Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Ben Dau from Waverly, Iowa. A metropolis of 3,500 homes just outside of Waterloo.
We had a great conversation about the uniqueness of working in a small market and what it means to dominate a market like that.
We went through all of the elements of a Getting Listings campaign. He's just started with his first Getting Listings mailings, he's got his first leads, so we talked about how to parlay that momentum and continue to grow using some big opportunities by thinking outside of just the transactional real estate box. Instead, thinking about all the homeowners in Waverly.
It's a really great conversation that went very fast. You're going to enjoy this episode.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep079
Dean: Hello, Ben!
Ben: Dean Jackson, how are you, sir?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Ben: I am doing very well, thank you.
Dean: Hey, Ben, how do I say your last name? Dau?
Ben: Yep, so, pronounced D-O-W, but spelled differently.
Dean: Well, welcome about.
Ben: Thank you.
Dean: I'm super excited. We got the whole hour here to focus and build a plan, am I'm anxious to hear all about what you've got going on. Where are we at?
Ben: Well, I'll give you the backdrop, and then I have some questions that I wanted to ask you.
Dean: Perfect.
Ben: So, I am a new agent, new as of February of this year, and I am also a pastor, so I'm doing both. I have been a pastor for the last seven years and then was needing a little bit more as far as income for my family and decided to step into real estate because it had been a long-term interest of mine, so that is sort of where I'm at, so I have a little bit of income from the church for this year while I build up sales career, but looking at next year, 2020, I will be going basically half-pay with the congregation. So, I'm looking to ramp up sales enough through real estate to be able to make up the difference and hopefully more than that, go from there. Let's see: as of the start of June, I started the Getting Listings program.
Dean: Oh, nice, so you're just getting started, here, okay.
Ben: Correct, yeah, and, Dean, that was magical. It was amazing. I hit the easy button. Dianne got me set up with everything, and the postcards dropped on a Saturday, and I don't know when the mail starts being delivered in my town. I usually get it around noon, but the day that I saw that in my mailbox, I was excited. I'm like, "Yay, they're here. I logged onto GOGO Agent, checked out the landing pages, and someone had already gone through the whole process, hit the landing page, requested the packet, and that was before 10:00 in the morning, so, yeah, it was amazing.
I've had four leads come in since then, and we're kind of off to the races with that, no calls or followups for listings yet, but I'm hopeful for that, and then, I have also started using your market maker letter template and kind of leveraging some buyers. So, because I'm a newer agent, I have been talking with some of the other folks in my office, and, occasionally, they'll come across a buyer that wants to be in a particular area, and I love the hunt, so being able to kind of put a flyer together and go and door knock and have something to drop off that's a little bit more compelling than a business card has been really fun.
Dean: Right, absolutely.
Ben: Yeah.
Dean: Well, this is great. So, you're doing all the right moves. It's barely middle of June, now, so you're on track, here. Let's start off with the area that you chose for getting listings. Tell me about the area that you chose to mail to.
Ben: Yep, so, I am in a pretty small town. We're about 10,000 people total, and I chose-
Dean: Where are you?
Ben: I'm in Waverly, Iowa.
Dean: Waverly, Iowa, okay.
Ben: Yep, so, we're just about an hour south of the Minnesota border, and the districts, the areas that I decided to start with were two of the historic districts in town because my live-in one and also the other one was just an area that has a lot of, I think, starter homes, and they were both two of the higher turnover rates in our town, so, all together, we had 379 people that we mailed to.
Dean: 379 homes, okay. All right, and, when you look at this now, I mean, over the course of the next 12 months when we look at what you measured the turnover rate for the last 12 months, I'm assuming, so you kind of know how the mechanics of this work. So, what kind of turnover rate did they have in that area?
Ben: Yeah, my town as a whole is 5% and these two particular neighborhoods were 8% and 7%.
Dean: Okay, and when you look at it now that what we're looking at is somewhere around 25 or 30 homes that are going to sell in the next 12 months, that's what were up against right now. That's the idea, and so our goal, the reason that we're doing the Getting Listings program the way we do it is to identify in advance, "Who are those 30 people?" That's the whole thing. We're not trying to convince them to list with you by the strength of the postcard. What we're trying to do is, by offering the information that somebody who's about to put their house on the market would want, we're getting those people to raise their hand and we know who they are ahead of anybody.
And, that's a valuable thing because now with get to, each month, send them the updated information along with the Get Top Dollar newsletter and offering them the next steps, either the ten-point price analysis, room-by-room review, the silent market. One of those three things is going to be the motivator that gets somebody to reach out to you when it's time, and it's okay that it's not right now because we know we're in this for the overall things. You're laying the foundation of a longterm career in this market, in this neighborhood and area, so you're establishing roots; that's what we say, and that's kind of like we're planting an orange tree or an apple tree or whatever kind of trees you have that bear fruit in Waverly, Iowa. We've got orange trees in Winter Haven, not apple.
Ben: Right, yeah, we're more apple trees up here, yeah.
Dean: You got apple trees, so it's a good analogy that you're planting an apple tree and you know that the yield from 379 homes that you've chosen there is about 25 or 30 apples a year, go off to think, so we're planting seeds that, hopefully, those four people that have raised their hand right now, which is a little bit better than 1%, which is what we would generally look at if you added a zero to this and you were mailing 3,000 and we got 40 responses, that's a good response.
So, it's all just staying the course and the disciplined execution over time of this. We've got evidence upon evidence upon evidence that you're on the right track, here. It's just a matter of sticking with it. So, that's exciting, but what could accelerate it, of course, is if you had a buyer for those homes. You referred to them as historic homes. Is there a name for the neighborhood or is it historic homes? What would somebody who's a buyer for this be looking for? Is it a category that you've chosen?
Ben: So, I based it just off of what are considered the historic districts in our town, so these are all fairly old homes. We're talking 1890s through maybe 1920s and some, so, yeah, they're older, more Victorian and craftsman style homes. I don't know if anyone ever moves into those districts because they're historic or they're looking for a painted lady or anything like that. I think they typically move into that because those are the starter home prices within our community.
Dean: Okay, so what is the price range of this area for you?
Ben: These homes can go anywhere from the lowest that's currently on the market is like $82,000 up to, I would say, in these neighborhoods, they top out maybe around $140,000.
Dean: Okay, so they're starter homes. So, first-time buyers would buy these.
Ben: Correct.
Dean: So, that's an important thing, then. There's our way of getting this, is being able to find first-time buyers, but we can find the category of first-time buyers without needing listings to do it. So, you're in a small town. Are you familiar with the USDA, the rural home?
Ben: I know a little bit. I think I have an idea of where you're going, but I'm not particularly familiar with that.
Dean: Okay, so, in GOGO Agent, we have some areas in Winter Haven that are eligible for the farmer, so I can't imagine that Waverly, Iowa is not part of that, so that may be a great thing where you're able to advertise zero-down homes for first-time buyers, which is always a perfect appeal, too, because a lot of people have the income, but don't necessarily have the down payment. They've got the income and the credit to carry a mortgage, and if they knew that they could get a house for zero-down, that that would be a great appeal to them. Are there apartments in Waverly? People get their living in there?
Ben: Yes, yeah. We have several different areas that have some apartment buildings in them, yeah.
Dean: Okay, and so, there's the kind of thing where what we want to do, now, is to start to think like a market maker. You've got one of the things that I always talk about in terms of these categories, being a category market maker is that you've got something now established. You're going to have, over time, here, if each month, you continue to mail the postcards and we add four new people a month. We've been doing with Dianne. She's mailing more people and adding more people every month, but as you get to a point where very soon, you're going to have 20, 25, 30 people who have responded for your report, right, so you've got this kind of secret inventory of people who are below the surface right now. They haven't yet decided to put their house on the market, but they're getting all their ducks in a row. They're getting everything organized for that.
And, when their house comes on the market, it's going to be appealing to first-time buyers, so we've got the opportunity to go ahead and start looking for first-time buyers without having to depend on those people listing their house. This is the big conundrum for brand new real estate agents, often, is that it feels like you have to get listings to find buyers, right, and that that's where all of the chicken-and-egg kind of thing comes from, but if we've got a way to find buyers that don't depending on you having a listing, and, at the same time, we can start finding people who are thinking about selling their house, we're able to match those up. So, if we now start doing either postcards or Facebook ads or print ads in what's the available opportunities in Waverly for reaching the people there? If you were trying to reach people, is there a newspaper with a real estate section in Waverly? Is there a Homes Magazine? What are the ways that you would reach Waverly?
Ben: Yeah, the homes magazine was here for a while and has since gone away. I would say the four main ways that I could think of would be: direct mail is pretty underutilized, Facebook. Our paper, first-time home buyers would not be really in the paper because they're younger folks.
Dean: But their parents and their grandparents might be.
Ben: Yep, yep, and, yeah, so, some of the brokerages still advertise in the paper, but, really, that is becoming more of an open space as more drop out of it, so that could work, and then, our local radio station has a pretty good following, as well.
Dean: Oh, wow, nice. And, that's newsworthy in a way, too, like you can present this kind of thing. And, is Waverly a community up adjacent to a city or are you out kind of on its own like an island or are you an immediate suburb? What's the lay of the land for Waverly?
Ben: Yeah, Waverly is just north of two significantly larger towns, so we have Cedar Falls and Waterloo, which, maybe together, would be a population of, oh man, 120,000 or more, so we're sort of a bedroom-
Dean: How far?
Ben: And, they're 20 to 30 minutes away.
Dean: And, do people kind of work in Cedar Falls and live out in Waverly?
Ben: Waverly is not a place that is cheap. We actually are one of the most expensive places in Iowa to be.
Dean: Okay, perfect, yes.
Ben: Yeah, so, it's a lot of engineers and other professionals that want to have sort of a smaller town feel. Waverly's a pretty amazing town. We have a Nestlé factory, so you wake up in the morning and it smells like chocolate as you're walking by the river.
Dean: How bad could that be?
Ben: Oh, no, it's amazing, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, right.
Ben: So, yeah, we tend to be sort of a bedroom community for some of the professionals of Cedar Falls/Waterloo.
Dean: Love it.
Ben: And then, yeah, we have a college and a hospital, so it's kind of a smattering of different people groups here.
Dean: Well, this is awesome. I think when you look at this in that context, your 10,000 people, I would put your eye on treating all of Waverley like your single-target market, you know, like thinking about creating this sort of CAT scan perspective on it. You started with the first-time buyers on the low end. What's Waverly known for, or what other categories would there be? So, I've talked often about golf course communities or lakefront homes or waterfront or farms. What kind of things are some of the categories for Waverly if I get the big picture here for us?
Ben: Yeah, so Waverly does have two golf courses, and our newest golf course is still sort of being developed. There's a builder out of Waterloo, who's the 30-minutes-away town, who is developing that, so that is growing and having some new life pumped into it, and then we also have a river that runs through town, so there's a number of folks that like riverfront property and are more outdoorsy, kayak, that sort of thing.
Dean: Yeah. How many riverfront homes would there be, and golf course homes?
Ben: I have not looked that up. If I were to take a stab at it, I would say-
Dean: Yeah, if we were on Price is Right.
Ben: Yeah, right, I would say maybe 150-200, maybe 250.
Dean: Okay, so 250 homes on the river, probably.
Ben: Mm-hmm .
Dean: Okay. And, the golf courses, are they sort of like, you know, closed golf course community?
Ben: No, I wouldn't say that it's closed, and it is undergoing a shift, because the guy who started it had a plan of having condos along the golf course, and after he kind of went belly up, this new developer's coming in and I'm not sure if the vision has changed or not, so there's kind of a mix of condos as well as larger homes. Yeah, that area certainly has the highest priced homes in Waverly. Yeah, I would say there's probably under 100 that are in that, and actually, I think I have that pulled up because that was one of the things that I looked at. Oh, it is more than I actually 232 homes in what I call the Prairie Lynx district.
Dean: Okay, so, there's another sort of category, here, that we're looking for. I always look at, if we're going to create a total sort of overall plan for approaching this long term to be involved in all aspects of the Waverly, Iowa market there that we want to kind of do that CAT scan perspective there, but we could start with your guide to Waverly house prices just overall because people, I suspect being so adjacent to Cedar Falls and Waterloo, that people coming out there kind of want to get a sense of what they get for the money out there or what's available or kind of introduce that idea there that it maybe where we could find a lot of that migration from Waterloo and Cedar Falls?
Ben: There is, and I think more so, yeah.
Dean: So, part of this whole idea before we took all this stuff online, it's very similar to what I was doing in Toronto. When I was just getting started with direct response, that was the thing that I did was the guide to Halton Hills real estate prices, house prices, and that, I took pictures of the different styles of homes that were available in Halton Hills and showed people kind of what you get for the money, so if you went on thing, you start out with the least expensive homes, which might be the condos or townhouses that they have, that kind of thing, and then the detached homes and then on up to the luxury homes.
So, as people get a sense of, "I've got this much money, this is the kind of house that I can get," and the map and some highlights of the area almost treating it like a relocation guide for people thinking about moving out to Waverly. And, that gives you a really good opportunity to find buyers before, without depending on them calling on specific houses, you know? You get people who are looking for the whole thing. Anybody looking out there, that would be something that would be valuable for them, you know?
Ben: Yeah. Would you recommend that being an electronic thing or a physical?
Dean: Both.
Ben: Okay.
Dean: Yeah, both. And, nothing really matches the physical mounting evidence that you are acting on somebody's behalf. There's something about holding something in your hand that's different than just getting an email or an electronic version of something, you know? There's something to that, that way people can pass that around or, "Come look at this," kind of thing. They're not gathering around the computer kind of thing. You can curl up and look at this, this guide.
And, it does make an impact. It's something that people, then its physical presence is there with your contact information and always offering people the next step, right, like, "Join us for a daily tour of Waverly homes," or yeah, those kind of things where whatever the buyers are interested in, you know? Are there any other categories? Because, most of the things you described to them right now are kind of hundreds of things. Is there anything that there are thousands of? Are there condos?
Ben: No.
Dean: I'm trying to get you to think bigger. I'm trying to get you to think bigger, yeah.
Ben: Right, right, yeah. Within Waverly, that would be a challenge. If we were to expand the scope to Cedar Falls/Waterloo, then we could get thousands, but, no, we're about 3,500 owner-occupied homes within the Waverly area.
Dean: Oh, I get it. Oh, so I was thinking 10,000 homes, but 10,000 population.
Ben: No, 10,000 people.
Dean: Okay, great.
Ben: Yeah.
Dean: Ah, got you, got you. Well, then, yeah, I would look as soon as you can to get to a point where we can be mailing to the whole town. It's funny. I did an event here in Toronto this last three days and Tony Kalsi, he was on episode one of The Listing Agent Lifestyle. He's the guy who we have all the case study stuff with. We were talking about that he started out with 2,500 homes, but now he's up to mailing 22,000 homes, and it just keeps parlaying. It keeps getting bigger and bigger, but he's over 1.2M now, and mailing to 22,000 homes. So, it's a 12:1 ROI.
Ben: Yeah, that would be my dream.
Rick: We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I. A full commit-
Ben: Hello?
Dean: Where did I cut off?
Ben: I don't know. There was some awesome music playing, though.
Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Ben: Let's see: Tony Kalsi is mailing 22,000 homes.
Dean: Right, perfect. We calculated out he's up over 1.2M now since doing the five-year case study, here, and about a 12:1 ROI. He's spend about $90,000 over the course of the whole time, and generated $1.2M, and that's a longterm concerted, concentrated effort in parlaying, starting out with the 2,500 and then doubling that and then doubling that and just continuing to use the revenue to continue to grow. So, that, the reason I point out laying out that CAT scan perspective for you is to plot your next move, here, moving forward, there, and that's a pretty exciting time.
Ben: Yeah, so, I guess that was a question that I wanted to circle back around to you, then, Dean, was: what is kind of an ideal size for a Getting Listings mailing because I've heard you talk about the horoscope effect where someone looks at it and says, "Okay, that's me and that's special." So, I want to balance having the horoscope effect with also not having 30 different communities that I segregated, but they only have 50-100 homes in them.
Dean: Right, exactly, yeah. I think what would make sense is ones that are your town Waverly is, for the listing side, having the Waverly house price report that's going to be the most useful. Where the categorization comes in as much is in finding the buyers. The buyers who are coming to Waverly may be coming because they want to be on the golf course or because they want to be on the river or because they want to be in a historic home or with some property or, whatever it is, you start thinking about the categories, there. Because, whenever somebody's looking for something, the person who's looking for a condo is not the same person that's looking for a horse farm. So, when you have that horoscope effect of the horse farms, that is a magnet to the right people.
Ben: Okay, if I'm understanding you correctly, then: so, for potential buyers, that's where I'm going to want to categorize and try to track them down, so, first-time home buyers. I'll be mailing apartment people, but then, for the sellers, for the Getting Listings program, the market data, how to sell your home for top dollar, did I hear you correctly say that I could probably just do a single guide to all of Waverly?
Dean: Waverly. I think you could and, you know, have you seen the videos that we do along with the postcards for Dianne?
Ben: I have not.
Dean: Okay, so, essentially, this would be my vision that we get to a point with you where we're mailing all 3,500 homes in Waverly, that the postcards are arriving on time it so that you know when they're arriving, and then we shoot a video of you somewhere recognizable in Waverly saying, "Hey, this is Ben Dau reporting live from Waverly town center and we've got this month's Waverly house price report. You may have seen this postcard arrive in your mailbox offering you this report," and you got a picture of the report, "It gives you an idea of everything that's happened in Waverly. It'll tell you what your house is worth. Just push this button right here or contact me at waverlyhousepricereport.com."
That is an amplifier for the postcards. We've found that when we do that, we get a bump even in the response of the postcards because of the reality of how people's lives are. If it's Wednesday afternoon and the postcards arrive and people are coming home from work, they've got the groceries and the mail and the kids, and they see the postcard as they sort through the mail and they make the decision that, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to get that. That'll be helpful," and then they put down the mail and they put everything down and get fixing dinner and getting the kids' homework done and getting everybody in bed and life goes on, and then, 9:00 or 10:00, everybody's in bed. The dishes are done. They're sitting down. They're watching TV and a commercial comes on, which is the international symbol for-
Ben: Pick up your phone.
Dean: Check our feed, see what's going on.
Ben: Right, yeah.
Dean: And, they pick up their phone and scroll through Facebook, and there's Ben Dau in the middle of town. It looks like sometimes happening in Waverly because they recognize it and they watch the video and they go, "Oh, yeah, I meant to do that," and all they have to do is push the button and they get it, and it's just such an amplifier. It goes a long way to making you famous in Waverly. And, you got a head start in that you already, to some degree, are, in that you're the pastor, right, so there's something, you got a head start, there. We just need more of it, but everybody needs to know that you're a real estate agent.
Ben: I have a question for you. I think it was on your podcast or it might have been another; I can't remember, but there is talking about dominating a market is roughly 20% of the transactions taking place. In a small town like mine, that is still a fairly small number of transactions than what I would like it to be, so is there a way to go more than that or does 20% seem to be the ceiling? I mean, would there be a way to get into the 30 or 40%.
Dean: I don't know that it's a ceiling, but your everything's possible, but, how many real estate agents are there in Waverly and how many transactions total would there be?
Ben: Yeah, I feel like we have gobs of agents, like maybe 20 to 30 because we have, I think, four different offices here in Waverly, plus we're starting to see some infiltration from the folks from Cedar Falls/Waterloo, and we're only looking at 135 homes that sell each year, so 270 transactions and, I think I forgot to look up what our top selling agent in town is, but she's a gal that's been around forever and she's probably at 10% or more of things already, so, yeah, that was kind of another topic that I wanted to ask you about was how to kind of increase that, because within our town, there aren't a lot of agents that do much with marketing. I think I'm the only agent that does any sort of direct mail, and then there's nobody on radio. There's no one writing for the newspaper, so those are things that I wanted to try to do.
Dean: Your report, by the way, then you package it: it's newsworthy, right, that that's part of it.
Ben: So, yeah, trying to work with the radio station to get some sort of real estate segment going on. And then, I really like people, so an idea that I've been toying with that I wanted to just ask you about would be: no one really does block parties around Waverly. I grew up going to them all the time in my town, but I guess my question for you is: is there a way to combine this idea of a block party kind of with your Listing Agent Lifestyle philosophy of putting things out there, allowing people to opt in without being super pushy about it?
Dean: Part of that is really just going to be about getting to know all of the people. You can do anything you want. It's kind of a circuitous route to direct business, you know, in that, but it does lead to it, that the more people that know you, the more opportunity you have. If you were to say, out of the 10,000 people in Waverly, how many of them know you? How many do you know? That's really part of it like, "What's the level of your fame in Waverly?"
Ben: I have no way of knowing.
Dean: Right, but there's the thing. It's such a small market that it's easier to ring-fence and be famous. It's like you could almost create your own reality show within Waverly that, I would look at probably transcending just the transactional part of real estate, but focus on the reality of living in Waverly as opposed to just this, that there's an opportunity. I've talked some about this concept of managed home ownership, that I think there's a big opportunity there to offer more than just transactional real estate services, because there's a whole lot of other things that go into being a homeowner.
Ben: Would you tell me more about that, because that sounds really interesting?
Dean: Sure. Yeah, it does. And so, when you look at it that there's 100 and whatever number of transactions of people buying and selling homes in Waverly, which is going to yield the average price range in Waverly?
Ben: The average home price is $160,000.
Dean: Okay, so if you're talking about a $4,000 or $5,000 average commission check for you on the list for transaction side, so let's be generous. We'll call it $5,000 and we'll go up to a couple of hundred things that there's really a million dollars available in real estate commissions if you got all of the business in Waverly, so that's the reality of what we're dealing with.
Now, of the homes in Waverly, all the home services and the things that go into managing and maintaining and improving and enjoying their homes in Waverly, that number would dwarf the number of commissions that are paid, right? And that there's nobody really taking that category of managed home ownership. I've had people come to my Breakthrough Blueprint events, which are open to all kinds of entrepreneurs, that, on that front, they own home service companies like HVAC and plumbing and electric and all those home services kind of things and they're looking to create an integrated thing where they manage all of that for people.
And, I look at it from the point of view that I know what my desire would be because I was able to articulate it for one of the guys at one of the events, and I said, "My desire would be that I would like to live in my house like I'm a guest in your house. That would be my ultimate scenario is that you manage the home that it's like I would love for a responsible adult to own my house and take care of everything about it, like I don't have to think about or worry about or do anything to maintain and improve or do whatever I want in my home; all I need to do is just tell you what I want.
So, I would feel great if somebody proposed that idea to me, and we start with a home inspection to get the lay of the land. Let's look at everything that's going on in my house right now, see if there's anything that needs immediate attention or lay out the things that are going to need attention like to look and see. The reality is that most things in your home have a usable, functional life, so you're going to have to replace your roof at some point. You're going to have to pain the exterior of your home. You're going to have to replace your air conditioner or your air handler, or your furnace or your plumbing is going to require lots of things just in maintaining homes that would be valuable.
Ben: Fascinating.
Dean: Valuable, right? And so, if I start thinking about expanding my category to making living in Waverly an enjoyable thing, especially if I'm an executive that likes Waverly because it's a little quieter than the bigger community: I work in Waterloo. I come out here. I just want to be here and live here and not have any hassles. I don't want to come home from work and have to spend every weekend or evening worried about working on my home. If anything goes wrong, I just want to know that if I just call Ben, Ben's going to get it all handled. It's almost like a concierge level type of service, you know?
Ben: So, would that model work as like a monthly payment subscription?
Dean: It could.
Ben: And then they buy into a pool.
Dean: I think there's lots of opportunities to explore how that could work, you know? If you look at it that there are things that somebody is going to spend annually no matter what on maintaining their home. There's always going to be something, right, that somebody may be happy to have a baseline level of services done or taken care of, but even just to have an advocate that they can call that you would jump into action if and when they need to get anything done even if it's not a monthly thing, put a per-use case thing, you know?
Ben: Yeah, yep, okay, so sort of almost like a property manager or project manager role.
Dean: Absolutely, managed home ownership. That's when you couple that along with that you're the real estate transaction, you know, you've got kind of a green light for all of that. Nobody's got that kind of relationship with the homeowners of Waverly. And, I think I've said it before that when you look at what Warren Buffett is doing with Berkshire Hathaway, what's always stood out to me is the absence of the word real estate in Berkshire Hathaway Home Services.
They're one of the fastest growing real estate companies, but it doesn't even say real estate in the title. It's Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, which opens them up that Warren sees that the most valuable thing is the relationship with the homeowner. I think that's where there's a possibility there, you know, is to expand to think about as a lifestyle brand, you know?
Ben: That's really interesting because we have a lot of those professions that would hang around a real estate transaction, they're folks that I know. They're in part of my congregation or that I've just met over the years, and, yeah, I love the expression, right, "The rising tide raises all ships," so, being able to figure out a way to help incorporate what they do into that, that's really fascinating.
Dean: Yeah, and that way when you start looking at increasing the number of services or things adjacent to the selling of their home, that with all the weight on the real estate transaction side, you look at it that if it's an 8% turnover over the whole year, that means that it's approximately every 12 years that somebody moves kind of thing, so if you take that $5,000 that you're going to get on the listing side commission or on the buyer side commission and you divide that over the 12 years in between transactions, that it's basically $400 a year, essentially, that you've got, now, I think that there's probably a way to have $1,000 or more per year per family if you look at it as the peripheral things. There's a book that was written 20+ years ago, now, called The One to One Future.
Ben: One to One Future.
Dean: Uh huh, by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, and that book was ahead of its time. It was very difficult to imagine executing what they were advocating then, but you look at it backwards, now, you look at it from where they were, they totally saw what was coming, and it's so much easier to execute, now, and makes so much sense, especially with all the privacy issues that are going on, now, that there's so much opportunity, I think, to be an advocate for somebody, that people would be willing to share. If you represent a lot of those people, you can create great opportunities for them.
Ben: I know we're nearing the end of our hour, so, man, thank you. I'm going to-
Dean: It goes by fast, doesn't it?
Ben: It sure does, yeah.
Dean: One other thing that I want to talk about, then, with you, too.
Ben: Please.
Dean: And then, of course, I'll answer any questions that you have, but I want to make sure that we address your top 150, the people that you already know. That's going to be a foundational thing for you, so I want to make sure that we get your list together and start with the world's most interesting postcard to them so that whenever they're hearing conversations about people who are thinking about moving, that you're in that mix, there, that you're on their mind.
Ben: Yep, yeah, that is something that is on my radar to do. I had to work through some hurt feelings after like five of the folks that I would have said are on that list went with somebody else after they knew. I was just like, "Rar, rar, rar, rar."
Dean: Right, right, right.
Ben: So, yeah, I'm with you. I kind of get over myself a little bit, there. And, I know that you have used the parameters of who you would recognize in the supermarket and have a conversation with. Now, I'm a pastor, so, that, the number of people whose names and faces and stories I know and who I would talk to is fairly large, so, I mean, I know there's Dunbar's number around 150, you know, as far as that, the core relationships that I can maintain, but those have ebbed and flowed in my life over my time in Waverly, but so there's kind of this large secondary group. Are they a worthwhile inclusion within the world's most interesting postcard, or should I just keep it down to-
Dean: Yeah, listen, anybody that your feelings would get hurt if they used somebody else would be a good indication. If you know them well enough that you would hope that they would choose you, then they should definitely be on there, and you're in the fortunate situation that you know those people, so, being in contact with them is really a valuable thing, right, that each month, you'll be on the top of their mind when they're thinking about moving, themselves, you know?
Ben: Yeah.
Dean: That's what we're really doing.
Ben: That's a helpful parameter for me, so thank you.
Dean: Maybe I'll tell other people, "Anybody who it would hurt your feelings if they listed with somebody else."
Ben: Right, right.
Dean: That would put them on the list.
Ben: Put them on the list. Okay.
Dean: Cool. So, any other things that we didn't talk about? I would love to hear your recap of what we did talk about and what your takeaways are.
Ben: So, my recap and takeaways: the main thing that I have highlighted at the top of my notes, here, is what you said at the beginning, that this is disciplined execution over time and I know that is true. I'm just antsy and I'll talk about that with my followup question, but so, that's my main takeaway, disciplined execution over time, and then my next steps are going to be to create this overall guide to Waverly that I'll be able to then advertise city-wide, direct people to a landing page, have them opt in, because that's going to be, I think, a lot more time friendly for me, which is good.
And then, so that takes care of kind of the listing side and I'm just going to trust in the process. And then, the buyer side, I'm going to try to niche things down a little bit more around riverfront golf courses, first-time home buyers and acreages, and find ways to mail those out, yeah. I might have to post some questions in the forums for those would be the categories or reasons why people might move to Waverly, but then trying to find them is, "Where are they currently so that they can move here?" That would be, I guess, a follow up question that I have.
But, and then this idea of managed home ownership, that is fascinating to me because it feels like that would be a way to even out cash flow, but also, I'm just brainstorming but captivated by the idea, like, if people were to pay in a monthly whatever, if there would be a way, then, when they're ready to sell, that they would have built up enough equity, so to speak, that we could do some major transformations, make sure everything is just beautiful and it sells super-fast, you know?
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Ben: Yeah, so those are kind of my main next steps and takeaways, and the remaining question that I have would be that The Listing Agent Lifestyle is built around inbound calls, you imagining, "What if I can't make outbound calls on my cellphone?" I like outbound. I like door knocking. I like those sorts of things, but I also really like the philosophy that you have here as far as not being pushy, which is kind of a thing in Iowa, you know? So, I'm curious if there's a way to do outbound well or if the leveraging the buyers and the just-listed, just-sold postcards, if that's outbound enough, so to speak.
Dean: With the buyers is enough, yeah, like if you've got a buyer who is looking for a house on the river and they're going to be looking at homes on the river or you're showing them homes on the river and there's only two for sale, that that would be the kind of thing to introduce yourself to the people who have homes on the river and say, "Hey, I'm working with these buyers who are looking for a home on the river and there's only two for sale. Have you thought about selling yours or have you heard anybody talking about selling? Are anybody you know thinking about that?" That's a better thing than just knocking on people, "Hey, you thinking of selling," like you're trying to get listings. It's not about that. It's about trying to transact, you know?
Ben: Okay, so using the buyers as my excuse for outbound, okay, great. Well, that answers all of my questions, then, sir. Thank you very much.
Dean: Awesome. Well, I really enjoyed that. I look forward to watching this all unfold, and, congratulations on getting off on your fast start, here, and, yeah, get involved in the forum and we'll watch everything unfold.
Ben: Okay, sounds great. Thank you so much.
Dean: Thanks, Ben.
Ben: Thank you, bye.
Dean: And, there we have it, another great episode. And, if you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com. You can download a copy of The Listing Agent Lifestyle book, the manifesto that shares everything that we're talking about, here, and you can be a guest on the show if you'd like to talk about how we can build a Listing Agent Lifestyle plan for your business. Just click on the be-a-guest link at ListingAgentLifestyle.com. And, if you'd like to join our community of people who are applying all of the things we talk about in The Listing Agent Lifestyle, come on over to GoGoAgent.com. That's where we got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listings, to multiply your listings, to get referrals, convert leads and to find buyers, and you can get a free, truly free, no-credit-card-required trial for 30 days at GoGoAgent.com. So, come on over and I will see you there.