Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, we're talking with Alex Mendal from Palm Beach County in Florida.
If you enjoy a Listing Agent Lifestyle episode with talk of Getting Listings and dominating a category where you get both the buyers and the sellers, if you like to talk about multiplying your listings and Getting Referrals, then this episode is action-packed, and just for you!
We talked about all the things Alex has going on and laid out a great action plan, which I am 100% confident Alex is going to be able to execute.
He's already got things underway by getting his first Getting Listings mailings out into the world. He's generating leads and taking action, and we're going to see some significant success from Palm Beach County over the next few months here.
There's a lot to take from this episode, and if you join in and play along at home, this can be a great outcome for you too.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep108
Dean: Alex.
Alex: How are you doing, Dean? Sorry about that.
Dean: No problem. Here I am and here you are.
Alex: Finally.
Dean: There we go. Happy Friday.
Alex: Happy Friday to you too.
Dean: I hear it's a closing day today, is that what's going on?
Alex: Closing day today, closing day on Tuesday, closing day last Friday. It's been a very eventful couple of weeks.
Dean: Well perfect.
Alex: Yes.
Dean: So where are you calling from?
Alex: I am in Delray Beach, Florida. Actually you spoke with Mike Seville a couple weeks ago and we're actually - in West Palm.
Dean: Okay, love it. Perfect. So here we go. We're working our way up the coast.
Alex: Exactly.
Dean: Or down the coast. Which one?
Alex: Down the coast, yep.
Dean: Down the coast, okay. Yeah, yeah. So I'm excited to spend some time with you and see what's going on. What are you working on, or what's the Alex ... how do we say your last name? Mendel or Mendel?
Alex: Mendel.
Dean: Mendel.
Alex: Thank you for asking.
Dean: Yeah. What's the Alex story?
Alex: How far back do we want to go, or how far into the future do you want to hear about?
Dean: There we go. Let's talk about how we came to real estate and what's been going on so far.
Alex: Sure. Sure. I started building my resume, I'm 29 right now. I tried the whole college thing, didn't work out for me, so I always stuck to jobs where I could see myself growing. Before I got into real estate, I tried six months in New York, worked on Wall Street, wasn't a fan of it. I hated New York City. Came back down to Florida and I got a job working for the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine where I traveled the country putting on symposiums for physicians, but that was once a month. For the rest of the month I was on the phones, making phone calls-
Dean: Is that the SyngergenX kind of thing?
Alex: Very similar. Very similar, yes.
Dean: Okay. Okay.
Alex: I can't remember if they were the competitor or one of the exhibitors. It's been so long already.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: I was 20 when I joined. So I did that for about three years, and I hit a glass ceiling and I was miserable. I hated answering to somebody, I had a mind where I kind of wanted to build my own thing.
Dean: Do your own thing, yeah.
Alex: So I was trying to figure out what can I do where I could build my own thing, and somebody said, "Why don't you try real estate?" So took the class, took the exam, the state exam, failed the first time, passed the second.
Dean: Oh.
Alex: Yeah, I got to be honest, you know?
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: I can't say I got 100 on the first time.
Dean: All right.
Alex: So I did that, and then six years later here we are.
Dean: Six years, so you started at 23.
Alex: Yep.
Dean: I started at 21, 1989. Yeah, 1988, sorry. I started-
Alex: I still hadn't been born yet.
Dean: Right, exactly. So there you go.
Alex: Sorry, Dean.
Dean: - Imagine how that feels for me. Exactly.
Alex: Yeah.
Dean: And so yeah, we look at that and that's a thing about life. What I can tell you is that my mind feels exactly the same as it felt back then. I still think you don't change fundamentally. I'm 53 now. But physically, you change. You don't have the same vim and vigor and energy, but that's self-inflicted more than physiological probably. Need to get the anti-aging machine.
Alex: Exactly. Biomedical hormones.
Dean: That's exactly right. So tell me what's been your experience over the six years of being in real estate. Did you grow up in Florida?
Alex: I moved here in 2003 when I was 13.
Dean: Okay. So basically you grew up-
Alex: Basically I grew up, yeah. I became Alex in Florida.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: I was just a kid before I moved here. So I really became who I am today in Florida.
Dean: Oh, yeah.
Alex: So when I started initially in real estate, I floated around a lot. I always see what can I learn from where I am? Is it working? Am I getting to a level that I see myself? If not, where can I go? What can I do? So I started off as an assistant to a broker for about seven months. She really didn't teach me a lot. It was really just to pay the bills. So I did that for about seven months and then I went to a brokerage that specialized in foreclosures.
In 2014, there was still a whole lot of foreclosure inventory, but I saw it dwindling down. And they provided leads, which was great, but I didn't know how to - them, I didn't know how to speak, I didn't have the training. So after that, I joined a team at RE/MAX, and I was there for about three years as a buyers' agent, and that's where I really learned how to communicate with buyers, how to prospect, my scripting, how to be as knowledgeable as can be.
Granted, I had a 40/60 split, so didn't make too much money over this three years, but I saw that as my internship years where I learned as much as I possibly could.
Dean: Yeah, that's great. And I imagine at that split, you weren't paying any of the expenses, you were just getting paid less and somebody was paying all those for you.
Alex: Oh, no. RE/MAX still liked to charge, even to the buyers' agent.
Dean: Oh, okay.
Alex: It ended up being closer to a 30% split.
Dean: Okay, okay.
Alex: But it -. I wanted to eventually be a team leader that competed with that team itself. So I gravitated, I was a sponge, I tried to learn as much as I possibly could, and then I went out on my own and I've been trying to figure out what is the best course of action on how to really build my career. There was some speed bumps over the next couple of years, but the past year and going into this year has been my most successful years in real estate.
Dean: That's great. So when you say on your own, are you with RE/MAX or your own broker?
Alex: No, I left. I still have my sales associate license. I don't really see the need to get a broker's license. I never want to be a broker, that's too much liability.
Dean: Right. Right, right.
Alex: So I was with eXp up until actually a day ago. This is my coming out party. [crosstalk 00:09:02] Yesterday I switched to Compass.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: So now I'm there.
Dean: So a new beginning. A new direction.
Alex: A new direction, new beginnings.
Dean: Start a new course.
Alex: Exactly. Like I said, when there's a speed bump in the way, I figure out how I can get past the speed bump. And the speed bump I had with eXp was I started getting a little bit more into luxury sales, and I had an appointment where they were very impressed with me, my skills, my marketing that I do. I do a lot of video.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: They just wanted that luxury name brand company. That was very-
Dean: Nothing says luxury like Compass.
Alex: Right. That's what I'm getting. A lot of my clients I've had in New York City, they see Compass as one of the biggest names in real estate now.
Dean: Okay. All right. And how did we connected? How do we-
Alex: I saw your ad. Probably I sent out my first getting listings postcard the beginning, I want to say, of January maybe.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: Mid to beginning, yeah. Second week of January. When I was a buyers' agent on the team at RE/MAX, they were all about the Craig Proctor system.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: And that's really where I learned, and then one sleepless night, my fiance was passed out next to me and I was just scrolling through, I think it was either Instagram or Facebook, and I saw one of your ads. And I click on it and I was like, "This is pretty interesting." I saw you had a great 30 day trial, so I was like, "Okay. Why not?"
Dean: Why not? Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. They're great. I spend about $80 after that, I'd be stupid not to at least check it out for 30 days. So I checked it out and I sent out my first getting listings to I think about 480 houses in a certain subdivision, and I got two interested people. I was like, "All right." It's sold.
Dean: There might be something to this. Yeah, there may be something to this, yeah. I love it. That's great. Okay. And so have you listened to a lot of the podcasts? And where are we at in terms of-
Alex: Not too many of them.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: Not too many of them. I try to as much as I can. I do frequent the forums, though. I like reading.
Dean: Yeah. Sure. Perfect.
Alex: I love reading what everybody else is doing, picking - here and there.
Dean: Yeah. Okay, good. So part of what we're looking to build for you is we're building this community of people that are applying the elements of the listing agent lifestyle. That's what we call it. And so in order to do that, we've got eight elements that we're trying to install in your business, and the first of those is getting listings. Because if you're going to have a listings centric business, you got to have a system that gets listings. And so that's the first thing that we usually get people set up with because a lot of these things really just require some energy in the beginning to get them set up into orbit. But once they're in orbit, it's so easy to continue to run it.
So tell me about how you chose the 480 homes or what your thought process was going through that.
Alex: I really studied the different neighborhoods. I knew I wanted to be in Delray. I knew I wanted a certain price point that was attainable to most buyers in my area. There's a website that I use, I typed in probably 15 to 20 different zip codes in Delray Beach, - , Boynton Beach, all the surrounding cities to Delray Beach, and really figured out which neighborhoods had over 500 houses, had the turnover. And then after that I went into BMLS and I look at in the past year who has market share in those communities.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: So it came down to a few neighborhoods. And then what I did from there was in MLS, we have a system called Remine. I don't know if you're aware of it. It's a data application where you can select I only want single-family houses, owner occupied, have no mortgage or cash buyers.
Dean: Equity, right.
Alex: Equity, everything, property value, this and that. So of those, the neighborhood that I chose, Tropic Palms, has 600 houses. But because I put in those parameters, it dwindled down to 480, and it only focused on the houses that are more likely to be interested in knowing what the neighborhood values are at.
So I've sent the getting listings postcard twice, as well as the just sold card. There was a part in the getting listings where ... the listing next door. That's what it was.
Dean: The listing next door, right.
Alex: Yeah. So I sent that twice as well, and that was only to about 30 houses each time. And from that, I had five people that raised their hand. And then I'm in communicate with two of them.
Dean: Yeah, you're on the right track. That's good.
Alex: Yeah. And I'm figuring out the next neighborhood already that I'm going to do-
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alex: And on top of that-
Dean: So this is great.
Alex: And I'm already figuring out my oil well, the market maker one as well that I have a whole marketing plan.
Dean: Oh, good. All right, so you're on track here. Because the thing is this 500 or 480 homes, and ultimately you'll get up to the whole 600.
Alex: Right.
Dean: Like if you look back at the last 12 months, the ones that your algorithmic kind of, I call it stock picking, would've eliminated, you'd find that probably some number of those would've been eliminated if you did it the year before, right? So you're missing out because you never know. You can't algorithm a death in the family, or a divorce, or somebody getting transferred, or somebody winning the lottery, or losing in Las Vegas. There's so many wild card things that algorithms can't control for, so it's better to think about it ... I look at it like Warren Buffet. That we're looking to take this 500 homes over the next five years, and really dominate it. That's what we're looking for for you is to get to the point where you own that market.
And that's where the real value is, because all these leads that you're generating now have long, long value. We just had our - agent academy up in Orlando last weekend.
Alex: Okay.
Dean: And Tony Kelsey was there. If you haven't listened to his episode of the podcast, it'd be worth listening to because we've been doing now a six year case study on-
Alex: Oh, wow.
Dean: Yeah, the longevity of running the getting listings program. And one of the things that I'm constantly amazed by is people who responded in year one are still coming out and listing now. Yeah. So the five that you have right now, you've already got 1% of the neighborhood has responded to you.
Alex: Right.
Dean: In some way, and so now they know you and you're demonstrating month after month after month after month that you're acting as their listing advisor. And that's going to go a long way. The sense of fairness that people are going to have, that they're going to be, "Well, we've got to give him the shot. He's been serving us for six months or 12 months or two years," or whatever it is. So you're building equity in that, and that's going to take off for you.
And I think there's the thing, is that you just look at hard laying. Tony started off with 2500 homes, and now he's up to over 20,000 homes that he does. Yeah, yeah. But he's also done over $1 million in commissions from it.
Alex: That's amazing.
Dean: That's the ghost of Christmas future for you there, looking at it all play out, you know?
Alex: Exactly. I already have my next 1500 home community that I'm planning to start next week.
Dean: Okay. And then the next thing that we look at in there ... so I've got 100% confidence that you can play that out. Did you have any questions about getting listings or anything that's unclear about it for you, or that you are-
Alex: Not really. Not really. Like I said, I've been reading. I think I've read almost every forum entry.
Dean: Okay. Okay, good.
Alex: Going back 26 pages of forum-
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
Alex: So I did that. Really what I'm going to be focusing on next is I want to start listing properties on the inner coastal Not beachfront property, those are multi-millionaires. I know I'll never get those. So the next best thing is single family houses in the inner coastal, where people can dock their boat-
Dean: Waterfront.
Alex: Yep, waterfront. Exactly.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: So I'm trying to figure out, I want to grab the buyers for those.
Dean: Yes.
Alex: And that way I can start saying maybe have two or three sales in the buyers, and then kind of start diving into it and start - buyers.
Dean: This is the perfect market maker category that we've talked about.
Alex: Right.
Dean: That inner coastal is going to win on a lot of levels because you've got a known quantity. Like if you take from ... where do you start in the north?
Alex: I think I'm going to start from Manalapan, which is - exactly, yeah. I may even do up to Palm Beach Island.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: From Palm Beach Island down to Southern Boca Raton.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: Which is about 500 houses.
Dean: Is that all Palm Beach County?
Alex: Yep.
Dean: Okay. So you look at that Palm Beach County, and there's only 500 homes on the inner coastal in that?
Alex: There may be more. I did it a few weeks ago.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: Yeah. I just have to check my numbers.
Dean: Okay. And are there other island inlet things like the secondary-
Alex: There are canals.
Dean: Yep.
Alex: Yeah.
Dean: Yep.
Alex: So there's probably a lot more than 500.
Dean: Right. So if you're going to do that, that's what I would look at is that category of dominating the boat access in Palm Beach County, just around the inner coastal.
Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Yeah. And that would give you a ... that's a really good category. Now the thing about choosing these categories is that they've got legs, you know? Like when you look at it, that's a category you can wrap your mind around, and it's something that is going to be a prime driver for somebody, aside from the house.
Alex: Right.
Dean: And this is where I talk about the categories. Some people may come down with the prime category in their mind of we want to get a condo on the beach. That's their prime driver.
Alex: Right.
Dean: That's what they're coming in, pre-loaded before they ever start looking at houses, that's what we're looking for. Other people may be coming in, I want to be in a gated community on a golf coarse. That's a category. And the boat access is a driving category. I want to be on the water so I can get in my boat and go, and have access to the ocean. That'd be a big win for people. That's a driver.
Now you can start finding buyers, you can start finding those people without having to have listings, because it's a clearly defined category, which is an advantage for you in so many ways. Because having the buyer pool is going to drive getting listings for you. So it's really the most lucrative thing that you can really put together. And you're 29 there, you've got a long runway of this. And especially you look at Florida, and Florida's a rocket ship over the next 10 years population wise.
Alex: Oh, yeah.
Dean: We're growing by they're estimating six million people more by 2030.
Alex: Crazy. - increase taxes and all that from the north.
Dean: Yeah. Well, plus there's 10,000 people a day turning 65 right now, and that's going to continue for the next 12 years. So all of that moving sidewalk is going to be a big piece of it. Because you know yourself, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, that they all ... it's like mandatory military service, where you retire, that you need to come down to Florida. So some of them are going to want to have waterfront.
Now it's going to take you a little effort to compile a list of waterfront home owners, and that's going to be your advantage, is that to carefully match up, even with the plat maps, that you know for certain that everybody on this particular list is the owner of one of these 2000 homes on the inner coastal, or whatever that number is.
Alex: Right.
Dean: It'd be good for you to know that, and to get to know that more and more and more, to deepen your knowledge of that, and plan now to really dominate that category.
Alex: Sure. Yeah. Which would be, do you think, the best course of action for me to start targeting those buyers? Where should my ads run? How should they run?
Dean: I think certainly Facebook is the low-hanging fruit right now, the easy thing. Especially with a category like that because right now you can ... the only targeting we can do is a 15 mile radius. So I would say how big a radius is it from ... how many miles from the top of Manalapan down to Boca?
Alex: Probably 15 miles. It's not that crazy.
Dean: So it's probably perfectly that, right?
Alex: Yep.
Dean: So what I would do is look at that whole ... I would put a radius around that. Now it probably only goes a few miles in on the coast, right? Like that's-
Alex: Right. It's probably a mile-and-a-half from-
Dean: Okay, yeah. So what I would do, one of the things that we've been working with, is dropping a pin on Facebook in the ocean.
Alex: Actually I just realized last week that I could do that. I was like, "Wow. Why didn't I think of this before?"
Dean: Right. So then I might get a 20 mile radius size circle, and drop the pin 18 miles off the shore, and capture in however big it needs to be to get from Manalapan to Boca.
Alex: I actually did two. I did two pins into the ocean, so I could - exactly where I wanted.
Dean: Perfect, so there you go. So now you've got that sliver of waterfront down there, and now that's where I would just look at getting in front of everybody there. The targeting thing, and we're right in the heart of the season for this right now, that you can target people who live in the area, but you can also target people who are here, but live 100 or more miles away. And so those would be the two audiences I would look at targeting.
Alex: Right.
Dean: Yeah. So I would put together your ... the simplest thing is to put together your ad for the guide to waterfront house prices, Palm Beach County waterfront house price guide.
Alex: Awesome. Palm Beach.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: Oh, so that's what you did with the South Beach condos?
Dean: Exactly like what I did with the South Beach condos. Exactly like that, except for Palm Beach waterfront, inner coastal, boat access. And you'd put a picture, you might put a aerial picture or a drone shot or something that shows what you're talking about so that people would recognize that's what I'm looking for, you know?
Alex: Yep. Have you tested short video clips versus a picture ad?
Dean: Yeah, you can. I think that I would do all of it. I would look at this that building on it, I want to do the minimum viable thing first for you, the lowest, fastest, easiest way. The set it and forget way is create the guide, get a nice looking cover, get a great background image, and then just put that out there. And that's going to find you the people who, when it comes across their news feed, are going to say, "Oh, I want that." Just like you said, "I want a book called How to Get Listings."
Alex: Right.
Dean: Right? You recognized immediately, "Oh, this is for me." And the people who are looking for that are going to do that. Then on the other end of that, now the more effort that you put into this, the more skill that you have, the more creativity that you put into this, the better it's going to be for you, right?
Alex: Right.
Dean: If you put stuff into it ... what I would be looking at doing is I would look at creating almost a reality show about the Palm Beach waterfront lifestyle, and I would start doing all kinds of things like you talking about the new listings that are coming on, or the-
Alex: And maybe rent a boat, take it down the inner coastal and look at all the new properties for sale from the boat.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah.
Alex: I like it.
Dean: I'm sure you have it down there, but here in Winter Haven, there's a thing called the Freedom Boat Club, where you can join - $300 a month or something and get access to boats when you want.
Alex: Yep. Yep.
Dean: And that might be a good investment for you to start building assets and start documenting the territory. It would be really great for you to have footage of literally in a pontoon boat just driving down every mile of the territory, you know?
Alex: Yeah. I like it.
Dean: Because that's going to be an asset for you, that when you're starting to create not only an asset of today, we're looking at this area or these things and you can narrate it, or you could also silently with just some music do it to have it almost just like driving their boat the inner coastal.
You could highlight all the places where you can dock, if there's restaurants or gas stations, or stores or marinas, or service places. Just start to document everything, and elect yourself to the position of the Waterfront Mayor of Palm Beach County.
Alex: I like it. I'm just making notes. These are great.
Dean: Yeah. And get to know the people who are in that ecosystem. What are people going to need to know, it might be nice to know people who build docs. Maybe you stop by a project where somebody has built a new dock, and you talk to the guy who built the dock, and kind of educate people about that process. And maybe they build a wood dock versus a retractable dock, or the new things of boat elevators or all the things that could go around with that. You could talk to the people who build sea walls, or what else goes into waterfront life.
Alex: Right. Yeah.
Dean: And that way you're showing that ad for the waterfront guide, and you can have a hybrid. You could do a ... do you know what a Chyron is for a video, the lower third where you have a fixed graphic and then show the video in behind?
Alex: Yeah.
Dean: You could do the free guide cover in the graphics, but then in behind it have looping video, and you can build an audience of people who are watching the video so that you can show your reality show to this interested audience, you know?
Alex: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I like it.
Dean: How much are the waterfront homes?
Alex: They range.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: Something from 600 to 10, $15 million. So it all depends on where.
Dean: Right.
Alex: And is it on the inner coastal, is it on an inner canal? Is it a part of their -
Dean: And this kind of education, letting people know, like finding the hidden gems, there might be some really great inner canals that somebody might not know about, and you can show these hidden gems. It's almost like somebody who is thinking about coming down that wants to be on the water, they may not know.
I'll tell you something. There was a show on HGTV that was ... they would show it from the BBC in the UK. And this is just so bizarre, but there was a ... I think it was something waterfront homes, but it was Magnificent Waterfront Homes or Waterfront Mansions, or something like that. And I had a friend, I'd do an event in London every year, one of my Breakthrough Blueprint events. And one of the guys that comes to those events, he's got a boat on the Thames in Henley-on-Thames, which is a village outside of London.
And we went on a boat tour on his boat up and down the Thames, and we were coming around the thing, and all these beautiful houses right on the river. I said, "Wow, this reminds me. There was a show on HGTV that had these beautiful waterfront mansions, and this one was this and this," and we literally were coming around the corner and he goes, "That one?" And it was that house that I was describing to him that was right on the thing. It was just funny to have the coincidence of that, you know?
Alex: Right.
Dean: But you're thinking with these people who are looking at these from New Jersey or from Pennsylvania or wherever they're from, and you're showing them their dream territory, where they're going to be, and then one day you're out in the boat with them showing the the waterfront homes, and you're going to come across something that they saw you do in a video, and it's going to be a cool moment.
Alex: That would be awesome. Yep.
Dean: Yeah. I think that's got such a great ... you can tell my mind immediately goes to how are we going to dominate the waterfront in Palm Beach County, you know?
Alex: Yeah. That's really how I see myself.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: That's what I want to focus on, and that's going to be the next month of just focusing on that.
Dean: Get that stuff ready. The month is just to set the stage, and then the next 10 years is the domination, you know?
Alex: Right. Yep.
Dean: Yeah. And then it's just lather, rinse, and repeat because it's the same system, we're going to do the same thing, do the same app, same postcards, except we're sending it people who own waterfront homes and we're offering them the waterfront report, and then we're looking for the buyers at the same time with the waterfront guide, and sending a weekly waterfront market watch email with all the new listings that have come on the market each week, and then inviting people to-
Alex: You send the weekly market watch to the buyers or the sellers?
Dean: To the buyers.
Alex: The buyers.
Dean: For the buyers, yeah. We send the monthly newsletter to the sellers, and then for extra credit, you can do a monthly video for the sellers as well, with the waterfront report.
Alex: Wonderful.
Dean: Yeah. But this is going to be such a profit center for you. It's crazy.
Alex: Yeah, I'm excited.
Dean: Yeah. I like it. Now what about your top 150, your relationships? You've been there since you were 13, so you must know people.
Alex: Yeah. I haven't really dived too much into the top 150. That's on my agenda to tackle that.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: I started sending out to past clients and a few people that I know, the world's greatest postcard.
Dean: Yes. That's what we're looking for.
Alex: Yeah. And I only sent that to about 30 people. I did it real quick and I got one text message from a friend that said, "Hey, this is great." And then another call from one of my managers when I worked at the anti-aging place. He called me and said, "Hey, Alex. Just got your postcard. Calling to let you know I'm thinking about selling my house and buying a new construction. We already have it signed with another agent, but bring us a buyer."
I'm like, "All right. At least he picked up the phone and called me." - It got his attention.
Dean: Maybe if you had sent it to him before.
Alex: If only I saw that ad one month earlier.
Dean: One month earlier, that's right. That's funny.
Alex: Yep.
Dean: But there you go. That's exactly the kind of thing. So we need to preempt that guy from going anywhere else, the others. I know you know 150 people.
Alex: Right. I do, I've just got to sit down and actually do it.
Dean: Yeah. Or we have an easy button that Diane can do the whole thing for you. You just need to write the names out and she'll find the addresses and stuff. Is that what you're concerned about, finding the addresses?
Alex: No, it's just actually finding the time to sit down and put the names to paper or to spreadsheet.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Good place to start is look on your Facebook. It's a good place to start because probably a lot of them are already there. You just need to then get their physical addresses.
Alex: Yep.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: Think so.
Dean: Yeah, but the faster you can do that and get that in orbit, the better. Do you have any listings right now?
Alex: I have one I'm actually taking photographs for in an hour, and then another one that is coming to market in about a week. So I have two. Obviously trying to maximize that and get some more. That's why I love the getting listings.
Dean: Yeah, exactly. Have you done any calculating to see what your listing multiplier index would be?
Alex: No, I have not.
Dean: Have you heard about that?
Alex: I've seen the word.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: - for anybody who's going to be listening, why don't you tell them and I'll listen.
Dean: That's so funny. Yeah. So here's the thing, what we look at is right now, if we look back at the last 10 listings that you took and we were to go through those 10, and to see how many transactions you were able to generate from those 10 listings, how many would that be? And most people look at it that the only thing they're measuring is they say, "Well, I sold 100% of my listings for 98% of the asking price in 22 days average," or whatever. That's what they measure, how quickly we get homes sold and for how much money, and I sold 100% of them.
Now when you look back at it, what we do is to see did you get any extra transactions from it. So the possible outcomes are that you could get one point for the listing getting sold, so if you sold the last 10, you'd have 10 transactions that you did. But then you also have a chance to find the buyer yourself for that listing.
Alex: Right.
Dean: And you've also got a chance to find a buyer who buys another house, like you maybe met them because they came to an open house or they responded to your ad, but they didn't buy that one, but you were able to start a relationship with them and sell them another house.
Alex: Right.
Dean: Or that you were able to get another listing in the neighborhood after you sell this one, or that you were able to get a referral from the seller before the transaction ends. So those are the five transactions that we look at. Would it be fair to say that your average commission is probably 10 to $15,000?
Alex: Right around there.
Dean: Yeah. So let's say 10. If we look back at it, if you just got the 10 listings sold, that would be $100,000 that you made from that, right? And would've had 10 transactions. And the way we calculate your listing multiplier index is that we take how many transactions you did and we did divide it by 10 to get an index.
So let's say, do you think that in the last 10 listings, did you ever find the buyer yourself for any of those last 10?
Alex: Just one, actually.
Dean: One. And was there ever a situation where you started working with a buyer because they inquired about that house?
Alex: Yeah, of course.
Dean: And bought something else?
Alex: Yeah.
Dean: And that's true, so you went through it and actually did it, typically what we'll find is that there will be somewhere between eight and 15 transactions. Out of your last 10, did any of them expire or come off the market or not sell?
Alex: Yeah. One of them.
Dean: One.
Alex: Yeah. We lost the seller.
Dean: Okay, that's perfect. So that counts against us. You didn't get any transactions from that, so that's why I say when I present this to people, mostly we end up somewhere between eight and 15 out of a possible 50 points that you could get on the last 10. So let's say that you got 15. And then we divide that by 10 to get an index of 1.5. That means that right now every listing you take using your current system for marketing listings will yield 1.5 transactions. That's how you do it, right?
Alex: Right.
Dean: So now what we're focused on is when you see people talking about this in the forum, at Go Go Agent, that you'll notice that our clubhouse leaders are at 3.5 as a listing multiplier index. So what that means is that for every 10 listings they get or every one listing they get, they're getting 3.5 transactions. So every listing is not worth $10,000, it's worth $35,000.
Alex: So what are they doing differently that I could put into my business?
Dean: That's the question. So one of the things that we look at is ... have you seen the instant open house landing pages that we have?
Alex: Yes. Yes.
Dean: So that's one of the things. Info box flyer, instant open house landing pages, the just listed cards. Have you seen those?
Alex: Yep. Yep. Yep.
Dean: You have? The just listed cards?
Alex: Yes.
Dean: Yeah. Getting the sellers involved in a strategy session. We did a great session at the academy all about getting the sellers involved in marketing to help find the buyer. And so all of these things are with the intention of maximizing that opportunity that you have. Because you're the only one in the world that has that opportunity when you have a listing.
Alex: Right.
Dean: You're the only one that can put an info box flyer, you're the only one that can put a sign there, you're the only one that can send out just listed, all that. And so we look to maximize it. And a lot of times, the mindset that people have is that if the market's hot and things are selling, they'll often say, "Well, I don't have to do just listeds and just solds because I just price it right and all of our listings sell."
Alex: Right.
Dean: Yeah, but it's costing them money. If you took the last 10 listings and if your listing multiplier index is 1.5, you made $150,000. But if we're rubbing Ron Reed's system, that yields 3.5, you would've made $350,000.
Alex: Wow.
Dean: And so it's worth ... we look at the extra effort and money that you're going to spend as an investment to capture all this extra stuff that is yours for the taking, because only you can do it.
Alex: Right. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: Now I'm definitely going to because one of the listings I have coming up is $1,750,000. So obviously, I'm going to have to take that and really leverage it as much as I possibly can.
Dean: Yeah, perfect. Absolutely. So that's good. That's the kind of thing, when you start looking at what you can do with those bigger opportunities like that, it's exciting.
Alex: It is. Yeah. Definitely got to create a whole marketing plan for it.
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Alex: And use what I've learned from the getting listings.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. So man, you've got a lot to sink your teeth into here.
Alex: I have a lot going on, and I'm very excited.
Dean: Yeah. So what's your recap? Give me the rundown here of how this all landed, because we talked about a lot of stuff.
Alex: We did. So here's my action plan starting Monday.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: I'm - create the guide to the Palm Beach County waterfront houses, start blasting that. Start talking to people who are goo with a camera for the reality show, and that really got me going. Since I do a video already, at first I was uncomfortable to be in front of the camera, but now I love doing it, so that sounds like an amazing idea.
Dean: Yeah.
Alex: Start getting out there and talking to the docks, people who build that.
Dean: Start getting to know people, yeah. Absolutely.
Alex: I got to create a template for my weekly market watch. So I've got a lot to do now.
Dean: You really do. I know. Well that's exciting. That's why getting a lot of these things in orbit, like the original 500 homes that doesn't take much effort, to now all you need to do is just set up the postcards on autopilot to go out, because we can schedule those ahead for you so you don't have to remember to do it every month, and it'll just happen. And then you just have to put together the monthly mailing for that.
Alex: Yep.
Dean: The newsletters. And then this waterfront stuff is going to ... once that's fully operating, it's going to be amazing.
Alex: Yeah, that's what I'm really excited about the most. To be in that market oil well.
Dean: Yeah. I love it. Cool. Well any other questions or anything else that you need clarity on?
Alex: No, this has been great?
Dean: Before we wrap up?
Alex: No.
Dean: You're pretty clear?
Alex: This has been great. Yep.
Dean: This is good. Well this will be a good ... we'll check back in a year and see the outcome of all of this because I think you sound like a executer, so I like that.
Alex: Thanks, Dean. I appreciate that. That means a lot.
Dean: Yeah. And I'll see you in the forum for sure.
Alex: Sounds good, buddy.
Dean: Okay.
Alex: All right.
Dean: Thanks.
Alex: Thanks so much.
Dean: We'll talk to you soon. Bye.
Alex: Yep. 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 over to gogoagent.com. It's where 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. And you can get a truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days at gogoagent.com. So come on over, and I will see you there.