Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, we're talking with Eric Peterson from Texas, and this is a very timely conversation because it turned into a discussion about how we communicate right now, in a time where we don't know what's going to happen.
We're in a situation where the entire country's on lockdown. We don't know when that's going to end. We don't know what the impact is going to be ultimately on the economy and on the real estate market.
So who do you communicate with, and how do you communicate in a time like this?
We had a great conversation about what's changed and what's stayed the same, and we ended up with some action items and some things you can do in a time like this.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Listing Agent Scorecard
Be a Guest
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep111
Dean: Eric.
Eric: Hey Dean, how are you?
Dean: I'm so good. How are you?
Eric: I'm doing great, yeah. [crosstalk 00:01:10]
Dean: Yeah. Are you on lockdown over there?
Eric: We're not totally locked down as quite as much as some places are, but we're all working from home and things are definitely different at this point. We're not doing open houses, which used to be a big source of business for us, starting this weekend. And so, we'll see where this goes.
I'm just trying to stay positive. And I liked your analogy of being the tennis match umpire, and that's about all I can do is watch what's going on and we'll have to adjust and there'll probably be a silver lining for our business in some respect. I don't know exactly what it is today, but [crosstalk 00:02:04]
Dean: Yeah. So, this is an interesting thing because I think it'd be a good thing for us to talk a little bit about it because normally when I do the episodes like this, the Listing Agent Lifestyle episodes are focused on the big picture on your Listing Agent Lifestyle plan here. And we can talk about that too because this too shall pass what's going on here, but I think it'd probably be a good thing to maybe spend a little bit of time talking about what happens in a situation like this too.
I think that we're in a situation that's kind of an acute onset special cause of variation as Deming would say, and that there's going to be an end to it. I think it gets magnified right now in the middle of it where there's so much uncertainty, and it's unfolding, and nobody knows what's going to happen. And everybody's fearful about, "Oh no, is this going to be a big financial collapse?" What kind of things are you hearing? Or what kind of thoughts are you having about how this is going to affect you and the real estate industry?
Eric: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I'm very uncertain about it. I think that I can look at my business, and this is the way that I'm trying to look at things is that, so the first phase, we're a little bit fortunate that we've been operating a moderately successful business and we've been good savers. And so, I feel fortunate in two respects there, one is that I feel like I can give people a good advice or at least observations of what's happening in the market without feeling any pressure of trying to influence what they do one way or the other.
Dean: That's where it is, right? You don't need... And you have to be aware of that. I think that people aren't going to be in one of two camps, which is self-interest and self-survival is a thing that if you were in a situation where you need this deal to close this month so that you can pay your own mortgage next month, that's a different situation than if you have what we call financial peace, right? And just part of financial peace is knowing that it could go backwards for six months, let's say, or maybe longer, that there will be a situation where when it starts to trade again, there will always be activity in the market. How long have you been in real estate?
Eric: So, I've been a real estate agent since 2004, but primarily focused on the listing side of the business a little over five years ago. My wife and I started our own company. And maybe a year before that, I was always just a middling, I don't want to say, dabbler. I got into the business. I'm the mortgage broker, got into real estate business when my dad had a stroke and I was looking at ways of making extra money. And if we're talking about the lifestyle, the real estate business to do it, to do it as kind of an average realtor, you can do it part-time, so in between doctor's appointments and things like that.
Dean: Yeah, - started this. It really is, yeah.
Eric: It can be, yes, absolutely. And what happened when I met my wife, and we got serious and got married, and my wife actually has a PhD in chemistry and then decided to become a realtor with me, which is an interesting story, but she looked around at the business. We live in this huge neighborhood of 4,000 homes and now there's several thousand other homes surrounding it, and her attitude is like, "Why are we not doing more business right here? Why are we not trying to do the listing side of the business right here?" And it was a little bit of a mindset shift for me.
I have a little bit of an interesting perspective because I've been in the mortgage business or real estate business through the tech crash 9/11, through the financial crisis, and now, and so, I have some perspective, but this is certainly a much different experience. And so, I feel like we can give our clients and friends good perspective on the whole thing.
I think that we're trying to watch what's going on, and I'm watching the numbers and watching the sentiment and trying to give people the best advice that we can today, which automatically means two things, one is that it's not going to be perfect advice, and so, I'm clear with everybody about that, and also, if I am giving any advice or saying, "Here's the observations from the tennis match today, but-
(singing)
Dean: Hey, sorry about that. I must have gotten cut off.
Eric: That's okay. [crosstalk 00:08:50] Yeah. So, the first thing, just we're not giving perfect advice because so much of this is a little bit unknown, certainly an overturn. And then, the second is that whatever we're seeing today, the tennis match may change tomorrow. And so, we just can tell it's a little bit unknown.
And personally, I make almost all my decisions as if I'm playing a game of poker, and looking at things and you're having to play the odds, and you can never make any decisions that are automatically perfect and you just want to do the best that you can.
Dean: Yeah. I think that's really the thing that we have to look at is that no matter what, things are going to go on. We often have a tendency to think, "Oh no, if people stop buying homes or if the prices start to go backwards, that's going to be a bad thing," going back to what you were saying about the tennis shot.
I mentioned on another podcast that the idea that growing up as a tennis player, one of the great lessons I learned from that was that every shot makes somebody happy. If the ball's in, that's going to make me happy, but if the ball's out, that's going to make you happy if we're playing against each other. The neutral position is that being the umpire, where you're not getting emotional about it, you're observing that that's what it is and adjusting accordingly.
And I remember you've been through it in 2008 and 2009 when the market completely turned around and you start to think, "Well, who did that make happy?" There are a lot of people who were upside down in their homes because they didn't have any equity in them because there was a lot of people buying overextended homes with zero down and often negative M, so they didn't have any cushion in the homes, and as they started turning downward, then people were losing their homes.
But we ended up creating what was one of the best programs that we had was the bank-owned weekly program, where because there was now a new influx of bank-owned homes, there was the opportunity for people either, investors to look at now buying real estate on sale, or first-time homebuyers who got priced out of the market by how quickly prices were rising and now they have another chance, and move-up buyers who had equity in their homes but were missed out on the bigger house that they wanted because the prices got too far out of reach for them. So, there's always a way to adapt.
And I think that as people observed this over the last 12 years, we've seen nothing but up, up, up, up, up, that there's a lot of people this time waiting on the sidelines almost with steepled fingers waiting there to be a downturn so that they can swoop in and invest in real estate. I think that's just... I know a lot of people like that, I'm sure you do too. Are you seeing that kind of preparedness thing?
Eric: I think that there's definitely no doubt that there's money on the sideline. I mean, even interesting enough, our market is super hot, like some of the homes particularly in the 300,000 to 400,000 range, we've seen an upwards of 30 offers on the properties. And so, when you start talking about the money on the sidelines waiting to a little extent, that could even be 29 other people that weren't able to buy that house. In our neighborhood or our area, it might not even be that it has to be some-
Dean: Yeah. And you may find that people who are at all concerned, who may be house-rich and cash-poor or cash-concerned, may look to get out of their house or try and get out of their house while the prices are still relatively high. We're seeing a lot of that this week, just in conversations with people that there's been an amplification of what's going on in the spring market here that people are maybe trying to get their house on the market sooner rather than later, swift action kind of thing.
Eric: I think I agree with that. I don't see necessarily huge declines coming in our market. Well, of course, we'll have to see. But for that, I'm going to talk to somebody a little bit later this afternoon. And everyone's trying to work out the best timing of the market, which is always tricky. But the one mistake I think I see people make even when they're trying to decide if they're going to, let's say, sell a house or rent it, is they don't consider the opportunity cost of holding on to that property.
For example, the people that I'm going to talk to, they've already got another home that they can move to and they're like, "Well, should we sell today or should we sell six months from now," or whatever, and that's a whole long conversation.
But if you consider this an acute situation that we will recover from and the stock market is down whatever it is today, 30%, 40%, wherever it is now that, let's say, you're going to sell your house and maybe you're getting $10,000 less than you expected that you would, but you've lived in the house for 10 years and you have $300,000 of equity to unlock, and you could put that money to use in the stock market at a 40% discount or whatever, that might not be a terrible decision or way to look at things or however you wanted to do it.
And so, I think that looking at the overall picture, just like you say, even in those opportunities there that somebody can look at it and say, "Oh my gosh, I was expecting to sell my house for $500,000 and now I'm only going to sell it for $490,000," but they have all that cash today, that might not be a terrible thing in their particular situation.
I think whenever we talk to somebody in our area, we just have to look at what the sub-market is that their home is located in terms of area price range, even down to the style of the house, there's going to be people that are going to be more motivated to buy a particular type of house than maybe something else, and so all of that goes into it. But, yeah, there's definitely opportunities.
So, the way I'm looking at it from if you want to take it back to a listing agent standpoint, I attended the last GoGoAgent meeting down there in Orlando, and it seems like a lifetime ago - a couple weeks ago. There's the-
Dean: I've listened to that, yeah. That's one thing I want to put on is that, that was literally only three weeks ago, not even three weeks ago, and we had... Coronavirus wasn't even really on our radar in terms of talking about it as anything to be concerned about. I mean, Zac got sick while we were there, but nobody was thinking, "Oh boy, we need to social distance." That wasn't even in the vocabulary at that point. He was really concerned about the traveling.
Eric: Yes. It was interesting. I was sitting next to Zac on the first day, I hadn't even thought about that. So, I hope he's okay.
Dean: Yeah, well, we're already past the two-week quarantine.
Eric: Right, right. So, you may or may not remember one of the things you were encouraging me, in particular, was a lot of my marketing is focused on "Call me to sell your house today," and to take that and take a little bit of a softer approach.
There's two things that I'm looking at. One is, in maybe the last three or four months, people in our neighborhood as far as buyers coming to us, we've always been such a seller-heavy business, and it's good but it impacts our listing multiplier because we don't work with as many buyers, and part of that is because it was so hard to find homes for sale in our neighborhood. But buyers, all of a sudden, in the last couple of months, have been totally willing to go another seven, eight miles down the road to get a new home or a newer home, and then opening up opportunities for me because we've been looking at, with the inventory levels being so tight, we've been looking at where are we going.
So now, I'm suddenly finding, "These are all people that I really like, so I would like to sell their home whenever they decide that they want it to sell. I like those houses." I figure, also, if they're moving, there's probably other similar people who are already there that I would like to work with. And so, I'm looking at this as an opportunity to start trying to become an expert.
Because there may be times where I don't have much better things to do than to even drive through some of these neighborhoods or to start doing some mailing campaigns that aren't going to be immediate business because, quite frankly, it might be tone-deaf to be sending somebody something that says, "Call me to list your house today." I don't know.
Dean: It's not about that at all. It's about being... I think that where the opportunity is, is to communicate to the people that are already in your world right now for this hypercritical thing. You hit the right word, tone-deaf, right? You don't want to be tone-deaf to the situation by going out to the public or to look for new leads in terms of stuff like that right now, I think.
But communicating to your after-unit to the people who you already have a relationship with is an important thing. And I think communication to the people who've already responded, all of your prospect list, the people who are in your sphere already, that group of people is the perfect thing to communicate to. And I think that there's the opportunity to maybe start gathering people if they think that they're going to be selling their house, that would be an opportunity to let you know that sort of thing, like how to know when it makes sense kind of thing. What's your prospect list situation? How many emails do you have that you're communicating with right now?
Eric: Oh, geez. Yes. So, we send out monthly email lists and we do a video. We video newsletters through a service called BombBomb, if you're familiar with that. And we have two different lists, one is a general list and one is a list specifically for the neighborhood that we heavily farm. And I could do a little quick video about... We just sent that out last week. So, we send it out and - here's what we're seeing in the market. And so, I hadn't figured out where to fall on this.
I got a good response from it because it wasn't like the, "Call us and sell your house." It's just like, "Hey, here's what we're seeing. If you have questions about the market..." But also throwing it out there that I think one of the opportunities we have for long-term business is to... In the short-term, one of the negative things about the inventory being so low is sellers are much more likely to hire their friends, let's say, who might only sell one or two houses a year. And so, this is an opportunity of being able to just show overall market expertise and just being there for people.
I've tried to also tell people that even if they have a friend that's not in our area, that it's important that they talk to somebody who really is an expert specifically in their location so that they can have that boots on the ground approach of knowing what's going on as opposed to just somebody who's following things on Facebook or following things on who's hanging out at the water cooler at their office. And so, those are the things that we're taking interestingly enough. They're calling us or contacting us asking how we're doing and all that. And so, that's even good just every time having people call you where the phone is only where you can answer it. That's your income levels, right?
What I haven't figured out is like how often to be in front of people about that. I certainly don't want it to seem like we're trying to take advantage of the situation. And I also don't want to create a panic. I've seen people posting things on Facebook and they're posting charts of the number of illnesses and deaths and things like that, we certainly don't want to take that approach in real estate like, "Here is exactly where things are and all that," and have it cause people to freak out over that kind of stuff. And so, I'm not sure, maybe I could use some advice from you as far as touching and how often to let people know.
Because of social media, there are ways that we can just stay in front of people without it coming across that way. [inaudible 00:26:29] posted yesterday, one of the things that that we have, is we have a little bit of marketing expertise, and I guess what you would call the be in the attention business, right? So, just trying to remind people if they're working from home, like friends, some tips that they want to do in terms of even like how to loop on a teleconference that they're doing a Zoom video conference or something like that, so that they can make sure that they stay in everybody's mind, win a company if they're going to lay people off or something like that.
And so, just looking for ways that we can give people advice that might be a skill that we have that isn't necessarily real estate-related, but still somebody might be interested in, that way we can add value to that phrase too.
Dean: Well, I often say, I think that there's a role that a real estate agent, real estate professional has. This is something that I've held for a long time of really positioning themselves as an ambassador for living in where you live. For years, my original idea of when we created money-making websites, here we had the living in Winter Haven, that the idea that, as a realtor, the only time that we're relatively short-lived relationship with someone sporadically over several years, that we're somebody in the market of buying or selling a home. But yeah, we maintain relationships with people until that moment comes along because it's such a high transaction value per time.
If we're going to $10,000 or $12,000 or $15,000 for helping somebody sell their house or buy a home, and then five years later, earn another $10,000 when they resell that house and buy another one, that it's often have people think about what if they thought about the relationship as that instead of $15,000 one-time and then it's going to be five years now before that becomes valuable.
Again, if you think about it like that, I'm putting words in how people think about it that they think often it's not going to be years before they sell again. But if you think about it, that's $3,000 a year over a five-year period, what would it be like if you were treating that person like they're paying $250 a month for you to improve their life while they're living in wherever you live, and thinking about the category of home ownership and living in your community as what your real relationship with people is.
And that's a discussion that we've been having, even as preparing for the future as people worry about perhaps downward pressure on real estate commissions and looking for alternate ways for people to add value as a real estate professional.
I mean, you start to look at those things. And I've always pointed out to people that I think the fact that the real estate business has been around for hundreds of years, and it's going to survive and thrive, it's going to adjust certainly.
But the fact that Warren Buffett is deeply involved in it and that, I think, the big clue though is that Berkshire Hathaway was opened. I think maybe more brokerages than anyone in the last three years or so I think, it may be, but in the top anyway. But what's conspicuously absent in the name is real estate at all is Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, and I think there's a clue in that. Really, if you start shifting and focusing onto what does that broader umbrella of home services entail, I think that's a really forward-thinking way to look at things.
Eric: Right. I think that that's no doubt about it, the business will be probably different coming out of this. And currently, we're... I would look at that as involved in the real estate business as Warren Buffett's that I look at that as a good sign myself, but certainly what he's doing is watching what you believe is probably pretty smart. And it's something that I've actually, because we're our own independent company and trying to figure out how we can compete long term with other companies that are able to bundle services like that and maybe - spend some time thinking about for the next couple of months.
Dean: Yeah. And I think that you find... The reality is that real estate is a local business. And that in many, many, many markets, the number one company is a local independent and not a large national brand, and that's based on relationships and legacy, I think. But there's still an opportunity, I think, to really focus on this 15-mile radius kind of thing that we're being forced to embrace through Facebook that that's the minimum targeting we can do. I think there might be an interesting thing to really pick your 15 miles and focus on 100% serving the homeowners in that 15-mile radius. There's something to that.
Eric: Yeah, I agree. I think that to some extent, I've gotten very nervous maybe because I live in the neighborhood, I believe I'm nervous about giving people advice about other things besides specifically real estate advice, especially if it's not my-
Dean: But listen, here's the thing, is that it's not necessarily that has to be you giving the advice because I think that under the category of homeownership, there are other people in that world that if you look at...
Let's say that we take a top-down holistic view of everything that's going on in one particular household that lives in your community, right, somebody that you would be an advocate for, and let's take 100% of the money that they're going to spend on an annual basis to live in and care for their home in your area there. There are so many things from home maintenance, from home improvements, from home furnishings, from smart homes, all of that stuff that goes into living in your home, home ownership, that there are other businesses, other people that you could align with as a network kind of thing that you're all spreading.
You've got a newspaper, which is great, right? But that could be a really interesting thing if you start to think about almost building in a closed network that you host together with these people who would be a... If you start to think about home maintenance stuff and the home services and all the ongoing maintenance things, carpet cleaning and the home improvement things, painting and handyman and contractors and all this kind of stuff where before HomeAdvisor or Angie's List took over. The model for Angie's List was actually somebody, one local person, who started keeping a list of trustworthy service providers and that scaled all over.
Eric: It's a good idea, I think. I wind up having some bad experience sometimes and then I shut everything down. So, if I give the name of a painter to somebody, now it's almost like one of these things where I'm vouching somebody for somebody and it's like the mafia. And if they don't do a good job or if somebody... I look at some of this stuff, and I think about maybe you've probably got more experience in this, so I'm actually curious about anybody else's experience, too. I just look into that and say, "Does anybody want to refer me business because I gave them the name of a painter," or something like that.
And then, the downside of it is if I didn't name the painter and then that painter is more expensive than somebody else and then they go on our Facebook group and comment that this person is too expensive, and now it looks like I'm referring out people that are too expensive and I just look at that and I go, again, my whole poker thing. You tell me where my mindset is. I look at that and I go, "Geez." So, the downside of this is so much more than the upside, because you're right, we have an excellent curated list of topnotch vendors.
Some of those interestingly enough, though, don't want you getting out there, like our handyman. He actually doesn't want us giving out his name to everybody in our neighborhood because then what happens is, he gets calls and he's like one of six people that they're clearing for a written estimate to put up a ceiling fan. It's like - business is either.
But yeah, it's something I haven't calculated the pluses and minuses and maybe the [inaudible 00:40:13]. Sometimes the things that I'm worried about don't really matter at all. And maybe it's my ego thinking that anybody's even going to remember that I'm the one that referred that - to somebody.
Dean: I think that you look at, and this is all the thought process, right? There's a great book called The One to One Future by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. It was written about 25 years ago now, that was talking about this opportunity, our desire for trustworthy help. I think there's a healthy way to do it, but it's just something that could be an exercise in thinking about how can you serve your constituents, if you think about it like that.
There's a number of people that are living in a house that you helped them buy or that you were involved in them getting in that. And that's really the ideas thinking about how can you deepen the relationship with those people. And it may even be that it's just framed in a project management way in that if you were looking at it as if somebody needs something done even using a service like HomeAdvisor, where people could go online, get estimates, get background check, get all of that stuff, but even that takes them some time.
I have a personal assistant who manages all of the stuff to do with our home life in terms of she gets groceries, she cooks, she does keep the cars maintained, the property maintained. If we need something, she meets the repairman or calls them, organizes everything. She's like a household life manager. Well, it really is because it's certainly... You know that I value an abundance of talent, and that all of that stuff that she's doing takes somebody time.
And so, almost when you think about doing something like that where almost like a concierge service for your clients, right? And I'm talking about looking at this as under the umbrella of trying to serve your top 150 especially and create with the ultimate yield being your return on relationship.
And so, I look at that, that if I were a real estate agent with the top 150, and I had access to someone like Courtney, if you were my client and you need something done, that I could enlist Courtney in helping you just get that done, that if you need to get your air conditioner, breaks down, or your water heater, something happens, that she could coordinate getting that all done and do it in a way that could be. If they don't have a relationship and you're not comfortable, just directly referring someone that she could facilitate getting the estimates from HomeAdvisor, reviewing them with you, you deciding which one you want to go with, and she just being your body band or your coordinator for it.
Eric: It's actually a brilliant idea, especially if somebody has a lot of buyers who have bought in a particular area recently to have somebody even to offer, "I have an assistant and maybe if we add other staff and there's usually some flex time there," something like that, it's really a bad idea and probably should.
One of the things I really took from the group also is that idea of the top 150, and so, we mail out. I had an epiphany, I suppose. We're mailing out to strangers 10 or 11 times a year, and then only keeping in contact with the people who've already had a positive experience with us. And so, our plan was to do that quarterly originally, but I think that we should bump that up a little bit. And certainly, I suppose if maybe I'm afraid of posting it to, say, 3,000 strangers on the neighborhood group-
Dean: Yeah. I'm not talking about that. Right.
Eric: Yeah, I could very least offer it to our little group, and if nothing else-
Dean: When we talk about your return on relationship, how do you calculate that for you? What is your return on relationship? Do you remember how to calculate it?
Eric: I don't remember, but it's not something that I've ever-
Dean: Thought about.
Eric: ... really considered. And I think I also have had... Because of where we are and selling so many homes, a lot of people moving to our area are coming from California, but then a lot of the people who were selling homes for our people that we never met or never met before so we didn't know them, they're hiring us because of our expertise in an area. We help them sell their house. It's a great experience. But then, they move to California or move to Denver or move wherever, and they're sort of our best friend for 60 days and then we never hear from them again. And it's really hard to some extent, but then, again, I think I have to change my mind shift from some of that to be like, "Well, yeah, that is a large portion of it, but that doesn't mean that everybody is-
Dean: No, exactly. That's right.
Eric: Yeah. And so, it's not something-
Dean: And by the way, there's also people that you know that you haven't helped buy or sell a house yet, but you have a relationship with. The whole premise of this is that there right now are 150 people, plus or minus, that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd recognize them by name and you'd stop and have a conversation with them. That's just the reality.
And so, when you look at this... That's why it's important to have a metric that helps you evaluate how you're doing with that. So, the metric that we use is return on relationship. So, if we say, "How many repeat and referral transactions did you do in the last 12 months," do you have a sense of how many that would be?
Eric: I actually don't. So, it's a mistake, and it's certainly a mistake not to, but I wouldn't say that all the sudden, this year, a good point, most of the buyers that we're working with are people who were referred to us. And so, it's definitely been helping, whether that's because we've done anything, I think it's always, even going back to what I was saying about so many people moving away in it is kind of, to focus on the 150, I think is great too, but you could actually do a pretty good referral business with just like 10 -
Dean: Right. That's my point, is that there are and I'm looking at this as your, we call this your top 150, right? The top 150 people that you have the deepest knowledge or relationship with, because they're the ones that are most likely to refer you. It goes without saying that if somebody doesn't know you or have a relationship with you, that it's unlikely that they're going to refer you. If you look at the people who do the referrals that you did get, they're coming from people who would be in your top 150. So, the whole focus of it is to understand the mechanics of how referrals happen.
We talked about it that all the referrals happen as a result of conversation. And in those conversations, three things have to happen. They have to notice that the conversations about real estate, they have to think about you, and they have to introduce you to the person that they had the conversation with. So, it's a progressive thing.
And for every person that does call you and say, "My friend, John, told me that you could help me sell my house," there's probably five other opportunities that didn't happen because they may be told a thought of you but didn't say anything, or they told their friend to give you a call and they didn't give you a call, or they were having the conversation about real estate and they didn't even think about you. Right? The probability of your top 150 having a conversation that's about real estate is very high. There's over a 12-month study.
Eric: Yeah, especially I think right now, right?
Dean: Yeah. And so, that kind of thing, being present with people and really being able to shape the thought process within the zeitgeist of what's actually going on right now, like having that awareness that with this month's world's most interesting postcard, it's going to be an interesting thing that you're going to say that if...
Just a quick note in case you hear someone talking about maybe selling their house because of the uncertainty of the coronavirus, that's maybe a conversation, right? Or what's going to happen with prices. Your people are wondering could this be a collapse in the real estate market. "You can give me a call or text me and I'll give you a subscription to our weekly market watch or this video or our book on how to sell your house for top dollar fast," or whatever the thing is that you could allow people... People want to do what they can for other people. That's why we refer things.
Eric: Yeah. So overall, I love the casualness of some of your marketing. Just a quick note, I like the "whenever you're ready." I feel that they fit with how I want to approach things. I like that quite a bit. And I think that just allows you to be in the right place at the right time whenever they really aren't ready, and not the end.
Dean: Once you realize-. It's only ever going to be on their timetable. And that gives you comfort to really evaluate is, no, they're not resisting your sense of urgency. When you say whenever you're ready, now they can evaluate, "Am I read right now?" "Yeah, I am." "Okay, let's move forward." But if you say, "Now's the time," or "Better hurry," now you have to put up some resistance to that and say, "Well, I'm not really ready yet," or whatever.
Eric: Yeah, I like that a lot. I also like the idea that you were talking about putting out a specific thing that you're talking about. So, if you hear somebody talking about what's going to happen with prices, or even if you hear somebody talking about wanting to buy a new home or whatever the case is, that we always try to be so general and even for us, the idea of specializing in an area or giving somebody like a specific thing that they want to hear about, it's tempting to be like, "Well, I want to tell somebody, 'Hey, we can do everything if you hear anybody talking about anything,'" but then if you're putting that out there, they don't really have their antennas up if they hear somebody talking about something and something specifically that they need help with.
And so, I think I like that idea as well. And you figure over the course of a year, if you're communicating with people, then you can get out 12 different things. And so, probably cover the gamut that way, but at least have a better chance of keeping on top of somebody's mind if you're asking for some of those more specific things, I suppose.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. It feels like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I want or need, or that that's really where it is." So, this has been a great discussion. We've covered a lot of things, so I think that this is a helpful, thoughtful dialogue to have, especially in this time. What is your thought or takeaway or summary?
Eric: Yeah. I think the overall takeaway is probably just that whether it's even at this time or as the market improves, just to make sure that we're out there for people, that we're here to help them not just in a transactional mode, which is nice, that'll serve us well in the long run no matter what. And so, I think, overall, that's really helpful to me is focusing on that.
And I think no matter what, one of the things we're focusing on is I'm trying to work today and make sure that I've worked really hard today given whatever's going on knowing that those type of things, like the business that we have closing is from 60 days ago and [inaudible 00:58:18] that putting some of these things into place today versus saying, "Well, nothing's going on for the next whatever time."
Dean: Yeah. It's so easy to get sucked into this loop of checking the news and worrying and thinking and going down that path, but if you can go back to a situation where you check in that noon and see what the news is and check it at 6:00 PM and see what the news is, but use the time in between to take advantage of the extra time that you have now because of plans changing or people not being out and about as much.
You have to turn what asset you have into productive stuff because that's the biggest squandering that's going to happen collectively, not just in real estate, but in anybody who's a small business owner who's paid on results, and not a salary, is that losing this time that we have right now to productively invest that time in things that are going to be assets in the future.
Eric: Right. Yeah, definitely. So, I don't want to wake up... Because I do expect when we can all go outside, that there'll be a pretty big boom of both buyers and sellers.
Dean: Absolutely. End up demand, right?
Eric: Yeah. So, my goal is to have a bullpen ready of people that are wanting to do something when they feel like it's safe to do that. And so, that'll help us because otherwise if we don't keep the machine running and we wait until we see signs, then it will be two or three months further down the road and then it'll be the end of the year. Because it is tempting, even for us, we're like, "Hey, we could just take our dogs and go camping," or something like that. But I think in the long run, we would regret that.
Dean: And I think week by week, things are... Like right now, there's uncertainty as we look forward that it feels like, "Do me like it's a long time." And time does seem further when you're looking forward than looking back. Because if we say there's a really good probability that this is going to be more through it and back to 80% of normal by July, let's say, and that's a 90-day period, which feels like a long time, but this weekend is going to be 90 days since Christmas, which feels like just yesterday. So, looking backwards, it goes so fast, but now, I think hunkering down and really taking advantage of the opportunities too.
Dan Sullivan and I recorded a podcast, The Joy of Procrastination Podcast, and we're talking about this concept of the shutdown leap. What could it be if you determined that while everything is shutting down instead of shutting down yourself to really get into a situation where now you can leap forward, that you're upgrading your abilities, you're upgrading, you're using this time to invest in things that are going to have a long lasting effect in your business.
Eric: That's definitely what we're trying to do.
Dean: Pretty exciting. Well, Eric, it wasn't the normal kind of conversation that we have, but I think we got a lot of timely, really good stuff to talk about here.
Eric: Yeah, I enjoyed it. I really appreciate everything that you do, so it's my pleasure to be on your show.
Dean: I appreciate it. And then, once things get back to a little bit more of the normal swing, I'd love to have you back on and we'll do a full analysis of what's going on in all the lifestyle elements for you, too.
Eric: I think that would be so much fun. I mean, it would really be so much fun to come back and revisit this in a few months and see what we thought came true and how everybody came out on the other side.
Dean: Absolutely.
Eric: Perfect.
Dean: Well, have a great day. Stay safe. And we'll stay connected through what's going on here.
Eric: Okay. Thanks so much, Dean. Take care.
Dean: Thanks, Eric. Bye.
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 talked about in the Listing Agent Lifestyle, come on over to gogoagent.com. So, 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.