Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Eric Pruitt, one of my neighbors here in the sunshine state, a little further down on the waterfront areas between Jupiter and North Palm Beach in Florida.
We had a really great conversation about the real estate business. Eric's been a very successful realtor for many years, and I was fortunate enough to meet him when he came up and spent the weekend with us at our GoGoAgent academy last week.
I love to see someone who is excited about new opportunities and excited about trying something different. We talked about some of the Listing Agent Lifestyle approaches that will be good for Eric to implement, especially around Getting Listings, Finding Buyers and Orchestrating Referrals.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep066
Dean: Hello, Mr. Pruitt.
Eric: Good morning.
Dean: Now that we've actually met, I'm excited to have the conversation. It's great to spend some time with you last weekend.
Eric: That was a pretty eye-opening experience, that's for sure.
Dean: Yeah. Tell me, I'm interested now to hear the whole Eric Pruitt story because we're just getting familiar with each other now, and I loved that you had some great contributions over the weekend. I'm interested to have the conversation with you.
Eric: Okay. So give me an example.
Dean: Well, like so, "I was born..."
Eric: I was hatched in West Palm-
Dean: Exactly. Exactly. I want to hear the real estate related story to Eric. How you got to where you are now.
Eric: I was born in West Palm Beach Florida, which is where I'm at. I went to junior high school. My father died when I was 11. My mother remarried a school teacher of Dublin, Florida. We moved to Melbourne for 10-11 years. I went to junior college for two years. I wasn't like the real A student. My father in law, my step-father's, brother-in-law was assistant chief for the city of West Palm Beach Fire Department. I decided to become a firefighter for city of West Palm Beach.
Dean: Oh wow.
Eric: I did that and after about two years there, I started saying, "Man," I had lots of time then, but no money. Right? 'Because you work 24 hours straight and 48 hours off. I'm going, "When I was young that was a great thing," and it's like my buddies were working construction, laboring and stuff like that. I'm a fireman, only have to work two days a week and that was really cool.
As time went on, those construction workers turned into contractors, stock brokers, and I'm still back working two days a week making $11-$12,000 a year. I said, "Man I gotta do something else where I can make some real money." It's like God, fate, whatever you want to call it, played the role in my life because the biggest real estate company in Melbourne and in the Atlantic where I was born, Melbourne Beach, all that area, was James H. Pruitt reality.
Dean: Oh wow.
Eric: Yeah.
Dean: No relation.
Eric: No relation at all, but everyone thought that was my father.
Dean: Okay.
Eric: This guy had a house on the water. He had a yacht. Fast forward, I'm now a firefighter for two or three years and I'm sitting, and the head of fire department union comes in. They're talking to captain, and they just had mortuary stats or whatever it's called for the fire department for the West Palm Beach firefighters, and I hear them say, "The average West Palm Beach firefighter dies seven years after he retires."
Dean: Oh my Goodness.
Eric: I'm going, "Oh my God. This is ridiculous," and you work there every third day no matter, Christmas holiday, whatever day. You're there every third day for the next 30 years. I couldn't retire until I was 55. I said, "Man, this is crazy. I'm going to find a better job. What could I do where I can make lots of money and then, boom. Oh, man, that Pruitt reality guy, he made lots of money. I'm going to get into real estate."
Dean: Yes.
Eric: I got my real estate license at the college at night. I went to interview people. Turns out I got a job with The Berg Agency who was the biggest company in South Florida at the time. They were two blocks down from the fire station I worked at.
Dean: Oh wow.
Eric: I worked 24 hours straight as a fireman. I would shower and change at the firehouse, go to two blocks and be a realtor for the next two days. My manager said I worked harder in two days than most realtor does in two weeks.
Dean: Right, right, right. I got you. That's funny.
Eric: Before coaching, there was mentoring, and I was very lucky. My manager really liked me and the owner of the company, the president of the company, liked me. Because I was such a hard working guy, and the manager says, "Eric, I'm going to set you up with Eva Morgan." She was their top agent, she was 60, which then I thought was old, but not anymore. She mentored me. I remember going back then, they had this program where they had actually prospect. The company would prospect and find leads and then send the agents on it and then they took 25%.
Dean: Ah. Okay.
Eric: They sent me on my first appointment. I met with the people, and they didn't list with me. I come back to the office, and I'm all bummed out. I said, "Ah, Eva, man, I was just over there and they didn't list with me and I just wasted all that time," and she says, "Son, let me tell you one thing, whenever you're belly to belly with the buyer or seller, you're never wasting time in real estate." I never forgot that.
It turns out, I ended up listing and selling that house three different times which was absolutely great.
Dean: Wow. Yeah, building the relationship, because not now, sometimes means maybe a little bit later.
Eric: Right. I did that for about five or six years working at the real estate office; going to the fire station, back and forth. Then one day here's the closest thing I ever got to insider trading, is that the president of the company comes in says, "Eric, what are you doing with all that money you're making?" I said, "Oh, I'm going snow skiing in Colorado." He said, "If you're smart, you'd take some of that money and invest in the company you work for." "Okay, see ya."
I come back 10 days later from my ski trip in Colorado, The Berg Agency's closed. There's a note on the door. The Berg Agency has been sold out to Coldwell Banker. All Berg Agency employees go to Coldwell Banker. That stock went for $2.00 a share to $30.00 a share in a week.
Dean: Oh my goodness.
Eric: Yeah. I went to the Berg Agency. Here's the interesting thing my first year in the business with the Berg Agency, was the biggest company in South Florida, I was in the top brokers.
Dean: Nice.
Eric: Just because I just never gave up. I never quit.
Dean: What was your method? What were you doing when you were just getting started? How were you finding new people to work with? What was your approach?
Eric: It's funny you say that, Dean because it was a lot of banging your head against the door, calling. I remember my first appointment they said, "Here's the desk. Here's the phone. Good luck, you're on your own." I said, "Okay." I go call For Sale By Owner, and I go knock on the door. They said, "Yeah, here how are you doing?" He lets me in the house. I had no idea, no clue. Just walk in, "Oh, okay, hi." "Yeah, okay," and left. Got no business from him The Berg Agency had Tommy Hawkins and Jayne Kennedy videos that I watched and learned how to do the listing.
Dean: Right.
Eric: I took the Sweathogs Program with Floyd Wickman.
Dean: Yes.
Eric: That really taught me how to list and sell houses. Because-
Dean: Yes.
Eric: You talk good, but you have to know what to do when you get there.
Dean: Well, you have to know what to say, that's it.
Eric: Yeah.
Dean: The funny thing is you know Floyd is a friend, and I've had great conversations with him. I remember calling him because he's been doing this forever. I remember when I went to Peter Diamandis' to the Abundance 360 event. The thing that I left there with was thinking, Floyd is actually preparing people for the success in the future of real estate. That is really coming down to the conversational dynamics, the relationship parts of it.
When you really think back on it, I mean, when you went through Sweathogs, that the thing that sellers really wanted back then, was they wanted to get the most money they could get for their house in the least amount of time, with the least amount of hassle. I think fast forward to 2019, and sellers want exactly the same thing. I mean it's still the same conversations that come up now, still come up or come up then, still come up now. It's really interesting.
Eric: The one great thing about the Berg Agency. This is before the internet, right?
Dean: Yes.
Eric: We're talking like the books. The MLS books, every two weeks got delivered to your office. That's how you looked for houses. Back then, with the Berg Agency, if you had two listings, you got to advertise one a week in the newspaper and everyone wanted their houses in the newspaper. That was fair, so I kept my sellers happy. They weren't selling in a week back then. It could be four or five, six months.
Then we closed and went to Coldwell Banker. Now, all of a sudden Coldwell Banker's saying, "Okay, for every six listings, you get one listing a week." I left. I'm like, "These sellers are getting all upset and giving me grief," and I didn't know how to respond to it. So I go to the Coldwell Banker manager and I said, "You know I've got a problem. I was getting once every two weeks, now it's every six weeks, blah, blah, blah." The manager says to me, "Eric, you need Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker doesn't need you."
Dean: Wow.
Eric: Yeah. I said, "Wow, okay." Within about two or three weeks, I went joined partnerships with another Berg Agency employee or broker. We started our own company called Real Trust Properties. We did that for five or six years until I mean I got my business just basically from going out and calling people, just getting in front of people, Dean. Like you said, "They want it as easy as possible, most money in the least amount of time, and least inconvenience.
Dean: Yes.
Eric: It seemed easier back then. So that partnership was going pretty good for five or six years and then all of a sudden, my partner comes to me and says, "Hey, we've got people here that aren't happy. They're threatening to quit because they think you're skimming all the good leads." I said to him, I go, "What are you talking about?" I said, "You know I'm not skimming leads. You know I'm working for them." "I know," we had maybe 10 agents. He goes, "Five of them are going to leave if you're still ownership." I said, "Okay." He goes, "Either you buy me out, or I'll buy you out." He knew I didn't have the money to buy him out. He says, "Well, you can still work here." I said, "Great, I'll sell out my interest to this company to you for $10 and I just want a 100% of the commission that I get. Earn on my own, I get to keep."
We were both young guys back then. He was, "Yeah, okay, great," so they agree to sell the interest to it. It was him, his father, and myself, and we go to close the deal on the business and the attorney says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait he can't get 100%. He's a liability and he has to have something of value to the cooperation." Back then, I was selling $50,000 townhouses. You know 3% is $1,500 bucks that we charge for half then and so then they say, "Well, how about $200 a transaction? So you keep 100% minus $200.00 transaction?" So I was forced into, I say, "Okay." Well, then I got angry, because I feel they really stuck it to me.
Dean: Right.
Eric: What I did was. "Well, okay. $200.00 on $1,500.00 that's about 15%, that's an 85% split," but I said, "You know, if I increase my sales price, and I bring it up to $300,000, now I'm making $9,000 and you're getting $200." Right?
Dean: Yes.
Eric: So I did that. I increased my sales price. Starting selling a lot of houses on the water back then. I mean you get a house and it cost $350,000. Everything was fine and dandy when I was selling those $50,000 houses. Well, once I got up to selling $300-$350,000 houses. My partner started getting angry and angrier. The talk of the water cooler before was, "Oh yeah. We could be as good as Eric if we owned the company," right? Once I sold the company, "Oh yeah. We could be as good as Eric if we get to keep all the commission."
Dean: Oh boy.
Eric: Yeah. It got so bad that I said, "You know what? I don't need this. I went and talked to RE/MAX." They really opened my eyes to show me what an agent could really make. I said to my partner, "Hey, you got it all, dude. I'm gone." I joined RE/MAX and I've never looked back. Here's the interesting thing. Go ahead.
Dean: I was going to say how long has this been?
Eric: I've been with RE/MAX about, well, probably that was about 28-30 years ago.
Dean: Wow, that's a long time.
Eric: I did 23 years with RE/MAX and then all of a sudden the market crashed 10-12 years ago. Then it was like survival. How cheap could you get by on. The RE/MAX offices were closing and the only big office around here was Keller Williams. I went to Keller Williams for about three or four years and then came back to RE/MAX about four years ago.
What's been big in my program is there's 2,500 homes on the water in our area.
Dean: Yes.
Eric: So I have them on the mailing list, and I'm constantly mailing. I try to do it once a month, but it's probably more like once every two months. The good news letter, "We just sold your neighbor's home on the water." It was called a good news/bad news letter.
Dean: Right.
Eric: The good news, we just sold your neighbor home on the water. Bad news, we still have a buyer looking for a home that hasn't found one yet. We just blanket that letter out 2,700 times or it was like, SOS help. SOS help. We just sold the neighbor's house down the street. We still have a buyer looking to buy a house near the water. Can you help us?
It's interesting after this weekend, diminishing returns like you guys were talking about on the mail out to the postcards. I've really seen it happen in my waterfront mail outs. I used to send out 2,300 letter mail out. It takes a little bit of time to print all those letters, stuff them, stamp them, seal them. I'd get eight to 10 responses and then I would get three to four listings. They were all million dollar houses on the average so it paid out well.
Since then, I don't know if it's the advent of the internet, advent of your postcards, I don't know what it is, but the last couple of years, the response has been really bad. Now I just sent out 2,700 home letters and we've gotten one response.
Dean: Yeah.
Eric: Something needs to change.
Dean: I get it.
Eric: That 2,700, that house is $1.2 million, 90% chance I'm getting a listing.
Dean: Oh well that's good. It's a good thing that it'll pay off for you. You wondered now, when we were together this weekend then, what were some of the things that resonated with you or were eye opening or different perspective for you?
Eric: Well the one thing is what's the most incredible postcard or whatever?
Dean: The World's Most Interesting Postcard, right.
Eric: I'm always like a high D personal. I'm a real hammer, and it's like, once I sell someone the house, they go on a seven year drift, follow-up campaign. Every month they get a letter from us. The problem is, it might be a 10 year follow-up plan right now I think. The most probable time that they're going to sell, they drop off the list and they get nothing else from me. In like 10-12, once they've been there. After 10 years, they don't hear from me anymore.
Dean: Right.
Eric: That postcard would be so easy just to send them out on automatic.
Dean: Yeah that's part of the whole thing is that measuring the return on relationship. That's really what we're really about there. Is to get that sense that this is actually driving a ROI. We measure it in a standardized way where everybody's on a level playing field. We measure the return on relationship, the number of repeat and referral transactions divided by the number of relationships that you are managing in your relationship portfolio there.
That's one of the elements. Let's go through some of these. Let's go through the listing agent lifestyle elements here and do some brainstorming or build a plan here for implementing here.
When we look at the first element of getting listings, for years you've had that sort of approach of mailing the letters to get the listings basically on demand. Whenever you wanted, you could get them. One of the things that we talked about, you and I, was this triangulation of the waterfront as a single-target market. You've really got something there. You've already done the work of identifying the 2,700 waterfront homeowners and what was the price range on those again? They range-
Eric: They range from probably low 800 to a high of 10 million.
Dean: Yeah, perfect. So you look at it and what would be the average in there or the median kind of thing?
Eric: Probably a million and a half. I mean there's not too many low ends and well, actually the really heavy high end stuff, I've stayed away from. I mean the five million and 10 million, but they are, I mean, I'm in the Jupiter, Florida and in Palm Beach Gardens. Which is very high stuff, but there's also very low end stuff.
Dean: Right, and so that this waterfront is such a great desirable thing because for somebody who's got a boat, and the reason that they're coming here, choosing to be on a coastal community is because of the water. That's what they really want. So you've got a really great market built in like that there, definitely searching for waterfront homes.
Now, part of the great joy of being able to put yourself in what we call that market-maker position is being able to have a systematic way of finding both the buyers and the sellers. Being able to have the ability to identify who's going to be selling their house in the next six months, 12 months, 24 months, on and on. Out of those 2,700, what kind of turnover rate is there in the waterfront homes? How many sell in the course of a year?
Eric: That's a good question.
Dean: Okay. It's similar. It reminds me like here in Winter Haven, I mentioned the lakefront homes are the thing and they have a turnover rate of about 4% so there about 85 or 84 sales of lakefront homes in Winter Haven in a 12 month period.
Eric: What are they total?
Dean: 2,100. You may find that with that 2,700, that it might be in that 4 or 5% turnover. Do you find that there typically what you would say high turnover or-
Eric: No, low turnover?
Dean: Yeah, so I think it might be probably accurate, but it would be good number for you to know just to get a sense of the scope of what we're talking about. I always have people calculate the total yield of a market, and you'd mentioned when you were doing townhouses for $50,000 that you realized, "If I sold something for $300,000, I'd make more money."
That's the same principle in action here that the good news is, it costs the same amount of money to send postcards to waterfront homes with an average price of $1.5 million as it does to send it to condos with an average price of $300,000 or whatever it might be. Maybe it's even lower, but that's where we look at it that it's not just the price range and it's not just the turnover rate, because the condos may have a higher turnover rate. Some people may go, "Well, I'm going to go for that because there's more activity," but when you look at what the total yield would be, meaning, how much money is available that's going to be paid out in listing side commissions for the, if we were to call it, a hundred.
Let's say there's a hundred waterfront homes which would probably be pretty safe and maybe more, but if there were a hundred, that would be probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 million dollars. If you look at just the listing side commissions of a hundred, million and a half or more homes. That gives you a pretty good sense of the value of it.
That's really a good start to wrap your head around the ROI of doing something like the Getting Listings Program, where we would mail a postcard directly to those 2,700 homes. So maybe you would spend $1,500 or so, let's say to mail to 2,700 waterfront homeowners. Over a period of a year, $18,000 for doing it every month for a year. All of that is less than one transaction. If you look at where you would reach escape velocity on that. Because as soon as you did the first transaction, you are playing with house money the way we look at it. You know?
Eric: Right.
Dean: Yeah, and when I showed you the infographic, and you met Tony and Ron Reed and these guys who've been doing this for a while as our case studies here. I'm pretty excited that if we were to model this with those waterfront homes while at the same time, doing a guide to waterfront house prices for buyers, that would be a really good thing.
Now I know you still have a, Homes & Land Magazine in your area. Are there other print publications that are...
Eric: Other than the Palm Beach Post Times which has got a residents' magazine, which is very expensive. I mean, I think we have the Happy Herald or something. Not a whole lot.
Dean: Right. Do you do any print advertising in the Homes & Land?
Eric: Yeah, I have one page in Homes & Land.
Dean: What do you typically advertise? Your listings in there?
Eric: Yes.
Dean: Very good.
Eric: Just a side note. I real quick, did a map on this MLS of the homes 900 to 7 million which encompasses about that 2,700 I mail out to?
Dean: Yes.
Eric: 105 sold in the last 12 months.
Dean: We were right on. That's funny at a hundred. That's great. Listing cost, that kind of statistics all are parallel. I am a real numbers guy. I would've been doing this all over the country. That's good. Okay. Perfect. That gives you a track to run on here that we look at a hundred of those and the way I did the math, is if you're looking at what would be the average the listing side-check that you would get for a million and a half?
Eric: Probably 37,000.
Dean: Yeah. $35,000 or $40,000. Yeah, exactly. You look at that. That's where I was doing that math. There's $4.5 million if call it that or $4 million if we just say $40,000, that $4 million, where I'm getting that is 100 times that $40,000. That's what I'm saying is, that's going to be paid out. That's the pool that's available right now that in the last 12 months was paid out to listing just the listing side of the commissions.
When you look at that, when we start looking at all the listing multiplier opportunities that we have, looking at not just one transaction, but that each one of these listings then brings with it the opportunity to find the buyer, just get it sold, to find the buyer, to find a buyer who buys another house, to get another listing in that neighborhood or another waterfront listing or from someone who's buying, moving up to that waterfront home and to get a referral from the seller. When we apply all of these listing multiplier strategies to that listing, the opportunity is just huge.
When we look at the total, the outcome possible here, it makes so much sense that you would be willing to invest the seed money that it takes to get to the first transaction. Then be all self-sustaining from there, which is a cool place to be.
Eric: I agree with that because I've always been heavy on the phones, calling the expireds in the morning and in the last about six, eight months ago, I had a serious sinus infection going on. I had to have a sinus surgery and it took about six months to get over it. You really realize, man when you got to make hay, shine when you're feeling good because when you're not, it's tough to do.
Dean: Yes, absolutely. You're right. This is the thing that is nice because we're not even making any outbound calls with this.
Eric: Yes. It's going to happen no matter how I feel.
Dean: That's in spite of how you feel. Which is the greatest thing. That's the cool thing. I'm excited to get that rolling. Where in the process are you in terms of getting everything set up to do the first mailing?
Eric: Well, the first thing I want to do is get the postcard. I just literally, after coming back from this weekend, my goal is this week is to have the top 150 in a postcard.
Dean: Yes, get that dialed in.
Eric: Here's the interesting thing. You had that question at the seminar, "Do people pass clients that you haven't contacted in a while," because you said, "Recognized in the store." If you recognize them in the grocery store, you should put them on the 150 list. My challenge is, I did too many parties when I was younger. I've had the case where I've listed their house or sold them a house, and then bumped into them at the mall a week later and didn't even recognize them.
Dean: I had somebody say that to me. Said with a southern accent, said, "Dean, I barely recognize my own kinfolk in the grocery store."
Eric: But that's a good one. I'm going to start using that one. I mean it's really an embarrassment for me and I don't know what the reason is, but it just don't connect up there. Here's the thing. I got a call yesterday from a guy who said, "Hello Eric, how are you doing? Hey, you had this house listed when I bought it five years ago, I'm thinking about selling it. Could you come talk to me?" Could you imagine if he would've got a freakin This was the buyer's side. It wasn't even me. So could you imagine if I would've put them on the postcard?
Dean: Yeah, something. For most people, when we look at the who we mail those postcards to, part of it is, and the reason we talk about 150 people is that, that's basically what we have the capacity for relationship with. That's how we define relationships that you would recognize them by name and you'd stop and have a conversation with them. Genetically, we're wired that, that's the capacity we have. It's so much so that they actually study this and evolutionary psychology. Robin Dunbar did a lot of the research on it. It's named Dunbar's Number, is the size of relationships that we can have.
It was really interesting that when they did a study on Facebook, when you take out people, like business own people, who are trying to add up more people into their Facebook friends and stuff, the average number of friends that people have on Facebook is 153. For normal people, which is an interesting, just correlation there that, that's pretty much what people are comfortable with.
Now I always say, that who should be on that list is anybody who is living in the house that you helped them buy. You're the incumbent realtor in their world. You're holding that position. The number one reason that people don't relist or reuse the realtor that helped them before, was that they lose touch with them. They can't remember them or they don't know how to get in touch with them or the realtor never maintained the relationship.
This goes such a long way that each month now, there you are. You're staying in touch with them. That's going to help things out a lot. We always look for when people who may think about you naturally when they're in conversation about real estate. That's what we're really looking for is to ensure that in the moment, when it matters, that you're the thought that they have.
Eric: Yeah. That's my first goal. We have a call with Diane today about that.
Dean: Okay, perfect.
Eric: On the waterfront, you said it had to be neighborhood specific. The 2,700 homes are broken down into, there's probably 1,000 in North Palm Beach. Probably 700 in Palm Beach Gardens, and better than Palm Beach Gardens is probably the other 1,100 in Jupiter.
Dean: Yep.
Eric: What I was thinking about doing, is to just take you know, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." First, take just the waterfront homes in North Palm Beach.
Dean: Yes.
Eric: Which is probably about 1,000.
Dean: Yep.
Eric: Then that way I could come up with the North Palm Beach waterfront report.
Dean: That's exactly right. Yep.
Eric: Then, just work that in for the next 12 months and before branching on to go into more, others. It's like one of the challenges that I'm seeing is how do you do all the reports if you got Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, all these different neighborhoods?
Dean: Well, it's only three. It would only be three. You could even combine them in the reports as long as you're distinguishing. It's not so big an area that you're talking about Melbourne and Boca Raton where they're completely disconnected markets. There's somebody looking for a waterfront home-
Eric: Look at all three of those.
Dean: They may. That's what I'm asking you, is-
Eric: They do. They do. Yeah, they do. They definitely do.
Dean: They want to get the scope of the thing. It may be in certain situations. Is there a price difference in Palm Beach versus Jupiter up at the top? What's the North and South tips of the area that you're doing? Is there a price difference there?
Eric: Not really a price difference. They're all about the same range. There's more high-end in Jupiter because you have Admiral's Cove and all the luxury communities that have deep water and North Palm Beach has that and Palm Beach Gardens, not so much.
Dean: Okay perfect. That's good to know. In certain places, when I was in Halton Hills, we used to have a situation where Halton Hills was at the end of or the edge of the Greater Toronto Area. It was the end of the commuter train line. People were still connected into the GTA. People would come to Georgetown and the prices were less than what they were in the city, so it would be a nice break for people.
We use to use to point out that there were two more towns in our area from a little bit further away. One was Acton and then one was Hillsburgh and one was 10 minutes away, one was 20 minutes away. We use to say that you could save about $1,000 a minute for every minute you are willing to drive beyond Halton Hills. So if you're willing to drive 20 more minutes, you could save $20,000 on a $165,000 bungalow. You could get that same bungalow for $145,000 in Hillsburgh. That's why I was asking about whether there's any price difference the further-
Eric: You're probably talking from Palm Beach Gardens to Jupiter is probably only about a 12 mile Inlet to inlet is only 12 miles.
Dean: Completely then, I would do the one report with sections for Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, and what was the other one?
Eric: North Palm Beach.
Dean: North Palm Beach. Yeah, I would definitely just do the one report that you can combine the report so that all of it's in there. When you're sending the postcard, since we're doing the digital variable postcards, you could mail the people who live in Palm Beach Gardens or North Palm Beach would get a postcard that says, "North Palm Beach waterfront prices," and the same would be true for Palm Beach Gardens and for Jupiter.
Eric: Okay.
Dean: It's more important that because that's all they're worried about is what-
Eric: Their house.
Dean: Yeah, "What is my house worth?" Some of them may think, "Well, I'm in North Palm Beach. I'm not in Jupiter," or whatever. They may have made that distinction. That's the closest horoscope effect that we can get.
Eric: Okay.
Dean: Then it's easy. Then it's just every month, all the updates.
Eric: I got it.
Dean: You're going to love this system because the whole thing, I mean really as we mentioned, we got it so that all we have to do is that we can take care of everything. All the mailing.
Eric: Right, so the thing is what I'm a little confused on, what kind of report do you send them? I mean, I just literally started this since this weekend.
Dean: I know. Yeah. It was great that you could... How did we get connected, by the way?
Eric: Zach.
Dean: Through Zach. Okay. Perfect. So Zach's been around for I've known Zach for 20 plus years.
Eric: Yeah.
Dean: It's exciting to see what he's doing with the high-rises in Atlanta.
Eric: Yeah, because we have some good high-rises here too, but you can't do it all. That's one thing I find. Have you ever watched that movie, Up?
Dean: Yes.
Eric: The guy, the dog with the squirrel.
Dean: Yes. Yeah.
Eric: That's me, squirrel.
Dean: I think that's a lot of us.
Eric: As realtors, right?
Dean: We've all got that shiny object syndrome.
Eric: My biggest challenge is focus.
Dean: Yeah, that's it. That's why you'll notice about me that the things that I tend to focus on, or I try to make things as simple as possible with the fewest moving parts and no complexity. Part of it is just to set things up so that they can be consistent without requiring my disciplined effort.
If I can set things up to happen automatically, that's part of the discipline of this or the benefit of this is that it doesn't require any discipline. It's like this can happen every month without you having to really do anything. Because we're mailing essentially the same postcard and the responses come in and I've already written all of the creative stuff for you.
It's just a matter of doing updating the data on your end in terms of one search. Well, you'd actually do two searches a month where you would search everything's that happened in the last 12 months. Then, everything that's happened in the last 30 days. Those are the only two reports that people would get. They get the full report the first time that they respond and then, each month they get the monthly update report.
Eric: What was that booklet thing that Zach had with all condos and how often does that go out? Is that the report?
Dean: Yeah. So Zach this is what would be a great thing that we could do for the buyer's side for you, is to prepare a guide to waterfront house prices. And to show, because there's some what you're looking for is to give somebody a sense of where things are and which waterways are deep water. Which ones, if there's any specialty things. I don't know enough about the waterfront to make the distinctions. What would be things that people would be concerned about or looking for with a waterfront home?
Eric: The depth of the water. If there's a bridge, the clearance on it. Fixed bridge, no fixed bridge.
Dean: So you would be able to show people which ones are bridge restricted or bridge heights or water depth, all of that kind of thing. That would be a very helpful thing I imagine almost navigation type of maps where you could have and show what locations of the special things that might be great on waterfront restaurants or gas stations or service stations or whatever you call it, Is it gas stations or what do you call the…?
Eric: Yeah, Marina. Marinas.
Dean: Marinas, I guess all of those kinds of things. It would be with pictures. Maybe aerial shots. You can do the whole thing from Google satellite views or to give people a sense of the kinds of homes that are on the water. There's a nice supplement then to, "Here's all the ones that are available now as well."
Eric: Right. Okay.
Dean: All the while, while we're building that list of the buyers, we're also of course doing a list of the future sellers. The people who are responding to the postcards.
Eric: Right.
Dean: That's where we get this really great opportunities to start triangulating because we're building this list that everybody who's asking for the buyer stuff, we're able to every week, send them the waterfront weekly market watch email with all the updates of, "Here's what's come on the market." Then of course, offer them the super signature items of, "Join us for a daily tour of waterfront homes," or the things that would be the next step for people.
Eric: Right.
Dean: I'm excited to watch this unfold because I know you have such longevity and you strike me as the kind of person that once in place that you stick with it and that's I think going to be a great thing.
Eric: All right. Well, Dean thank you so much and you've given me a lot of homework here.
Dean: Yeah, that's it. I mean, I can't wait to watch it all unfold. You're in a great market. You got a great price range. You've got a unique product that we can triangulate. I can't wait to see it all unfold.
Eric: Right.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks so much, Eric.
Eric: Thank you, Dean.
Dean: I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
Eric: Bye, bye.
Dean: And there we have it. Another great episode. I love when a good plan comes together. I can't wait to see how all this will work out once Eric does the fast forward to six months, 12 months and building this amazing list of the waterfront homeowners who are most likely to be selling their house and also building a wonderful list of people who are looking for waterfront homes. This is going to be and exciting next 90 days, six months, 12 months to watch it all unfold.
If you want to join us and watch it all unfold for you, come on over to GoGoagent.com, that's where everything is. All of the postcards, the entire Getting Listings Program we've been talking about. The World's Most Interesting Postcard, all of that is available for you at gogoagent.com. As well as being part of an amazing community of people who are all in pursuit of this listing agent lifestyle. Come on over, gogoagent.com. You can take a free 30 day trial, no credit card required, nothing. Come on in, take a look around, see if it's for you. If it is, then I really look forward to working together with you. I'll see you over there.