Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with David Jurek from Hundred Mile House, British Columbia up in Canada.
We had a great conversation. David's in a small market, a kind of resort, or a cottage area, where people are coming from a few hours away to have cottages on the lake.
We talked a lot about the advantages he has as a competing broker with a team of other agents working with him, and how to balance that personal production with being a leader and rallying to get the best from his team.
We covered three very specific things he can do to support everybody and benefit from the 'rising tide' that will lift the whole team.
I'm excited to see how it all plays out. He's got a lot of balls in play, and he's making all the right moves. I'm confident this is going to be a great experiment for him.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep062
Dean: David Jurek.
David: Dean Jackson.
Dean: How are you sir?
David: I am good, how are you?
Dean: I am wonderful. Are you snowed in?
David: You know what amazingly we are not, we are having one of the mildest winters up here. We should be snowed in, but we are not. It's a minus one, and we're just enjoying this weather actually.
Dean: Perfect.
David: Sounds horrible to say that at minus one when you're probably in Winter Haven enjoying the warm weather, but hey we'll take this over the minus 15 we should be having.
Dean: Yeah, so where are you?
David: I'm in 100 Mile House, which is Central BC, I guess you could say.
Dean: Central BC, okay.
David: Yup, you bet about four and a half, five hours north of the lower mainlands of Vancouver, Fraser Valley area.
Dean: What's the population of 100 Mile House?
David: Population in town is probably just under 200,000 people.
Dean: Oh my.
David: Yeah, so just a small little town, one of those where you know everybody. But then we service about another 25,000 with the surrounding area.
Dean: Okay.
David: Excuse me. Good little pocket of homes right, locally and then yeah, nice surrounding area. We're very popular here as cottage country for the lower mainland folks. It's one of those four hour drives and we've got numerous lakes.Right?
Dean: I love it.
David: Yup, so good little area.
Dean: Cool. So, tell me what's been going on. I'd love to hear the whole David Jurek story.
David: The whole David Jurek story is so, going back, how far do you want to go back Dean, this might be a long call. No. I'll give it to you in a nutshell. I started real estate I guess 17 years ago.
Dean: How nice.
David: I started in the Okanogan, you probably know where that is.
Dean: I do, yeah.
David: Colona. Yeah, so the beautiful Okanogan and it was an excellent place to be at the time, or I think it still is obviously, but I'm not there anymore. Very competitive market, I was going to become an accountant, thank goodness that didn't happen. I don't know what I was thinking because I knew that wasn't the path for me, I would have hated it. Anyway, so I got into real estate there and took off with a bit of a good start. Very competitive market, between 1000 to 1300 agents, population obviously couple of hundred thousand people. A much bigger market than what I'm in today.
Worked there for 15 years, and my family lived up here in 100 Mile House. I thought I would come up here for a visit the one time and I saw a little RE/MAX office. What's that?
Dean: And you haven't left.
David: And I haven't left. No. I saw a little RE/MAX office here that was struggling and that's who I worked for in Colona. So I made a funny text to the guy who owned Colona and said, Hey, I should buy RE/MAX in 100 Mile, it's not doing very well. And two days later I was on the phone with RE/MAX saying, Hey, we hear you want to buy an office up there. So I don't know.
Dean: Oh. Wow. Okay. Good for you.
David: So three years ago I ventured up here, and we bought a little office with three people. We ended up letting two of those go over a little bit of time, and then built it up. We got 11 of us here now. So, just a tight little team.
Dean: Well, that's very exciting. What are you hoping that we can kind of work on today?
David: Well, you know what? Before I stumbled across your GoGo Agent, obviously I've been doing my own version of, now you've got a pretty nice system there where everything is done for you, so I don't know why anybody would recreate that. But anyway, nonetheless, before I came across that, I did some marketing in Colona because you had to. And it's funny because you come up here and it's almost like you went back 20 years, except you got smartphones. It's one of those things, do you just do nothing and go along with everybody else, and keep it a secret that you can get away with it, or do you buckle down and do some marketing?
Dean: Right.
David: We've come across some challenges recently, obviously, which we're not allowed to sell own listings anymore. We can, but we're not allowed to represent the buyer. The buyer would have to be unrepresented. In the past, in Colona not having a much bigger center. But, in the first few years obviously here, selling your own listings is a fairly big thing.
Dean: Yes.
David: That's okay though obviously we replaced that, if you're not showing your own listings or doing it, they replaced it with other activities to make money. Anyway, we've got some challenges with that. The other thing obviously I don't know if you've chatted, I've listened to many of your episodes. I'm a competing owner here, and I would love for everybody to buy into a system like this. Obviously, where we all benefit. We're obviously all competing against each other, but yet working together as a team. I'm sure you've got folks who have larger teams who work together a lot.
Dean: Yes. Absolutely. I was just having a conversation yesterday with a guy who has a pretty good size EXP team. They've got a couple of hundred agents, they've got 44 people on this core team. We were talking about the challenge of being a competing broker, like you're saying, and that even if you're not a competing broker, being a broker of agents that are competing is a challenge on its own. You bring the agents together, but he's there to brainstorm, but ultimately, everybody wants the firm to do well. Everybody wants the organization to do well, but not at the expense of them personally, right? They want to be advantaged over everybody else, right? That's just human nature and, you got to recognize it and you've got to address it.
But there are lots of things that can be done that are non competitive, that are going to help raise the tide for everybody. One of those things, and there's three, I'll tell you the three and maybe we can talk about these and then talk about some plan to help execute those. The three things that you as a broker can help people with that are non competitive are, maximizing the referrals that they get from their top 150, right? The people who know them, like them and trust them.
You're in a small town and there may be some overlap that people may know the same 150 people, but that's okay too. Predominantly, largely they're not gonna know the exact same people, especially their core group that they're existing clients, the ones that they felt in the past, their friends, their neighbors, their families, people that if they saw them at the grocery store, they'd stop and recognize them by name. That group of people. You can help everybody by focusing on that, to maximize their return on relationship.
One of the things you said, you've got 11 now on team. So, you've got a potential reach of 1500 or 2000 people. There might be some overlap up, but probably very little, less than you would think. To have something where everybody is thinking this referral mindset, right, of orchestrating referrals. That you've got the opportunity to do the world's most interesting postcard for everybody. That everybody's getting programmed for referrals so that they are saying, just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about this, and then programming them of what to do. That's a really good baseline for people.
The other things that you can do is have everybody map all of those people like a google map layer with-
David: Yeah. And I've got to try that on the GoGo Agent Site. That sounds interesting. So, you can do that on the site?
Dean: Yeah. So you can export your data and then you can lay that into a google map layer, like a custom google map layer, hidden map that only you can see. It would drop a pin on the spot where each of your top 150 lives. Once somebody gets their top 150, collectively you could have different colored pins for each person. You could see where everybody has clients. You get to see what your reach is as a team that way, and start thinking about integrating into your Mondays, or your meetings, or however you communicate, to start incorporating what we call Market Maker Monday. Every Monday you think about, who are you showing houses to this week, and who are you going to see about listing their house this week?
Not who are your prospects or who you're generally looking for, but who are you actually booked to go out and see this week? There's urgency, an immediacy to it. Collectively, as people are going through that to look at your own top 150 and start to see, okay, who do we know that lives on that lake, or lives in that area, or lives in that complex, or on that street, whatever it is. So that you have the opportunity for them to send a referral type of email to them saying, so if you were one of my clients and let's say somebody else in our office was showing houses, and you live on, what's one of the lakes there?
David: Sheridan Lake.
Dean: Sheridan Lake. So you live on Sheridan Lake and let's say Nancy in the office is going to be showing the homes on Sheridan Lake this week. And I, as your incumbent realtor can send you an email and say, hey David, Nancy in my office is showing houses this week to someone who's looking on Sheridan Lake, and there's only one for sale on there right now. Have you heard anybody talking about selling? We may be able to match them up with this couple from Colona. So if you take that little core idea, and you multiply that times 50 Mondays times 11 agents, it's impossible to imagine that that's not going to generate more business, more referrals for me collectively.
That's one of the advantages of the collective like that, right? Where everybody is listening and then they look at their thing and they're like, Bingo, I got somebody there, I'll check, I'll do that. It's a good idea, that's a way of orchestrating referrals that way. Okay. Other things that you can do all along, like having collectively a client appreciation party or having a big type of thing that you can have a bigger impact when you're collectively getting together to do those things than individuals, right? You make a bigger impact in the community that way too. So those-
David: It was interesting actually, because I just came back from it's a little bit off topic, but the connection you just mentioned community. So we had a big real estate conference last week. Obviously, the pressures on the industry, which we all know realtors aren't going to go away. The pressures on the industry where everybody's going online and everything. One of the speakers asked what would your community say if all of a sudden realtors got replaced with big data? They no longer needed you, right? So what you're saying, that is nice to really stand out in the community so that people would miss you if you were gone.
Dean: Well, that's the whole point, right? That's where we were talking about,` I'm just such a big follower of Warren Buffet. I'm really paying attention and seeing that they just two weeks ago, bought one of the biggest franchises in Florida to bring under the Berkshire Hathaway brand, right? If you take away, aside from EXP, which seems to be growing quickly now, the biggest corporate grower is Berkshire Hathaway, over the last several years. What I find really notable is the absence of the word real estate or realty in the name of the company, right? Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. That's really where I think the big opportunity is, right? Is that it's not as big data and all the pressure for disruption is really on the transactional element of real estate, not on the relationship element.
There's a bigger category attached to this called home-ownership. The home ownership category is, there's so many services that are needed and beneficial to somebody who buys a home. That's where I think Warren Buffett is seeing the future. The important thing is the relationship with the home owners, right? Because you bond with people. I think there's nothing more powerful than being the incumbent realtor who has a relationship with the person who's living in the house that they helped them buy. That you're in a unique position to, if you want to, take on the role of being an advocate for them, right? And helping with all manner of things in home ownership. I think collectively, you've got an opportunity as a group to focus on something like that too, right? Even as a separate revenue source.
David: You Bet. Yeah, and we've absolutely done that. But there's always room for more in improvement. It's really cool to see those relationships grow, and the community to grow when you're actively involved in it for sure.
Dean: Yeah. Okay. The other thing then is the listing multipliers. That you can help collectively generate more transactions per listing than they're currently doing on their own. We've got our metric that we calculate as your listing multiplier index. Are you familiar with that?
David: Ah, yes. You bet. Yup, that's right.
Dean: Okay. How long have you been working on that, or what is your listing multiplier index, or what was it? Has it improved or-
David: Good question Dean. When I lived in Cologne I didn't keep track of anything. Then when I moved up here I thought perfect, fresh start. I'm going to keep track of all my numbers. Once again, here we are three years later, and I actually haven't kept track of any of it. Yeah. One of those scenarios where I should be doing it but I'm not.
Dean: Right. When you start to look at it that part of that thing, there's some magic in the group accountability in a way too, right? If you are collectively supporting each other and keeping those kinds of stats present, it gamifies it too, right? It gamifies the situation a little bit to be able to encourage everybody. And that's the same thing whenever you get a new listing that would be included in the Market Maker Monday opportunities too, right? If somebody is going to be listing a house and it's in a neighborhood where somebody has somebody in their top 150, two or three doors down, to let them know, hey, just wanted to give you a heads up. That house across the street's going to be coming on the market. Have you heard anybody wants to move into the neighborhood? Maybe we could pick your new neighbors. If everybody collectively is doing that, I couldn't think of a more valuable collective use of 20 minutes a week, than to do something like that. Do you guys have a meeting? Do you get together?
David: We have a weekly meeting sometimes obviously, because we're a cottage country for the lower mainland, summertime we get inundated with, there's only 30 realtors in the whole town. Less than that, surrounding areas included, there's about 30 of us. So, summertime sometimes it's a little bit tougher. Though, if there's tons of value in it, obviously you're going to schedule it in and make sure that happens, right?
Dean: Yeah, right.
David: We do have a weekly meeting.
Dean: That's when all the activities happen too, right?
David: Absolutely. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, I love that. So, the listing multipliers, having everybody be aware of those numbers, like everybody aware of what their current listing multiplier index is and what their other team members are doing and everybody having an awareness of helping out that way. That if you can keep a collective group too, like have it that within our office that we're generating all of these transactions. Because, it may be that that uses a buyer to do those things. Working as a team for the benefit of everybody without it being exclusionary. I understand that part of the thing like doing lead generation things feels like somebody's getting something that somebody else isn't getting, right?
But, if you say you take this quadrant, and you take this quadrant, and we're going to mail the Getting Listings Program or whatever, you have to divide that in a way, right? So, it doesn't feel like it's a multiplier. Once somebody has a listing, there's nobody else in the office that can get it. So, why not let's support each other in generating as much business as we can from that listing.
David: Totally.
Dean: Are you looking to recruit too, or are you happy with the size of the team and you just wanted to-
David: No. I'm looking to recruit. However, we're very picky with who's here, we've got a really tight family feel. So we've turned a handful away. Obviously, just because they might not be a right fit for what we have going on. Which like I mentioned when I first came, it's like one of these hidden gems secrets because nobody was really marketing a ton, so it was neat that when I started marketing, those who had the same mindset are the ones who joined.
Dean: Right.
David: Now we have a very forward thinking progressive group here who are interested in doing something, and that's nice to have. I don't want to go backwards with that fall in our laps, right.
Dean: What's the price range? What's the average price range?
David: Price Range? The average price range right now and yeah. Waterfront goes for much in certain area. On average, I'd say we're about 275 right now, I think that.
Dean: Okay, yeah.
David: Something like that. Yeah. Some of the bigger lakes are more popular, which is why I know when I emailed back and forth with Diane, I was saying that I personally am- In Colona I used to specialize and I loved that. And then, obviously you teach that and it's interesting. In Colona, one of my favorite stories is I used to specialize in acreages because I lived on acreage. I called myself the Acreage Group and I sent out mailers and newspaper ads. Everything didn't have my name on it, but it was all Acreage Group specific, all targeting of particular buyer.
My favorite story is, I get called to a beautiful apple orchard, $1.5 million property, and I walk in and they're holding my newspaper ad that didn't have my picture on it, but it said Acreage Group on it. They start listing off the realtors that are friends of theirs, at the time actually sold more acreage than I did, but they didn't mark it that way. And said, we're not calling them because you're the acreage guy. And so we got to deal with you. I just laughed. I listed that, I sold it myself to my own buyer a couple of days later. It was just one of those things that specializing absolutely does make a difference or target marketing. Yeah. So coming up here I thought, well what do we have lots of up here, is the waterfront.
Dean: Yes.
David: I just started collecting, little bit of a tedious task obviously, collecting addresses because I was going to do, which is a question I have for you actually. I was going to do addressed mail to the waterfront.
Dean: Yes.
David: We're talking about this, depends on how tedious you want to get it because there's lots of lakes if you want to target everyone. Let's just for the sake say 1500 homes. So would you, as opposed to about 5,050 homes target all of them? Would you do addressed mail at a dollar an envelope to waterfront, or would you do waterfront mailing to everybody for less money unaddressed?
Dean: Well, this is a great question. And it's funny because I just recorded a podcast about that very thing. I was in Miami last week at a marketing conference. I was speaking at this group and one of the people who was there is a guy who is 85 years old now. He is basically the father of conservative fundraising. He basically invented the category. What he did back in 1962 or 64 at the presidential election, there was a new law passed that anybody who donated $100 to a political candidate had to be registered. There'd be a public record of anybody who donated $100 to a political candidate. Through freedom of information, of course, that information, that list was available to everybody. Right? And what he did was he went in and took six ladies in with him, and on individual index cards, they wrote the name and address of 12,500 donors who had given $100 to the conservative candidate.
With that, he had now, the only list available of the only known conservative, don't know, donors in the world. From that he built an empire. He started doing that exact same thing with all the first state Governor campaigns, for Senate campaigns, for Congress campaigns, all of it. Anybody who donated $100 or more to any conservative candidate, he had the list. Then couple that with his knowledge of marketing and direct mail and would build this fundraising juggernaut. He's the guy who's largely credited with getting Ronald Reagan elected in the '80s.
That lesson from that is that this list is semi publicly available. It's there, but it took a lot of effort to get that. Now that list, it's known for you, the 1500 people that own lakefront homes that's available, but it's not easily compiled. You have to do the effort to do it, but once you do, that is an asset.
We did the exact same thing here in Winter Haven and they're 2100 homes, lakefront homes. There's no way of the tax records to see just true lakefront. So, you have to individually go in and match up the addresses with the Plat maps to show this is true lakefront and had that list, now you can mail directly to lakefront owners. Now, what that would really be the most valuable for you is if at the same time you're also advertising for buyers for lakefront homes. So, if you're running ads in areas where, and Facebook is fantastic for this, now you can target specific areas where people are coming from to buy up the Lakefront homes in 100 Mile House or whatever. What's the story behind the name of 100 Mile House?
David: 100 Mile House? Cariboo Gold Rush. This was the 100 Mile stop. There was a house here, maybe a few other services obviously at that time. But yeah, that's the story. It's 100 miles up the Cariboo Gold Rush at the time, yeah.
Dean: Okay, perfect. Yeah. Okay. So, when you start looking at that, is there a name for the area like in Ontario, this Muskoka?
David: Yeah. This is South Cariboo.
Dean: South Cariboo. Okay. If you're looking anywhere from a two to four mile radius away, or whatever or south of there, that where people are coming from, if you're advertising a guide to South Cariboo lakefront house prices, that's finding new category buyers, which is very valuable. Right? You've got the opportunity to match them up with the seller list that you have. You said it earlier, you can't represent two parties, but you can certainly do a transactional, right? You can-
David: You can. You can still do the transaction, you just can't represent both parties, which now here in BC, the paperwork that makes up the party who's not being represented signed. If they still signed it, it's quite interesting because basically says, you're crazy if you sign this document and work with the agents. Right? But again, we can refer in the office and it's still a great thing when you take a look at that.
Dean: Sure. Well, that's part of the thing then, that as long as somebody has some representation.
David: Absolutely. Yes.
Dean: So, you can still do that, that's great. But this whole category now of having the ability to do that, and then take this CAT scan perspective of what other category like lakefront is certainly, that's the winner, right? Because that's the pinnacle of what everybody's looking for. But, certainly new construction is probably something else too, right? That somebody wants to build there, or somebody wants acreage, or somebody wants what other features or categories could there be?
David: In Winter Haven, when you guys collected the waterfront did you have names or no names? Just asking.
Dean: Yeah, names. No names and addresses.
David: Yeah. I can't get names anymore unless I pull a title, which is $14 a house, right?
Dean: But that's fine, but it doesn't matter because what we're mailing is postcards. Right? So-
David: That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I just wanted to know if you took a look at it, like I said, whether they're addressed or unaddressed, because it'd be cheaper for me to mail the 5,000 unaddressed homes my waterfront feature. Then it would be, to say resident and then the address and address mail it to them, right? That's kind of the kicker, I think, do I overlap? Does it matter if the non waterfront people are seeing my waterfront advertising? Probably not, but is there power in having that address on the label?
Dean: Yeah. Well, I wonder what the difference would be pricewise. If you're saying, could you do that with the postal walks?
David: Yeah. So, with the postal walk, address you or what? We were just to put a dollar in Canada, I think to mail a letter. Right? Unaddressed, I just did everywhere unaddressed on paying 9.7 cents a piece. For just over $500 I mailed everybody.
Dean: Okay. Well, that might not be a bad thing to do, and just not care about the overlap. Because that may be an opportunity for people who don't live on the lake but maybe would like to. Yeah, exactly. They may respond before that. Yeah.
David: Yeah. That's been my up in there because I met you back in the day when you used to pay $43 cents or 46 cents, it was questionable. But now with a dollar, I'd be paying $1,500 to address it to them, or $500 to send it to everybody. So, that's where I've been up against, wondering if I should do one or the other. But-
Dean: Well, that makes sense now that you put it that way, that you can have that ability. Where it might be valuable to have that list, even if you do compile it, is when you have somebody who's looking on a particular lake. To be able to isolate just the homes on this lake and mail to them. There's always value in those specialized areas.
David: You bet. And I love the report, obviously I got that from you. We've started compiling your guide to Cariboo waterfront.
Dean: Yes.
David: But, I do intend to mostly Facebook market in the lower mainland where the buyers are coming from.
Dean: Yes. Exactly. It's perfect.
David: Yeah. Excellent.
Dean: The other thing that you can do, I mentioned about three things that you can do that are non competitive. We talked about helping them orchestrate referrals, really focusing on that, right? Getting everybody on board with that. Then multiplying listings. Helping everybody focus on their listing multipliers, and part of that is being able to coordinate and collectively do open houses or do whatever. If everybody is doing this, then to have a collective carousel ad in Facebook for the area there showing this week’s open houses. So that they get one of their houses featured in there as well. It's a vehicle that everybody wins by collaborating.
David: You bet. Yup.
Dean: The other thing is converting leads, converting leads that they already generate. A lot of times if the realtors in your office are like the millions of realtors everywhere else, they're better at taking people who want to buy a house this weekend out to show them the house and find them one, than they are at following up with the people who are going to buy in six months. If you can collectively create the safety net, create the long term follow up, ability for everybody where we do our market watch newsletters, market watch updates of all the activity that comes on the market. Then, if you can-
David: You should do that monthly, right?
Dean: Every week.
David: Every week. Okay. Interesting.
Dean: For buyers. Yeah, for buyers.
David: Yes. Oh, for buyers. I see what you're talking about. Yup.
Dean: Yeah. For buyers it's every week. If you can have that as a resource for everybody, where they don't have to reinvent the wheel and do their own. If you can, as a team put together the weekly report that's only going out to their own leads, everybody that they're nurturing. Because right now without the team concept, everybody is hiding their prospects in their own little incubator bushel and protecting them from everybody. They're trying to follow up with them, but everybody's doing it individually.
Whereas, if you're giving people the actual tool, the weekly flagship that goes out with all the stats and the new listings and the updates of, all somebody has to do is just add their people to the list. You can do this with- One of the features in Gogo Agent is, we have a team module where you can as a broker have parent access to, Yeah. Everybody would have their own partitioned off top 150, and their partitioned off prospects and all the tools, they have their own account. But, you could collectively provide this weekly email that could go out to everybody with a certain flag. It'd all be personalized for them so that, that way the newsletter then that's going out to Nancy's prospects is coming from Nancy. The one going to Jason's prospects are coming from Jason.
It's a collective newsletter that you put it together. That's where the real value is, that this portfolio of all of these unconverted leads. Now, when you're talking about your buyer, thing like that, you're doing that as for your account, for you as the broker, right? For you as an agent. Yeah. Right.
David: Yeah. One of my struggles here is that again, the exceeding whole thing. At the end of the day, I figure a good leader should be doing the things that make money and everybody else can tag along and I'm not looking to keep any secrets from everybody. I would love to share it with everybody.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right. There's the thing that you may get to a point where you allow people to tag team the Facebook ads in a way, right? If you've got a budget that you're comfortable with for yourself, that may not be all of the available exposure. Right? If you're saying that you're spending $50 a day or $20 a day or whatever it is, but maybe there's $150 a day available of it. That somebody else could do $20 a day too, and you're reaching different people.
David: Yeah. The interesting part of this business is how many people don't treat it like a business. I think been one of my biggest thing is when I say, we got these businesses in town that are spending thousands of dollars to sell a $20 pizza. We're spending hundreds of dollars to make thousands of dollars. It's like a little gold mine. It's just trying to explain it to people and say, it's okay to spend $500 or $1000 this month because you're going to make 10. But, there's a little disconnect there. That's been my mission. I'm going to connect these two dots for everybody.
I take a look at my brothers who are in the hearing business and they got hearing clinics and staff. Everything they got to go through to make the same kind of money that I make, and I don't have any of that. I have an iPhone and I have a MacBook. Right? This isn't a plug for Apple. It's interesting the opportunity you have in this business if we treat it like a business.
Dean: Yup, you're absolutely right.
David: Yup. Awesome.
Dean: So cool. Those are the things that I would think about as that competing, to create those elements for the team there. And certainly, the category stuff, you're in such a great opportunity where you're in a market where it's distinct and it's manageable. What do they say in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, right? Who knows about marketing? They're not gonna know what hit them.
David: Yep. No, it's true. Yeah, so this year I was pleasantly surprised when I came across GoGo Agent. I've listened to your marketing Mondays over the years and whatnot. When I stumbled across Listing Agent Lifestyle and GoGo agent, I thought, Jeez, I got to do this all by myself, but yet it's all here. Why would I not just plug into that? I haven't really marketed since I've started here three years ago. Finally, this year I said, you know what? I'm going to dive in and what I did in the Okanogan I'm going to do here, and just see the difference from one year to the next. I'm excited about that. Yeah.
Dean: That's awesome.
David: And hopefully, take the team along the way with me also. So-
Dean: Yeah. What else are you working on? What else are you- we could focus on.
David: Personally, I'm going to focus on, there's a neighborhood called the 108 Mile Ranch. I technically live on the outskirts of Adam, considered to be in the 105, which falls under the 108. So, I do live in that neighborhood. It's got its own grocery store, it's got its own school. Definitely, its own airport and everything. It's definitely a neighborhood. I'm going to target on farming that neighborhood specifically. Obviously, with the GoGo Agent. I plan on doing the instant open house plan and all that other stuff. That and the waterfront was my two that I really wanted to target on.
So I just sent out my first market watch postcard for the year, like an up market watch. Yeah. What happened in 2018 going forward? Again, it was a little bit complicated and tedious to mail each pocket neighborhood. We have about 13 distinct areas. Without getting into why it's tedious, I did one postcard with every neighborhood because people like to know what's going on in neighboring neighborhoods also. I mailed the same postcard to everywhere, just as a starter. Then I'll slowly start to differentiate those and do smaller things. I did that. That actually went out a couple days ago. So it's interesting because I've already got some folks who've popped in.
It's one of these opportunities that nobody's doing anymore, right? That seems to have gone by the wayside mailing. But because nobody's doing it, it's effective again. It's awesome to see the results off of that. So, I'm some doing that and then the waterfront. But again, the waterfront piece, I kept scratching my head thinking, is it really more valuable to mail triple the cost to direct mail versus the unaddressed of the whole area. So I'm glad that we had a conversation about it.
Dean: Yeah. It seems like it's going to be just so much more efficient.
David: You Bet. I'm still compiling the list. Like I said, I still plan on compiling the list of addresses because like you say, there is value in that. That it's an asset after that, right?
Dean: Yeah. Specifically, like having that specificity, that will be thoughtful down the road here. It's interesting. Last week's episode, or this week's, I guess, of the podcast with Jason Gruner. He's running the Getting Listings Program in 21 different areas. They're all sending the individual postcards. We use digital variable printing here, so it's easy to execute. You can still do it all as one mailing, but it just has different variables for the specific neighborhoods. How many homes are in the different areas that you're focused on?
David: Yeah. The 108 Ranch that I'm focused on is just over 800. Waterfront, like I said, depends on how tedious you want to get with that, around the 15th.
Dean: What would be the distinction of the neighborhoods? Are they named neighborhoods or-
David: Oh, yeah. In the area, they are. Yeah. A lot of them are named by the lakes that they're on also. There's the Sheridan Lake area, the Bridge Lake area and the Green Lake area. Right?
Dean: I gotcha. Yeah.
David: There's a combination of all of that. And then there's Horace Lake. Yeah. So, most of them are actually named by the lake that are around them. It's interesting when you take a look at the area we live in, from aerial, it's like a shotgun blew a hole. There's little lakes everywhere. So, the neighborhood, but to unaddressed ad mail because there are a lot of them have centralized post offices.
Dean: I gotcha. Yeah.
David: They're a little bit difficult to target specifically.
Dean: I gotcha. Yeah, and especially if it's only 1500 homes altogether, everybody's going to feel like they're in on it, and they've never seen anything like it anyways.
David: True.
Dean: Yeah.
David: Yeah. I did the first mail out I did to the whole area, which is just over 5,000 homes of everything. And it cost me 800 for the printing. I did a five and a half by eight and half postcard, 800 for the printing, 500 to mail. For $1300 I targeted everybody.
Dean: That's awesome.
David: It will be interesting to track that going forward. This year is the year that I'm going to track all of that and just see what comes from where.
Dean: Yeah. I love it.
David: Yeah. It's going to be exciting.
Dean: So, what else could we focus on for you?
David: What else could we focus on? Yeah, I guess my big thing that I wanted to chat with you about was, the addressed versus unaddressed for the waterfront, which you've covered that off. The team feeling is, yeah, I just like to include everybody into it, and I do. Like I said, I think going forward, that's why I haven't done a whole heck of a lot of personal marketing here. It's because I want to include the whole office as a whole. I think leaning into those multipliers and realizing that we're not competing, but we are, right, in certain aspects are really quite interesting. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Getting to the point when you realize that market maker mindset of every Monday at your meeting, just really getting into the rhythm of that, where everybody knows that they come to it with, these are the people that I'm actually working with this week and getting everybody where they can have quick access to their, top 150. To be able to see on the map it will stimulate them. Oh yeah, I've got this one, and this one, and this one on that lake. That'll be a big thing.
David: You bet. One more question, your video, Diane, I think it's Diane that did the videos in front of the neighborhood, right? At the conference I ran into Andrew Fogliato.
Dean: Oh Wow. Nice.
David: Facebook. Yeah. So it was neat. He was talking about you. I'm like, I got to call with Dean next week. Would you give that same material that you mail on Facebook or not?
Dean: Yeah. What we do is we've been using the Facebook video ads, we've been doing microtargeting. We get right down to Lakewood or Lake Ashton, and there's a video standing outside the gate. We time it so that it's in their news feed the day the postcards are arriving. We pay attention, as soon as the postcards are scheduled to be delivered that day, we'll turn it on that night and we'll let it run for the next 30 hours. We'll maybe turn it on at 6:00 and let it run until midnight the next night, or all the way through the next morning.
The purpose of it is to amplify the response to the postcards. So, she's standing out front of the gate saying, "Hey, this is Diane Lightsey reporting live from Lake Ashton with your January 2019 report on Lake Ashton House prices. You may have seen this postcard arrive in your mailbox, offering this report on everything that's happened in Lake Ashton over the last 12 months. Let me tell you what happened in December. There were this many sales, this many new listings, blah, blah. I've got it all in this report. If you just click right here, or go to whatever the URL is, we will get your report out to you right away."
It amplifies response. It bumps it up simply because of the psychology of what's actually happening. That people are coming home, they've got their groceries, get the mail from the mailbox, they see the postcard and they may make a decision right then that, oh yeah, I'd like to get this. And then they can't do it right now because they got to get dinner and get the kids homework and ready for bed, and all that stuff. So, it gets set aside, and then the kids are in bed, and they're watching Real Housewives of New York or something.
And a commercial comes on, which is now the universal signal to pick up your phone and start scrolling your social media. And there's this video in their news feed that looks like a woman, a news reporter right outside at the gates of their place. You're going to watch that and that's going to stimulate, oh yeah, meant to do that. They can just click because we're using the lead ads on Facebook. So they don't have to even enter anything. They just pushed the button and it preloads their name and address and stuff. So-
David: Yeah. That's often to tap the power of that target marketing in the neighborhood. Yeah.
Dean: And we treat it just like postcards. We're not running that. That's not an ad that we're running every day, all the time. We run it and we watch because we're going to such a small area. We watch the frequency number and as soon as we see that going to 1.5, that means we're now showing it mostly to people who've already seen it. Yeah.
David: Interesting. Yeah. That's good stuff.
Dean: And those are cheap. If you treat it like postcards, it's like mailing, each of those impressions, costs four or five cents compared to 50 or 60 cents to mail a postcard.
David: Yeah, I know. If you're good with the follow up and treat those leads properly, yeah, the return on investment is crazy.
Dean: What's the next step for you once you get this all, really, what's your big vision?
David: My big vision? Oh, man. Hard to say what my big vision is actually. My big vision once I hang up with you, is to tap into the GoGo Agent properly instead of just scanning over it. Because again, I'm used to creating my own things. You're plugging your program here, but I guess that's okay. I'm on your show.
Dean: Yeah, don't mind that.
David: Yeah. Exactly. The big vision is, I guess I ultimately would love to, and I've wanted to track this for a long time, but to track small town versus big town, right? I want to track all the numbers. I think there's so much more money to be made in a small town than a big town, though when you talk to the majority of the people they think, what the heck are you going to do up there? Anybody buying or selling homes up there? Yeah. Big vision is to track all these numbers and to train everybody to do the same up here. Right?
Yeah. I just really enjoy having the team of folks that work with me here. It would be great for us. We are a smaller office than the competing office, they have a couple of stations and four agents, but market share wise we're quite close actually. It'd be neat to basically take way more market share with less agents. I think with the marketing that we're doing, I think we can quite easily do that this year. And so that's my big plan for the dealers to build up the whole office personally, to start advertising this year, that it makes up here in the area that I live. And then to do it with the office.
Dean: Yeah. Well, that's awesome. It's all very exciting, David. I'd love to see that you're making moves.
David: You Bet. Yeah. I'll keep you updated on the progress of how this works up here in small town, 100 Mile House, but-
Dean: That's it. We're gonna have to get you to shovel yourself out and come see us in February for our-
David: Okay. Absolutely. When is that again?
Dean: Yeah, February 22nd, 23rd.
David: 22nd, 23rd. Oh, you know what? I already looked at that. That's the same time we have our R4 RE/MAX convention. Otherwise, I would be there.
Dean: Okay.
David: Yup. So, maybe next year. Is it the same time every year or?
Dean: Ah. Yup. But we'll be in Toronto in October. So-
David: Okay. Gotcha. Oh, yes you'll be in Toronto in October. I'll have to make it out to that one.
Dean: There you go.
David: That's awesome.
Dean: Well, it's all very exciting. I enjoyed our conversation. I can't wait to see how it all unfolds.
David: Likewise.
Dean: Let's stay connected in the forum and share your results with everybody. It'd be great.
David: You bet. I will absolutely do that.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks David.
David: Alright Dean. Thanks for chatting. You Bet. Talk to you later. Bye.
Dean: And there we have it, another great episode. I love when all of these ideas come together. I just see it so clearly, all the opportunity for David and for his team to really take over that small market, one category or one area at a time. So here's what I think would be a good next step for you. We've just completed our Listing Agent Lifestyle Scorecard, where you can see how the eight elements of Listing Agent Lifestyle are affecting your business right now.
You can do that at ListingAgentScore.com. It's a good place to get your mind around what an action plan might be for you to start applying some of these elements that we talk about in the Listing Agent Lifestyle. We mentioned a lot of the programs that we have available for you at gogoagent.com. You can come on in and try all those out and get a free 30 day trial of GoGo Agent, no credit card required. You can come on in and try our Getting Listings Program and maybe you'll be like Ron Reed and get a listing before the 30 day trial is even up. That's our hope for you. I want you to be able to see all the things that we have, the tools that we have to help you make things easier for yourself, and the ways that we can help you actually execute these things with our easy button program.
So, come on in and check us out at GoGoAgent.com. In the meantime, if you'd like to continue the conversation here, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com. You can download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book. And you can, if you'd like to be a guest on the show by clicking on the be a guest link. So that's it for this week. Have a great week and I will talk to you next time. Bye bye.