Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, we're talking with Mike Seville from West Palm Beach, Florida.
I see a recurring theme when we're talking about Getting Listings, and that's choosing a category you can triangulate with finding the buyers for, without depending on actually getting the listings.
This episode is a great example of a category you could probably replicate anywhere in the country, whether it's golf course homes, townhouses, condos, lakefront homes, oceanfront homes, or homes with a view.
If you listen to this episode with that in mind, there is certainly something here you can copy. I talk about a specific category with Mike, but whenever you hear me talk about his target market, I want you to imagine we're talking about a category that's available to you.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep102
Dean: Mr. Seville.
Mike: Mr. Jackson. How are you, sir?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Mike: I'm good. Happy new year.
Dean: Happy new year to you. Is it Mike or Michael?
Mike: I'll tell people I can cash both checks.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. Legally cash both checks. I like it. Welcome. I'm super excited. I always love, you could probably tell to these and listen to these. I love brainstorming and building plans and I'm excited we got the whole hour just to talk about your business and I'd love to hear the story. The Mike Seville story.
Mike: Okay. Let's see-
Dean: The PG version.
Mike: Yeah. I'm making as short as possible. I'm here in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Dean: Okay. My neighbor.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I believe you're in Central Florida, correct? Yeah.
Dean: I'm in Winter Haven. That's right. Yep. Okay.
Mike: Yeah. A little North of me. I've been in real estate since about and was just real estate in general since 2011. Started off as a property manager, moved on to becoming my own private investor and then became a realtor about two and a half years ago at the behest of a mentor of mine. I got into the business and initially I knew that listings are where you want to be.
Dean: It's true.
Mike: Yeah. Then got into a traditional brokerage and just a lot of confusion and then watching the wrong agent and getting advice from the wrong agent. We both know that 90% of the things we've done by 10% of them, and then got into the buyer's line of thing, and just men, running around and almost seeming like you're not accomplishing anything, headache after headache, etcetera. As of the last three to four months, I want to really focus on the listing business. Then buyers are like that immediate ... In your mind, you think they're this immediate paycheck, I'll take it back, the headache for the immediate ... these people, at least that you feel like you're moving but you probably not.
Dean: That's true. Yeah, exactly.
Mike: Yeah. I like to move in that.
Dean: Yeah. Well, congratulations. That's not an unusual conclusion that people have come through and you've come to it earlier than a lot of people. That's exciting.
Mike: Right. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. The last two to three months I have mostly been just dealing with and I came upon you a while back. I think you did an interview with Josh Shane Lee.
Dean: Yeah. I did. Yup.
Mike: He was talking about the super statements and this is what really got me excited about you and really want to look you up was the home loan review and explaining it as that instead of pre-qualifying just because the way it's positioned and I'm like man, this guy must know something. Of course, I get on to your channel, Oh my god, this guy's the man. That's it.
Dean: That's good, good.
Mike: I guess that's the long end like the last two to three months have really been focusing on listings and my listing presentation. I really been doing a lot of for sale by owners. They have their hands up needing the help and after you look at the stats, you look at the stats and you're like, but it's still ... You're still coming from a place of instead of authority because there's a lot of other people who are going after him. The first three days they're inundated by real estate agents to protect them.
Dean: Well, the problem with that is that your part of the hound dog pack. You have a rabbit and that everybody's chasing that rabbit jumping on him at 7:30 in the morning. As soon as it expires or as soon as that physical ad comes out, the hound dog at their door, right? Choose me, choose me. Let's choose me, choose me. It gets tiring, right? To grind and it's a hamster wheel because it's really you, again, may feel like you're getting results or making progress because on the surface. There's all kinds of reasons for why it makes sense because there's somebody who has actually proven that they have a desire to sell their house so much so that they put it on the market.
We're here to help them come to their senses that you're going to be a better way to reach their aim of selling their house. All the other realtors have that same idea and they're trying to convince them of the same thing. The same thing with expires. It's like, as soon as the listing expires, everybody calls them or they start getting people leaving packages on their doorstep or popping by to see them or all these things. You can see how rightfully the sellers might think well, the house was on the market for six months. Where were you then? Right. Why didn't you sell it when you had the chance if you've got all these buyers? It's not a fun way to do things.
Even if you do get good at it, there are ways to know what to say. The experience, you're ... You can get very skilled at converting for sale by owners and expired. As soon as you stop doing it, it stops working. You're not building any equity in it. You're building your skill level which makes your success rate maybe rise but it's still dependent on you actually doing it. What I like to do is look at how can we invest time and effort and in a system that gets sellers to call you. I've been in real estate now for 32 years and since the beginning of that adventure, it's been drilled in us. Everybody knows that you've got a list to last and that your listings are the name of the game.
That's the thing that you really want. Everybody's trying to figure out how to do that. All the conventional best practices and wisdom are to prospect, right? To either call for sale or call Phizzbo's or cold call. Nobody has really made that easier. I mean, there's certainly things now where you can get the expired and Phizzbo lists uploaded into a dialer so you don't have to actually dial. But you can just make the phones, which makes it much easier and easier to stay on track because you don't have to reconvince yourself to dial that next number. You just click, here's the next one, here's the next one. That helps you stick with it, but that doesn't change the hamster wheel thing.
I've never met anybody who long-term really enjoys making those calls. They may psych themselves up into thinking about it that, "I know that if I just continue to make the calls, I know it's going to work." It's a numbers game. Each know that I get is getting me closer to a yes. You start doing the calculations because I used to do it myself. I started out making 100 cold calls a day but as soon as it was ... And it worked and I was very good at it but I had that realization that it's a hamster wheel and it's not helping continually solve the problem of getting listings. The evolution that happens, and it happened for me is that you start thinking, "Okay, this is working. I've got some money now and I'm doing well. I'd like to start now using my money to get some listings."
I started this path of getting my name out there. We start thinking, "Okay, well I'll do personal promotion, right." Let's get my name out there. What I realized is that's a very expensive thing too because getting famous is different than getting rich. I would say to people, it's that choice. You have the opportunity to either focus on getting famous or getting rich and it's a lot less expensive to get rich than it is to get famous. I say, "Let's focus on that." Then if you still want to get famous then you can spend some of your money on that. I started trying to crack this code and it's taken me all this time. I realize that back in 2003, I want to say 2002, 2003. I had cracked the code on how can I get listings without making a single outbound phone call?
Because that was my provocation. I thought part of the thing was when trying to figure out, by that time we had a big coaching company helping real estate agents make more money. One of the things of course that everybody wants is to get more listings but I started realizing that even different than generating leads and trying to convert those leads on the phone thing is still different than generating leads and having people call you when they're ready to sell their house. I set out to solve a challenge. I put a challenge to myself of what would I do if my objective was to get listings and my phone only accepts incoming calls?
Mike: That's a great question to have.
Dean: That is a great question. The reason that I did it was because at that point I was not only doing it for myself, I wasn't doing it so that I could get more listeners. I was doing it so that I could show other people how to get more listings. What I was realizing was that the things that we were doing from the 90s on all the direct response things was that the people who were more skilled at or adaptable to making the phone calls and stuff were a minority of people, right? Compared to the people who were really great real estate agents. If they had people to work with. If we could get somebody to call them, that would be like the gold mine. We did that and I put together a program called Getting Listings.
We did the first for session of that in 2005 and if you have listened to the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast. The one of the first three episodes was with Chuck Charlton, who was the guy who got the very first listing in the Getting Listings Program, right? He's gone on to make you know a ton. Get a lot of listings over that whole time now, but he was the first one that got the listing before the course even ended. Since then we've been helping thousands of real estate agents get listings in a really automated way. And it comes down to choosing the area where you want to get the listings and then breaking down the process of getting all of those people to when they're ready to sell the house to call you. Have you got an area that if you were to identify it that you would like to get listings? I mean you're in West Palm, pretty big area there.
Mike: Yeah. Palm beach is a big area. I'm in West Palm Beach. I have the zip codes that I was thinking about but when I go back and listen to how you want to segment the difference to that'll code, It's weird because you have condos really close by, you have the homes really close by and then right across the street, you have the million-dollar home and you got the 500 to 1,000 homes there. They have the 200 to thousands of homes that type of thing. You are saying to identify an area that possibly have between 500 to 1,000 of the same. I think that's where my disconnect is come in, finding the area that has the 500 to 1,000 because the subdivision don't, to me, don't seem to get that big.
Dean: Let's talk about the different, what I'm looking for this, this is part of it is choosing the category of thing that we're looking for here. If you look at sort of the broad categories that people can choose from is the, let's say, the named communities within there. The breakers or the breakers less or there's lots of golf course communities in West Palm, right? That would have more than 500 or a thousand homes. Can you name a couple of the others that might be?
Mike: You got a probably like Lake Clark Shore, it'd be one. Possibly singer Island South of Olive. Also, we have about over 500 homes and a decent price point. We have like a historic, this big community. There's different within it. They have Flamingo out there, but those are what the subdivisions are called. But their entire thing, I think that'd be decent. Probably like the historic are that they definitely have or that 500 to a thousand mark.
Dean: Okay. What you're looking for is a category that we can point to, right? Whether its lakefront homes or waterfront homes or a horse property. I mean you've got Wellington right there, right? That course properties are a category of that. You've got townhouses as a category or golf course communities. How many golf course communities are there in West in is? Right. Lackless, probably a ton. Right? Yeah. One of the great things that you have going for you is living in Florida. When you look at the prospects for the next decade, the next 10 years, you'd see that Florida is on a moving sidewalk of growth. Just inhere that the projected population growth of 6 million people by 2030 means that we're growing by 500,000 people a year. We're growing by West Palm beach every year. I mean when you look at it, right? What's the population of West Palm?
Mike: Non-seasonally where about a hundred and something thousand. Seasonally we get to about 4 to 500,000.
Dean: That's what I'm saying. When you look at it, put it in perspective like that, the state of Florida itself is growing at the rate of one West Palm Beach a year for the next 10 years. Now a good portion of that is going to be coming into West Palm, right? There's going to be lots of opportunities there. The other thing that we have going for us is that just demographically there's 10,000 people a day turning 65 right now in the United States and that's going to be true for the next 12 years as the tail end of the baby boomers reach 65 years old. You look at the just the math on this, when you look at States like New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania and New England and all of the North of the Mason-Dixon, things that have all of these people that are turning 65 that a good portion of them are going to be filing into Florida and the West Palm specifically over the next 10 years, right?
I want you to see that the way I think about this is in a 10-year window here, right? I'm not thinking about, "I got a call, this expired and get that listing today." I'm thinking about I want to get all the listings over the next 10 years. Part of that is choosing what are the things that people are going to want in that when it comes to West Palm and you and we want to match who you are to this as well? You don't want to feel mismatched or feel like you enjoy. You're just choosing it for numbers thing. When you look at it, golf course communities is certainly one category of things that somebody might specifically be interested when they come to West Palm. Condos might be another because they maybe .... Or golf villas or townhouses or something where they can come in and be a seasonal resident, if they want to spend summers up North still. You start looking at that. Horse properties certainly are the thing but I don't know whether that's something ... Are you a horse person or is that-
Mike: I'm not a horse person. Yeah. A long time.
Dean: You get it? Yeah. You get it that you're not going to sort of try and wedge yourself into something that doesn't fit naturally, right? I want you to feel like this is something I could comfortably sink my teeth into and dominate. You've said some things, just even in the conversation that we've had so far, the area you talked about things to have a reasonable price that are in this thing. It seems like you are attracted to the middle of the market as opposed to. You haven't been talking about the ocean front mansions in Palm Beach and West Palm, right?
Mike: No. No, no. That's a different client. They tend to stay on the market so long.
Dean: Yeah. I got it. This is a process of evaluation and looking at selecting a target audience that you can really feel good about building a strong foundation in. Do you have active adult communities in West Palm?
Mike: I don’t know. We have too many. A lot.
Dean: Okay.
Mike: Yeah. We definitely have a lot. We 55 plus community.
Dean: Okay. How old are you?
Mike: I'm 37.
Dean: Okay. You're not ready for the active adult retirement thing yet.
Mike Seville: I've dealt with a lot of clients. I do have a couple of listings in those communities. Yeah. You get those.
Dean: Yeah. Yes. There's the thing that you're a nice young man, that's really when you start to... So that in that perspective you're in that category, right? That you're pleasant and cheerful and knowledgeable and energetic and all that stuff. That's good. You don't have to be 65 to relate to or help people in active adult communities, right? If that's something that might fit for you, do you play golf or are you golfer or-
Mike: No golf.
Dean: No golf. Okay.
Mike: I'm thinking about that on what we just were sneaking in regardless to the active. Just using the space that you mentioned with the 10,000 people a day who are turning 65 these people are attending to downsize and go into the smaller condos, the less maintenance of the property. I'm 37 and we're tending to get a little bit bigger home. My friends now have kids of their own, etcetera and needing to move out of the condos. I liked that area of where being able to sell the home where the people are downsizing. I just did it recently, she's wanted to go, she was getting into a condo and so I sold her bigger homes to a family that's moving up. I've been doubling for that kind. I like that middle road there. It's an interesting part.
Dean: It's a transitional. It's a pivot point, right? That's why I liked that as well. You mentioned investment properties. Are there a vibrant multifamily opportunity in West Palm like we'd board four, six, 12plexes?
Mike: What I see is a lot of duplexes and triplexes is they get up to the quad. You do have the bigger units. They very competitive though. Once you get above four, once you get ... When you get into that, it'll be essentially be commercial. The 10, eight, tens and twelves, everyone wants those of a decent ... Could be decent cash loads if they ran correctly.
Dean: Yes. When you say competitive, what do you mean by that to you?
Mike: Competitive. Yeah. A lot of investors want those.
Dean: Want those.
Mike: Yeah. Want those.
Dean: Yeah. Is there a real estate specialist who is dominating that area or is there an opportunity for you?
Mike: I mean those are, I would say like the bigger brokerages. Marcus and Millichap, I don't know how familiar you are with those commercial brokerages. Yeah. I mean it's known in the investment circles like you want to buy directly from the owner if you can and you want to sell with Marcus and Millichap because their marketing is pretty good.
Dean: That's interesting because they have the buyers, right? Is that what they're saying?
Mike: Correct. I mean they're a machine. They're such a big company. It's interesting that way.
Dean: Okay. It's an interesting thought that when you look at it that they ... There's a couple of lessons from this. Number one, you knew who that was. You knew what they were specialized in and it sounds like they do that and don't do the golf course homes or the active adult communities, right. They're narrow in their focus, right?
Mike: Correct. Correct.
Dean: Everybody who owns those units, they've established a buying reflex in their clients that if you're going to sell it, you'd need to call them. That's what we want to carve out for you as a category that the buying reflex is ... So, if you're going to sell your townhouse or your golf villa or your whatever it is.
Mike: All civil.
Dean: Yeah. I look at that and start to think, whenever there's enough, a thousand or more of something is a big enough category. Or even the historic homes would be something. Let's say somebody's coming from Pennsylvania and they come to you, they come with a thought of, "I'd like to get a golf villa. I'd like to play golf. I like to be on a golf community. We'd like to villa. We don't have to do any maintenance and that we can leave it for months at a time while we travel and all that stuff," But that person has a very specific desire, right? They don't know the specifics, but they know in general. That's what I would like. You wonder like how many golf villas would there be in West Palm like that?
Mike: I mean, there's a lot. I mean in County, West Palm, the city of West Palm, but in the County there's a lot of them. Yeah.
Dean: Yes. Of all of the conversation that we've had so far, is something coming into focus for you that you might say, "If I had to just choose like one single target market, what would that be?"
Mike: I definitely think just based on the conversation and the numbers that were given, the buyer or excuse me, the seller that wants to downsize. Is that a category or is that not a category?
Dean: Part of the thing is that you, part of where you're looking and would probably benefit from that is that your seller who's going to downsize is the one living in a big house in Pennsylvania who's going to downsize and then come get a smaller place in West Palm. It's more difficult to identify, like if you've got the villas or the thing that somebody is going to downsize to, that's what's going to attract people, right? Because rather than picking homes that you think these people may downsize is let's ... If you pick the areas where somebody who's thinking about downsizing might choose, you're going to attract those people both from far and near.
Mike: Okay. My question is, just briefly is, if they're downsizing from Pennsylvania and they want to go into a golf Villa here. You were saying that when they call someone here, that that person's referring them to me. If I'm the golf villa thing.
Dean: No. If we have selected golf villas, let's say that there is. Just for round numbers, let's say there are a thousand golf villas in West Palm. Okay I know there's probably more, but let's say just for our numbers that there's a thousand. If you had all the golf Villa listings.
Mike: Okay. Okay. I actually got it.
Dean: Any of those people who are looking for it would be attracted to you because you've got the listing right?
Mike: Listing. Right.
Dean: Right. Okay. Now that's the first benefit, right? That we want to identify out of those 1,000, the 50, 80, a hundred of those people who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months. If you look at it that if there's a thousand golf villas that there ... And they have a 5% turnover rate, that means that out of those 1,000, 50 of them are going to sell in the next 12 months. It's only those 50 people that we're trying to identify. If you knew who those 50 people were, that would be an advantage, wouldn't it?
Mike: Of course. Yeah.
Dean: Yes. When we're doing the big real estate seminars, I would invite people with a challenge. I would pick somebody in the front row and I'd say, "Mike, let's imagine that this audience represents an 800 homes subdivision and every person in this room is one of the owners of the 800 homes in this area." I'm going to give you two choices. I'm going to let you get up on stage here. You can give me 800 of your business cards and we'll hand them out to the 800 people or ... And you can spend 60 seconds. Tell everybody who you are and I'll help you get your name out there so that everybody knows who you are. Or you can sit right there in your seat and I'll have somebody bring you an envelope. In that envelope will be a piece of paper with the name, address, and telephone number of the 50 people in this room who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months. Which would be more valuable.
Mike: The latter.
Dean: Of course. That's what we're looking for here is this is a multistage approach. The first thing is to identify that audience, right? That marketplace. We do the stats, we do the math, and we say there are a thousand golf villas in West Palm. Of those, here's who the owners of those are. In the last 12 months they've had a five to 8% turnover rate in the last two or three years, let's say, right? Consistently. Now the goal is to, instead of getting everybody to know who Mike is, the goal now is to find-
Mike: Those 50 people.
Dean: Yeah. Who among these 1000 are going to be the ones who are going to sell? Now this is the logic that went into me finally cracking the code on this. If we take the thousand homes and we say, if somebody is going to sell their house right now in the next 12 months, what's the first shot that they have? Or among the first thoughts that they have?
Mike: On how much can I get for it.
Dean: How much is my housework? That's the first thing, right? Know that that's the thought that is going to provide the basis for everything. Because if they're looking to move up to something else, they want to know how much can I get for this to give me a context of how much money I'll have if I want to move forward or how much money am I going to have left if I sell this house and pay off the mortgage or whatever it is. All the context of it revolves around how much can I get for it. When we look at that, the thing that people mostly get wrong is they start thinking. Real estate agents I mean, that I've got to get my name out there. They start sending out postcards that say, "Mike Seville, golf Villa specialists, call Mike and start packing." That kind of the thing, right?
Look at me. I am your golf course specialist. We're getting your name out there trying to convince them to list with you by sending them a postcard. Okay. Now that's not very convincing because everybody else, all the other hound dogs are sending their postcards saying list with me or call Patty or I'm the best person we're trying to get your name out there. Now the fact that your name is out there is better than your name not being out there. That's true. Sometimes it does work, but it's like a slot machine, right? Now what we're looking for is to create a vending machine, not a slot machine. We want to create that certainty, right?
Mike: I like that.
Dean: What we want to create is we've selected this audience of golf Villa owners. Now we want to recognize that the thing that they really want to know is how much is my house worth. That's the first thought. When I first stumbled on that thought, that was probably in 1995 or six when I first started doing direct response postcards that we would send people in a find out how much your house is worth for free over the phone, right? Where we were saying call me and I'll tell you how much your house is worth over the phone, right? Or find out how much your house is worth. Or we would do things like sell your house in less than 90 days, guaranteed.
We're, again trying to convince people right to raise their hands but there's a very implicit commercial intention to that message, right? Is call me and I'm going to tell you ... Everybody is aware now that a free valuation certificate or a free. Find out how much your house is worth online is really a free ticket to a real estate agent hounding you for the next several months, right? Everybody's aware of that so they are resistant to calling because they're not quite ready yet and they don't want to deal with the real estate agents, right? I thought that brought me to the next level of this which is thinking about the information that they want, right?
If we look at the approaches and talked about the spotlight and level one, the spotlight that I described of, "Hey, I'm Mike and I'm your golf Villa specialist." That's shining the spotlight on you, right? Then level two is shining the spotlight on them and saying find out how much your house is worth or sell your house in less than 90 days guaranteed, which are all action things where I'm looking at you and identify yourself.
Mike: It's the same.
Dean: This third approach for the spot, the spotlight is to take the spotlight and without them really even knowing. Just shine the light over their shoulder and aluminate the information that they really want which is how much are the golf villas selling for. If you were to put an offer them the January 2020 report on West Palm beach Gulf Villa prices, that now is information base ... That sounds like it's already done. That sounds like market data and not your subjective opinion of what my house might be worth. People trust market data more than they trust opinion data, right? If I tell you what your house is worth, or if I offer to tell you what your house is worth then it's different than here's the report on the West Palm Beach golf Villa prices.
This is the market data of everything. You see the difference. It's subtle but it's profound. It's a big difference. That was the gold mine that we discovered that we can offer that information to people and the most people will reply because we're not trying to convince them to list their house right now. We're patiently delaying that for two or three moves from now knowing that it would be the most valuable for us if the most of the 50 people who are going to sell their house in the next 12 months will identify themselves to us.
Mike: Just in this particular example, you narrowed it down to a golf course Villa as opposed to a golf course community? Or because on that-
Dean: Yeah. Because-
Mike: Goo ahead.
Dean: I mean certainly the more specific you can get the better. Within golf course communities. Now what happens is and we've got the whole program, that whole getting listings program for doing that. But now the category is going to help you then that when we start looking for buyers who are coming from far and local. If you're offering to the general market, the guide to West Palm Beach golf course communities; that's a buyer guide so that people can get a map that shows where the golf course communities are. Pictures that show what kinds of houses are in these golf course communities. Information about the golf course, information about the price ranges of what you have. The styles of homes, whether they've got golf villas or luxury homes or condos or whether they're building a new construction. What kind of amenities.
If you're building the goldmine of information for somebody looking for a golf course community in West Palm that is your ticket to finding the buyers or those. We want to get you in the market maker position. Where you're triangulating, you're getting the most. Does that make sense?
Mike: It is.
Dean: Okay. That might not be-
Mike: Go ahead.
Dean: No. That could be the same thing with the historic homes or with the waterfront homes or with the condos. It was the same mechanics, right?
Mike: I think when you started talking about those people who are coming from up North and want to downsize or as much as move to Florida and have something smaller and on the golf course, golf course Villa thing. I mean you still are getting the people within town who want to downsize as well. Until you got to everything.
Dean: Yes. Of course. Yeah.
Mike: That's where a lot of-
Dean: Yeah. The great thing is, now we're in such a wonderland of opportunity with Facebook and Instagram and all the things that you can target the areas. You can target in this with a different ad for people who are visiting West Palm Beach, then you can for people who live in West Palm Beach. Yeah. I mean it's fascinating. It's great time for what we are able to do now.
Mike: It was one of the questions I had for you was, I know you have the postcards. I'm getting out. I become a fan of the postcards and direct mail. Because I was so focused on Facebook, especially before I made the change to it. We're so spoiled.
Dean: I know, we're spoiled. Micro-targeting. I mean it was so great
Mike: It's the same, it was precision targeted. Would the postcards like it would that not be also a way instead of doing the direct mail thing, yeah, instead of don't direct mail? What's the difference in your mind of offering the free market report on Facebook as opposed to offering it on or personal? What is the difference?
Dean: The difference is that you can't on Facebook target the specific 1000 people who own the golf Villas. Even if they live out of town. We can mail once you get the list. Not all of the people are going to be full time residents in West Palm and the tax record may where we mail to where the owner the mail, right? We're not just mailing to those. You're mailing directly to the registered owner and you've got that opportunity to go directly to them. Because those are the only 1,000 people that we're interested in. Frankly, we're really the only people that are going to ... That we're focused on 100% are the 50 people who are going to sell their house here.
When we look at that, that's a phenomenal thing. When we have the opportunity to do there is narrow and have 100% accuracy in the audience that we're trying to reach. Where when we're running Facebook ads, we're limited to a 15-mile radius, right? Which is great for the general audience. If we're running all of the zip codes, we're running ... You can run all of West Palm and look for people who are coming from afar, right? People who are visiting there and offer them the guide to West Palm Beach golf course communities as the resource, the gold mine for people who are looking for golf course properties.
The brilliant advantage of picking a category is that you can get to work finding buyers for that category without having to have listings to do it, right? Most of the time people, they look to get listings so that they can advertise a listing so that they can find buyers, right? If we start building a list of people who are looking for golf course communities in West Palm and they are ... where every week sending them updates of all the new golf course properties that come on and we're featuring different ones and you're bonding with them and building a great media property that they're getting a weekly golf property market watch email.
In there we're adding the opportunity for people to come on a tour of golf the course communities or to get a home loan report or to whatever the thing is. That's the advantage now when you do get somebody who wants to go and look at homes. Now you've got ... And you've been mailing the postcards to the thousand villas and you've gotten 30 people who've raised their hand and you're, now we've got 30 people that you can send an email to. To let them know you're selling town or a villa this weekend and you get to be a market maker. That's where the advantage is.
Mike: At that thing. It's awesome. I know we spoke about the Phizzbo's are for sale by owners. If you do get a for sale by owner and for this example, a golf course Villa. Now you are bringing five ... If you bring three to four people buyers because they were already so interested in it and also they going to put it to decent.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Mike: You put it assets. Yeah.
Dean: It puts you in asset sit. Yeah. You're not saying, when all the other people are going to that Phizzbo and saying," Well, once you list your house with me, here's the marketing plan that I'm going to implement for you. We'll expose your property to all of these people." You're going in and you're saying, "I've already been looking for the buyer for your house for 180 days now, and I've got four of them right now that would like information about your house. They'll be the first four people that I bring to your house."
Mike: Awesome.
Dean: That's a bigger thing, right? You don't need their listing to get buyers. You've got the buyers and that's going to put you at an advantage, right? Why would they list with anybody else? If you're the one who's got all the buyers, you're going to bring people buy right now.
Mike: They have already been getting the postcards and we've already built that authority.
Dean: That's right.
Mike: That was an eye opener.
Dean: Well listen, how many of the Listing Agent Lifestyle episodes have you listened to? Go ahead.
Mike: A lot, I guess. You all just finished up in regards to the podcast, the seminar. I'm listening to a million. I've listened to a lot of podcasts, but I'm really trying to cut it all down to actually to what I want to do. Yeah. The Listing Agent Lifestyle is that's where you want to be. You want to people to get those calls and to develop those assets like we just discuss. Yeah. A lot of yours to answer your question.
Dean: If you listened to the first three episodes are all about the getting listings. I mean, we've got the Tony Kalsi and Chuck Charlton and Ron Reed, three people at three different stages that we ... With Tony, we've been doing a six-year case study with Tony, documenting everything that's happened. Actually, we have a second episode with Tony a few months ago, September or October, that was marking the six-year review of that. He's up over a million from the getting listings program in that case study. Yeah. Lots of really great stuff. Then I just recorded with Ron Reed, a follow up again.
Mike: I'll go back and listen to it.
Dean: Yeah. You're in the right place. Are you already a GoGo Agent member?
Mike: Yes. I'm working on that. Yes. Yeah. In the last month.
Dean: All right. Okay, great. Well then you are on track and of course Diane can help with getting everything set up specifically for you. I think what I'm hearing from our time together here is that you've got a little more clarity on the importance of a target audience like that.
Mike: Yeah. That's what I need.
Dean: What's your take at all this land that will ... It went by fast. We can talk to about that but what's your recap?
Mike: I mean, I'm definitely developing that asset of the buyers because I was like, "Man, I'm done with buyers." I mean, but to be able to have those buyers and then being able to bring them to this list once I determine the exact-
Dean: Target audience.
Mike: Yeah. The communities I'm going to target and then just to have those lists of buyers and getting very, very targeted with those thousand or so homeowners, 500 to a thousand, I believe what you say. I'm excited.
Dean: Yeah. I mean ultimately, we want to get you up to as many you can. Tony parlayed all the way up to 20,000 homes. Yeah. Yeah. Same with Ron Reed here, he started out with 500 or 600 and ... But you can start with that and, and go the sky's the limit.
Mike: Last question. Is there a percentage amount that you, in regards to commission versus marketing? Is there like a sweet spot that you suggest?
Dean: What we're at with the case study with Tony is that he's at 12.2 times ROI on everything that he's spent. When you look at it, I look at it from the standpoint of how much ... If I could bring you golf Villa listings right now, if I just said, "Here's one, can you go list this one?" How much would you be willing to pay right now for me to do that for you, for you to be my exclusive listing agent for the golf Villas in West Palm?
Mike: I mean if I'm getting a listing and sellable listing. Well, when do you pay?
Dean: Well, exactly. I mean that is an established thing. If relocation company that does that for you. You'd easily pay 40% or not, right?
Mike: 40 or not.
Dean: When you look at that, that what that is it's two and a half times, right, ROI. That's what essentially, but it's reversed ROI because the only time you pay the 40% is when you get a bigger check, right? You get a big check and then you send me 40% of that and you're happy to do that because you didn't have to risk any money to get to the point where you do that. That's the thing that you want to just keep in mind that it's a ... That's how valuable it can be.
Mike: Yeah. I'm not going to hold you any longer Dean and I appreciate the time. Thanks for the eye-opener.
Dean: We have our GoGo Agent Academy at the end of February in Orlando.
Mike: I'm going.
Dean: Yeah. You can come.
Mike: Yeah. I'm going to be there
Dean: That would be the great thing, you get to meet everybody and I know Tony is going to be there and Rod Reed and there'll be guys. All right, that's been delightful.
Mike: All right, perfect. I look forward to seeing you. Orlando and likewise.
Dean: I'll talk to you on our GoGo calls. Thanks.
Mike: Excellent. Thanks.
Dean: Okay, Mike, be-bye.
There we have it. Another great episode. 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. 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 @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 so we've 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. You can get a free, truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days@gogoagent.com so come on over and I will see you there.