key in order to be successful, not just in real estate, but anywhere, right, really knowing what you’re good at. And that’s something that we put together in the course, and you know, it is a video course. But at the end of the day, it’s building a brand, and a goal and a vision, and then creating video content to support that brand vision. Because that how point,

D.J. Paris 37:19
how important is it to determine the brand prior to create because, you know, we have this inclination to want to jump right on, I have a video idea, I want to jump right into it. And that’s great, but might not align with the overall strategy or the vision. Right?

Ivan Estrada 37:34
Exactly. I mean, like, for example, let’s say the St. Regis right there a hotel chain, they only create videos that are in line with their brand, they’re not going to do something, oh, let’s talk about sneakers today, because I want to talk about sneakers, they’re not going to do it because it’s not in line with their brand. In the course we create brand pillars. Every company usually has about four to five brand pillars. And that could be like, for example for myself, its real estate, its technology, its community, its travel. And then under those brand pillars, there’s all these, then we go we dive deep into what those mean to us. And so when we’re creating content, when we’re updating my bio, when we’re writing blogs, when we’re doing creating flyers or updating our flyers, we look at those brand pillars. And we and we always say, Is this in line with our brand pillars, Is this our brand pillars, or this is our voice is this in line with our voice because if it’s not, I’m not going to do it because a it’s going to confuse people. And B, it’s not going to support the brand and and brands that we know that have been here for a very long time. They stick to their brand pillars, and that’s why they’re so successful.

D.J. Paris 38:46
Yeah, they stick to it. And then going back to the consistency piece. They, they understand that there’s a time delay on getting acceptance and traction. Just like there’s a time delay when you start your real estate business and having wild success. Most people

Ivan Estrada 39:02
don’t years, it takes years years.

D.J. Paris 39:05
And the same sort of thing for for social media or video content is we live in such a immediate sort of, we get immediate feedback and we get immediate metrics. And so you know, when we post something on social and it has a low number of likes, we feel a certain way about that, you know, some of us feel more deeply about it than others. But all of us have a reaction, whether it’s it’s probably more of a reaction than we ought to have. But it’s but it’s a reaction. And so people have this tendency to to put a lot of time and energy into a video. It doesn’t perform at the level they want. And it might not be because the videos not have good content or good quality. It might just be that they’re not favored in the algorithm yet because they’re rarely putting up content or their audience hasn’t gotten used to it yet, or just hasn’t been seen. And they get discouraged and they stop making things.

Ivan Estrada 39:54
Exactly and that’s when you have to go back to the intention. Why am I creating these videos for life? for comments, or am I creating these videos because I know it’s providing value to my current and future clients. And it’s also helping build my brand. Because if it’s about the likes and the comments, then you’re going in here with the wrong intention. And so I it’s very important to really be clear with that. Because, you know, I have friends, and I’ve gotten people asking me, well, these types of videos are getting a lot of likes, right? They could be real estate agents doing parodies, or, you know, things that are funny, and that’s great, right? As long as all your video content is not that and you’re not just going after the likes, and the comments, because I know a lot of real estate agents with a lot of likes, and a lot of comments and a lot of views, and no business. Yeah. So you’ve got to be very careful, very intentional with your content and be very patient.

D.J. Paris 40:51
Yeah, it is, it is a marathon. It is not, it is not a sprint. But boy, it’s it’s one of those things that, you know, has so much opportunity, because I noticed that I’m in I’m not even a social media, I’m not really a heavy social media user. But I’ve noticed that I’ve started migrating over to back to Facebook and Instagram, and I’m not somebody that just infinitely scrolls, but I do check out the stories and reels for about a minute a day. Because you can cycle through those pretty quickly, within a few seconds, I can, I can get a sense of what the video is about, I can see what my friends are up to. And some of you know, just other brands and what but I’ve noticed that even I when I’m like, I’m not gonna I’m not somebody that just you know, is on Facebook all day. Even I am now looking at these at the short form at least short form video content, what is your opinion between short on social media short form versus long form?

Ivan Estrada 41:45
So you should be doing both. And but both of them go on different portals. So the long form should only be going on YouTube. So you people use YouTube as a search engine. So that’s where you want to create all your, you know, long, long version q&a videos about real estate questions, answers that you have to questions. Maybe like your company, video, your team video, anything where you want to have it live on for a long period of time, a community video, for example, that is evergreen, three or four minutes, you want to put it on YouTube, but still also have a short version, short version for Instagram, Facebook, tick tock, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn is probably the where I’ve been getting a lot of viewership. So make sure that you don’t forget about LinkedIn. But the short term videos that’s that’s for those, those portals that I just said those social media accounts, the tick tock, Facebook, and Facebook, sorry, Instagram, Facebook, tick tock and LinkedIn. And the only the long versions go on YouTube, because YouTube actually prefers the longer videos. Sure.

D.J. Paris 42:59
They do. And they and now and YouTube even has has little shorts, shorts. Yeah, which is, but But you’re right. And this, this idea that now and there’s technology, like we’re actually using technology right now where we’re streaming to four or five different platforms, as we’re recording this, and it’s like the the technology is there, and you can learn how to use it. Now what about video editing? Right? So we Yes, we have phones, we know we can film things? And but for those of us that aren’t skilled at editing, do you have in your course you guys talk about that? Or give some suggestions about how people can get things edited?

Ivan Estrada 43:38
Absolutely. I mean, we have a partnership with a couple of companies iMovie I’ve been using. For the longest time there’s another app called cut. But honestly, when I’m creating content, like like on the fly content that’s not highly produced. What Instagram has is vary and tick tock, I don’t really like to go outside of that. Because sometimes it actually doesn’t favor your algorithm if you use another app to do editing, and then you embed it. So you don’t really need complicated editing software, if you’re using complicated editing software is because you’re doing a more highly produced type of video. I always tell agents, look, your time is valuable. You should be prospecting and lead generating in this market to not take classes on editing. Unless this is something that you want to do as a part time job on the side. There’s no time for that. Go out prospect, lead, generate network, do all that. If you need to do complicated editing. I would be doing that with a videographer. There’s so many applications out there websites, where you can go on there, you give them the the raw content, like Upwork, right? There’s so many people on Upwork are looking for work. It’s all over the world, by the way all over the world and it’s super cheap. So that way you don’t have to be doing any The editing, and they can do some really cool stuff at a very low price.

D.J. Paris 45:04
Tell us about about the program bandwidth. So talking about which by the way you can learn about a brand with.com. But tell us about the the video program and how it turned somebody in, you know, from a novice into into more of an expert.

Ivan Estrada 45:17
Yeah, absolutely. So the idea came to me, right before the pandemic, this was going to be an in person coaching seminar, two and a half days, to eight to 10 hours a day. And I already had the idea of okay, well, first, for the first section of the course has to be breaking those mental blocks and the mindset and the fear. Because I could do all the teaching, I can teach you how to be in front of a camera, how to talk, how to write script, how to edit, how to syndicate how to track and measure for results. But if you don’t get over the fear, the hurdle of you saying, Well, I don’t like the way that I look today, or I don’t like by the way how my voice sounds, or I’m just afraid of judgment. So I’m not going to do the, none of the the rest of the courses useless. And so once the pandemic hit, then we thought, Oh, crap, I can’t do any in person trainings for this. So we put together a system, there’s no system like this in the world, where it’s, we have the 15 modules, and we have it divided into four sections mindset. And then we go into the mechanics. And then we go into actual, the actual filming and the editing. And then the last part, which is super important is, like I said, before, having that marketing calendar, tracking for results, and constantly measuring, to make sure that all the work and all the effort and everything that you’re doing is actually working. And the course which is really cool, it’s you’re not just watching videos, because you’re not gonna learn by watching. It’s not, you know, you can’t learn how to play basketball by watching a ton of basketball videos. So every module is, is connected to each one, there’s a lot of work that you have to do, there’s a lot of typing. It’s it’s pretty much it’s like a college course, it’s everything I’ve learned for the last 14 years on building your brand. And I’m testing you and I’m asking you questions, and I need to see the answers. And then you’re actually filming video, and you’re submitting your video and you’re seeing your progress. As you go through the course, you’re doing daily video diary. So it’s a very robust system that we have set to make sure that people have all the training to feel confident to not only create videos that they’re proud of, but videos that work because like I said, you create all the videos you want. But if you don’t have a plan, you don’t have a brand that it’s attaching itself to. Then what’s the point?

D.J. Paris 47:46
And you you know, you’ve had it you’ve had TV experience, you’ve you’ve been on NBC is open house, a house honors Million Dollar Listing,

Ivan Estrada 47:54
I just did a TED talk last year, like the training that I got for my TED Talk, which we have in here on memorization like I had to learn of you. By the way TED talks are 100% Memorize. So 18 rows memorize, and it takes strategy that I thought I was like, There’s no way I can learn a one or two minute video by memory, but 1314 minutes, there is no way. And everything that I learned in there is in this course.

D.J. Paris 48:22
Amazing. Yeah, I want everyone to check this course out. It’s brand with.com Use the promo code real for 25% off. I’ve been you know, what would you say to an agent who says I know I need to do video I haven’t yet started? What’s the best first step for somebody to start getting involved in coming up with a video strategy?

Ivan Estrada 48:45
Well, other than taking the course, the next best strategy would be you need to have some type of accountability to yourself that you are at least going to start with one small video from a camera doesn’t have to be anything produced. But you need to have an accountability partner in order to just put out your first one because I’ve you know, even people who have had on my team, it took me weeks in order for them to pull the first one out because again, we go back into our head of I don’t like how I look. I don’t like how my hand gestures were all over the place. My left thigh was a little weird. And I’ve told my clients what you’ve got my agents, you’ve got this all wrong. You’re making this about you. This is not about you. This is about the value that you have to provide to someone else. So we first you need to have that mindset shift. And then you’ve got to have me as your accountability partner saying where’s the video? Where’s the video? Did you publish your video so someone in your office, it could be your manager if you have a coach? Well if you have a coach they’re making you do video so if you have a coach I’m pretty sure you’re doing videos but if you’re not asking your coach, I need to do a video. This is I need to do it by Friday, make sure that you have the goal, right? By Friday, I’m going to put a one minute video out that’s going to go on YouTube, Instagram, tick tock be very specific, by this time, in order for it to get done and have there be some type of consequence. And if I don’t create this video, by this time, I am going to send $100 to my, you know, a charity that is not one that you support. Let’s just put it that way. So that that way you have some type of accountability and a little fire to make it work.

D.J. Paris 50:31
I love that it’s accountability is so important. We just it’s not any sign of weakness. I think we’re, we look at it sometimes as I need somebody, I used to think about that having a personal trainer, I used to think, what’s wrong with me that I and it’s like, no, because now with a trainer, I actually get to the gym because I have accountability. And also, I have somebody that shows me what to do. But most importantly, I have somebody that I don’t want to disappoint. I’ll disappoint myself all day long. But disappointing, someone else is a lot harder for me. So that accountability piece, it will help shore up this like, I’ll do it later mentality, which we all have we you know, and we all you know, it’s just a normal part of the day to want to think that and having that accountability that check in. Also in the same thing you have, you have weekly accountability with your own clients that you’re helping them sell or buy homes, you’re checking in with them weekly as well. So this is this is a great approach, get an accountability partner and come up with a goal and say, here’s, here’s what I’d like you to hold me accountable for and here’s the consequence, and maybe even put a reward at the end of it if you get it done. But definitely put a consequence so that it gives you a little bit of the carrot and the stick. Absolutely. Let’s um, yeah, let’s I think this is a great place to to wrap up. I really want everybody to check out the brand with.com website, this really goes through Ivan’s program, you know, this is a guy who does very, very serious marketing and branding proposals and executes them is very, very strategic does this for high end, luxury homes, he sold over 600 million himself, him and his team. And they also now we’re going to show you the 14 years of experience that Ivan has wants you to learn from him. And these are tips and techniques you can use to really separate yourself from the competition. You know, we’re we’re all I think a little tired of seeing standard posts on Facebook and Instagram that are just listed just sold. Nothing wrong with that. But that’s typically the majority of the marketing I see for realtors out there is look what I just did. Look what I’m currently doing. And that’s all great. But there’s, I think there’s more that you can learn. You can solve problems you can create value without just only bragging about accomplishments. As Ivan said, you know, the clients don’t really care. I mean, I guess it’s a good thing to say I’m busy. And here’s what I’m doing. And that’s great. But you should also it should be a certain percentage of it should be educational. Here’s what you could learn today. Here’s what you might be worried about. And Ivan’s going to show you exactly how to find that content, cultivate it, shoot it, edit it, produce it, and consistently drop it, drop it live so that you can of course get people hooked on your content, which is the whole point right? We want people hooked on your content, but it takes time. The good news is it doesn’t really take any additional equipment. It just takes time but it also takes creativity and Ivan’s going to show you how to do that. And again, you can use tools like chat GPT to give you some ideas of what type of video content you want to create. Ivan’s going to go through all of that for you so I’ve been telling for anyone wanting to explore the video program again is that the best website brand with.com

Ivan Estrada 53:47
Absolutely So brand with.com is where you’ll find the course brand with video my book brand with purpose. It also my podcast brand with podcast and we also have a copy of my latest TED talk on there to inspire you.

D.J. Paris 54:03
Yeah, we will have links to all of that in the show notes guys subscribe to his podcast check out his book if you’re not yet ready to invest in the program and guys you should be because I’m gonna go through it myself. I am super excited Believe it or not, I had do a terrible job of video content for our podcast so I am like a lot of you going I should be doing more and this is the year that I’m going to commit to doing that because guess what, it’s going to bring me more listeners so even Podcasts can benefit from this of course but of course your real estate business can as well and so check out the podcast brand with podcast check out the the program brand with just go to brand with.com or Ivan estrada.com For all things Ivan check out his TED talk as well. We will have links to all these in the show notes. You can go check these out. And you should just be following Ivan on all of his social channels as well because guess what, that’s where he’s posting a lot of his video content. So great place to see what Ivan’s up to and you know, you can borrow from the Masters check out what he’s up to. Everything can be found at Ivan estrada.com or brand with.com. And again, remember to use the promo code real for 25% off the brand with video program. On behalf of our audience. Ivan wanted to say thank you so much for being on our show. Really appreciate you and all of the tips and advice you have given to the audience. It’s been awesome. And on behalf of Ivan and myself, we want to say thank you to the audience for making it all the way to the end of an episode here. Please, outside of checking out all the cool things Ivan’s involved in. Also, tell a friend about this episode. I know you know somebody in your office that’s not that is frustrated with their own branding or marketing efforts, send them a link to this, this might be just what they need to make 2023 a better year and let’s face it, it’s up to half a year for realtors. Let’s make it a little bit easier for them. Send them a link either over to our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just tell them to pull up any podcast app search for keeping it real. Hit that subscribe button and also leave us a review. Let us know what you think of the show what you like what we could do better that helps us improve as well. Ivan, thank you so much, sir. It was a pleasure having you on and we will see everybody on the next episode.

Ivan Estrada 56:13
Blast. Thank you

Cyrus Seraj with The MG Group Chicago talks about his experience with law school and then working in real estate business. Cyrus explains his journey working with his father when young, in finance later and real estate and how affection and connection with people started to grow. Cyrus emphasizes that it’s in people’s DNA to belong to a group and how great it is to share the responsibilities with others. Last, Cyrus discusses the importance of finding life-work balance in your life.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Cyrus Seraj can be reached at [email protected] and 773.495.3303.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Randy Baruh as a New York City real estate professional shares his unique experience in the field of real estate and how he transitioned from the theatre to a career in real estate. Randy explains the importance of social media in reaching people without being in touch with them. Next, Randy discusses how important it is to be authentic and have fun as a real agent. Randy also talks about working with a team who makes magic happen. Last, he explains why you shouldn’t look at social medial as a lead generation but as a marketing tool.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Randy Baruh can be reached at [email protected] and (917) 806-5175.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

Welcome to the first episode of Video Boot Camp for Real Estate professionals with Kim Rittberg.

In this episode, Kim shares her experience and strategies on how to make a proper video for the clients. Kim explains its importance and how a video can be very powerful in reaching the clients and building relationships. Kim also discusses her video boot camp on how to attract the ideal clients. Last, Kim shares 5 video ideas.

Grab Kim’s Free Download: Improve Your Video Quality to Increase Your Revenue — Grab 10 FREE tips from a former media executive so that you can take your videos from mediocre to magnetic. Plus when you download these free tips, you’ll also receive an additional PDF on how to go from camera shy to camera shine.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Not sure what to post on social? Well today you’re going to learn five videos you can make right now to grow your real estate business. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads in interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

Hello, keeping it real podcast listeners. This is your host DJ Parris your guide and host is how I normally start but today’s a special introduction here because I am not doing this episode. So I want to introduce you to our newest feature on the podcast. This is going to be a monthly episode called Social boot camp with Kim Rydberg now I had Kim on the show recently and I was I just completely had such a great time with her that I basically grabbed her and said you have to keep doing our show on a regular basis. So Kim is going to be doing monthly episodes specifically around social media and video really helping you figure out what are the top agents doing to increase their reach their engagement, you know, we all can be doing better and more on social media. But firstly, let me tell you who Kim actually is. So you know why she’s somebody you should be listening to and why I chose her to be on the show. So let me give you her bio here. Now Kim Rydberg is an award winning digital content strategist and on camera coach who helps real estate professionals and business owners grow their income leads and credibility with video and podcasts. Now get this she spent 15 years as a media executive at Netflix, People Magazine and in TV news, and she launched the first ever digital video unit for Us Weekly magazine. She knows this stuff well. Now Kim coaches real estate agents to be better on camera and make unforgettable social media video and podcast content that brings in leads clients and revenue. She has been featured in Business Insider and Fast Company and has been in speaker and instructor at Penn and Syracuse University and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School. She also hosts her own podcast mom’s exit interview, spurred by her decision to quit corporate and launch her own business after working in the hospital while giving birth to her second child. Now the podcast helps women craft careers that work for their life instead of the other way around. Please go check out Kim’s podcast mom’s exit interview and hit that subscribe button for her now let me tell you what you’re going to learn today because this is really exciting. This is our first episode and you’ve been so patient let letting me drone on about how much I just love having him on the show. But let me tell you what she’s going to talk about in just a moment. Today, we’re going to talk about five videos you can make today to grow your real estate business. And you know what, that’s all I’m gonna say let’s leave the rest up for Kim. So guys, do Kim a huge favor and let her know what you think of this episode. You can reach her she’s gonna give her contact information or you can always reach out to us we’ll pass it over to her. But tell another agent about the show specifically about Kim’s episode because we want her while her episodes which she’s gonna be doing these monthly. But let everybody know about this because Kim is a real superstar and we’re so so honored to have her so without further ado, let’s get to Kim

Kim Rittberg 4:38
I am so excited to be back with you all on keeping it real. I heard from so many of you. Direct Message me you sent me emails. I’m so appreciative of this audience. You all are investing in your cells and you really want to learn and I love that because I love to teach. Fun fact I just spoke at the Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices convention in Las Vegas. I don’t know if any of you were there. It was really fun. Lots of great people great teaching great learning. And if you are interested in this episode, that means you’re looking to grow your business with video. So, if you’re struggling to show up on video, or you’re making some video, but it’s not landing your ideal clients, I have a brand new video bootcamp, it teaches you how to attract your ideal client and grow your leads income and credibility. I have dozens of awesome testimonials on my site, you can see, but be sure to check it out. As soon as possible. My last boot camp, actually, I had to close the doors early. So you can apply now it’s not binding, you can just apply and we can see if it’s a fit. Basically in the class, you’ll get a system and a process to create content consistently and efficiently. No burnout, you get pre built scripts and templates for videos. A proper set up for filming, I teach you how to repurpose your content, meaning you film once and you get 10 videos, and a brainstorm process and lots of accountability from me. I am an award winning video strategist. I spent 10 years in TV news, I worked at Pop Sugar video, US Weekly video, and Netflix marketing. But now for the past five years, I’ve been helping business owners and professionals grow with video. And I’ve won some awards. And anyway, it’s really fun. So let’s jump in and I want to teach you some stuff. So today I want to teach you about five great video ideas that you can make today as a real estate agent. The idea of video, I like to bring it back to the basics is video is not just okay post a video, here’s the client video has this amazing ability to reach your existing clients or existing network, find new leads new potential clients and reignite old old contacts. By that I mean, you can have a contact come out of the woodwork you haven’t seen in five or 10 years. My agents that I work with in one on one and group coaching are seeing this. They have someone reach out they haven’t seen in five years say, Hey, David, I loved your Instagram, I’m seeing you really showing up. And because the content is on brand, and it’s focusing on educating or entertaining that it’s really connecting. So I really want to start with that because I think it’s important before we talk about the video ideas, we remember what video can do for us. And again, I’m going to do another quick little tip before I give you my ideas. When you make video. Remember to make your video one of the three E’s entertaining, educational or emotional, meaning that is what you want the watcher to walk away with. So we’re never selling, we’re very rarely selling like, even, you know, maybe you’re saying, Oh, I won this award. Or maybe you’re saying just clothes just listed. That’s that should be like 20% of your social feed, to really convert to really bring people into you and into your network and be building that relationship, a tiny portion should be selling. But remember, you’re making this content because when you bring people in, when you build that relationship, eventually ideally, they will be a client and it’s not a client or refer. So that’s just something to really keep in mind before we jump into the ideas just level setting what it can do. And these ideas are really agnostic of platform. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Facebook or Tik Tok, or Instagram or YouTube, all of these videos, they work, you know, they’re really solid ideas, they’re really showcase you and it doesn’t matter where you are. And this is basically these are five ideas I use, I sprinkle them throughout my real estate agent. And they work. They’re just like fun ideas that bring people in to you. So number one first idea, position yourself as a neighborhood expert. So that can go as a tour of the neighborhood you represent. It could also be a feature on some businesses. And the reason why these are really good is because if you’re selling let’s say I live in Brooklyn, New York. So if I’m selling in Brooklyn, I want people to realize I am really the expert. I know the values I know the people, I know which books are the best, which which you know, where you can walk your dog, it’s really important to position yourself as the expert so that can be you can be holding your camera and again, you do not need a lot of fancy expensive equipment. Actually, an iPhone is awesome, because people feel like they get to know you. So you’re gonna hold your camera out in front of you, or get a selfie stick. I don’t, I don’t really use a selfie stick. I just hold my camera. It depends how long your arm is, you’re going to hold it in front of you. And you’re going to make sure you’re standing a little bit far back you want people to see the street, you that’s called an establishing shot. If you’ve ever noticed in TV, before you see a scene you’ll see the outside of a house or the city you know, like the Los Angeles cityscape or the New York City skyline. They’re establishing where you are. So you’re gonna want to stand in the main street of your town or in a really beautiful park that everybody recognizes. And you’re going to introduce the concept of the video. You are not going to start with your name because especially if you’re making short form video, that’s not a good use of the beginning seconds. You’re gonna say do you want to know all of that? Brooklyn Heights, let’s jump in, or I just discovered the best. Top a spot in all of Brooklyn, check it out. And so you’re basically starting with your headline, you’re always starting with your headline, and then you’re jumping right into the video. So that’s number one. first idea is being a neighborhood expert. Number two is an SEO driven video. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What this means is that Google could find your video. So SEO even though I’m saying Google, it’s really just the ability to have words that people can find. So if you’re an Instagram, and your video says Brooklyn’s best restaurants, book, Brooklyn’s most family friendly restaurants, and that’s in your caption, someone in Instagram actually searched that and find you. So that’s very valuable. When you think about it, right? Being being able to be searched is very valuable. So what you can do to find a great idea that people are searching for you go on Google, start searching words about your neighborhood about your area, see what people are asking. You can go to Cora qu o Ra. That’s a forum where people ask questions, read it or add it Reddit is a good one, and YouTube. And you’re going to be looking at what is out there and what people are searching for. Everyone’s searching Google and you stop, like, what can I find in or what’s the best neighborhood in, it will fill in the blank for you. So basically, you want to see what other people are searching for. And so that video, it can be you can execute it on whatever you want. But if I found that people are searching for in Brooklyn, you know, which neighborhood in Brooklyn is closest to Manhattan or something like that? Now that I know if people are searching for that, I’m going to make a video about that, I’m going to stand right in the neighborhood, I’m going to film myself, I’m going to put something great and visual over my shoulder, I’m going to stand where the Brooklyn Bridge is, but I’m probably not gonna stand somewhere too noisy or too windy, because you’re not going to hear me. But I’m gonna stand in front of the Brooklyn Bridge. And I’m going to say, where should you live in Brooklyn, if you work in Manhattan, and you’re looking for a short commute, here are the top three neighborhoods that are closest to Manhattan. And then basically, I will talk a little bit about it. So that’s number two. Number one, we have the neighborhood expert video. Number two, we had an SEO driven video. Number three commonly asked questions. Basically, you are obviously an expert, you’re not just a real estate professional, you’re an expert, you talk to dozens, hundreds, maybe 1000s of people. And so what you should be thinking about is, what are they asked me a lot, because of a lot of people have already asked you it means more people want to ask you that. So that’s a really great thread to pull out to come up with ideas. So if you always get asked, you know, what’s going on with interest rates? Or should I buy a condo or Co Op or this new area? You know, you think it’ll be hot? In a few years, whatever the question is, you’re going to make make a video about that specifically. And remember, you don’t actually have to, you don’t actually need to answer all of the answers. Because it’s a short form video, you only have to fill like 1530 45 seconds, shorter is better. So you take your commonly asked question and you answer it. And again, you’re always starting with a headline, because it’s the headline that grabs people and brings them into the video. And when I say a headline, I mean, you start with that thought, that really catchy headline. And you also write on screen with words, your headline. So

number four, a trending sound video. I think you all know what this is. But if not, I will describe it. Basically, you know, the the all of the lip syncing and all the dancing, right and Instagram and Tiktok. They’re not all dancing and singing. Sometimes they’re just like music and someone’s doing something to music. Basically, those trending sounds come up more. So we just talked about search engine optimization means Google and find you better. While a trending sound. If you use it, it increases the ability for people to find you, we call that discoverability. So if you use a trending sound, you increase the discoverability of your social feed. So you can use that song in a fun way where you know someone’s dancing to the song or lip sing to the song. You also can just show something about your business. It could be behind the scenes of what you do each day and just use a trending song. But it is really important to think about that as a potential use because if you’re putting all your videos without sound, you’re really losing a really good opportunity. I want to say something about trending sounds. It’s very, very important to be solid on your message. And when I say your message, I mean your brand message Suraj what makes you unique in terms for to make this work? Because otherwise, it takes a really long time. If you see a trend out there, like someone’s dancing to some fun song, and they’re and they’re writing some text on it, if you don’t really know what your main content topics are, it becomes very hard and very time consuming to all of a sudden jump on like a fun trending song. So it’s very important that like, before you even make any of this content, you really know what you talk about who you are, right? Who are you as a brand. So when someone comes to me, I say, I help business owners and real estate professionals grow their leads income and credibility, I also let them know, I’m a mom of two. I live in Brooklyn. I love art, other little things. So when you get to my social feed, you’re like, Okay, this makes sense. I understand who this person is. And when I’m trying to jump on a fun trending video, I know what I talk about, I basically talk about video, I talked about being better on camera, I talked about being a working mom. And so you know, those are the sorts of topics you’ll be seeing there. And then it makes it easier for me to make a video quickly, when when a trending music comes up. And speaking of making something quickly. Video number five I recommend is a timely video. My first 10 years of my career was in news. And I have seen the ability for people to really get a lot of attention by pegging themselves to a news hook. And a news hook doesn’t have to be something political or sad. It doesn’t have to be news, it just has to be timely. So for I think the easiest way to think about it for real estate is the next thing the next time a big thing happens in your in the market and the financial markets, you should get on video and put your opinion on it. So for example, I’m gonna give you a real life example. My agent David, we were shooting a bunch of oversharing on LinkedIn live, and then it was the Silicon Valley Bank failure. So we made sure to film immediately the impact of that on New York City on New York City Real Estate. And it’s your opinion, so not only does it have the benefit of being a timely video that people really want to see, it has the benefit of putting you out there as an expert, as a thought leader. And so I think that that’s something to really keep in mind. And when I talk about timely, it doesn’t need to be news news news, like I mentioned before, it could be pop culture moments. So in my recent video bootcamp, one of my students Torres, I taught her to really think about pop culture moments and try to jump on it in terms of video content. And this was right after the Rihanna Superbowl moment, where she announced her pregnancy with this amazing red leather flutter spandex outfit. And I sent out a quick newsletter, everybody’s saying make sure to peg something to the Super Bowl to Rihanna specifically. And she did, she showed up on a video and it wasn’t like a dancing or singing video was her reaction to Rihanna. And that real instead of getting her normal few 100 views, it got 13,000 views, because you did it at the right time. And she had a different angle on it. Again, she’s talking to camera just talking about Rihanna his experience, it wasn’t a highly edited or highly polished video. But when you’re really thinking about what other people are thinking about, and you put yourself into the conversation, it can be really good. And I do want to say here, when you’re making these videos, there are ways to optimize it. And that’s something I go over in my video bootcamp, basically, building your brand, Making great video, and then getting it discovered. So you know, when you’re trying to do those timely videos, adding in the right hashtags, so you can get discovered. And if this is all overwhelming for you, don’t worry, because I have a video bootcamp opening up really soon. Applications will open soon if you go to Kim river.com. But I did want to mention about discovery because when you’re trying to jump on a trend, when you’re trying to jump on a new story, you really want to make sure you’re appearing in people’s feed so that they can find you. A couple of other things that as I was going through this, I was just gonna recommend. I talked a little bit about the idea of a headline, and I had lined on a hook is basically the idea that the very first few seconds of your video is the best chance to get people. So when you’re having your idea, really tried to think of a headline that like a media outlet would use. So instead of starting your video, with a text on it being like, here’s a restaurant in Brooklyn, it’s not a great headline. But how about the most delicious tapas restaurant in Brooklyn or three new restaurants you need to try right now in Brooklyn. That’s a better headline, right? It’s a little spicier, it’s a little more engaging. It really has more of that hook to hook people in. And then the other thing I wanted to remind people about is the brand element of it and really like being solid on understanding who you are and what you bring. And it is it’s important to know that because it really helps you figure out fresh ideas because the You really want to try to be yourself and the best version of yourself because you’re putting yourself out there as an expert, like you’re really a thought leader in your field. So I think that’s important. Another thing, this is kind of like, if I’m giving tips, maybe that’s one, class one, level one, or one, or class two, or one, I’m gonna give you a little bit of a video 301 tip when you’re filming, especially outside, but inside to a great way to get higher engagement, more people watching more people staying through the video, you can switch where you are. So for my example, earlier, we’re on filming near the Brooklyn Bridge meeting, I want to hold up my camera and start seeing I

want to know the Brooklyn neighborhoods that are closest to Manhattan. So you have a great commute. So maybe I start with a shot of the Brooklyn bridge behind me. But then on my second frame, frame, meaning the next moment in the video, I stop a start the next one, and I turn my body a little bit, and I have an entirely different background. Changing the visuals does a lot to keep people there. You know, I think we get used to seeing that talking head really like a person just talking to the camera, it’s fine. It’s not a problem, it’s better than not doing video, it’s a great way to showcase who you are what you do. But if you can add in more visual intrigue, more visual interest in it, that is great. And all you need to do basically, you have your first shot, where you’re filming at the Brooklyn Bridge, your second shot where you turned it a little bit and you’re showing some neighborhood in DUMBO, Another Brooklyn area, and then you’re turning your back to your third shot, it can be the same as your first shot. So it doesn’t have to be so complicated. But if you can, and you want to level up just that little bit, you can but that’s really like a through like a plus Apple for the teacher stuff. So don’t worry too much about that. And, again, thank you, I really love hearing from you. So message me which one of these videos are going to do and tag me because a lot of you, I forgot to tell you a lot of you tagged me in your videos, and I was so happy to hear from you. I was like, yes, these people are the best. So make one of these videos. Again, I’m gonna list out the videos, a neighborhood expert video, an SEO driven video meaning something people search for on Google or YouTube. A commonly asked questions what people asking you specifically just answer one of those those questions in a short form video. For you can make a video off of a trending sound can be like a dancing video or a singing video. Number five, a timely video, peg your next video to something happening. It could be something local, it could be like a big sports game in your neighborhood, or a big news event. But those are those five videos, I want you to make one of these posted and you’re going to tag me it’s at Kim KIMRI tt br j. So don’t forget, we’re gonna make it you’re going to tag me and you’re really looking to level up your video game and you really want to get out of that like I don’t know what to make, how do I make good video, all of that stuff. I my video bootcamp is opening in mid April. It’s sold out early. So if you’re interested to apply now, there’s some finding just go to my website, Kim ripper.com. You go to Courses and coaches, courses and coaching. And from there you can put in your information and basically I’m gonna show you how to set up or great has set up to shoot great videos, how to repurpose your content, and amazing system or process to create lots of awesome content efficiently. I give you scripts and templates. Basically you get my 15 years of knowledge and a seven week boot camp. It’s but it’s in a fun way. And there’s a lot of accountability so we’ll make videos together. You’ll get my input on those videos during live coaching sessions. It’s a live coaching program. So thank you so much for having me. I love hearing from you. Don’t forget to message me on Instagram or LinkedIn wherever Kim Rydberg r i t t b erg. Thanks so much

Welcome to the March episode of Learn With A Lender with Joel Schaub of Guaranteed Rate!

In this episode Joel talks about the second largest bank failure in the US, and how this situation puts pressure on the Fed to change the course of rates. Joel explains a strategy on how to use higher rates and educate clients and not to buy just because the rates are low but always ask the question “WHY”. Lastly, Joel emphasized agents should organize events, spend money and engage with mortgage people to broaden their network.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Joel can be reached at [email protected] and 773.654.2049.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
What’s going on with these bank failures? And how is it going to impact your customers abilities to get mortgages? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show today, once again is our monthly series called Learn with a lender with Joel shop from guaranteed rate. Now, Joel is the vice president of lending at guaranteed rate. And he’s been doing loans at a high level since 2003. Which, by the way, 20 years congratulations. And he’s got to that level because of what he does specifically for agents, which is that he gives back part of his commission to the client to the buyer on every transaction. Now last year alone, Joel gave back over $300,000 in closing costs to buyers who worked with them. And that put Joe’s volume in the top 1/10 of 1% of all loan officers nationwide. In fact, out of 400,000 loan officers Joel is currently ranked number 137. Last year he closed 319 transactions, his highest amount ever, for 126 million this year. To date, he has closed 43 purchase transactions for just shy of 18 million. So if you are looking for a loan officer or a loan officer to partner with or for your customers, we cannot more highly recommend Joel he’s the very best we’ve ever worked with. I use them as well. Joel can be reached at here’s his email [email protected] [email protected]. Or you can shoot him a text message or call him at 773-654-2049 Let’s say hello to the biggest Cubs fan. I know Joel, welcome back.

Joel Schaub 3:06
DJ, thanks for having me on. I love that you made the Cubs reference at Spring Training. It is a new season right. And it’s kind of a new season right now for real estate agents out there as well. We were kind of talking before the show started about how people are getting more energetic and they’re getting back into it. And there’s just a lot to talk about.

D.J. Paris 3:26
It’s exciting, the sun’s coming out. So if you’re listening and you’re in a in a northern part of North America, where you haven’t maybe seen the sun so much, it’s starting to get a little warmer. If you’re in the southern part where it’s always sunny, then, you know another sunny day down there. But yeah, it’s it’s exciting. We’re starting to see activity as far as real estate, at least here locally in Chicago, this spring market has started we’ve seen activity rates have have been you know, okay, and so I think buyers are back at it. But curious to hear your your perspective, because right now we’re dealing with while by the time this release is you know, this will be probably after but we had some some banking turbulence. You know, we had Silicon Valley Bank, which which basically failed, and is being recovered by by the US government, you have a couple other smaller banks, regional banks chat being challenged as well. And then Credit Suisse overseas. So there’s a lot of uncertainty around the banking thing. And then it’s also like, what’s the Fed going to do? Are they going to raise rates, lower rates, how’s that gonna affect everything? Obviously, our listeners want to know, obviously, no one’s got a crystal ball but curious to hear what what what your interpretation of what’s going on right now is all about.

Joel Schaub 4:45
We’re back to this phrase. DJ, we’re bad news is good news. Okay. And it’s strange, but it’s true these bank failures actually put pressure on the Fed to change the course of rate increases. So this Bad news, which by any stretch of the imagination, having the second largest bank in history fail is bad news. And what that meant was more money rushing into the bond market. And as the price of those bonds went up, the yields went down. And so did mortgage rates. And so even though we’re not anywhere near the lows of the last six months and rates, the news is telling us that rates are down, and it’s an opportunity for agents to get back out and talk to buyers, because rates are down significantly, from just last week, by the time this airs, we’re probably going to see more of this continued rates and buyers are not afraid now, to see rates in the sixes or sevens. And that’s just kind of the norm. And are you seeing? Yeah, yeah. And so if you’re an agent, right now, if it was a year ago, people seeing rates creep up into the fives or sixes, that put a halt on a lot of buyers. Now we’re into a new year where that’s the norm. And we shouldn’t see them continue to creep down. But we still will see the Feds raise rates in the short term. But we’re already looking ahead to what they do in 2024. And they’re thinking that we’re going to see a cut early next year already.

D.J. Paris 6:14
Yeah, I think, you know, the, maybe it’s kind of a, a byproduct of our diminishing attention spans as Americans with technologies kind of I think zapped our attention spans tick tock in particular social media. I think I think hopefully, one of the maybe one of the benefits is that people who were upset that maybe they felt they missed the that that amazing rate, time period from a few years ago, I think the you know, I think we’ve forgotten, I think I think it’s we’re moving forward. Now, I feel like the public sentiment is changing. I don’t I don’t hear as much from agents saying, all my clients are really bummed that they missed the three, you know, three plus percent kind of era. I feel like we’re turning the corner on that people are starting to realize, you know, the six is is not a bad place to live. And even the seven sometimes it’s not, it’s not the worst place to date, to data rate. And you can always like Joe, you say, you know, date the rate, marry the home, you know, you can always refi in the future. So I think we’re starting to get more acceptance from the public about about where we’re at currently.

Joel Schaub 7:24
But if I’m an agent, I’m also talking to buyers right now, I want them to know that there are rate options in the fours and fives, there’s ways to do this. So let’s talk about two things that the agents that I know are really using seller by downs to fund the rates. Okay, so let’s talk about what that to one rate, buydown looks like or a three to one rate by down, understand the mechanics of this. And this could literally make the difference of you getting a buyer that wants to write an offer, or then waiting, okay, so the problem is that rates are high right now. And we think there’ll be high for the next a year or two, we can get sellers to give a closing cost credit to drive the rate down in the first one, two or three years. And so let’s just take a minute and talk about how that works. And how you can use this so that you can go educate buyers on this. And even if you’re a seller, you’ve probably seen this come across your desk. So making sure that you understand this, and can talk to your sellers about why the buyer is asking for our credit.

D.J. Paris 8:27
Yeah, let’s talk about it.

Joel Schaub 8:30
30 year fixed rate mortgages, they’re right now in the mid sixes as the time of this taping, but if you got the seller to give a 3% closing cost credit, we can take the rate at any bank and drive that down for the next two years. So that in the first year, the rate is 2% points lower. In the second year, it’s 1%. Lower. And then for the rest of the life and loan, it’s fixed. So it’s not hard to get rates that are in the fours right now. Sellers can pay for this. And it really changes the monthly payment DJ people are saving hundreds of dollars by using this exercise.

D.J. Paris 9:06
Yeah, no, it makes it makes sense. So the seller basically pays this concession. And does it go? Does it go directly to the bank? I’m guessing does it go into? Does it pay for principal interest or it’s just a part of the package or

Joel Schaub 9:22
it’s an escrow account so the client doesn’t lose the money let’s say next year rates have dropped drastically and we want to refinance, the money the seller gave is still there, and that will actually go to reduce the principal. So that’s a whole other strategy. Okay. But let’s talk about what that means. If you’re listening and you’re thinking well on a $500,000 home, why wouldn’t I just take 15 grand off the price? I’ll just Why mess around with all this. This seems like a magic trick or look at the math. If you take $15,000 off the purchase price, it might save about nine V or $100 a month on the payment, it’s good. But if you take that same $15,000, and have the seller buy the rate down for the client, on a $500,000, purchase, their payment would drop four to $500 a month. It’s a big difference. Wow. Yeah. And that can make the difference for somebody that can afford a home and not afford a home, okay? And it’s not an excuse to go buy something higher than you’re approved for. If you’re not comfortable with the payment with the way the rates are, let’s not buy let’s be honest with ourselves and be putting ourselves into something that we’re comfortable with. It’s just a way for the next two years, while rates are high, to get the seller to give us a lower rate. And I love lower rates.

D.J. Paris 10:48
Yeah, we all we all do. And at the same time, we also don’t want to chase rates, it’s like chasing the stock market. It’s anyone who any competent financial advisor will tell you don’t chase the stock market. You know, the smartest minds, financial minds in the country have a hard time doing it. And I’m certainly not one of those smartest financial minds. So I certainly don’t try to, you know, time to market as they say, and in the in the equities market. And the same thing with with rates, right, we know that buying a home is a financial decision. It’s a huge financial decision, oftentimes one of the biggest financial decisions of someone’s life. But it’s also a hugely emotional decision. And so I think the way that you solve for the fact that rates are higher than then probably people would want them to be is to really focus on the Y, right, talking about the y but also knowing that there are these creative financial strategies to make it more palatable along the way until you get to a place where maybe a refi makes sense.

Joel Schaub 11:51
I’m so glad you said that, because it’s not an excuse to buy, just because that rate is lower, it’s just a nice added benefit. So if you’re an agent, the last piece of this equation is just writing it on the contract as a seller credit. There’s nothing fancy about it listed as a seller closing cost credit. Almost every bank out there right now will do by downs. I don’t know a single bank right now, this is we don’t understand that. So work with a mortgage company that you know, and make sure that they know how to execute a to one rate by down for your clients, for a three to one rate down by down for your clients, and then go out there and submit offers that are designed to win and help. So that’s one strategy. The other strategy to get lower rates right now is let’s stop talking only about 30 year fixed rate mortgages. Okay. There are so many options out there, whether we talk about 15 year terms, 20 year 25 year terms, or looking at Adjustable Rate Mortgages again, okay, they’re coming back and our take out, yeah, either think of this, if we think in the next two or three years rates are going to be down and we don’t have the crystal ball, is there a big downside risk and locking rate for the next seven years. That’s a great arm, right? I don’t like three year arms or five year arms, I just don’t. But I like the seven and 10 year varieties. And when you’re borrowing serious money, all those jumbo arms are a lot lower. If you’re borrowing in that million plus range, you can get jumbo arms down at five and a quarter 5.125. And so speak with somebody about this, don’t just think that the 30 year fixed rates, the only option options to get them lower,

D.J. Paris 13:36
you just brought up a really good point, I hang out with a lot of realtors, with my different, I do a lot of association work. And so I’m around not even just Realtors at our company. But realtors who are you know, all throughout the industry here in Chicago, and everybody only talks about the 30 year fix. That’s absolutely so true. Realtors only know one number for when it comes to lending. And that’s the number they focus on. And you’re so right that that is not the end all be all number, it’s just the most, you know, discussed number is the 30 year fixed. So that is a really, really strong point is to remember there are other products with other options out there. And not to to think about the entirety of the mortgage lending sort of industry as one number is oh, it’s all based on a 30 year fixed. No, it’s just that’s just the most common number that people know. But there are other options like these bite down options and arms and etc.

Joel Schaub 14:35
And why is it so common? Right? It’s because it’s the lowest payment. The lowest paying, you’re paying over 30 years. And yes, that works for a lot of people. But you’d be surprised right now the number of people that are not interested in paying a loan for 30 Damn years. Okay, why are we paying it for so long? Yes, my payment will be a couple of $100 more but if I can pay this loan off in 15 years, and I can get it right Getting the low fives, especially right now I’m going to do that. If I have the bandwidth and I have a good income and my debt ratio is low enough, we really should be looking at those options, or at least discussing them. Even if we ultimately do go with a 30 year fixed, having that conversation is something that you should be doing, and making sure that you know what’s available, because a couple of years from now, when rates are even lower, maybe you end up going to a lower payment. But having lower interest right now is one of the key things that is going to get people to buy a property. So now we’ve covered a lot of things, we’ve covered rate by downs, we’ve covered other ways to make sure that we’re not just having 30 year fixed rate conversation. So don’t forget about arms. Okay. Don’t forget about lower terms so that you can get lower rates on mortgages.

D.J. Paris 15:52
Yeah, that’s really, really helpful. I’m curious, too. You work with a lot of top producers, you know, in our area, I’m curious on what you’re seeing them start to do this year, because we know that this is a, you know, a more challenging market. 2023 So far, has been tough. Inventory is still challenging. Although string market has accelerated things a bit curious in what you’re seeing these top agents doing, I don’t what I’m not seeing as agents running and hiding our top agents running and hiding. So I’m curious because you have such direct connections to them. I’m seeing them do a lot more events I’m seeing I’m seeing a lot of like, customer events, or client appreciation events, those kinds of things I’m seeing. So I’m just curious if you’re noticing anything, and you do a lot of those as well.

Joel Schaub 16:46
If you’re an agent, right now, it’s all about your sphere, making sure that you’re getting out there and doing events. And these don’t need to be big over the top events. So we’re doing so many things into one right now, in terms of getting out with agents and doing candlemaking parties and doing sips, right doing wine tasting events. We’re doing March Madness, parties, we’re getting ready for the baseball season and setting up viewing parties, things that are simple and getting back out there. And it’s just spending money, okay, you don’t have to do a lot. But if you’re not doing something, you’re doing nothing. And so for the last couple of years, when COVID was kind of like the mainstay, right? We’re finally getting past all of that, we’re getting back out there. And so if you’re not doing events, go partner with a mortgage person, all of these mortgage, people would be willing to spend money on you. Okay, that’s the reason why so many mortgage people hate me. I talk about this all the time. Go work with somebody that’s willing to spend money on you. Because these mortgage people will call you left and right and tell you how fast they are on mortgages and how good they are. Say, Hey, do you want to do an event? This event is gonna cost me $4,000? Do you want to split it with me? The first person that says yes, that’s your person, somebody that steps up and wants to help you grow your business. Those are the people that are going to be in it for the long haul. Okay, so they’re doing events, and then they’re doing client gifting. We’re doing St. Patrick’s Day gifting. We did Valentine’s Day gifting. We’re doing all these off days, like National Pizza Day, find a day send something out to 50 people, even if it’s as simple as just a small token gift partner with a mortgage person. They want to help you and go out there and do events this year, do gift giving, and put it on them. A lot of these mortgage guys have done this with other agents and ask them what are you doing with your other agents? You call me all the time asking for my business. Let’s do some business together. Do you want to help me sponsor something? They’re gonna say yes, the good ones will at least

D.J. Paris 19:05
I interviewed a woman recently who’s the number one team in her and her husband are the number one team in South Dakota. And I She’s so interesting. So such a neat a neat woman, neat realtor. One of the things she does is they have a moving van like but a big, like a kind of a like a moving truck. And not the biggest ones but you know, like one that anybody could drive without a special license anyway, what she does, it is so brilliant. And she says anybody who works with me can use it at any time. Like I don’t care if you bought a home for me five years ago, you can just call me you can use the band anytime. And on the side of it on one side is her branding for her real estate practice. On the other side is her loan officer that she works with. And the loan officer you know, pays to be on that side of the van it pays for the lease of the van. And so it pays for itself because she’s doing Something that you’re and you know, the loan officer is thrilled because his name’s getting shot all over town. And people are moving. And they’re seeing this. And I thought, you know, I’m sure she’s not the only person that’s ever done this, but boy, that’s a smart idea. I had never thought of that. And I thought, What a cool thing. And she goes, it’s great because in her in her local community, she says, everybody knows that they can just call me and borrow my van anytime whenever they need it. At any point, you know, any of my clients. And I was like, That is genius.

Joel Schaub 20:29
And that tells the story of somebody that’s willing to spend money. And so go back to your partners, right now, it doesn’t have to be a new partner, it can be one of your mortgage people that you’ve worked with for years, right now more than ever ask them to help you on something that you’re doing. Okay? This is the key, that person was willing to pay a lease, right? That person can do a lot of things that are RESPA compliant, they can never pay you just to give them deals. But there are so many ways that as long as it’s less than 50% of the total spend, you can go out and partner with a mortgage person and put their money where their mouth is, we just had an event, yeah, over New Years, where the total cost was $8,000. And we wrote a check for 4000 of it. And these agents are getting deals because they’re out there doing things. And that’s what I encourage everybody who’s listening to do think of one event that you can do, you don’t have to go from no events to an event per month, but do one a year or one a quarter, and partner with somebody that wants to help you with that on the mortgage.

D.J. Paris 21:29
It’s just all about relationships. And one of the best ways to deepen relationships is have social gatherings, whether it’s one on one, whether it’s a client appreciation event, whether it’s a drop by gift, whether it’s Hey, I’m thinking about you, you know, and if you if you’re really budget, you know, if your budget is very tight, you know, then there’s other ways you can you can do things but but this is the time to partner like Think creatively partner with a loan officer, who they can basically double your spend, essentially, if you find somebody who is going to be helpful, and Joel and his team would love the opportunity to do that with you as well. Also, one thing that Joelle and his team does that I think is exceptionally important, especially right now around all of the crisis that’s happening financially, at least at the time of this taping, again, hopefully, it’s resolved by the time this releases, but But Well, yeah, it probably won’t be Well, we hope so you’re right. We just hope that the adults are in the room at these at these big financial institutions making wise decisions to keep us all afloat. But one of the things that Joe that you do that I admire quite a bit, and it’s very helpful for me personally, as you send out a weekly email that your team puts together, and it highlights kind of here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in the lending world. And it also even talks a little bit about kind of the broader financial picture. And it’s bite sized stuff, it’s data points that agents, their questions that agents get all the time. And agents have to really kind of comb the internet for their own answers. And I like the fact that you send that directly to my inbox once a week in a bite sized way where I can read it. You know, when I can read it in 10 minutes, and really digested be like, Okay, now I’m, I’m more confident when I’m speaking to a customer. And so I’m just want to make sure that any of our listeners know you can also get on Joel’s email newsletter list. So you can receive these weekly updates as well. Joel, what’s what’s the best way they should do that?

Joel Schaub 23:29
Well, yeah, that newsletter came about it used to be private, I used to figure out the ways to make it digestible, right. So that we’re not having to explain every single thing to a client. And it became something like kind of a pop culture, people want to see this, they want to know, like, what is he talking about? And so they can email me and just say, add me to your newsletter. It’s just [email protected]. So J, o [email protected]. And as simple as one sentence, add me to your newsletter, and then you’ll get weekly updates, and you’ll be able to speak about the mortgage side. And it’s not so it’s so cumbersome, right, we got to break it down in ways that give you fun talking points and just help you through it. So that’s one of the things that we love to do. And then helping clients get lower closing costs as the second one. So we can send you the email template where clients get a $1,500 closing cost credit if they’re working with us. Once that gets sent over with a newsletter, we’re happy to help buyers as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of good things coming up for the listeners, TJ.

D.J. Paris 24:35
Well, yeah, this is a great place to sort of wrap up for for this episode. And Joel as per usual, thank you. Great, great content, great information super helpful for our listeners. And for everyone out there. If you don’t have a good relationship with a loan officer Joel and his team would love the opportunity to chat with you reach out to him, you can email him also, whether you want to get on his email list or partner with him or maybe just And a client his way. Or maybe you’re a buyer or seller yourself and are interested in lending opportunities. Joel and his team are fantastic. So you can reach out to him [email protected]. And that’s via email. And then Joe, what’s the best way they could reach out by telephone?

Joel Schaub 25:17
After I did this, I had about 15 or 16 individual conversation, I talked to people all over the United States. And they were shocked to say, like, you’re actually going to spend time and I love it, because I like hearing about different markets and seeing what people are doing, and just sharing my feedback. So yes, 773-654-2049, you’ll either have any pickup personally, or you’ll get a return phone call from me. And it’s really great to see how just different markets were in what you’re doing. And we just share that information and help each other grow,

D.J. Paris 25:49
and guaranteed rates in all 50 states. So wherever you’re listening to this from a guaranteed rate can likely help you to fit in if they’re not able to assist, they’ll be able to tell you who to talk to as well. So anyway, Joel, thank you once again for coming on. You’ve been with us for years and years and years always brings great content. We love having you on excited to see you next month for another episode. And on behalf of the audience, we say thank you on behalf of Joel and myself to the audience. We also say thank you, please tell a friend about this show everyone listening, just think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this information. Maybe they’re a little depressed or down right now about the conditions of the market. This might help cheer them up and give them some things to talk about with their clients. So share this with the people in your office or any other realtors that you know that’s the best way you can help us grow and also support our sponsors too. But yeah, reach out to Joel get on his mailing list guys. [email protected] asked to be on there. Trust me, it’s worth it. You know, give you the ammo you need when you’re talking with clients. Joel thanks so much. We will see everybody on the next episode. Thank you, DJ

Jesse Stein, founder and CEO of Audience.co and a digital marketer, discusses his experience in digital marketing. Jesse explains the importance of handwritten notes and why his software team build a robot that can write precisely like humans. Jesse also discusses how the card should be personalized to the specific client and how combining the old school method (handwriting notes) with modern methods like a you tube message could be very effective in building the relationships and adding value to the clients.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Jesse Stein can be reached at (844) 625-1847.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
How cool would it be if all of your digital marketing as well as your physical marketing could be done together and in sync? Wouldn’t that be great? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment we’re going to be speaking with marketing expert Jesse Stein. Before we get to Jesse, just a couple of quick reminders. As always, first, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you for supporting our podcast. Please check out our sponsors and also tell a friend about the show. Think of one other realtor that’s struggling right now especially with their marketing, send them a link over to our website so they can hear this episode. Keeping it real pod.com is where all of our episodes live. Of course they also are on every single podcast app there is out there so tell someone else in your office you’d be doing us a huge favor. So thank you and you know what, let’s just get right to it my conversation with Jesse Stein.

Today on the show we have Jesse Stein from audience dot c o let me tell you more about Jesse. Jesse has an impressive background as a serial entrepreneur. He’s founded, grown and sold multiple online ventures throughout his career. His notable ventures include sports memorabilia.com, also a skincare brand and dietspotlight.com. In addition to his entrepreneurial success, Jesse is a domain name expert who founded and sold Soho digital for $32 million. He’s made angel investments in several companies such as integral ad science TMR, W distillery, data world sketchy blanket and whereby Jessie Ansari and whereby also Jessie holds an MBA from the Wharton School an MA in International Studies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Lotter Institute, and a BA with honors in sociology and Asian Studies from UC Santa Barbara, and Sofia University in Tokyo. Please vote for to learn all things, Jessie, check out his newest venture audience.co That’s audience.co And we’re going to be speaking about that today. Jessie, welcome to the show.

Jesse Stein 3:50
Thanks, TJ for having me.

D.J. Paris 3:53
It’s an amazing pedigree, your your background, your vitae as as they say I love reading back and I would really you know, this is a more unusual episode for us so traditionally we’re are normally we’re speaking just to real estate agents about how they became successful and very rarely do we talk to sort of experts out tangentially related to real estate but but not specifically out there producing but I’m really excited to chat with you because you’ve been a digital marketer for or Gosh 20 plus years and I am excited to learn some of your sort of success secrets and what you might suggest our audience part you know, start paying attention to in 2023

Jesse Stein 4:39
Likewise, really excited to add value to you guys. You can get your your money back, but you can’t get your time back. So I really appreciate all the listeners here and I just want to add I just want to add value.

D.J. Paris 4:51
Great Yeah, well, let’s let’s start I would love to hear about the start of your digital marketing journey. Like how did you get into the digital marketing space?

Jesse Stein 5:00
I just graduated from Wharton in the late 90s. And Right Place Right Time, beginning of the commercial Internet, New York City, I was just married, started a company called Soho digital, which you had mentioned, and grew it into a $30 million interactive agency sold it in 2005. And they’re really learn how to build sales funnels by online media, and do SEO, and all that became the foundation really for my digital marketing career. And after that, I got into Domaining. After I sold that you’d mentioned that. So I bought hobbies.com biking.com boating.com yachting.com. All these like really category defining domain names. And the plan was to take these domain names and build them into full fledged businesses the way that you would buy beachfront real estate and build a condo tower. But the one that really took off was sports memorabilia.com. And Rob bought that as completely raw domain in 2005. And with a group of people eminently smarter and more talented than me, which is a common thread that runs through my career, we built it into the biggest autograph store on the internet top 500 internet retailer and we sold it to fanatics in 2013. And along the way, I built with business partners, a skincare company, two 50 million bucks sold in 2009. And that was all direct to consumer via internet, and then started dietspotlight.com, which became one of the biggest nutrition and diet websites on the internet. And at sports meme, we were sending handwritten notes to our customers. And we noticed that the customers that received the handwritten notes now I’m kind of segwaying into audience dot code. Yeah, the company that sends handwritten notes on behalf of realtors to help them drive more listings, and we combine the handwritten notes with digital marketing. So it’s really cool. We use the handwritten note as a Trojan horse. But at sports memorabilia.com, we’re sending notes. And we noticed that the clients that received notes spent way more money with us. So if someone had bought a mattress, yeah, they spent way more money spent way more money with us. But there was no scale to it. Because we were having warehouse workers and consultants and admin staff send the notes, the handwriting was often embarrassing. So like, there’s no scale to it, we were waiting for someone to do this. And so three years ago, hired a team of software engineers, and we built these robots and the software, and they hold pins, and they write precisely like humans, and we can go into that more DJ. But that’s kind of the genesis of my digital marketing career.

D.J. Paris 7:57
Well, that’s really fascinating. So I want to go back to the handwritten note, just sort of metric that you were you were mentioning that, you noticed that so somebody would buy something, they buy a piece of sports memorabilia, you’d write a Hey, thanks for being a customer, we really appreciate it, you know, someone would write it, maybe it would look nice, maybe it wouldn’t. But regardless, those people would then return and spend more money.

Jesse Stein 8:19
That’s exactly right, we noticed there’s a direct correlation between and we would run these AV tests where the control group would be the customers that didn’t receive notes. And then we take a look at the lifetime value of the customers that did. And it was just way beyond any kind of statistical probability. Those that received notes spent way more money were more loyal left, better reviews were happier clients, and so on and so forth. But again, there was no scale to it. And that was key. And then there was no combination with the note and digital marketing, which is absolutely critical, which I can talk about a little bit later on in the show, if you want.

D.J. Paris 9:04
Yeah, that’s, that’s fascinating. I think this idea of the return to pen and paper is, well, I don’t know that we’ve returned to pen and paper, I don’t know that we’ll ever return to pen and paper as a society. But there is something maybe even more magical these days about receiving a handwritten note. I can count on one hand, the number of handwritten notes I receive from anyone, you know, I outside of birthday cards and things, but just in a year, maybe I get three or four, maybe, maybe that’s even high. But every single time I do receive what I believe to be as a handwritten note, whether it’s, you know, helped with robots with pens, or if it’s somebody actually using their hand I read every single word, because I don’t know I guess we’re just hardwired to sort of appreciate that more. I’m not even sure exactly why that captures my Attention more than an email, but we all know just intrinsically that it does. And it’s also a lost art. It’s something that, you know, obviously, you know, all a lot of industries have moved very far away from. But there is something very, I would say connecting about handwritten notes. It feels like it feels intimate, and it feels special, and it makes the other person feel very. Yeah, very, very grateful. I’d say. So curious to get your thoughts on why handwritten notes why, why do you think that’s working? So well?

Jesse Stein 10:36
Yeah, just like anything when you zoom in the devils in the details, so it’s the way that we engineer the note. And then the key is the way that we combine it with AI, and digital marketing, which I’ll talk about in a second. And all the components are key, just like just like anything. So what we do with the note is, we print it, I’m just holding up, obviously, the people listening sure won’t be able to see this. But we printed on a thick stock card. We there’s, as it turns out, there’s an ideal character length. So you want your notes, whether you work with us, or whether you try it yourself. You want your handwritten notes, if you’re a realtor, to be right around 650 characters, this is enough character length, to be able to tell your story about for example, how you just listed 17 Chestnut Street in Toledo, Ohio. And you can even include a short market report there as well in the 650 characters, then what you want to do is you want to create a graphic on the front of the note that aligns with the neighborhood, so it’d be a local landmark. And then you want to apply a filter to the graphic to make it aesthetically pleasing, like a water color, or an impressionistic filter. And then you want your note card to be we’ve learned all this through trial and error, you want to know, a bifold. Note. So what it does is, so the card is bifold. And of course the envelope is handwritten, as well. But never use pre canceled stamps. So the temptation is to save a little bit of money by using the pre canceled stamp. As it turns out, people really notice that so use a real first class postage stamp cost is 62 cents handwrite, the envelope should be fixed doc. And then that will get that will get the note from the mailbox to the kitchen counter. Okay, and then it’ll optimize for open rate, which is great. So you have it open, but now they crack it open, they pull out the note. And it’s needs to be aesthetically.

D.J. Paris 12:55
So they open the note they see something a landmark that they recognize, and that a landmark that is likely to make them feel good about their community or wherever their geography, geographical location, they see something they recognize in a cool way with a cool filter on it that’s on the cover. And then they’re like, Oh, I know what that is. And then they and by the way, we’re really talking in this particular example about a cold mail, mailer. So somebody somebody receives, you know, a handwritten note on on heavy stock. We’re real stamp, not a not a stamp machine. They open it up, they see something they recognize, they still don’t really know what it is, they open it up. And okay, I just wanted to sort of catch our audience.

Jesse Stein 13:39
Absolutely. So and we can also talk to how to use these notes. Again, whether you work with us or whether you try it yourself, how you use notes for both geographic farming and to nurture your sphere. So there’s two different ways. For example, Tom Ferry, who’s seen every single real estate tool on Earth decided to invest in us and he’s a very happy client. So as Chris Heller, who you’ve interviewed, he’s a charmer of Keller Williams, you can ask all these people, you can go to our site, there’s dozens and dozens of testimonials from top agents, feel free to reach out to any of them. But they’ve opened the envelope, they take out the note, they read it, there should be no bait and switch element whatsoever to to the note or any of the marketing you do for that matter. And remember, in general, your marketing should be about adding value right about guiding more about educating more about helping more about serving more about mitigating and answering questions more than any other Realtor in your neighborhood. So that’s why our template library which is vast and we’ve sent millions and millions of notes so we know precisely the note templates that work depending upon the touch so you’ve just sold a house we know have touched number one needs to look like touch number three. And in general, the common thread that runs through everything we do is it’s all about adding value. It’s all about educating. It’s all about helping that homeowner make the right decision whether they go with you or not. So they’ve opened, they’ve taken the, the note out that notice the beautiful graphic, they’ve read it. And then what’s really important is to include a QR code sticker on there, and you you can’t print the QR code sticker, you need to actually have a real sticker. You can’t just print the QR code on there, because that looks mechanical. So

D.J. Paris 15:35
write that it’s sort of the whole thing sort of falls apart at that point. Yeah, you got it.

Jesse Stein 15:40
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that the illusion kind of falls apart. So make sure that the stamp on the front of the envelope is slightly off kilter. Make sure that QR code sticker is slightly off kilter. And what you want to do is you want to record a short, either YouTube video or a video that’s on your brokerage website. That is not personalized to the individual homeowner, because that’s way too much work, but personalize it to their neighborhood. Hey, greetings, Key Biscayne residents. Gradients keepers camp resident, thank you so much for scanning my note, I just wanted to include a little market report, let you know I’ve listed a few homes, in your area on your service, I produce quarterly market reports, remember, give, give, give, give, then get later. So it’s all it’s all about adding value. So you add the value, you have the QR codes ticker, then here’s the real power of the notes. And the real secret. twofold. Number one, you can now use the note as a Trojan horse to market to that homeowner in a variety of different ways. Okay, that’s why I named the company audience.co. I didn’t name it something old school with handwriting or addresses or something else, because I knew it’s all about taking a cold audience. And it’s about warming up that audience. So now, you can even go door knocking if that’s your thing. You can next time you see them at a networking event. And by the way, run this experiment, send 100 of our handwritten notes or do them yourself to 100 households go door knocking, you will be completely blown away at how receptive and warm and welcoming those homeowners are because you’ve generated the most important thing of all, which is reciprocity. You have sent them a beautiful, aesthetically pleasing note that guess what, you’ve optimized for the second secret, which is they’ve kept and displayed it. So the decision to sell one’s home is a really high consideration high dollar amount very, very, among the biggest decisions any consumer ever makes. So what are the chances that they’re actually going to be interested in listing their home on the day you send the note very, very 00. So as it turns out, handwritten notes, and I’ve been a marketer now for almost 25 years. This is the one medium that defies the time space continuum. And let me let me explain that because it sounds a little bit esoteric. there as long as you make it aesthetically pleasing and engineer it in the way I’ve talked about with a fixed doc note the bifold. Note, the note will end up on their kitchen counter will end up on their home office desk will end up even on the refrigerator and a magnet even on their mantel. And they will remember you and their their will have a warm feeling. And they will feel this sense of reciprocity. And so when they are interested in selling their home, you are absolutely going to be top of mind, I don’t care if you’re new to the farm. If someone else has been farming that neighborhood for generations, the fact that you took the time to send these beautiful handwritten notes with a real first class postage stamp will resonate, then use them as a Trojan horse. So what you want to do now and what our platform does is we find first of all, our lead filtering database makes it so we only send notes to the most likely to sell households. So we have map functionality where you can freehand draw, and you can literally take a scalpel out and get super surgical with their leads. So if you listed a home at 17, Chestnut Street, you can then hit surrounding households with our notes, but only the households that are most likely to sell. So we have 200 plus filters. So you can filter by owner age, equity level, how long ago the CLO was issued, and so on and so forth. Then what we do is we find all the email addresses of all this is where my digital marketing background comes in. We find all the email addresses of all the primary and secondary owners, we find all their LinkedIn profiles and we find all their other social handles. And then we have an app that you go to and you automatically follow up. So it’s using the node as a Trojan horse over later from our system, the homeowner gets an email with a subject line that says, Did you receive my handwritten note? And this will, this will double or triple response? Right? So response is typically, all in after all of our follow up between three and 5%, which is 10 to 12 times a responsive normal to right. Yeah, yeah,

D.J. Paris 20:21
exceptional. That’s exceptional. So so let’s go through the I want to go through the workflow again, because this is, is you’re kind of blowing my mind with all this. So okay, so I just sold a home in a neighborhood, I am going to now farm the rest of that neighborhood, I want everybody to know that I just sold this home, I’m going to send them each a handwritten note through your company, we’re going to slice up the neighborhood, there’s going to have an aesthetically pleasing picture on the front so that they’re going to want to display the car just like they would a birthday card, on their mantel or on their thing, because it’s something that relates to their community. It’s also cool looking. And on the inside, it’s going to have a note with some sort of value add in there and introduction and a QR code sticker, which would then link them to a video, maybe you using Bom or loom or YouTube or whatever your record some sort of video specific to that neighborhood, like, Hey, guys, I am so and so I just sold blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would love the opportunity to work with you, here’s some information about your McPhee i or i can give you a market update or whatever, you come up with some sort of message in the video. And then and then your system is going to go in and also identify those homeowners, we’re going to we’re going to look we’re going to solve for social media accounts, we’re going to pair them with any information that you can find. And then you have an app that will allow you to then start to follow those people. And you can start to then, you know, reach them in other mediums, such as on the digital side is that where so it kind of goes. So you’re saying the Trojan horse is the the the physical, you know card that they’re that your team is doing. But you guys aren’t just the card company, you’re like, Oh, we’re gonna go way, way beyond that. Because now we’re going to, we’re going to go from physical to digital,

Jesse Stein 22:13
you got it. And we were even inside of your app, you’ll even find optimized LinkedIn content that you can post directly onto your LinkedIn account or on Quora, or other channels. Sure, that positions you as the authority. And that’s all included in the platform. So it really is a holistic marketing platform. And then on the back end, I didn’t want to get into the weeds too much. But this is super cool. So what happens is, that follow up email sequence that I talked about, after you send the handwritten note. It’s a very deliberate and intentional sequence. It’s been totally optimized. And the first rips the first one yet drips. And the first one is very simple. The first email comes a week after our notes are sent. Did we get the note kind of did you get the note and it says, I fear I may have sent it to the wrong address I sent. I sent it here. And and it lists the person’s address that gets an eight to 12% response rate, which for anyone sending cold email? No, usually, it’s amazing. It people lose their minds when they use the platform because it’s all been optimized. So now, the second touch is even cooler. So what we do is we use I’ve been using we collectively as a company have been using chat GPT for two years now. So we’ve really gotten a chance we’ve created 10s of 1000s of articles with it. So we really know how to use it. What we do is we take your bio, as a realtor, we combine that with information about the homeowners home, everything from number of bedrooms to do they have a swimming pool, you name it. Okay with that month’s market report for Toledo, Ohio, or whatever neighborhood or what we what we do is we combine all three, and it creates a letter that says, hey, I sent you an email a week ago, and just wanted to let you know that I really did my research. And this is why I would love to have a conversation with you to at least get you a sense of what your home is valued at. And then it says your home is this your home is that by the way, I always love to add value. Here’s what’s happening in Toledo real estate market listings have been down 21% Baba, bah bah, bah, bah, it’s very organic, feels very casual. And it blows people’s minds. And that gets a really high response rate, too. So that’s all part of the audience platform.

D.J. Paris 24:46
And I guess maybe the best part about all of this is it’s to some degree automated, right? Like there’s manual review of course of of everything before it goes out so that you know to make sure that it’s it you know, it’s in alignment with the brand handing and all that. But the idea that it really takes a lot of that leg well takes all almost all of the legwork off of the agent’s plate. And you were saying at the beginning, you know, the one thing you can’t get back is time, right? So this idea of this actually is, I mean, I can’t even imagine how much time this would be. It’s just incredible. It just for our audience, the and Jesse, you’ll know this, Ben, I, I believe the the average return rate on a on a physical mailer is like if you get 1%, you’re a genius, like, so you’re, we’re now talking about, you know, 10 times that possibly, depending on on how you do it. But it’s all sequential, right? It’s, these are not one offs, one offs, we find, you know, have a very limited return. So we’re talking about as a sequence, so we’re really just initiating sequence. So your your team does all of this.

Jesse Stein 25:56
Our team does all of it, we even say automatically detect when you list or sell a home. And we trigger an email to you. And we’ve already set up your campaign. And what we do automatically, programmatically, is we take the home that you just listed, and or sold. And then we take the cover image that you featured on Zillow, or realtor.com. And if the home is not aesthetically pleasing, which some are not necessarily, or if it’s the front of an apartment, or whatever, we apply a water color filter to it, or an impressionistic filter to make makes it look cool. Yeah, look cool. And then we give you some of our best performing just listed just sold templates, you literally click on the link in the email, it takes you directly to the map, where we’ve already pre selected the most likely to sell households around the house you just listed or sold, which you can you can edit and change to your heart’s content. And then within 30 seconds, you can trigger a mailer to 100 200 households. So what clients consistently tell us and they’ve used every solution in the book is just the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to drive listings. And then to form deeper relationships with my sphere. And that’s what everyone wants the one caveat mTOR is, it’s not for agents that want instant gratification, right? takes time, you have to be persistent, you have to be consistent. If you got a listing on our first mailer, or second mailer, it was probably just luck or the right place at the right time. This is for agents that want to sell dramatically more homes over the coming years. And this is not by the way, this is not for folks that are just dabbling in real estate. We’re just a hobby, this is really the audience platform is for agents that are super ambitious and want to make this a career and want to form real deep relationships with the folks in their in their farming sphere.

D.J. Paris 28:05
And so do the agents have direct edit editorial control over over the content, so they can put their final approval and touches on it in case, you know, there’s certain things that your team wouldn’t know to put in

Jesse Stein 28:19
100%. So you can go right into the app and do that there’s like a million ways to contact us, you can go to audience health.com. And there’s someone right there on a live zoom. And then we have a large, very talented Customer Success group. So we can work with you one on one to make sure your campaign is perfect before it goes out.

D.J. Paris 28:39
By the way, I want to just completely stop what we’re talking about just to share one thing about Jessie that was very impressive to me, which I want to give you a compliment because I can count. Also, on one hand a number of times this particular strategy has has even come across my desk in the last bit since I started this podcast, which was about six years ago. So for all of our listeners, one of the neat things about having a podcast that people listened to, is publicists find out about it, and you just start getting blanketed with every guest requests you can imagine, which is very fun and cool and neat. It means you don’t have to go out looking for guests, which is very helpful. But it’s also challenging because you get lots of guest requests you have to filter through there, almost 99.9% of them are email based. Jessie did something very unusual. And I think this is a really great lesson that you can take. It’s into your real estate practice. And he did something very, very cool. He was down in his in one of his factories where his robots were in the process of writing cards, you know, and I’ve seen this before, this isn’t this particular technology isn’t actually new robots writing handwritten cards is not really all that unique. How Whoever. So he was down in his, in his, in his workshop with all these different machines going around, he was like, Hey, man, I want to be on your podcast, here’s all the things I can talk about. And he literally didn’t say like, Look at how cool our robots are, he was like, here’s what I can do for your podcast, here’s what I can give to your listeners. So he employed the same exact strategy, that, that he’s actually suggesting, you might want to use in this case, you know, with a QR code on the inside of the, of the mailer that you send, that goes to a video, Jesse sent me a video. And it literally was, here’s what I can do for you, meaning here’s what how I can help your show. And usually, that’s not the way pitches come across. And immediately, as soon as I saw it, I just said, book it, immediately book it, and when we reject most of the requests we get, but because it felt like he was doing something special for me when she was he was making a video just for me, and it had my name in it and all of that. And I went, gosh, you know, realtors should be doing more of these kinds of video messaging. It’s something that I, you know, if you’re going to text somebody, turn the phone around, make a little video message. If I mean, if it’s just a text in which a one line texting, you don’t have to. But if you really want to say something to somebody, turn the phone around, send it as a you know, as a text, or as a video message. Boy, that really got me and I just wanted to congratulate you for that that really caught my attention. And and the other thing too, is you’re not just writing cards, you have this entire platform. Most companies that do this, just do the handwritten cards. And that’s it. You guys are like no, no, that’s just the beginning, we actually are using that as the, as you say, the Trojan horse to get in to sneak in under under the under the door. And then we’re going to now we have everything and we’re going to be marketing you for up to you know, indefinitely.

Jesse Stein 31:54
Oh, I appreciate that. DJ, that means means a lot to me. And yeah, so I would encourage anyone listening to just make sure that you like the best way to add value is to think about what are what do I do uniquely? What do I know? Do I know pre construction projects better than anybody else? Do I have, you know, a relationship with the head of admissions at a private school? In my in my area? You know, how is it that I can create content and give give, give, give and then get and then I think the mistake that I’ve noticed a lot of people make is when they do talk about what they know. They often comes off as preachy. It often comes off as you should, instead of I did. And so your outro is he talks about this a lot of Gary Vee and others. And it’s so important. It’s so easy to miss. But the moment you say you should everybody tunes out, right? So the difference like Alex or mosey likes to talk about is you know, you should have oatmeal for breakfast, versus I had oatmeal for

D.J. Paris 33:15
lunch, once a judgement and the others statement

Jesse Stein 33:18
1,000% And I know it’s it sounds obvious, but no, it’s it’s a it’s a good one, you’ll immediately differentiate yourself from everyone else I can tell you, among the top real estate agents in all of Miami, his name is David Siddons. He sold $600 million in real estate last year. Very, very talented guy. And he is all about adding value. And so he’s constantly interviewing, you know, the important influencers in the neighborhood, the heads of admissions for schools, he’s creating content on his blog. And I really encourage everybody listening to not build their businesses on rented land. And what I mean by that, and I’m getting far afield from from handwritten notes, but I told you I just wanted to add value is that even if you’re with an amazing brokerage at Keller, Williams, exp, Douglas, Elliman, whoever it is make sure that you build your own website, and you build an amazing content and by the way, the brokerages will love this and you’re driving leads to that website building SEO, building expertise, authority and trust. Because who knows if you’re going to be at that same brokerage 10 years from now and right. The important thing is to not build your business on rented land. And by the way, the brokerages love this because you know that you’ll take so much ownership over your own website, and you’ll build that out and you’ll only benefit that brokerage. So all the content that you build, think about at least the way that we do it is think about how can I add value how can I give give, give and make sure you don’t build that content? On rented land, ie on somebody else’s platform.

D.J. Paris 35:05
That’s a good point because Realtors move, they move firms, even if you’re, if you’re listening now thinking I am never leaving my firm, just assume that someday something happens and you have to leave your firm. So whether you want to or not, when you have your own assets, and you’re not reliant upon the company’s tools and technologies, then you know, a lot of times those go away when you when you move, sometimes you can port them over to the new firm, oftentimes you can’t you want to build your own assets. And that also becomes almost I think, could be a way to leverage a higher commission split to if you’re like, hey, I don’t need your stuff. I’ve got my own. I, you know, that could become a point of negotiation when you’re looking at other brokerages. I wanted to ask you, though, about back to audience.co, which again, I’m just completely my mind is spinning with all of these, all of the services you guys offer. Let’s talk ROI. Because everybody wants to know, what’s the ROI now, obviously, this, you know, what, what are you usually seeing from your successful realtor clients?

Jesse Stein 36:07
Yeah, on average. So we’ve done a retroactive analysis over the last two and a half years, across 1000s of agents. So 18 months, after 18 months, it’s about 16.2x. So what we do is we look at what we look at our actual sales, but not only actual sales, because we’re not the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. And so the easy thing to do would be to be the company that says, oh, yeah, we sent a note to that homeowner, and that homeowner listed and sold with you, therefore we take 100% credit for that sale. No, that would be the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. And so what we do is we go back to the realtor and say, Hey, where are we responsible? It’s kind of like in digital marketing, first touch, last touch, like how do you do attribution modeling on this marketing channel. So you have to be honest, you can’t sand off the truth and put varnish on it. So that’s why we go to our realtor clients. And we

D.J. Paris 37:09
just the manual part really like did this? Was this because of us? Yeah.

Jesse Stein 37:13
Many times, it’s, you know, it’s never one thing. Right? It would be arrogant of me to say that we you know, the handwritten note was the reason why they listed their $5 million home, whatever value home? No, it’s a combination of things. And that’s why we offer in our platform, this integration, this digital handshake, you have to follow the user journey from the mailbox to the inbox, so to speak, you have to follow them from the note to where they are, which is digital. And so that’s that’s what we do. And so we ask a realtor clients estimate, but to what extent did we assist in the sale and sometimes it’s 10%. Sometimes it’s 50%. Sometimes it’s 80%. But we take that percentage, and we multiply it across everybody, and we use the we throw out the high and the low and we use statistical analysis. And then we come up with the number which is after 18 months of working with audience 16.2 And you spend $1 with us, you’re gonna get 16 $16.20 back. And But the caveat is, you have to do the follow up the right word. The fortune is in the follow up. Not work with us. If you don’t use the whole, it’s not a set and forget. Nope, nope, nothing is and any market or any channel that says that you’re going to you’re going to you know, lose lose fat while you sleep or, or gain muscle mass while you sleep runaway. You’re a huckster, we’re not. We’re a very powerful integrated marketing platform. But you do you do have to follow up like anything.

D.J. Paris 38:55
Boy, you’re in I think, I think the industry is needed a service like this. And it sounds like I’m doing a commercial for you. And I’m not, although if you ever do need someone to do a commercial, I’m teasing. But, but But seriously, I have been in this industry for 13 years, and I’ve yet to see this exact process from from sort of a to z and it also incorporating AI, which, which, of course is big in the news right now. I think so many of our realtors have probably been on chat GBT and GPT and tried tried a few things and then gone okay, I don’t totally know what to do with this yet. I like that you guys have been working with it for years and have actually sort of extracted out some of the best sort of best practices for your particular sequences. And this idea of because like, I know for me when I when I use chat, GBT oftentimes it’s it’s good for like, certain things. It’s not it’s only gonna get smarter though. It’s only gonna get more sophisticated. But you know, right now if I’m like, oh, you know if I Well anyway, I’ve done I’ve done lots of different acts. specimens with it, I find it very interesting. But I use it in a pretty dumb way. I don’t really know how to elegantly extract good data out of there. You guys have been doing this for years. So you do know how to do that. So like if I say, hey, write me a persuasive recruiting email for this realtor that I want to recruit to our firm. It doesn’t come back with anything too impressive, because I’m not really giving it a very, super specific question. I’m just sort of going, hey, just kind of search around online, find something that that you think might make sense, and it comes back, but it helps maybe with creativity helps some starting points. But it isn’t really a set and forget product right now. It’s just kind of like, maybe gives me a few ideas. But what you guys have done is actually done, you’ve done all the heavy lifting to determine this works. This doesn’t work. Here are the metrics. You’re all you know, objectively based. So you’re looking across the board at the numbers. And I mean, gosh, if I could get a 16 times return on every dollar I spend on anything, I would be a pretty happy person. So this isn’t a inexpensive platform, however, of course, but it shouldn’t be and of course, it wouldn’t be for 16 times return. And of course it’s not going to be inexpensive but that’s why this you know, I can’t even imagine the amount of time and energy and money you guys invested into this entire system. If anyone wants to learn more audience.co is the place to go. Jessie, what else should agents Okay, let’s let’s let’s wipe the slate clean for a second I want to talk specifically about Instagram and Facebook only because I think Realtors tend to live on Instagram and Facebook and with their social media lives. Tik Tok is becoming more prevalent for realtors, but I still think most agents are are hanging out on Instagram. And maybe then Facebook, you know, I don’t know which probably Instagrams doing a little bit more traffic than than Facebook for realtors these days, but I don’t know what our agents doing wrong. And what would you recommend that maybe they could make a slight shift or major shift that would they get better results from?

Jesse Stein 42:14
Yeah, so tours, vertical video. This is the first time in the history of the commercial Internet, in the history of social media, that where you can take one format, and distributed out natively to all the platforms. So Instagram is now native vertical video. So that is holding your phone up like a phone’s not landscape. So holding your phone up and shooting a video, a video walking around the neighborhood a video of a listing a video of a new construction, you name it, right? That’s vertical video, as produced or unproduced as you want to make it you can then distribute that out to Instagram natively, Twitter, natively Facebook, and of course, the most important up and comer tick tock and so people just think oh isn’t tick tock for selling hoodies to 14 year olds. Not at all. It’s so beyond that. And there’s hundreds of really forward looking realtors who are silently crushing it on Tik Tok, because it’s underpriced attention because there’s very few people there. So what I always look for are the opportunities where there aren’t many people there and you’ve got two to three year runway now on tick tock, and the beauty is you can use social media management software tool like a Hootsuite H O T shirt, right, and you can use that tool, shoot your vertical video, and then you can blast it out. And guess what? I bet some of you are thinking, Well, YouTube isn’t that landscape, no YouTube shorts, which you may have noticed, if you’re a YouTube consumer, YouTube shorts, which are minute or less, that’s all native, vertical. So the world is going native vertical video. And it’s really, really important to get on that bandwagon. And the last thing I’ll say, is 800 to 1000 word articles on LinkedIn, car, rush it and you can now on LinkedIn. Okay, on LinkedIn. So algorithmically. LinkedIn has never been about video and I can talk to you about why because of all of its back in training and how they actually make their their money 800 to 1000 word articles about your neighborhoods, market reports and so forth. Try to send you a maximum of four hashtags on LinkedIn and you want to post these articles and then the key is you want to Connect with as many people as you can like when you subscribe to audience, we get you all the LinkedIn profiles of homeowners in your farm. So you’ve got those. And then what you can do is you can use an automated tool like an octopus CRM, which is a Chrome extension to automatically connect to everyone on LinkedIn. And then when you post your content, they all see it. So those two things vertical video and 800 1000 word articles on LinkedIn.

D.J. Paris 45:27
I love it, I’m going to I, you know, it’s funny, I’m going to reach out Jesse to you because I want to explore doing vertical video for recruiting purposes for our brokerage. So I want to talk about how to do that in LinkedIn offline. So I am excited. This is one of the most exciting conversations I’ve had over the years, I’m really, really thrilled I really want everyone to think about there, we know that realtors are dealing with lots of reactive stuff. So all day long, you’re getting emails, texts, phone calls, you’re getting just lots of messages or things you have to deal with in the moment to secure a deal to deal with a current client. You know, and, and all of that just is going to interrupt your day and take your time. We know this just happens happens to me, I don’t even practice real estate, personally, even though I have a license. And but we have 800 agents here. So I’m getting their their challenges all day long as well. So I know the challenges that Realtors face, one of the hardest things to do is to consistently eke out these marketing strategies and to be able to consistently get them running day in day out, because let’s face it, you just got a lot of things to do. turning this over to a company where you can just kind of oversee and make your final edits, I think makes all the sense in the world. This again, this is what top agents are using. So audience.co is the place to go to learn about how this works, again, about a 16 times return on your investment after 18 months. Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s, that’s beating what I’m getting in the stock market by about a million miles. So this is this is again, it’s not we’re not talking, what we’re really talking about is growing your brand. And by doing by utilizing tools like this, this will allow you to have more time to do what you do best, which I think is the more one to one, intimate relationships, you know, the vulnerable, intimate sort of connections that you want to have with your clients. This allows you to do more of what you do best. Speaking with clients hanging out with them, meeting their needs, allow Jesse and his team to do all the other back end stuff so that you guys can you can do what you do best. So I’m a huge fan. Go to audience.co. Jesse, is there anything else our audience should know about about audience?

Jesse Stein 47:49
Yeah, well, I just wanted to recognize you and what you do as a perfect representation of the way that we like to guide our clients in terms of just add value add value add value. And the reason why one of the many reasons why kale is so successful is because of what you do DJ and so you’re you are adding value guiding more helping more educating more solving problems more by just having experts on here myself nodding, I’m not positioning myself as an expert. Oh, no, you’re an expert. I think all realtors you have on here and others. And so you really walk your talk. And it’s the reason why Cale crushes it and is able to offer the kinds of amazing Commission’s versus its competition that it does. And I just wanted to commend you for that.

D.J. Paris 48:46
Thanks, and really grateful to all of our listeners as well for continuing to support this podcast. Please, as you are, as we’re getting close to the end here, please remember to tell a friend just think of one other realtor that is struggling with their marketing right now. And but guess what, in 2023, all realtors are struggling in some way. This is a tough year. Let’s be honest about it. And let’s face it head on. And let’s think about this is the time to actually step on the gas and do more, a lot of agents are going to peel back because they’re going to have to this is the year that you want to step on the gas and push forward and gain market share. So audience dot SEO is the place to do that. Guys check it out. It’s really cool. I don’t have to pitch any more for Jesse because he he did an perfect job himself, but I want to become a customer. And so I’m going to look into this for my own efforts around recruiting. So I’m going to be using the same strategies you will likely be using if you check out audience.co. So check out audience.co Jesse and his team are amazing. They’re legit. He’s got the track record to back it up and all the metrics and data. So Jesse, thank you so much for being on our show. You’ve just been an amazing hour. Really appreciate you And yeah, and for everyone else again, tell a friend, leave us a review to let us know what you think of the show. It really helps us know how to continue to improve to meet your needs. So, Jesse, thank you so much on behalf of the audience and on behalf of Jesse and myself, I want to thank everyone for listening. We will see you next time. Thanks, Jesse.

Jesse Stein 50:19
Thanks, TJ.

Amy Stockberger talks about her journey as real estate agent, and why she decided to work with her father rather than starting a business on her own. Amy discusses the importance of relationships with the clients and how she started a VIP Club. Next, Amy describes how the agents can use branding themselves through monetizing it and how she created a lifetime support model saving stress and money. Last, she emphasized that building trust between clients and realtor is most important thing.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Amy Stockberger can be reached at 605-731-9597 and [email protected]

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
What is a VIP club? And why should you absolutely start one for your real estate clients today? Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris I am your guide and host through the show. In just a moment we’re going to be speaking with the top producing team in South Dakota, Amy stock burger. But before we get to Amy just a couple of quick reminders please tell a friend about our show. The best way you can help us grow is by telling another realtor about what we do here, send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done can be streamed right from a browser or if they’re already into podcast, just have them search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. And also if you want to do us an extra favor leave us a review on whichever podcast app you might be listening to my voice right now on it helps us and it also not only does it help us reach more people but it also helps us know what you like about the show and also what we should change and improve because really guys we do this for you and we want your feedback so let us know what you think of the show unless of course you’re only gonna give us one star then you know you can skip skip the review the review all that’s not a word the review. Anyway, leave us a review tell a friend thanks again. We love you. We’re so grateful to be here five or six years in we’re gonna keep making more episodes and now on to my conversation with the great Amy stock burger

okay today on the show we have Amy stock burger with Amy stock burger real estate in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Let me tell you more about Amy. Now Amy and her husband are broker owners of Amy stock burger real estate and also run a team reg brokerage model which I’m excited to learn more about. Now. They have been the highest producing team in the state of South Dakota since 2017 and ranked 23rd in the nation by real trends. They served 559 clients for 171 million in volume back in 2021. That was with 15 agents. Last year they did for a work of 486 clients 160 6 million in volume. Now AMI created a unique and all inclusive lifetime home support system that turns their clients into referral machines resulting in over 70% of their business source from relationship referrals. Amy has also successfully monetized each pillar of her lifetime home support model, which has added a lucrative revenue stream while gaining clients and Agent loyalty like no other. To learn more, please visit Amy’s website, which is Amy stockbroker.com, which is m y sto CK BERG er.com. And by the way, we have a link to that in the show notes. Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Stockberger 4:27
Thanks for having me, DJ. I’m glad to be here.

D.J. Paris 4:29
We got started a little late because Amy is down in Florida right now. And I was very, very jealous because I will be actually just a couple of hours from where she is starting in a couple of days. So I got very excited and we talked a lot about the winter months and how nice it is to get away for a moment or two. But Amy, I’m excited to to speak with you and you are you and your husband’s team and all of your agents you guys are just obviously you’re crushing it. So I’m always fascinated by A people who are who are doing really well and our audience loves to hear how you do that and how you started. And I’d love to go all the way back to the beginning of your career in real estate and first learn why real estate you know, how did you get involved? Why, and what was it like when you first started. Got it.

Amy Stockberger 5:18
So I got into real estate straight out of college, my dad had owned a Coldwell Banker brokerage at the time and did a really excellent thing for me, he got me a job. But at that time, I made $24,000 a year. And I’m the oldest Hi Dee, hi, I and he put me in the back office and said, Hey, sink or swim, see what you can do any any did the best thing for me taught me everything from the back end, the support team part of it and just knowing that the administrative part of running a brokerage, and then I fell in love with the industry, I got licensed, and I’ve done about every single position you can do within the real estate industry. So I started out support, I then we got licensed, and I became a buyer’s agent, which at that time was very, very, very new. There wasn’t a lot of teams at that point. And then I became a single agent went out on my own, and then quickly started my own team with my sister and a part time assistant. And then my husband joined my business back in 2009. And that’s when we really started to scale and take a hobby that paid me and made it into a lucrative career. And then we were team a team for a long time. And then we started our brokerage in 2019, and still run it as a team or as a broker. Yeah, as a team. In our brokerage we call the team rich, meaning that we still give all of that support that we really feel agents need to make them very, very successful in in their craft. And my vision is to create big juicy legacies for everybody within my ecosystem by using my lifetime Home Support Foundation.

D.J. Paris 6:52
So there’s a lot to unpack there, thank you for that information. I am, I was one thing that really struck me and again, really speaks to how well you run your brokerage and your team is that you really started this in 2019, which, again, you was not at not a champion had an easy year to do much of anything in real estate, right. So the fact that you you know, during the pandemic, were able to put these sorts of processes in place and start the foundation of this team, which again, I know you’ve been working in real estate long time before then. But this idea of doing this in the middle of the pandemic, boy, that’s what a bold and courageous move. Well,

Amy Stockberger 7:30
we started the brokerage in 2019, we started our real growth pattern really started in 2009. And we started our lifetime home support, you know, our our model of lifetime home support, we started that really in 2015, that’s when I really figured out that the way I was doing things i i loved taking care of the client, I loved the experience that the clients were getting. And I wanted to make sure that we were providing the highest level of service to keep us top of mind for them to have them review it refer us as much as possible and repeat business. And so that was the the really the game changer for us is when we put that into our business because then we’re we had a process a system a strategy to help the client before, during and after the home buying and selling process. And there’s so much to be said about how that before and after relationship part is could be even more important than that during the transaction, relationship heart.

D.J. Paris 8:26
Yeah, I’ve always thought that that was probably the maybe the thing I’ve tried to focus on in the show and talking to guests is I’m not? Well, initially, when I first started the show, I was mostly interested in how they treated their clients during a transaction. Because of course, top 1% producers are clearly you know, providing a level of service and support that maybe other agents aren’t. So my initially that was my my my main interest when I started the show. And then I realized pretty quickly early on that top producers all had very, very impressive strategies for while working with a client. But then I sort of got bored listening to it because it was a lot of the same stuff. And then I thought, well, I’m actually more interested in what happens in between sales. Because that’s, I think, where a lot of missed opportunities happen, obviously, you know, agents oftentimes just forget, because they’re busy. They’re in the middle of a million other things. And it’s like, oh, so and so bought a home three years ago. Yeah, I should probably reach out but having an actual strategy so that you’re staying in touch and providing value is amazing. But I wanted to actually go back to something you said because I always, every year I say I’m going to remember to ask guests more about this. And I never do. And I’m so glad because I would have forgotten today. But you you actually just jogged my memory. You were saying that you weren’t necessarily super happy with the way you were running things until was it around 2015 When you started really working on your process? So I’m curious is what were you doing back then that you that just to identify a problem or an issue that you were having? What were some of the issues you were having that you caught was due to want to create a solution for? Well, I

Amy Stockberger 10:02
was looking at the lifetime value of a client, you know, what is your lifetime value of your client, the value of them throughout your entire career, and it was putting the numbers to that, that, you know, when in a career, typically a lifetime value of a client, the times they’re going to transact is that, you know, in our market 100 to $175,000. And then what does that look like then for the lifetime value of the referrals that they’re giving us if if say, 10 to 15% of your your sphere is going to transact within 12 months. What’s that mean? When you you keep, you know, multiplying that success on making sure that your clients are becoming your referral partners. And so what I did in 2015, or before, what made me actually start, the lifetime home support model that I created, is I was running crazy open houses I was spending is immediate, felt like I had all this money going out on lead generation that the ROI wasn’t there. And I just knew that there had to be a better way to take care of my clients so that their experience was top notch. And then I also wanted to make sure that I again, had them there for being my referral partners. And then I wanted to monetize it, I that’s a big part of it. I’m a Systems person, like I said, Hi, di, there’s a system and strategy for every part of our business. And having that in place, I decided to put my my VIP club in. And so what my VIP club is, and I have a lot of different pillars within our business of our lifetime home support. But the one we’re going to visit with you about today was that VIP club where our clients get access to all of our pillars or a VIP club before, during, and after. So lifetime access for free. And so one of the first things I did is I put a moving truck in place, 15 foot moving truck in place. Put that there for my clients to serve them before, during and after for life. They get to use it for free. But But I monetized it right away. So I went back and did you monetize it? So I figured out what my debt service was for it. And I went and sold ad space on the back of it and made money off of my truck. So

D.J. Paris 11:58
I So did you purchase the truck? Or did you lease the truck? And then put like, how did you do that?

Amy Stockberger 12:03
Yeah, I purchased it, but you can lease. So yeah, I have created a whole system for other agents to take what took me how many years to perfect and I always say I have a PhD and failing forward, I’ve made all the mistakes. So what I’ve done is created a VIP course start your VIP course.com. And it it basically it’s a copy and paste formula to implement and monetize your VIP club. So agents can go out and take everything the ultimate all the material I have, I have a seven modules I have it broken down into the blueprint for your 32nd elevator speech about your VIP club, I have it broken down on how to monetize each pillar. So I have a moving truck, I have a party supply of a tool shed, I have a discount Market Center, I have a client events section, I have an agent recruitment section. And then I show them how to monetize each side of that with every system they need within it. Like there’s one whole module of just operations, because there’s so much that happens with all the departments within your company. And if you don’t have your systems, you’re not going to scale you need that those two are sisters, you need systems to scale. That’s just how it works. And so I have a whole module that’s just telling you here’s a checklist you need for every part of your business to implement and monetize this VIP program because at the end of the day, your clients are going to remember that experience and this experience that we’re providing which I’ll go deeper into on the next part of it here is that they’re going to remember it no matter what if you’re there and you have the systems in place to keep top of mind you know Gary Keller said it and Millionaire Real Estate that humans have two places in their brain for realtors, and it’s our jobs to knock the other one out and so that we’re staying top of mind so they’re their repeat business and referral business and so the trucks was the first thing monetize those I have two gonna have three here and 23 so monetize those guys. And then I added my party and tool shed almost almost immediately. And so what that is a a party tool equipment that they can use. So like think of banquet tables and chairs, commercial grade food warmers, cotton candy, snow cone, popcorn, machines, platters, anything you could think of for a party bouncy houses, all those things so clients can come back and use those for free for life. But a big part of this is that I put my brand on everything. So again with my truck, my clients get to use my trucks. My trucks are a marketing vehicle for me they get out 600 some, you know, impressions per mile. I bet they’re out there. So and then I monetize the back of them so people that so I make money off of my trucks and then now it’s my party party equipment. So everything that you know people for graduations, parties, people, my clients come back and use these for life. They throw parties, my name is everywhere. My brand is everywhere. So again, it’s more brand awareness right there in there. And I’m able to then you know, obviously my clients are referring us because they’re getting such value from us. And then there’s so many stages of homeownership. So we created our tool shed or tool shed has everything you can think of Um, that a client would need for every season of homeownership so from ladders, wheelbarrows, commercial grade, paint sprayers, carpet cleaners, you know, the big fans, all those things

D.J. Paris 15:10
they can. So basically you guys have all this equipment, your clients are able to contact you at any time say, hey, I need to borrow a power washer for my deck, or I need I have a children’s party coming up, I need a need to Can I use the bouncy house and then your truck is is there on at the event I’m assuming or nearby the event where people can see it. Your name is everywhere. You’ve monetized the truck. So it pays for itself. And you’re getting all this amazing marketing exposure and you become the person that you’re you create the stickiness because your clients are like, Oh, Amy’s got everything. I’m gonna just go to her. I’m one of her clients. That is brilliant.

Amy Stockberger 15:47
Absolutely. Then so because because we have we have over it’s actually this year, I betcha we’re going to be probably 2500 reservations that we’re going to have from our clients this year. But because there’s so and again, again, this is your branding yourself, you’re serving your client, which is what you want to do your brand yourself and then you’re monetizing I monetize all of them. So I’ve already said tool shed, they’re all monetized too. And you’re, I created software because of that, because your clients need a one stop shop that’s just about you. So when you think about the cycle of a buyer or seller, they’re out on your websites and your socials when they’re vetting you out. And or when they’re looking for houses. That’s what they’re doing. And that’s it. Yeah, they’re not coming back to your website, again,

D.J. Paris 16:29
to Zillow, any other time to check your price and see what their home is worth. Yeah,

Amy Stockberger 16:33
yep. So I created software, my lifetime home support software, so my clients can go out and they sell it to my students to where it has everything they need. So you’re serving, I’m providing value they’re going and looking at all of the equipment we have, they’re renting it on that on my software, so it easily can pick it up, it’s all set up by systems inside of it. So that might FTE my full time employee time on this is next to nothing because it is software, you

D.J. Paris 16:57
don’t have to actually organize that a lot. It’s all done through a system.

Amy Stockberger 17:01
And then and then that software though is set up where I have, you know, all my my Facebook blocked my Facebook feed, so that’s in front of them, everything for my client event is up there, everything for my home support team partners, which is another pillar, I’ll talk to you about my private Facebook group for them is on there. So I have listings on there, easy way for us to review or review me and my agents. So again, it’s it’s a place for them to go one stop shop that has everything they need. And I’m not selling to them, I’m serving to them, right. And again, if there’s one lead generation that everybody should focus on the most and spend the most amount of money on is their data bank, their data make, especially in a market like this, and this type of market is an opportunity market for those who, for those who are frozen in fear, they’re going to get just there, they’re going to get passed by they’re going to get passed by right now is it is it opportunity market. And this is where we’re gonna go in and pick up market share, that’s our market share is 23. You know, we’re climbing is the theme of our year that we’re going in. And that’s you need, and you need to do it through your data bank, because they are the best for know like and trust you. And the referrals from your data bank are the best referrals to work,

D.J. Paris 18:11
you’re almost guaranteed Yeah, they’re guaranteed

Amy Stockberger 18:13
and they come to you knowing your value. And one of the big things too, about this lifetime home support model, like my isa department, we have an 8% You know, contact to contract. Conversion Rate, you know, the market average is like one to two,

D.J. Paris 18:28
and then explain that to me. I’m sorry, I wasn’t not sure I totally understood that.

Amy Stockberger 18:32
My isa contract to close. Right. We have an 8% contract contract to close. Got it. Yeah. So that contract to close. Sorry, from contact to close

D.J. Paris 18:42
contact cold. Got it? Got it? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So the Minnesota

Amy Stockberger 18:45
lead comes in. So my lifetime home support model is a hook because you have to know that anybody who is going out to any website, they’re talking to five to six other brokers to so my lifetime home support model is the hook that keeps them with that said, hey, with us, you get access to all of these things for life. And I haven’t gone through all of them yet. But this is what we have. Because we’re lifetime home support. We’re here to save you time, stress and money. And we’re the experts of connecting buyers and sellers. And we do that and help you build wealth through real estate with our lifetime home support model. And so again, having this it just even if you’re doing lead generation for your web leads, you have this hook of lifetime home support that keeps them with you.

D.J. Paris 19:21
So, yes, and boy, again, you just said so much as a couple of things I want to I want to dial into because from our listener perspective, you said a couple of things that that really sort of grabbed my attention, which was well, actually, I’m gonna ask you a question. So you had said this, and you said this very quickly. So I want to sort of rewind back to this particular point, because I think this year, it’s particularly important and I think you would agree, but I’m curious, because you’d mentioned your database, your sphere of influence your you call data bank, is you know, the most powerful source of of new business And what I am curious about is and you’d set a percentage, and I just missed it. I know the percentage is 16%. That’s the number I know. But I don’t know which number I missed the 10 to 15%. Yeah. So here’s what here’s what Amy and I are talking about. So in your database, depending on what numbers you’re looking at, we’ll say 10 to 15% of the people in your database are going to transact in real estate within the next 12 months, or Amy, correct me if I have that wrong, but something to that effect, correct. So if we, if we know that, and if first of all, I think there’s a lot of agents that have never even put a database together. But if and if you haven’t, this is the time to do it, especially this year, because Amy’s exactly right, all the top producers this year, they are getting market share, they’re gaining market share on the agents that are a little bit reluctant or are pulling back, and maybe they’re a little scared, or maybe they’re depressed because of the way interest rates and inventory. But the brokers that are stepping on the gas a little bit and realizing this is the year to deepen relationships are just going to take that market share away from the agents that are pre are pulling back. But what I wanted to say is we’re basically you just basically smashed a myth or whatever or discredited a myth, which is I don’t have enough potential clients. No, you do, because 10 to 15% of the people you already know, are going to need a realtor in the next 12 months. I guess the question is, how, what percentage of those 10 to 15%? Are you actually going to earn or get, and if you just sit back and wait, it’s probably going to be a smaller percentage that if you’re more proactive, and what I’m reason I’m making such a big deal about this, I think this is such a relief to agents that are like, I don’t have enough leads, I don’t have anything new stuff coming. It’s like, okay, that might be but you already have this, this huge group of people that you could focus on, you know, developing more intimate relationships, more more connected relationships with but anyway, I just wanted to make that point.

Amy Stockberger 21:58
Oh, and that’s so true in a, the best real estate business you can build is a relationship based business real estate will always be relationship based. And now is that it’s always your should always be doing this, but it’s a game changer when you add something like this in to your business, because you can scale so quickly. And, and you’re serving. And if you’re not in this to serve anyway, it’s likely not going to work out for you, but you’re serving at such a high level that it becomes a law of reciprocity in humans are so predictable. And the Law of Reciprocity is just you get something you give something back and kind that’s just how our brains work. And so the our VIP club is such a huge part of our lifetime home support pillars. And you know, another part to that, I should say, so we have our party shed or you know, our trucks, we get those monetized or party shed or tool shed, those are all monetized. And again, our tool shed are things people don’t want to buy, rent or store we have. And that’s just the way they’re going to need the you know what they’re going to need. And in my course, since I’ve done this for so long, we thought we know and I have it all laid out in there. We know what equipment is good and what is not going to work we know what quiz equipments gonna last you summer, which one’s gonna last you two years. So I have laid that all laid out too, because that’s, that’s a trial and error thing, you know that you just wouldn’t know if you hadn’t done this process. So I’ve done that. But then another part of our home support team is our discount center. So I have a relationship with an online discount center that I’m offering up in this that they can go out and our clients get 85 to 25% off over 100,000 different national big brand names. So like Nike, Under Armour, Walmart, things like that, they get deeper discounts than what they would get on products and services they’re already going to buy that we’re offering up to our clients. So they can save another $5,300 a year just by using that and that so that’s you know, here’s another thing we’re offering you to save you time stress and money. And that has a lot of different lead generation in it that I’m using right now for corporate partnerships and, and building market share on that, which is totally different process. But it’s it’s so so so lovely because again, relationship based is a relationship based business is the easiest business to scale. And then the next one is my home support team. So again, our clients needs so many different services and products throughout all of his seasons of buying and selling right. So I put together what I feel is the best of the best of vendors within my local market who are part of my home support team. And they give our clients preferential treatment, preferential sometimes pricing and are there to make sure they’re giving them legendary care like we do so think of your obviously lender and inspector you know those things. We have all those within its age back. We have carpet cleaners, we have home cleaners, we have

D.J. Paris 24:39
the interior, probably mold remediation,

Amy Stockberger 24:43
everything so you know, I I charged these partners $3,500 a year to be a part of my program. And so my clients have access to it. So I have a huge lead gen or a huge revenue source in this but it’s it’s threefold. My home support team is threefold and that is It really is so beautiful for my clients because that’s another value add to my VIP. So they have access to all of my people that I’m keeping in front of them, because we have all the systems in to keep the home support team partners in front of my clients when they need them. They have the discounts, they have all of that. But then the second part of it is obviously the revenue generation. And that’s another big thing that brokers and team leaders really need to be thinking about this year is, what other revenue streams are you adding into your business, it’s very important to have other different revenue streams that you have laying down for to continue to keep monetizing your business and building it. And so so the second part is that we have the revenue stream coming in. And then the third part is market share. So a part of the requirement for my home support team partners to be a part is that we get to come in and present to their employees, we get to come in and tell them about our lifetime home support model all the things they get with being an AMI stockbroker real estate client for life, once we get into that one too many presentations and showing them all of our success strategies. Because we have a, we have a at least by Up program, we have an instant offer program, we have a guaranteed sales program, we will love it or leave it guarantee. So we have all these systems for every stage that once I get in front of them, and I’m telling them about, it’s far better than anything I could throw on social media. It’s far better than anything, it’s a one to many. And then we have a system where we’re staying sticky to where we’re keeping our information in front of that employee. So when they have a life change, which is where we can be a service to anybody in a life change, right? That’s what we do as realtors, that those people are who we can serve? Why would they not call me, they’re calling us because we’re the broker of choice, because we’re the ones who are offering the most amount of benefit, besides being the leaders in connecting buyers and sellers, but everything else they get for life with us.

D.J. Paris 26:41
So I just want to all of that was amazing. I wanted to point to something that I have never heard anyone else say. And I’m just going to kind of focus on it. Because I think it’s something that really any of our any of our listeners could possibly implement, although I Oh, by the way, for everyone who wants to learn this program in this system, Amy’s got an entire program for you, which is Is she calls it the copy and paste formula to monetize your own VIP club. And if you want access and Amy, it’s start your VIP club.com I believe Correct? Yes. So we’re gonna, by the way, there’s a link to that in the notes. And guys, this is really what you want. Because, look, I mean, anyone can put programs like this together, but I have never seen a broker or realtor put this kind of program together who has the level of success that Amy and her team do. And it’s it’s not like they’re only doing massive $10 million plus luxury deals, you know, she said their average price points, like, you know, 200 250,003 40 Yeah, so so. So that is a very, you know, sort of median price point for a lot of ACLs. She’s doing a lot of transactions, doing 500 Plus transactions a year with her team. And guys, she put all this together, and she wants you to learn more about this as well. So start your VIP club.com has a lot of this information, there’s, there’s, I think even a couple different membership options. There’s like a one time and then there’s monthly and all this but you know, it’s funny, whenever I see these kinds of products, it’s it’s really never backed by a brokerage or a team that’s actually doing a ton of production. So I think you have this really unique spot in this very crowded place. And we’ll show you how to, you know, create this amazing business, just like Oh, I’m actually doing it. And you know, I love that. So start your VIP club.com is where you can learn more about this. But the one thing I wanted to mention, which was a couple of things first having a private Facebook group. The only reason I’m mentioning this for your clients, by the way, which Amy has talked about is this is a brilliant thing I’ve never heard anybody mentioned this idea. Now here at our brokerage we have a private Facebook group for our brokers are in Illinois, everyone’s everyone’s called the broker. So for our Realtors, and they are, you know, they chat back and forth in there. We do trainings in there, we do a lot of celebration stuff, but I never have heard of a realtor having that for their clients. But it’s the same exact idea. It’s brilliant. Because your clients get to know each other, you’re probably posting content in there from time to time, and your clients get more direct access to you and your and the other clients so that in and of itself, I love and that’s something really just about anybody could could put together. But I love the fact that you have created this whole program that shows people step by step how to do things like yeah, you know, I think I do want to offer a van or storage or a shed with tools so that my clients can use it. The other thing you said that was really fascinating to me and as somebody who sort of works on the management side of of a brokerage. I don’t know why we’re not doing this, which is you charge your vendors, the ones that you refer to you charge them to be part of your preferred vendor list. And that is I’ve never heard anybody mentioned that that is such a smart idea. because number one, you want to make sure, of course, that they’re that they’re committed. And these vendors have do a good job, which you’ve already done. But it’s like, no, you should have to pay to get access to my clients, my clients are really the most important thing for me. And I want to know that, you know, I’m assuming that the thought is that you want these vendors to have some skin in the game, so that you know that at least you’re receiving some value along the way as well.

Amy Stockberger 30:21
Oh, gotcha. And think about it just as a from the realtors perspective, that client is trusting you for I mean, we play so many roles to these, these beautiful humans who are in a really big, big financial decision in their life. And, and they trust who you know, like and trust. And so, most importantly, people have been partners have always been so important to me, but I really, I really wanted to, to offer them to local Sioux Falls like our state, we don’t have a state income tax, like we just have, we have a lot of growth coming in. Because of that, we’re just you know, Forbes is where the best place to, you know, start a business. I think since my since 20 years now, since I’ve been in the business, you know, it’s been so long, but I really love growing local to, like, I really love giving back and growing local, you know, it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna help you grow your business, because I’m going to show you, I know how to market, I’m going to put you into my marketing, I have a whole system that I market for you to keep you in front of the people. And then they stay and they’re going to use you, it’s just a no brainer. And my home support team partners, I love them. They’re so good. And Mike, my goal this year is to have 125. So do the math on that $3,500 a year. Last year, we were right around that 100 mark. And the these these home supporting partners, they’re the ones who also do ad space on the back of my truck. They’re the ones my client events. So we do a really big client events a year and they’re the ones who I have a whole system in my course about this to that they pay for my client events, I have a whole sponsorship category, where they can pay for on that. So my monetize my client events. And again, if you’re not doing client events, you should anyway because you should be loving on them. But typically I sell anywhere between three to four additional units, every client event just from again, the law of reciprocity, and then having it is good for my home support team partners to they’re out there. And they come in, you know, the ones who are sponsoring, they’re there, and they’re meeting my clients face to face. And so it’s a great opportunity.

D.J. Paris 32:12
And the other thing that you said that I absolutely love, and I’ve sort of been beating the drum on this since I started the podcast, although I’m not a producing agent. So probably nobody listens to me, but but my guests, they do listen to so I wanted to make sure they that because you’ve said so much already, that I know a lot of our listeners heads are probably spinning going, Oh my God, there’s so many good ideas. This is a good one that I had. I’m trying to think of anyone we’ve done almost 500 episodes. My memory is garbage. So maybe somebody said this before, but I don’t think so. And here’s what Amy mentioned. And she said it very quickly. But it was really a brilliant nugget, in my opinion, which was when she has clients. She’s like, Oh, by the way, you know, she obviously knows where they work. She knows, you know, probably enough about the office they worked at or a little bit about their business. And then Amy’s like, Hey, who’s like the HR person, I want to talk to them and see if I can come in and do a presentation for the other employees, which is absolutely one of the smartest things because you’re going to have one of their employees vouching for you and saying, oh my god, you got to have Amy in here. She’ll bring in lunch, and she’ll do a little presentation. And that is absolutely brilliant. And nobody else does

Amy Stockberger 33:17
that. So I’m creating a course on this because we have you read the book, The Dream manager book? No. Okay, so the dream manager was, I think it was written in 2007. Back before the world was the world now, right where we’ve just had such a hard time with the employees and we own my husband and I own a handful of businesses. So we know how hard it is to keep keep keep attract and retain good talent. And so that’s basically the concept of that book is that it’s getting harder and harder each year to attract and retain good talent, so employees, and that a happy employee is a productive employee. So what I’ve done is I’ve created my and they a corporate partnership with all of these things with the foundation in my lifetime home support, and I’ve gone out to companies and just say here, I want to be a corporate partnership, I’m going to offer you all these things for free all this different parts of my VIP that we haven’t talked about all of it, I’m gonna offer that for you for free to put into your employee benefit program. And you can do this too, to help you become a better place to work for your employees don’t just have one more benefit of working for you. We’re going to offer up different Lunch and Learns activities because again, statistically an employee who owns is typically a more productive employee than an employee that rents is just stats is what it is that we come in and we just did we we get the opportunity to be in front of these people and not and again, I have you know, the high level you have the sea level that I’m getting in front of because we’re offering them this and I also get all the employees too. So the lead gen I’m able to give to my agents from from what we’re seeing from this is fabulous, like my goal is to have 10,000 employees signed up by the end of 23 We just signed up a really big one that I’m so excited about that it’s just going to be a huge thing for us to be able to help them the big company but also my employees or my my agents I’m gonna be able to help them grow their business even bigger than I have, because I’m gonna have more leads coming in for them through In this lifetime home support corporate partnership program.

D.J. Paris 35:03
Yeah, it’s it’s a, it’s a wonderful idea. Tell us more about the program itself for agents who might want to consider adding in some of not only these processes, but these revenue streams, right? Like, this is an amazing thing that you’ve figured out not just how to, because I’ve had a lot of agents on our show, who have amazing processes and strategies, and really, it’s just incredible, but they haven’t always monetized other parts of the business outside of the actual transaction, which of course, is monetized. So this idea of monetizing everything else, even like you were saying, you know, you know, getting a van and, and, you know, getting advertising on it. And even that in and of itself is smart, because it’s essentially becomes a free thing. But tell us more about the program to start your VIP club. Let’s I’d love to hear like what do people get? And what are the price points for it? Okay,

Amy Stockberger 35:55
so it’s basically the only course of its kind that gives agents single agents team leads brokers, a roadmap to creating a VIP club that will turn their clients into referral partners for life, and also to walk them through how to monetize each part of it. So from the moving trucks to the party shed to the tool shed to the discount center, I have discounts for all of these and discounts for the products that they can buy, as well as what products to buy, which ones are the best, then I it’s a seven course module seven module course sorry, in there and it has a section on each of the pillars for implementing monetizing checklists has a whole operations module has a whole marketing module for your own, I have a VIP clubs made for you, I have press releases made for you, I have your 32nd elevator speech made for you, I have your your first your rollout to your data bank, that initial rollout to your data bank, I have everything you’re gonna need to get sponsorship for your client events, how to throw a big a big, great client event again, I’m very system centric. So I also in this course gave away as a bonus. So my three of my my high level client event checklist from beginning to end that basically all they have to do is put one thing in it auto populates everything they need to do to run a a profitable client event that their clients are gonna love and their agents are going to attend. That’s the other part of it, to get their agents there to really love it. So that’s included in it. We also have a software, like I said that we created for our lifetime home support model. So it walks you through how the software works and what it’s going to do to save you on employee time. And it’s going to help keep you and give you more referrals because your clients have a one stop shop that that they’re going to need after the transaction again, they’re not going back to your website after the transaction, they’re just not. And so it just gives you a step by step no shiny object like I think our industry is so shiny object, don’t you like people throw money and all this stuff, and then they don’t go back and check the ROI. So this is a no shiny object. Here’s, here’s what you do, I’m going to show you how to do it, I’m going to give you all the tools you need from the contracts to sell off your sponsorship for your trucks to your client events, to your party and tool ship, as well as additional lead generation that goes into it. Because all of this has additional lead generation, I give away all of his stuff to nonprofits for free, I give it away to first responders for free, I give it away I sponsor some schools that I give it away to for free guess what I get to do I get to go in and talk to these people or I get to send in my employees to go in and talk to these people and tell them about our lifetime home support model. Because we’re doing that and it’s a good community to give back. I love that again, you should want to do that as a business owner. That it’s it’s a whole circle all around way for them to grow a airtight, no worrying about any type of market shift type of business.

D.J. Paris 38:38
So what I love is specifically going all the way back to one of my sort of initial questions was like, What are you doing in between the sales? Well, you’re basically telling us all of the things that you’re doing in between sales cycles, which how long and you’re like, what’s the average time where somebody buys or sells a home, and then on to their next, like seven years, five to seven years,

Amy Stockberger 39:00
actually three to five in our market. So when you think of the lifetime value of a first time homebuyer homebuyer, they’re a fiber, you know, they’re usually five transactions, you know, so you think about that, if that they’re five transactions for you as a first time homebuyer through the life of your career, then think of how many other referrals you’re getting per year off of them. That’s a really delicious career.

D.J. Paris 39:19
And the fact that you even have a private Facebook group really allows them possibly depending on how active they are in Facebook, to really get almost daily interactions with you, right, like, depending on how much content you guys are putting in there. But I was going to ask you like what do you do in between sales? Well, you’re doing so many different things where you’re just you’re constantly in contact and I bet you don’t even necessarily have to ask your clients Hey, are you do you need my help buying or selling something because you’re so present in their life? They’re reaching out to you I imagine you don’t even have to ask for the business.

Amy Stockberger 39:53
We know it’s it’s it’s beautiful. We really are going over 70% of our business comes from repeat each referral business and that’s, that’s a low because I also have an ISA department but my highest isa lead source is off of calls coming in. So those calls coming in are typically off of them either seen stuff that we’re posting out there about our lifetime support model or referrals in from past clients. And so, you know, that’s right, because then it’s then it’s Zillow, you know. So, my ISA is next one is Zillow. So it’s you actually

D.J. Paris 40:25
get more inbound calls than Zillow. But then you have like, purchasing leads from Zillow. Yeah,

Amy Stockberger 40:30
the company can list me calls or the commission via house calls. And then think about it though, too. So we, and this is all in my course. Again, it’s the hook, it’s a hook, they’re calling, because they’re contacting five to six different other agents. So again, my agents are trained that if they’re out, you know, the first time they’re showing you say, a client buyer doesn’t want to come in, and they’re meeting them in the driveway. They’re, they’re handing them the marketing sheet about their lifetime home support, and to say, hey, just by the way, oh, by the way, the sales this is what else do we have to do to help you build wealth wealth through real estate with our lifetime home support model with us and one year, you’re gonna save likely over $10,000? By doing something you’re going to do anyway?

D.J. Paris 41:05
Right? Amazing, what you really have, I mean, when you say you’re a systems person, you are really a systems person. So I imagine one of the main benefits is it just gives agents not just a blueprint of, of, you know, sort of how to think about building these systems, but actually tells them what to do on a daily basis.

Amy Stockberger 41:25
Yep. So at the end of every module, because that’s what it is, people will take a course and then they won’t know what to do. So at the end of every module, I call it my action step checklist, the end of every module, I have an action step checklist that tells them black and white, this is what you need to do to implement what you just learned. Here’s the checklist, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, on what you need to do, to move to the next step to continue to build that VIP club.

D.J. Paris 41:49
Yeah, it’s, it’s really amazing. And, and as far as cost, what what is the cost for the start your VIP club? 1997. Gotcha. So just shy of $2,000. And for anyone listening, that’s like, Oh, that’s a lot of money. Well, it’s really less than probably a third of one transaction. Right? So it’s, yeah, yeah, it’s it, guys. It’s a one time payment, you know, basically $2,000. And if some, if you could, you know, I think back to because I have to build the systems for our company in more of the recruiting side, and the retention side. And I can tell you, I spent a lot more than $2,000, putting all of that together over the last 12 years, and I would have killed to have somebody hand me a program like that, I would have gladly paid way more than $2,000, because it actually pays, it doesn’t just pay for itself, it actually generates incredible amount of revenue.

Amy Stockberger 42:42
Oh my gosh, the amount of revenue that you have from this, just from your repeat business is in there. And then when you think about it, yeah, it’s just a system and strategy. If you don’t have to come up with it. Mark Twain said, There’s no such thing as that original idea. Everything is just out there that just doesn’t exist. Same thing, you take this and it gives you a step by step on how to create it, implement it, and monetizing quickly. And then I also, I have a virtual assistant trained in my lifetime Home Support Program, that I sell time blocks out to my students to who want to implement faster. So my VA is have stepped into my students and help them just go with that if they don’t have either the bandwidth in house right now or they want extra help. As somebody who knows everything about this system already. They can buy time blocks in my lifetime home support, virtual assistants, too.

D.J. Paris 43:26
Yeah, that that makes so much sense. I I was I was at an event yesterday morning, here for our local association where we bring in top producers and have them speak to two to newer agents and we had about 300 people there. And it was a wonderful event and somebody grabbed me who I didn’t know he I guess he’s a fan of the podcast and said, speaking of virtual assistants, he goes I listened to an episode you did about you know why a virtual assistant makes sense. And I finally pulled the trigger did it he goes, I’ve like doubled my business because Easy,

Amy Stockberger 44:01
easy, easy. I told my agents all the time. If you’re doing it, then you’re the assistant you don’t need to be do you know my average agent, you know, like getting they’re selling, you know, close to 30 You know, and 22 homes a year and so that they shouldn’t be doing those things. You know, we have I think we have six VAs right now over in the Philippines that that we have and it just helps systemize so many things that we’re not worried

D.J. Paris 44:24
about. Yeah, we have VAs as well for our free running the back end of our brokerage not client facing vas, but you but but client facing bas are great too. And all of ours are from the Philippines as well. And boy I’ve had I’ve been using VAs in the Philippines for six years now I think and just incredible, incredible opportunities there. So globalized, we can find great talent from overseas, you know, with an internet connection and it’s just it’s just amazing.

Amy Stockberger 44:58
And right now just to speak to that I think a lot of agents again, and brokers who are just who are frozen in fear and not taking advantage of the opportunity and have let a lot of bas go. So right now there’s an influx of bas available. So again, for somebody thinking about that, that it’s right, now’s a good time to get a VA who’s trained in nearly every tech stack that’s out there.

D.J. Paris 45:20
Yeah. So what would you recommend, as a first step for somebody who does feel a little frozen right now, they don’t have a whole lot of clients, everyone’s bummed out about interest rates and inventory. And obviously, mindsets really important. So what would you recommend that somebody could do as just like a first step forward, to just start recognizing the opportunity that exists this year,

Amy Stockberger 45:47
they need to build their database, build their data bank, so if they want to email me, Amy and Amy stockbroker.com, I will send them my data bank builder, for free, send them out to for them to do just sit down and fill out just their data bank builder that’s just going to be memory jogs for them, of everybody they know who should be living within their database within their CRM, and then they need to turn around and do the next step. Put them in their CRM and let it start working for him. And then yeah,

D.J. Paris 46:13
are you a big fan of collecting as much data of data points as you can to give you a reason to reach out in other words, like how I don’t know how detailed you get with your with your clients in your CRM, but you obviously know where they work, because we talked about why that’s important. And also to you can put Google Alerts up for these companies. And if you see any major news come through another reason to pick up the phone, Hey, I just saw your company one this big deal or whatever. So I imagine a lot I mean, you’ve talked about a lot of what you do is real estate adjacent, or even not necessarily related to real estate, because you’re trying to just immerse yourself in their lives, which include work life, home, everything you I imagine you probably have a lot of data points in your CRM for each one of your your, you know, your data, or you said called Data Bank, sorry,

Amy Stockberger 46:59
yeah, we do we keep as much as we possibly can in there. I mean, that’s a big part, I think that I tell my agents is to that’s one of the benefits are working for our companies, our business plan is, is set up because I made all the mistakes. And so I’ve set it up so that they don’t have to, and they can scale easily and don’t have to do it the hard way like I did they are they’re able to do it the easy way with everything that we’ve we’ve taken care of for them. Because think about it too. Like I didn’t start as I didn’t use my CRM to the level I use it now, probably 10 years ago. I think if I did my head, I’m like, Oh, you have much more success. I would have had I use that the way I should have. But but then you think of a CRM, what are they using for those drip campaigns? Are they using the built in ones? Are they going back? Are they really putting any of their unique value propositions, my course has it all, I have a whole drip campaign for every part of it from the from the time they rent something to the drip campaign and the funnel they have from when they come in as a new lead. So you have the hook in there from a web lead to a past client to a nonprofit to your HST partners, all those in there. So you’re staying top of mind through all the ways you need to.

D.J. Paris 48:05
Yeah, it makes it makes all the sense in the world. I don’t know how big the rental the residential rental market is in Sioux Falls. I don’t know if that’s a possible source of revenue for agents. I here in Chicago, we’re in downtown. So obviously, there’s tons of rentals. And so many agents start out in rentals, and so many agents don’t. And I always encourage agents who aren’t like flush with leads, especially if they’re new, which of course nobody is, when they start, I’m like, do as many leads as you can, because almost everyone that owns used to rent, right? And I don’t know if that that might not translate to every market out there. But do you see a lot of agents doing rentals as a way to just as an entry point in your market to? Or do you encourage your agents to do that?

Amy Stockberger 48:49
If not, you don’t really have the biggest It’s not much. It’s just not even really a thing here? Yeah.

D.J. Paris 48:55
What about supporting local businesses? So you talked about having a vendor? Do you? I would love to know a little because this is another thing that anybody can go out and do go ahead and tell talk. So okay,

Amy Stockberger 49:05
so one of my standards of practice for our agents is that they have to be in a performing networking group that meets on a weekly basis. So at least group so and B and I’s are not for everybody. They’re just not they weren’t for me when I first got into the business basically, because I was dirt poor did not have the money for a BNI. And it just wasn’t the structure that my brain worked best in. So I created a leads group and I have a system for my agents to where they have to be a part of a leads group that again, that meets on a weekly basis, the benefit of leads groups, there’s exclusivity to your market, so it’s not like the chamber, I sit on the board of our chamber so I love the chamber chambers a big part of our business too, but it’s not like the Chamber you have exclusivity in that and you’re meeting with all the holidays over the one year you’re meeting likely like 40 times the investment to be in ours is about $45 a month and you have the opportunity to sit down especially as Realtors once a week and during your 32nd interview your 32nd commercial real Going around introducing, you’re giving out all your listings, you gotta get better bet that I’m telling you every seller in my list seller presentation that that’s part of my SOPs for my agents that we’re giving out our listings at everything. So again, word of mouth marketing, that’s the second place for buyers find out about a

D.J. Paris 50:13
listing, you’re giving out your listings. That’s very interesting. That makes sense.

Amy Stockberger 50:17
Well, at the second place buyers find out about a house for sale is through the realtor. So that word of mouth needs to be so big. And so that’s, you know, a big thing too, if you and I do have, I have a mini course coming out on that, and a blueprint to build a converting leads group. But that is such an easy, easy feel like you could do 10 transactions a year just from that I typically sell my personal business three to 4 million a year for my group that I started back in 2004. So So it, it’s such an easy, and again, it’s rapport build, it’s relationship building, and they’re out there, you’re building their business, so they’re out there helping you build yours. And again, the more eyeballs you have on your listings, the better.

D.J. Paris 50:52
Yeah, and you know, the vendor, the vendor list to is or the partnership list, I guess I should say is so important at this meeting, I was at yesterday, this this white, this top producer of that one of the one of the agents was they said, Well, where do you Where’s some of your best referral sources? And he said, Well, everyone talks about their existing clients, and yes, you know, good chunk of mine come from there. But he’s like, you know, what nobody talks about, because it’s maybe just a little bit slightly sort of uncomfortable. He goes, divorce attorneys, divorce attorneys are unbelievable. And the whole crowd you can see kinda like shuttered like, oh, I don’t really want it that’s dark and kind of, you know, maybe uncomfortable, but it was like, he goes, Oh, no, no, he goes, divorce attorneys are, first of all, they’re always in business. They always have lots of business, unfortunately. But, but, or fortunately, depending on the situation, but regardless, they have people who need to move, right. So this is these are huge opportunities to get in, to really think about leveraging these relationships and whether, you know, an earning, so I’d love to, I’d love to hear more about some of those partnerships that you have where you’re able to provide value like obviously on either end there.

Amy Stockberger 52:00
Yeah. So even probate to Anthony, we have attorneys in town for probate because estate planning attorneys Yeah, they have to. And that’s really one of the reasons like my instant offer program. So we have all like, like I said, systems and strategies for every part of the home buying and selling process for every season. So from that lease buyout, the very first house, and oftentimes that instant offer program we have is the last house. So that’s a really good program for you know, it’s typically it’s the older child who’s taking care of that for their their parents, typically out of state. And so having those relationships with probate attorneys in town to just hand those leads over. They’re just they’re going somewhere we know that they’re going to sell. And that’s a that’s a good good lead source for us.

D.J. Paris 52:40
Wow. Well, I and by the way, you know, so Amy’s a couple of things we want to mention here. So Amy’s program, you know, to really create a lifetime lead strategy, and have all the systems that by the way, she’s been working on for, gosh, quite a number of years now, and made all the mistakes that you don’t have to make, because they’ve already been made. And she already knows how to, to move past that. And to get her best practices. And again, she’s one of the top teams in the country. This is not, this is not a self help guru that has never actually practice. Like, like somebody like me who goes, Oh, this is what you should do. And you’re like, well, DJ, you never practice yet. Don’t listen to me. But listen, because Amy knows what she is talking about. And if you go to start your VIP club.com You can learn more about all of this. And guys, I don’t ever recommend any. Really, I mean, very rarely do I ever recommend a program for our audience because I don’t want our audience investing in something that that that they are going to come back to me and say, Why don’t like that DJ guy anymore. I just spent $2,000 and got nothing, no, you’re gonna get a lot with this program. And I need to use this program myself. For some ways I need to better strategize and process out are our business. And so this this is I’m going to be a client of this. And I’m going to, really I am because I need what here’s what I need help with. I need help better monetizing our podcast. So I’m going to I would love to chat with you offline about that. But But my point is, is Amy has figured all this stuff out. So guys, if you go to start your VIP club.com Then you can learn more about him, please, please consider investing in it. I know it’s a little bit of money. But trust me if it just gets you even just one deal, it pays for itself and it’s gonna get you a lot more than that. More importantly, it’s not even really about getting one deal and having it paid for it. It’s about setting up systems so that you don’t have to wake up every day and go What am I supposed to do? What should I do? Because that is a tremendous amount of anxiety. You know, we I know what that feels like when you don’t have processes and systems in place. It sucks when you wake up and you’re like there’s fear there’s, you just don’t know what to do. You’re sort of flying blind out there. Get a system this is this

Amy Stockberger 54:52
paralysis is overwhelmed paralysis. That’s just what happens if there isn’t a direct checklist and what you need to do. That’s what happens. Yep,

D.J. Paris 54:59
and By the way, the other thing I’ll mention for any agents that are in the Sioux Falls area, or are in, you know, a surrounding area of South Dakota and you’re like, oh, I don’t work with a team like this, my brokerage isn’t quite giving me these kinds of things. Or I would love to like work with Amy or maybe become a member of her team. While she obviously doesn’t accept every realtor that that reaches out. But Amy, she has her team is growing. They have 15 agents right now. And they are one of the top teams in the entire country. I know if I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota as an agent, I there wouldn’t I wouldn’t even look elsewhere. I’d be like, Why just wanna go with the best. So, Amy, if there is anyone out there and by the way, guys, remember to that when the pandemic happened, a lot of people started moving to places that they weren’t moving to prior to the pandemic or Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, right? So you might even if you’re not in that local area, maybe you have referrals of people that are now exploring, getting, you know, you know, retirement homes there or, or, you know, maybe just moving to because they can work from home. So even if you just want to refer business to Amy like she would obviously love the opportunity to speak to you but if you are an agent in her in her area in Sioux Falls in in that local area, and you want to consider possibly working or joining up with her team. Me, can you tell us a little bit about what you your team is looking for in an agent?

Amy Stockberger 56:21
Yes. And for those who who are looking to refer business, we go to my YouTube channel living in Sioux Falls, we have a big book of business for every little I have, I have a very dedicated and systemized relocation integration process. So I guarantee they’ll be taken care of, to the nth degree. But yeah, we’re looking for an agent, we’re looking for agents who are there to serve, you know, again, my vision for my company is to build big juicy legacies, through wealth through real estate with lifetime home support. And that’s what I want for my agents, we have a very support driven model. So we have the insight Tran transaction management listing coordination inside sales department for the generate a lot of leads, we pay for the majority of the tech stack to for our agents so they can be as as profitable as possible for them. And again, I’ve set it up for them to build their businesses. So they don’t have to do it the way I did it, that they’re going to be out there doing what they’re best at, which is taking care of that client. And we have pretty much everything else that we’re trying to take care of for him on the backside of it so they can continue to keep serving more and more clients.

D.J. Paris 57:15
Wow. So if they’re if there’s an agent that is interested in maybe learning more or providing value to your team, or maybe just wanting your guidance on what’s the best way they should reach out to you,

Amy Stockberger 57:27
yep, just at AMI at ami stockbroker.com Or they can go any my handles are at AMI, stockbroker realestate.com. And then for our digital marketing or digital courses, it’s just ASR you Academy.

D.J. Paris 57:39
Yeah, ASR Academy, or if you just go to start your VIP club.com That’ll take you also right there as well. It’ll redirect you. We’re gonna have links to all of this in the show notes. Don’t worry, you don’t have to write it down. It’s all in our show notes. Just look for there. And we will have it in there. But Amy, oh, my gosh, this this is I could have you on every single week, we could be talking about another process another thing agents should be doing. And you know what, that’s not a terrible idea. I do offline. We could we could possibly even drill down now. Everyone, we’re I’m peeling back the curtain for our audience, isn’t it? No, no, but but this is this is what I’m curious. So I was just talking to one of my colleagues this morning, he was going how’s the podcast going? Now I’ll just give everyone a little behind the scenes of what it’s like to run a podcast. And I would call my podcast, a successful podcast because it pays for itself. We have sponsors, we have a pretty sizable audience. And I’m not saying that any sort of brag, or what younger people say flex for that reason, which is so so silly. I’m not I’m not doing it. Because I’m the person that always thinks oh, it’s no big deal. I don’t you know, I’m not that important. But we do have a pretty sizable audience. My point is, is I am always wondering what our audience needs. Now, because podcasting is largely a one way communication, right? I’m listening, you’re you’re listening to me and Amy, I don’t often get a lot of feedback, we get a lot of lovely fan letters, like almost every day, we get some one or two letters from people. It’s so sweet. But I don’t often I don’t often know what our listeners actually want or need, because there’s not an easy way to sort of get that feedback. So what I’m going to ask everyone to do is if you think that this would be really helpful if maybe once a month, we had Amy on and she did a deep dive into one particular, you know, pillar or something, just because I think we could create really, really a lot of value for our agents, or for our listeners, I shouldn’t say and for our agents in my firm as well, but where they could learn some of this stuff, because I think this you have so many processes. I think this really deserves more than than one go around so we could really do a deep dive and learn more so I would be honored to and yeah, and I am excited as well. So guys, everyone out there, please visit start your VIP club.com Also, Amy stock burger.com is another place, I can just go to the show notes, we’ll click on the links, there’s so much great content there, a lot of it’s free, by the way to Amy’s very, very generous around giving. And, you know, let’s it also again, if you’re an agent, you want to maybe join our team, or maybe you have business for people that are moving to the area, obviously, you know, why not refer to the number one team in the area, that’s what I would do. So a visit ami stockbroker.com, as well as an AMI. So as we’re kind of wrapping up here, I definitely saw oh, by the way back back to our audience. So audience, if you like, if you think this would be really helpful for you, I didn’t give you an action step, let us know. And there’s not an easy way to give us that feedback. But if you go on our, our Facebook page, or if you just send us an email, which you can do at keeping it real pod.com We have contact information there and all of our social channels, you can let us know. But if this would be really helpful for you, and I know that it would be, but I just want to double check with our audience, make sure that I’m giving you the value you want, let us know and we’ll have Amy back on. But Amy, on behalf of our audience, I say thank you for taking time out of your busy life, your very, very busy life, to come on our show and talk about some of these processes. And I hope lots of our people really consider investing in your start your VIP club. So they can have a lifetime sort of referral business. And this isn’t the same sort of thing that you get from other sources. This is this is a really unique program that also shows you how to monetize it all. So I mean, that’s, I think just an incredible value add. So start your VIP club.com. And also on behalf of Amy and myself, we want to thank the audience for making it all the way to the end of this episode. We appreciate you we love you. You’re the reason we do this show. And please just if you want to help us grow to things, support our sponsors. So consider investing in their products and services. They’re the reason we can pay our bills. And tell a friend about the show just one other realtor that you that is struggling right now. And guess what, almost all realtors are struggling right now. So send them a link to this episode. Maybe somebody that wakes up on a Monday and doesn’t always know what to do as a realtor. What should I do today? Well, this episode that Amy provided a lot of great suggestions for people to really make 2023 a good year let’s let’s let’s make this a year where you get more market share. This is the year agents are falling away. They’re falling off. And this is a great opportunity for those who stay because you’re gonna pick up that business but you need processes.

Amy Stockberger 1:02:32
Yes, DJ, thanks for everything you do for our industry. You’re awesome.

D.J. Paris 1:02:36
Oh, thank you, Amy. Well, I appreciate that as well. And, and again, we’ll talk about having you come on more regularly because I think this would be so much fun. All right, guys. Thank you. We will see everybody on the next episode. Visit our website keeping it real pod.com Tell a friend about the show. Invest in Amy’s in Amy’s in Amy’s program. Start your VIP club.com All right, Amy, thank you so much. We’ll see everyone on the next episode.

Nick Niehaus as a Co-Founder and Head Trainer at Business Video School talks about working with real estate agents. Nick discusses the importance of coaching and training, marketing tips and social media tricks. Last, Nick describes why, based on his experience, he believes video messages are very powerful to create a strong bond with clients.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Nick Niehaus can be reached at +1 314-548-9106.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.

D.J. Paris 0:00
Thinking about adding more video this year to your branding and marketing but not completely sure how to do it? Well, don’t worry, we’re going to talk to an expert today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solutions so that you can easily generate more business. There agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with business video consultant, Nick Niehaus to tell you exactly what you should be doing this year to take your videos to the next level and attract more clients. Before we get to Nick. I guarantee there’s another realtor you know who needs to up their marketing game specifically around video send please send them a link to this episode Nick gives so many great tips and advice in here it was guaranteed to help them in your in their business. And they’re going to be guaranteed to be thankful to You for sending them a link. So please send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done, and we have just about 500 episodes now they can all be played directly from a browser. You don’t even have to open up a podcast app, go to keeping it real pod.com Every episode there and also, we’re in every podcast directory so you can always search for keeping it real and hit that subscribe button. Okay guys, let’s get to the main event, my conversation with Nick Niehaus.

Today on the show we have Nick Niehaus with Business Video School me tell you more about Nick. Now Nick Niehaus is the co founder and head trainer at Business Video school he has spent the last six years working with 1000s of real estate agents to help them overcome the challenges of transitioning to video communication, and marketing. In doing so Nick has become an expert at helping email up sorry, me. Repeat that last sentence there I screwed up. In doing so Nick has become an expert at helping small business owners gain confidence on camera and learn how to use video to grow their business through branding. Please everyone go to visit Nick’s website which is biz video school.com Business bi Z bi Z video school.com link to that in the show notes. Nick, welcome to the show.

Nick Niehaus 3:48
Yeah, thanks, TJ. Thanks for having me on.

D.J. Paris 3:50
Very excited to chat with you. I you know the world has really changed a lot a while obviously the world’s always changing but certainly with the advent three years ago, you know, with when COVID hit, and we were doing work from home, I saw a shift in Realtors really probably more out of desperation than anything but just embracing some of the video conferencing technology, more video production when it comes to social media. And I’ve seen agents continue to evolve their video practices, even now we’re largely back to normal and we’re moving around and about of course, I’m still seeing that trend continue. Obviously the rise of tick tock has has also increased the popularity of video, but I am so excited to have you on the show because I want to talk all things video. You know, this is something that I think every one of our listeners or viewers can can relate to and try to figure out as they determine what they want to spend their time and energy on. In 2023, I think video is a great skill that really anyone can develop. And obviously, you teach people how to do that. So I’m excited to have you out.

Nick Niehaus 5:11
Awesome. Yeah, no, and I love talking about this stuff. But that’s the pandemic certainly sort of accelerated and disrupted all kinds of stuff with videos. So it’s been an interesting three years.

D.J. Paris 5:21
Well, let’s, let’s talk about the role of video. So first, let’s get into your background before we actually start giving suggestions to agents. So what brought you into into this space?

Nick Niehaus 5:33
Yeah, so I mean, I’ve been, so I actually, you know, when I went to college, I started working as a freshman for a company called College works painting, and then it worked in there for six years. And in that experience, like you basically you run a small painting business, kind of like an internship program. And so that was my first experience with with marketing, which I sort of put quotes around, because there was a lot of door knocking, because it’s like going out knocking on doors, putting fliers out, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, it’s going going away is back at this point. But the reason I bring that up is because I basically had been working in marketing ever since. And so it’s something that I’ve been good at, in some areas, you know, really bad at and others. What happened though, is I actually started a company, man, it’s been almost eight years, I think, at this point. And what we did is we would put out flyers for other businesses, right? So we got working with real estate agents. As a result of that, because of the concept of farming, we had this cool sticky flyer, you could like stick right in the middle of a front door, very, you know, I get kind of catching. And so we started working with them and started doing this farming stuff. And that was, that was probably about six years ago. And it was right when video was really starting to emerge as a marketing tool for small businesses. And so there was kind of this big, this big kind of moment in time where you can start to run your own Facebook, video ads, you can start to run YouTube ads, and very few small businesses were even kind of aware of these possibilities. And so we kind of went to these agents who you’re working with to in these flyers. And part of it was we didn’t want to be out there, you know, putting fliers on doors for the rest of our lives are like, well, what can we do, it’s a little bit more sustainable. And so we started making videos with them, and you know, bringing them into our studio and coaching them on camera. And you know, a lot of it ended up being sort of psychological stuff, you know, getting over that fear of the camera getting over their, you know, qualms about seeing themselves on that video screen. And then three years ago, right around the beginning of the pandemic, actually a little before that, we started to realize, you know, hey, these people are common, we’re making a video with them, you think this would kick start this, this sort of brand effort, hey, I’m going to use video everywhere, I’m gonna start, you know, sending sending my clients video messages and start making social media videos, you know, and it wasn’t happening, you know, and that’s, that’s what kind of led us to saying, well, there’s a gap here, you know, there’s something people are missing, or they misunderstanding, you know, how to use video is that the technical steps? And the more research we did it was there was sort of all of it, you know, and we said, Okay, well, we need to build a training program for this, we need to start teaching people how to use this, this new form of communication, which is the way that we saw it. And so timing, it worked out perfect, because we actually, we built a course and piloted it, we launched that December of 2019. And so like, within three months, the pandemic swept the country. And I mean, literally, we got shut down, we weren’t, we weren’t allowed to make videos with people for a couple months. And that that was a forced pivot, obviously. But we sort of immediately said, Alright, let’s start doing this training. We got this course, let’s see, we can do we brought some partners in, I think we had 900 people come through that first course within about three months, you know, so it’s like, okay, there’s clearly clearly a need for what we’re doing here. And we’ve just been kind of running ever since.

D.J. Paris 8:32
I, that’s amazing. I remember back, really, before video was so prevalent in social media, in particular, when you would go to do anything in the video, they would typically ask you, have you been media trained? Right, that was that was the the old age sort of skill set that have you been you’ve been in front of a camera before? This is really before, we all just had, you know, high definition cameras in our pockets that could you know, take almost comparable shots with, you know, with these $20,000 cameras. And so it used to be a thing where you’re like, No, you really do need to get trained, you need to know what to say and what not to say. And you still do need to get trained. But thankfully, the barrier to entry obviously has, you know, your phone, which everyone has. And so let’s I think first what would probably make the most sense for our audience is let’s set let’s make the case for video. And when I when we talk about video, let’s define what what we’re talking about. Why Why should Realtors be focused on video this year?

Nick Niehaus 9:41
Yeah, and I love that question because I think you know, a lot of folks they get into tactics or strategy way too fast, you know, in a lot of these conversations that go straight to like, alright, what kind of videos should I make? And that was one thing that stood out to me when we first started the school and we started looking into Hey, what exists out there is that a lot of the recorded presentations, a lot of the top you know stuff people were talking on was just so far down the path in our eyes, you know, sort of like, hey, they’re skipping a lot of steps here. And no wonder people are thinking they should do these things, but they’re not taking action because they’re, they’re overwhelmed. They’re confused, you know, and it’s kind of a byproduct of the way it’s being talked about. So. So yeah, I think I think taking a step back and asking ourselves like, well, what, what is it? What is video, right? I mean, so that’s where I started, like, in my mind, video is a form of communication, I think it’s important to see it that way. Because everything we do to communicate with someone remotely, right, so if I’m gonna send a text and email, used to be sending letters, we don’t do much of that anymore. But you know, letters, all that kind of stuff. It was all it was all kind of created to supplement or, you know, sort of replace a face to face conversation, right? So the only reason we ever do any of these other kinds of communication is because we can’t be physically face to face with that other person, right? So if we, if we sort of say, Okay, well, ideally, I get into the same room I’m sitting across from the table, we all know that when we’re in that context, we’re able to build relationships the most effectively, we’re able to close deals at the highest rate, all of that stuff is kind of maximized. Well, that’s what video simulates better than anything else, you know. So when we compare it to a phone call, all this kind of stuff, the only form of communication we have available that feels as close to a face to face conversation is clearly video, right? And that has has a ton to do with trust. So when I can see somebody I mean, there’s actually a part of my brains called the fusiform gyrus that recognizes other people’s faces, and it stores that information and tells us, Hey, I’ve seen this person before. There’s an element of how many times right, if it’s somebody, I’ve seen a bunch, I automatically trust you. Because my brain says, Hey, this must be somebody who’s sort of part of my tribe, right? I see them every day, or I see him every

D.J. Paris 11:48
day, they’re safe, because I see them visually. They’re in my visual space occasionally. Yep.

Nick Niehaus 11:55
Right. And we evolved, I mean, that’s what’s interesting is like, throughout evolution, like we have not evolved to understand really any of these other forms of communication. So our brains at a at a fundamental level, when they see a person’s face, they the only thing that your brain can really understand is that person must be in the room with me, you know, so consciously, we know it’s not, but most of our brain is non conscious, right? It’s sort of,

D.J. Paris 12:19
it bypasses a little bit of, of those critical factors of the brain. So when we see someone, especially, you’re so right, because it’s not even just face, I think, I think when people are taking full body videos, it’s like, all of a sudden, we know what their, their physical being looks like. And just like we would with an actor, or somebody on television, we feel connected in some small way, consciously or unconsciously, simply because we, our brain thinks you know that, that yeah, you’re right. We’re in close proximity with them, even though we’re not.

Nick Niehaus 12:57
Yeah. And that’s huge. And it’s actually I emphasize this a lot in our trainings when it talks about how you frame yourself in a video, right? So a lot of folks like, if they send a video to somebody, their head is for some reason, in the bottom half of the frame, you’ve probably seen this where it’s like, you know, vertical video and their heads right out of the bottom, and they go space above it, you know, for for no reason. And a lot of it’s just they don’t know how to hold the phone, or they feel a little uncomfortable about putting their body out there. But that takes away from that experience. Right? So rather like that, that makes my brain question what’s going on? Now? I’m kind of like, well, I think I’m talking to this person, but like, it’s just their head floating there, which is kind of weird, right? So yeah, I think the more any kind of video I mean, this, this goes for public stuff, it goes for the more more intimate one to one video messages, you know, you should try to sort of appear like you would in front of that person if you were sitting across the table, right? So you want to incorporate some of your body, you want to make sure your face is large enough that they can read all your facial expressions, you know, you want to be somewhat careful about lighting, but mostly just so they can clearly see your face not because you have to look perfect, but you need to make sure they can see you just like they would if they were face to face. And if you do that, I mean that it’s a game changer, right? I mean, this is like I love sending video messages. Like I love to send people like Happy birthday videos. 10 seconds long. It’s such a perfect example of this, because then they see me, right, they have that sort of mini experience of having this kind of really quick face to face chat. But they remember it for months. I mean, I’ve had people that I’ll send him a birthday video one year, and a year later, I miss it. And they’re sending me a message like, Hey, where’s my birthday video, you know, because they remember from the year before, right? So there’s all that there’s all that stuff that’s going on in the human mind. And the reality is, once you get used to doing this, a lot of people look at video and they’re timid about it. And they kind of put it off because of that. But once you get used to using especially video kind of as a one to one or one to just a few people form of communication. It doesn’t take any more time. Right? So the time it takes to sit in front of a camera and say, Hey, let me give you a quick update on the transaction. Here’s what’s going on. In my experience. It’s actually fun faster than typing it out. Because I’m, you know, I type and I make some mistakes, I gotta go fix it, and you gotta overthink what you’re saying and make sure they don’t misinterpret what you wrote with a video, you don’t have to worry about that people understand it better, we actually comprehend more information when we can watch a person talking versus just reading the text on the screen. So that I mean, you know, we could sort of create a huge laundry list of sort of all the benefits for it. But I think at a fundamental level, that’s what you have to remind yourself is, hey, this is it’s not out. It’s not always a performance, right? It can be a performance, just like you can write a blog post that might get read by 1000s of people. But we can also send a text or an email, right? And we don’t we don’t overthink those things, we just do it, it’s just part of our day to day experience. That’s where I think people really need to focus on videos, how how do you just make it a normal thing you do as part of your day to day communication. And if you start there, number one, you see benefits a lot faster, it has an impact immediately. And then you also gets so much more comfortable on camera. So when it comes, you know, a few weeks later, a few months later, when you’re getting ready to build that YouTube channel or build that Tiktok you’re you’re much more comfortable, you’re much more confident on camera, and you just move a lot faster because of that. So I think there’s you know, I think a lot of us have sort of mix that up, we sort of started on the heart and and we need to sort of reset a little bit and come back to the beginning.

D.J. Paris 16:16
Boy, you just said so much. And my brain is spinning a little bit because I was thinking we were going to really pretty much exclusively talk about how to do video better on social media. And you said something? And of course, you do teach that but I am you said something that that really resonated with me today. Specifically, because it’s just happened to me just before we started our show. So this is so perfect, because you were talking about using video for more regular communication. So yes, of course, there’s a social media sort of strategy there. And, you know, people, realtors are always trying to figure out how much of my personal life do I display do I put on display on my Facebook page and Instagram, etc. But you’re saying we’re really talking about as a different thing right now, which I think is really critical. Because this just happened to me before our show, which was you can send one to one messages to people because we think about branding and like I’m gonna put this out on Facebook, everyone’s gonna see it like you said, 1000s of people might read a blog post or see a video. But then there’s also one to one communication and I just received I will tell you, I we get pitched by advertisers, guests every single day on our show, a publicists, you know, whoever may reach out, you know, hey, book, our guests, I got it. This is probably happened in five years. I’ve out of 1000s of pitches. I’ve probably had this happen five times out of 1000s, no joke. And it was, hey, I made a video for you. I want you to check this out. I didn’t know if this was a guest. I didn’t know if it was a vendor. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what it was could have been a spam message. I had no idea. But he’s like, Hey, DJ, are actually wasn’t even meant to me. It’s for a producer. But but there was like, hey, zonna Check this out. And this guy has this company where he does computerized or robotic handwritten, you know, cards and notes and things anyway, and he was like, hey, DJ, I want to show this to you. I think there’s got to be a good fit for your show. Now, because I watched his 35 second video where he kind of like, I’m like, Oh, I know this guy. I instantly liked him. And and I don’t know anything about him, he might be a horrible human being. He might be, he might actually not be a good human being. I don’t know. But I liked him instantly. Because he took the time to make a video. I can’t even explain why I liked him. But there’s this unconscious part of the brain that when some when you do see somebody, you have a tendency to want to connect with them. And so there’s a visual component that bypasses even logic, like I don’t know this guy, he’s just some dude trying to get on my show, which happens all day long. Why do I really want and by the way, he’s not the only person with this exact kind of business. There’s lots of businesses that have these robotic things that handwriting, so it’s not even a unique value proposition. But for some reason I got so excited that he made me a video he made me though, it took him probably a minute to do it. It was crazy effective had he had just written me and said, Hey, I’ve got this thing I probably would have been like, no, there was something that lit up my brain automatically. The fact that I got a video message a one to one video message. And I know that isn’t necessarily the purpose of our conversation. But it just happened to me and it really affected. It affected the way we were like I’m like just bought it immediately book him.

Nick Niehaus 19:50
Wow. And from that. No, I mean, I love that actually. I mean, I think realistically I mean there’s a lot of people talking about how to do video for social media. I mean that you know, because because you can There’s a whole career of influencer, right? So there’s people out there whose job is to grow a following on social media. And I think it’s it’s a little bit unfortunate that so many business owners are looking to those people, and they’re learning about video from them, you know, I mean, then there’s, you know, they’re not all bad. It’s not a comment that they shouldn’t be doing that. But it’s a distraction. I think that’s the real problem, right, is that there are you know, I actually put out a sort of small survey on LinkedIn the other day, I was curious was like, Well, hey, remember when email first came out? You know, it’s been about 30 years at this point, right? But it’s like, remember, when it first came out? How did you use it initially? Did you send email to a single person at a time? Did you send it to like small groups? Or did you blast out, you know, massive newsletters to 1000s of people? And obviously, every single person said, I sent emails to just one person, right? Yeah. And we miss that step with video. Right? So we got, we got to the Yeah, so it’s like we started on on the other end of the spectrum, because a lot of that, I think, is because we all grew up with, I sort of define it as three primary categories of video, maybe just to, obviously, movies, television, and then some of us home videos, right. So some people will say, like, well, one, my dad had a camera, and he recorded us all the time. So they were on camera, but as you know, very intimate setting. And I think what happened is that a lot of us as we started to realize, hey, we have cameras in our pockets. Now we’ve got these tools available. We thought about the kinds of video we had the most experience with, right? So of course, we sort of immediately went to public facing video television shows stuff that, you know, 1000s Millions of people might see and talk about intimidating, right? I mean, and I did the same thing my very first video ever made, I put on Facebook, you know, I may have even put some money behind it. So I’ve seen by quite a few people. And it took me months. I mean, I went out and I bought equipment. And I set up a little mini studio and all this all stuff I tell our students not to do now. I did it. And it took me forever. But I still you know, I’m a fairly early adopter. So this was still six years ago at this point. But yeah, I mean, the further I got into it, the more I realized, like, Well, cool, that was great. And if I do that, consistently, I can do this branding thing. And you know, that all worked, especially over a long term period of time. But then I started sending video messages, you know, and that and that’s, that’s your example. I’ve had that happen a bunch of times. I mean, I had, you know, I was a totally new entity in the real estate space, because we weren’t, we weren’t working with realtors, and we sort of made this pivot into real estate. And for anybody who’s ever done that, you know, you kind of know how hard it can be to get through that front door. You know, obviously, real estate agents get pitched all the time, there’s all kinds of salespeople trying to sell to him. And so I was sending these video messages to brokers saying, Hey, can I come in and do a presentation for your agents and talk about video and I was putting a video in those emails, you know, and I got booked, I got a lot of doors opened. And you know, I’ve even had people tell me like, this is the most effective cold email I’ve ever gotten, you know, now granted, they’ve gotten more video emails since then. I’m not the only one doing it in St. Louis at this point. But I think there’s there’s another part of this kind of coming back to your example that is, is really urgent, you know, because there’s, there’s lots of reasons to get started doing this stuff right away. One thing that happens today, though, is that when somebody sees you make them a 32nd video that was just for them, they still have the same reaction of hey, this, this feels like television. And so they look at it, and they go, I would be too intimidated to do that. So that that is that additional layer of sort of like wow, like, you know, somebody’s used to make a video, it’s quicker than writing an email. So for them, they’re like literally saving time. And then the recipient is going oh my gosh, what an Impressive, impressive effort feels

D.J. Paris 23:39
like Saudi did something big, like when I saw this, right, this guy was it was in his warehouse with all of his machines, you know, scribbling robotic hands writing letters, and I was like, wow, look, I’m getting a behind the scenes tour. Of in literally all he does pull his phone out of his pockets. adj that’d be Yeah, you’re right. It seemed like a bigger deal to me than it than the effort that he put in. So the, the reaction you get is actually amplified more than the effort that’s put in, in theory, right?

Nick Niehaus 24:14
Yeah, yeah. And obviously, you know, you can’t know if that’s going to happen with every person, if you email somebody who’s a professional, you know, TV presenter or something, they’re not going to be as impressed. But that is, I mean, that’s a big deal. I mean, that’s especially like we this is why we talked so much about birthday videos, because every single person that gets that video from him, it was so little pressure on your part, right? I mean, you can literally go to Facebook, on your phone on the app, and you get a list of everybody’s birthday and literally next to each name is a messenger button, you click that now you’re in a one on one chat with them. And there’s also a video recording feature built into the messenger app, you know, so you basically hold the button down you say a few words and you click send and you can send 10 of these in like five minutes or less. I mean, that is you know, in terms of habits because obviously everything you want to do you as much of it as possible should become a habit makes a lot easier for you. I mean, that is a very, very easy habit to form you know, as a every day. But as I get my coffee or as I have lunch or you know, you’re tied to something already doing daily, I’m going to pull my phone and we’ll look at the list of birthdays, I’m gonna send one to anybody who I want to say that to you not to do it all your friends, but But I mean, imagine like somebody has been dragging their feet on making their first video, and they’ve been building this this Megan in this big mountain that they’re having trouble kind of overcoming. Start there two weeks from now you’ve you’ve made 30 videos, you know, you’ve increased the awareness with 30 people substantially, you’re developing those relationships, you may already have business from that outreach, even though all you’re doing is saying happy birthday, just from being top of mind, we had a we had an agent pick up like a $3 million listing a few weeks after sending somebody a happy birthday video, right? So you might have results already. And it’s like, I just I I can see, I see people sometimes almost kick themselves because they thought five years ago, they should start using video and they spent the past five years, procrastinating essentially right sort of finding reasons to keep waiting. And all it’s harder than I thought, Oh, it’s you know, it’s instant. It’s intimidating. And then they send these birthday messages and like, wow, this I should have started five years ago, you know, like, this is not there’s nothing about this. That’s hard. And it has such an incredible impact. You know, and I think that it just resonates with people. But the the urgency I was talking about is that more every week more businesses are doing this, you know, and I think if you do it first in your industry and the first customer, the customers are kind of getting video messages from you first. The advantage of that, like you you’re an innovator, this is stuff people go tell their friends about I mean, wow, you’re the hotshot agent in town. If you wait another six months, another year, another couple years, there will be other businesses doing it. And now all you’re doing is catching up, right? You don’t you don’t have the innovation. So the benefits still there. But you don’t set yourself apart the same way, right?

D.J. Paris 26:47
Boy, I agree with all of that. I actually think the one to one sort of option that we’re talking about one to one, meaning I’m going to produce a video for one person, in this case, the example of the happy birthday. This, this is such I’m only giggling because it is it I think about this, I was thinking about this, as you were talking that every year, of course, I have a birthday and Facebook tells you know the world that it’s my birthday, and I get you know, however many people say happy birthday, and I you know, 100 or whatever it is. And it’s lovely. And I’m so grateful for that. I get exactly zero video messages from anybody who say, you know, hey, I noticed it was your birthday today Happy Birthday, even if it was a 15 second message? Do I remember who out of those 100? Who wrote me on my Facebook page? Happy birthday? No, I mean, you know, whatever. It’s probably the same people every every year, I would remember who who made me a 15 second video because it would be the only video. And you’re right, it is a simple and easy thing. And it’s also a great way to get introduced to video if you’re not comfortable in front of the camera, because there’s really nothing at stake. You’re just like, Hey, happy birthday. And that is it. You know, you can use there’s other social media platforms that that can be used to prompt things like this. So birthday on Facebook? Absolutely. Like you said, go there every day. Look, first of all friend everybody you know, on Facebook and Instagram and or Instagram doesn’t have birthdays, but or maybe they do I don’t know. But But LinkedIn, LinkedIn does something very interesting where they show you when people have work anniversaries. So that’s another huge opportunity. Oh, I just saw you, you know, your fifth year at such and such company. Congratulations, hope you’re doing well. Or promotions or new jobs or you know, other life events. LinkedIn is really good. So that’s another place where you could find reasons to do that one to one short video. Why, you know, I’ve we’ve been doing this podcast for five or six years now. Nobody has talked about one to one videos. I am so one to one video messaging, I am really, really grateful to for you for this because it’s kind of blowing my mind.

Nick Niehaus 29:06
Yeah, well, I mean, I this is one of those things, too. It’s like, this is why I like you know, what was in our school, like, I get to focus 100% on video, my job is to learn about video and all different ways to use it and you know, kind of be as much of an expert as I can. And it’s an incredibly broad category. I mean, there are so many different kinds of video. But yeah, I mean, that was one thing that I’ve still been, I mean, the companies that make these tools like you know, just to name a few like, you know, bom bom dub, Vinyard loom, right? They, you know, they all kind of do similar things now, I mean, they talk about this stuff, obviously, you know, they some of these companies have written books and whatnot. But I don’t know if it’s just that people will just hear that as hey, you’re just trying to sell your product and so they tune it out or what, but when I’m listening to and I’m trying some of this stuff and I’m talking to some these power users, I mean, it’s it’s a no brainer. You know, a lot of the folks that I’ve seen that they get into a habit and hey, I did this for three Three weeks, I am never turning back, I will never stop using this tool like my clients are all understanding me better, my customer service has improved drastically, I’m getting more referrals, I’m getting more repeat business, it impacts everything. And here we are, and everybody’s still talking about tick tock and YouTube and all this other stuff, you know, and it’s not, you know, it’s like, I think we get stuck in this hole, one or the other type of mentality, it’s not the don’t ever do those things, there’s just so much more benefit to be had in the short term, especially from this much more intimate, you know, much higher touch kind of kind of experience, you know, and so as soon as Yeah, I mean, I’ve, we actually, you know, as we started to understand more of this, we sort of we created our curriculum and our school to focus on it, I mean, we, we sort of redeveloped our entire process, and we said, look, you start with video messages, you know, we actually have sort of four strategies we recommend people implement, so they start with video messages, they get that, you know, make that a regular part of how you talk to people, you know, to the point where it’s like, you just can’t help but reply by video, when it’s appropriate, then you start to incorporate video, basically, sort of scale yourself with video now, so this is like your, your FA Q’s, you know, like training for employees, if you tend to have employees on the team, you know, think things where you’re, you’re saying the same thing more than once in a several month long. Period, right. And so then that at that point, then those videos out is intimidating, you know, it’s not as hard they come because you have all this experience on camera now, you know, and then it’s like, so then the third one is, is build a video marketing funnel, something that you you control that’s designed that you can sort of predict the outcome from that you can, you know, put people in at the top and expect a certain amount of results to come out the bottom. And then once all that is in place, that’s when we recommend doing the social media stuff, you know, and if you do it that way, then all that new attention you generate from hopefully cross your fingers getting, you know, going viral on social media, then all that attention, which by the way, is more likely, because you’re you’re good on camera, you know how to make a good video at this point, you know, that that drives those people into a system, right, so then they hit your marketing funnel, they get, they get nurtured by that automatically, they come in your loot, you’re using video to convert the leads, so they’re seeing, you’re continuing to see you, you know, it’s like, it’s always, it’s always been kind of weird to me, that we have these folks out there that have all this video from a marketing perspective and running video ads or doing social media video, and then somebody comes into their system, and they stop seeing them on camera, you know, how all of a sudden everything’s just text and email, you know, and I’m always just kind like, when they’re kind of weird, like, you know, they already know you at this point, they’re seeing you on camera all these times, you know, and all of a sudden, the communication becomes less personal feeling like, that’s interesting and disorienting. You know, so I think we do it the other way around, you know, it just continues to feel like I’m just getting to know this person that much more. And yeah, I mean, I just the just the efficiency of this stuff, you know, getting to a point where by the time that person calls you and they say Okay, I’m ready to sell my house, like they’re well educated, they’ve been watching you. I mean, you know, we hear examples all the time people talking about like the the father in law, disrupting a transaction or something, it’s like, well, now you can educate people ahead of time before they ever even contact you. And they can forward those videos to their, their relative and say, Hey, you’re, you’re wrong, stop trying to tell me all this stuff, you know. But yeah, there’s just there’s so many different ways that this has an impact. And I think if you go in that order, if you sort of start with the simpler stuff that’s more direct, and then you build to the more public facing stuff. I think it all just just works more cohesively makes a lot more sense to your customers, right?

D.J. Paris 33:27
It does. And it’s really a quite a shift of process if you’re going to really think so you start with the easy quick video messages, the one to one, celebrate celebratory stuff or the universe, you know, things that are easy quick and you can you can just do daily, happy birthday, happy anniversary, but all those kinds of happy home anniversary, whatever, you do those and just a really quick procedural question. Because I’d love to get your thoughts so you mentioned you know, like, you go to facebook you see here’s five people’s birthdays today you make five videos. Are you sending them the video via Facebook Messenger which is you said you know, you could do or are you texting it to them? So that it’s been my experience that people open S texts more often then like Facebook Messenger, but curious on what you might suggest for like a happy birthday video.

Nick Niehaus 34:28
Yeah, I think you’re looking in that situation at a trade off between convenience versus impact. Right. So I think if number one, I don’t have the phone numbers of a lot of my Facebook friends so because of that I just have to send a message that’s kind of the first question is what do you have in terms of contact info? I also because it’s so fluid, you know, and I have all kinds of qualms with Facebook but not to get into that some of the stuff they do is really effective right? So the birthday things I mean, that’s been one of their their home runs from basically day one right? They got it ready to give them their per day. And that’s been one of the things that keeps people engaged in the platform, the fluidity of basically looking at the list clicking I mean tonight, and if you’re listening to this, like, try this sometime, you’ll see how fluid it is, right? It’s like you go in, there’s the messenger button, you click it, you click the button for the video, camera turns on, you hold it down, you record hits that I mean, and then you just hit the back button two or three times, and you’re back on the list. Right. So that yeah, so I’m always looking to kind of like, if I tell somebody to do it certain ways, like, are they going to do it, you know, that that’s obviously a challenge you run to with coaching quite a bit. Right? So that would be that’s the first thing I would say. Now, you are right, though, which is that people are going to be more likely to see the text message, right. So I think the way I would sort of think about it is like if you have a core group, you know, so you’ve got maybe like those 20 3040, people that are like, they’re the ones that pass you the referrals, they’re the ones that are repeat customers, the ones you really want to stay, you know, 100% in front of, that might be worth sending them a text, you know, and then even then even following up, if you don’t hear anything back from your student 100%, sort of certain that they’re going to get it everybody else, I think just doing it through Facebook is probably fine. Mostly because it is just so easy to do. And it’s a lot easier to build a habit because of that. So I could set an alarm on my phone for 9am. Every day it goes off, I go to Facebook, boom, send my five or 10 messages, and I’m done. So I would say you know, think of it that way, right? What’s going to be sort of the most, what are you gonna be able to execute on regularly.

D.J. Paris 36:28
I also, that’s a great answer. And I also love the idea of sort of jumping ahead a bit to having these sort of intro videos as well. So now that you’re going to be doing this regular, happy birthday, happy anniversary, kind of kind of, you know, event focused, you know, videos, you can also then create longer form videos that can be reused. So hey, you know, here are 10 questions that first time homebuyers tend to ask, I’m going to send this to you, I’m going to send you this video, which will maybe answer some of your questions. So I don’t waste your time later on, you sort of I guess you package it around, this is to help you and us, you know, be more efficient or effective, and provide value along the way as I made this little 510 minute video, which is here’s some pitfalls to avoid, or whatever, or here’s how to prepare for our meeting, or here’s what how the process works. It could really be anything that a realtor has found that their clients continually ask about. So that could be like the basis for how do I come up with these videos? Like what’s the content? Think about the questions you’re most commonly asked. And then you can make videos about that and say, Hey, I’m gonna send this to you ahead of time. And yeah, I’m always available, you can call me anytime, of course, too. But I want to sort of start edge leading you down a path and providing content to you that’s relevant and valuable. Instead of you having to ask me, I’m going to be pushing this to you proactively.

Nick Niehaus 38:03
Yeah, yeah. And I love that. I mean, that’s where, you know, it’s a shame, because I feel like a lot of times in these sort of business contexts, you have to talk about doing something from almost always from the standpoint of making more money or growing your business, right, like, that’s the hook, right. But it’s a little bit too bad, because video is so effective for customer service, you know, and I’d love to be talking more about that. And there are obviously a lot of agents that care about that. But that’s the place where of all the impacts it has. And there’s there’s I mean, you can you can double and triple E conversion, and just the numbers, you know, in terms of what video does are kind of mind blowing. But the customer service part is really crazy to me, because you can preempt I mean, you can give people an experience where they feel like you’re you’re reading their mind, right, because you know what they’re going to ask, you know, what the processes are, you know, are the sticking points in a real estate transaction are going to be, and this can all be automated, I mean, so it’s this incredible experience where somebody comes in, and every couple days or whatever the right touch frequency is they’re getting, you know, hey, by the way, the next thing is going to happen is this, and here’s me explaining it to you and, you know, video allows you to show versus just tell, you know, so you can talk about, we’re going to fill out this document, here it is, here’s what it looks like, here’s where you’re going to put this information. This is why you need to have this number figured out. Because it’s going to go here in this document. I mean, the sense of clarity that that creates for people is is immense. And you cannot do it. I mean, it’s almost one of those things where you can’t even really do it in person. I mean, you can make a video that has like multiple different clips in it that cuts from one kind of, you know, piece of paper to another this is obviously getting a little more advanced, but you can you can design it in such a way that it actually explains things in a way that’s more fluid and more easy to understand that even if you were sitting in front of that person and showing them the papers, you know, so I think when you do that, this is the kind of thing that then people come in the door they come in as a lead or maybe they become a customer, they start getting this communication, but it is you Do and I think that’s the part a lot folks overlook is like, they’re not just getting an email with this text in it that could have been written by anybody, they’re actually listening to you, they’re watching you there, as far as their brain knows they’re sitting there across the table from you, while you explain all of this to them, you know, so it’s building the relationship, so you’re helping them, they appreciate that you’re informing them, this is the smoothest real estate transaction they’ve ever been involved in. But they’re also getting to know you. And so it’s almost and I’ll tell you, I experienced this myself all the time. Now, it’s a little weird, then when you meet that person, because they know you there’s it’s called the parasocial relationship, they already have a relationship with you, though, as far as their brain knows, they’ve talked to you several times already. And that’s all going to be there, you know, so So once you do that on a regular basis, for a few months, like don’t, don’t be surprised that a lot of these folks come in, and they’re much friendlier, they’re much more comfortable, you know, they’re not at all considering working with another agent anymore, like they’ve already hired you in their head, and just talk about, I mean, you’re gonna find a better fit, you’re gonna have more of the right people choose to hire you, you’re gonna have higher lead conversion, transactions going a lot smoother, I mean, just just so many different things. And then one additional part I’ll just sort of throw into there is I really, like these are all pre recorded, right? So that’s great, you know, tell me about the process. But if you ever run into something that’s especially like frustrating or has a lot of emotion to it, that’s where you really want to use video, right? So if you’re going to share bad news, like, oh, they didn’t accept the offer, you know, that sort of thing, record a video message, because the empathy is substantially higher on video, right? So that they can, you know, so even even phone calls, you could call somebody, but then watching your face and seeing your facial expressions, and being able to read that empathy on your face, that does still go much further. So I think that’s another place you can incorporate it to, to really, you know, maximize that that sort of sense of, hey, this person has the bases covered, they’re totally in control, I can trust them completely. And that I mean, just in terms of the enjoyability, so to speak of the process and working with your customers, it really helps.

D.J. Paris 42:08
Wow, I mean, we’re almost talking a little bit of kind of a mini revolution here and communication, like change. Oh, yeah. Like, we’re really talking about one to one video communication, whether it’s pre recorded or live, there is something that activates and lights up our brain and makes us feel connected to the other person. And through repetition, whether it’s, again, whether it’s pre recorded or live, you start the brain starts to sort of build these neural pathways of familiarity. So all of a sudden, we’re like, Oh, I know, I know, Nick, I seen it all the time. is familiar to me, which familiar nice, comfortable, which means non threatening, which is, which is typically a gateway to the ability to sell somebody something, right. So trust, we’re now talking about, you know, know, like and trust. And I think you’re, you’re really on the cusp of this and agents that can start to move away from that. And not that there’s anything wrong with texting, if that’s appropriate for a relationship great. But you can pepper in, like, I love the idea of the bad news video message. So let’s do a real like a use case example. So I’m a realtor, my client loses this bid that they put in this this offer to buy a home, I have to give them bad news. Now. Would you recommend I do that live video? Would you recommend a pre recorded video? What do you think is? And again, it could be anything, every relationship is different. But what’s a general rule of thumb on something like that?

Nick Niehaus 43:50
Yeah, I mean, I think that one’s that one’s going to depend on the customer a little bit. I think it depends on sort of the question, the difference between those two is that when you when you try to get on like a video chat with them, you’re interrupting them. So it’s like a phone call. That’s one of the disadvantages of phone calls. They have to answer and you’re disrupting their day.

D.J. Paris 44:09
And they might not be, they might not be in a place where physically they want to be seen.

Nick Niehaus 44:14
Yeah, they might not want to be on camera, you know, they might not feel you know, so. But that being said, depending on the type of client, like they might prefer that because they want to ask questions, they want to, you know, they want to be able to dig in a little bit on it. On the other hand, if you pre record it, they can watch it at any time. You can be succinct, you can get straight to the point, you know, you can get right to the news right off the bat. So it really just depends on how the previous communication has been going. Right. So I think the thing to look at there is like, Is this somebody who calls you you know, do they like having a lot of conversations on the phone? Have you done zoom meetings with them? In that case, I would say hey, would you mind hopping on Zoom for a couple minutes want to give you an update on on the situation here, right? Sure. And again, that’s one where you want to get to a quick because you don’t want them you know, waiting for hours to get that info. On the other hand, if it’s somebody who’s been doing a lot of texting with you, or things like email, which are, you know, we call it asynchronous, right? So it’s something you should do, you can watch it anytime it doesn’t have to happen right at that moment, then a pre recorded message is probably going to be better for them.

D.J. Paris 45:14
I love that too. And at the end of a pre recorded message, you can always say, I’m going to call you in a couple hours, to just to check in on you as well. But I wanted I didn’t want to wait for this, I didn’t want to wait a couple hours, I wanted to get get this information over to you immediately. That is, that’s huge. All of this, all of this is huge. It I guess, at the end of the day, it demonstrates care concern, effort, whether it’s warranted or not, is another conversation meaning for some reason, our, our physicality, our the way that we are built as humans, we just like that we just like getting one on one videos. I mean, it’s just kind of how it how we’re wired. So if forget about anything other than it just, it used to be It felt good to get and it still does feels good to get a handwritten letter, those are sure pretty much done. Now, although I still think that that is an amazing thing. But what’s taking its place is these one to one videos, I think, and they’re still very rare. So if you can make a one to one video process, again, start with birthdays, start with home anniversaries, start with, you know, hope your kids are going doing well, when they’re going back to school this fall, you know, whatever it could be, it’s your kid’s birthday, happy birthday, whatever you need to get this information put in and you can do those all day long. And even if you had just did that, if nothing else, if all you did was birthdays, and any other you know, life event stuff that you know, I bet you’d get I bet you’d get business just just from doing that. And obviously that’s like 1% of what you actually do, and still learn the other 99% that is what Nick and his company is going to teach you. So Nick, tell us about about the service. And and you know, what it entails and why our listeners should be checking it out.

Nick Niehaus 47:13
Yeah, I mean, I think the the main thing to understand about Business Video School is you know, it’s a school for real estate agents, it’s about 95% of our students are real estate agents. And we teach pretty much all aspects of video. Now I will say we’re not for the video expert. So if you’ve been making video for five years, and you’ve already got a YouTube channel with hundreds or 1000s of followers, that kind of stuff, like, you know, there’s people to help you. And we certainly could, but that’s not who we’re built for. We’re built for the beginner. So beginner and intermediate, right. So folks that are, you know, having trouble making your first video, or maybe you’ve made a few, but it hasn’t become a habit. Everything we do is about building video habits, right. So just you know, kind of a quick overview of what we have included, there’s a lot so you don’t do you don’t kind of come in and try to take it all at once. But we’ve got nine different courses, some of which we teach live on a monthly or quarterly basis, we have something called video recipes, which is a script and example of us doing the video ourselves. So you can imitate our delivery style. It’s all the instructions on how to make it it’s the social media posts, it’s any sort of assets like music that might go in the video. So it’s basically all the ingredients, you need to make a video and make a new one of those every week. And then we do things a lot of fun stuff. Like we have challenges every month, we split up into teams kind of compete to make different themed videos, we have q&a sessions live q&a is you can come on to if you ever get stuck. And then a community you know, I think the community is a big part of it. It’s just a bunch of folks that or it’s very much no judgment. You know, this was a lot of folks, Sharon, I this is my first video ever made, you know, what do you think? And obviously, there’s lots of things they can improve. But we’re just there to encourage them when they’re first getting started, obviously. So I think that that’s really what you got to look at is that video, it’s a form of communication, and it is going to take some time to really start to understand and implement fully. So we work with folks sort of incrementally speaking so you can come in, you take a class or two you work on implementing you come in with your Q and A’s and you need them. And that’s why we set it up as a membership because we felt like hey, it’d be nice if it’s not just a course you don’t just buy something and it sits on your computer and you got nobody to talk to you like we wanted to have that community want to have the support the ability to come in and kind of get your questions answered. And that’s what it comes down to you know, so a video is a concern. You know, if it’s something that you want to do more with, I strongly recommend you come check us out. I mean, obviously, it’s one of those things that the sooner you do it, the more benefit you’re going to get. Because it is only increasing more and more people are doing this stuff every day. So I think we we did create a coupon code so if you’re listening and you want to save 10% Just use the code keep it real when you check it out, and you’ll save 10% on your monthly membership.

D.J. Paris 49:46
Yeah, so everyone please go visit biz video school.com bi Z video school.com link to that in the show notes, use the coupon code, keep it real and get 10% off on the monthly membership, which guys, it’s, it’s less than 100 bucks a month. And imagine if it just, you know, for a year What’s that? We’ll say it’s $1,200. It’s less than that, actually. Let’s just say it helps you get one additional deal. What’s that, on average, maybe $7,000 of commission. So I’d spend $1,000 To make $7,000. Guys, please please do this video is, is what people are. There’s a little bit of a desert of the last three years of interpersonal communication, intimacy, physical interactions, right? We, we even now, we are still recovering from this lack of, of in person stuff. Video is the closest thing we have to simulating real life interactions. It works way better than text, an email, and other even voice, you know, voice voice messages. So please consider doing this. You don’t have to have a big production studio. You don’t have to have special lighting. You just have to be willing to start this process. But let the guys at biz Video School, Nick and his team help you do this. We’re big fans. You know, this is the biz Video School has been around for a while they are huge. labcoat agents is a big fan of you guys. They’re the largest online community for for Facebook. So I know that that this is this is definitely a great service. So I encourage everyone out there to check it out this video school.com Use promo code keep it real? Well, this is perfect timing. I know. Nick is heading off to his next meeting. So we will wrap up this episode. We want to thank Nick on behalf of all of our listeners and our viewers. For all what you contributed to the show today. Thank you for all of your great content. And also on behalf of Nick and myself. We want to thank our viewers and listeners for continuing to support and listen. Support our show, please tell a friend think of one other realtor that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with Nick send them over to our website keeping it real pod.com Every episode we’ve ever done can be streamed right from a browser and sign up for Nick’s abyss video. school.com Use promo code keep it real and let’s get your video up and running. This is the year to do one to one video. Nick, thank you so much for being on the show. And we will see everybody on the next episode. Thanks, Nick.

Nick Niehaus 52:23
Yeah, thank you for having me.