Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we're going all the way back to a time when we were gathering with people in public, and to our GoGo Agent Academy in February of 2020.
That was the last time I was in a group of people, and we gathered in Orlando for two days to talk all about the Listing Agent Lifestyle elements as we do each year.
Hopefully we'll be back on track to be able to do it again in February next year because these sessions are one of my favorite things I do every year. We get to talk about the up to the minute, State of the Union discussion of what's working, and what people are doing in pursuit of the eight elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle.
So, here is session one, and we're going to play a series of these over the summer, so you can experience it like you were there.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Listing Agent Scorecard
Be a Guest
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep115
Dean: Well, good morning.
Audience: Good morning, Dean.
Dean: Hi, how are you? So we're in a bigger room, what do you think of that?
Audience: There's an echo.
Dean: Yeah, it is a little bit of an echo on the thing. I'm really excited because this year is the first year of a brand new decade, which I'm very excited about. This is the first real decade we've had of the '20s, or the new millennium here, and something that we'll be able to kind of sink our teeth into. So we've got the... We would say the '20s was the year we turned it all around, this is where my business really took off. Because I don't even know what you call these last two decades that we've had, how do you even describe them? I started in real estate in the eighties, and then built stride in the nineties, and then everything... we've been lost for 20 years now, now we got something to sink our teeth into.
And I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but 2020 is very different than 1999, and I couldn't be more excited about it. When you really start to think about the future, where when we were thinking... I remember growing up in the seventies and eighties, and thinking when Prince wrote that song, that we're going to party like it's 1999. That sounded like that was forever, from when that song came out in whenever it was, 1984 or 1982. And you think about that, 1999 came and went and here we are in 2020 right now. And I was reflecting, I was just at a Strategic Coach event in Scottsdale last week, and we were talking about the unique things that are available to us right now because of all of the advancements that have happened since 1999. I look back, and in 1999 we were just starting to come online, we were just starting to have the internet as a thing.
And I remember there was the famous clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric talking about when NBC got an email address, it was at something and they're like, "What is internet?" And it was just like the most famous kind of like innocence of what's going on, and now we look at how it's evolved. When we started applying the internet to our marketing for real estate, the sort of advanced thing was to search the homes online, that was cutting edge marketing to be able to have people be able to go online and search homes. This was before Zillow, before all everybody's website had access to all the properties. And we rode that wave for 10 years before people really caught up, all through, right at the time when a pay per click advertising was coming available. And you start to see, now, how things have come in a mature internet. Because when the internet was on the rise, all the things that we were doing, first of all, the main world was definitely on the main land.
We make this distinction, Dan Sullivan and I do a podcast called The Joy of Procrastination, and on there, we make a distinction between the two worlds that we're living in. We're straddling the mainland, which is where we are right now, in person, physical world, and cloudlandia, where the real world is happening right now. There's no argument that the main world is the cloud, we're definitely all living in the cloud, everything about our lives is shaped that way now. Where, instead of... Like in the '90s, there was a journalist who did a feature article by embedding themselves in a New York City apartment to see if they could survive for a week with their only means of connection, the internet. And now it would be exactly the opposite, it would be almost unthinkable to lock yourself in a New York City apartment to try and survive for a week without the internet.
And now it's like such... And we've seen all of these cascading things that have come into the digital world. In 1999, PDFs and documents were easy to... That was the first thing that you could do, you could exchange documents, you could send things by email to people, and that changed things in the way we communicate. But then MP3s came along and we could do audio, now that became digitized. Then video, and in 2005 we get YouTube, and then it became the bandwidth issues were getting solved and we're able to stream video. And then we got the iPhone, and that is the shift, completely, to this new world now. That was where it all began. When we had the internet in our pocket, that was the beginning of our total migration to cloudlandia. And so now all of our clients, all of the people that we are working with, all the people that we have relationship with, everybody is there. We're connected instantly to every other citizen of cloudlandia, with a one to one connection that you could literally sit right where you are and reach out to anybody with your iPhone.
And it's difficult to peel ourselves away from that, to get any of the work done that is going to make a difference on the mainland for us. So using all the tools that are available to us also means that we've got the opportunity to have collaborative relationships at a greater level than we've ever had before, where you have to do anything. I'm going to put that out there. I'm going to say that you could literally form a situation where you don't have to do anything in your business, and it's a pretty amazing time to be in real estate right now. One of the things that I talked about at Strategic Coach, and I'll share it with you guys, is this... and I may have shared this on one of our GoGo Agent calls. Sort of in the last year, two of the biggest things that have happened are the absolute proof that we're living in different times right now. First of all, Kylie Jenner is a billionaire right now. Now, when you think about that, Barb, Kylie Jenner has been on the earth less time than you've been a MoneyMaking website's client. Yeah. Same with you, Penny, you think about that, that we've been sitting in rooms like this for longer than Kylie Jenner has even walked the earth.
And she is a billionaire right now, and she has a team of seven people, that's it. Now, the way that she's done that is by collaborating with the people who have the capabilities to do the things that she wants to do. She saw that what she would really love, her vision, was to create a cosmetics company, and she created this Kylie Cosmetics Company, not by looking up recipes on the internet for how to make lip liner or how to make lipstick, but by partnering with a company who all they do is make lipstick and makeup and things for the trade. And there are so many companies like this, I'm using Kylie just as an example for you, of something that I want you to understand the principle of what's at work here when you start to think about all the things that are available to us.
So Kylie's model is that she has this Seed Labs, makes all of her stuff. She's partnered with Shopify for all of the Ecommerce stuff, she's partnered with her mom's company to run all the business administration side of it, and she's there with her creative team of seven coming up with what are we going to do, what's the idea, what colors are we going to put in our palette this year, when are we going to name them, what do we want it to look like? All the what questions, and none of the how questions, she's got people who do all of the how's. And when I was doing the research for this talk I was doing in Scottsdale, I really started looking at what's going on with the company that makes all of her stuff. And they apparently make almost all the makeup for all of the people who put out influencer brands, and their parents started a company. In 1989, they bought a big lab that, basically, is a commercial maker of all the makeup. And so by partnering with this company, she's able to bypass any of the technical things, any of the figuring out how to do stuff, and have everything done for her.
And when I found a video tour, and I'll show you some of this as we go, but there's a video tour of the company that does all of her stuff. They have their own brand called ColourPop, too, and they have a 200,000 square foot facility where they do everything under one roof. Meaning they have a area where they do the formulations, they make the stuff, they test all the formulas, the colorings, everything. They make the packaging, they manufacture the makeup, they assemble it, they fulfill it, they've got the customer service team. They do everything under one roof and they can get a new product, from idea to shipping, in five days.
How you look at, in the old world, the big makeup companies... The company that just bought Kylie cosmetics, Cody, is a multibillion dollar company. They just paid her $600 million for 51% of her company, which means that she still owns the other half, which is worth $600 million, so she's clearly over a billion. And they have, now, a capability to respond to the market in a fast way. In Cody, in those other things, to get a new product to market is a two year cycle by the time they start looking at, "Well, what are people going to want in the spring of this?" Well, ColourPop and Kylie, they can see what's happening right now and say, okay, we're doing this, and we're doing this color and this name and everything, and get it out to market right away.
And so I say that and I've been telling that story since the first time she appeared on Forbes magazine, on her way to a billion. The first time they did it, because it had only been two years and they didn't want to say she was a billionaire yet. But they said she got to 900 million, and they were almost apologetic about it. If you know Forbes magazine, the way they said it was, "Honestly, we can't believe it either, but even with our most conservative multiples and our discount, she's got to be at least 900 million, so then she's definitely on her way."
So I've been telling that story, so I see people understand that you don't have to know how to do everything to make something big happen for yourself. And the immediate thought or feedback that people give is that, "Yeah, but she's Kylie Jenner. She's got all these events, she's not a self made billionaire, she came from a famous family. She's on TV, she's got 150 million social media followers." Which is all true. But then, this last year, we were given the best gift ever to counter that argument. And that gift was Lil Nas X. Lil Nas X and Old Town Road, does anyone remember that song, Old Town Road? Okay. Now Old Town Road... Today is the end of February, we're not in March yet, so it's still February. That the entire Old Town Road story that I'm about to share with you is not even 15 months old yet, so just keep that in mind as we do that. That just over a year ago, Lil Nas X is a 20 year old kid living in Atlanta at his grandmother's house, Did you know him, Zach?
Zach: What?
Dean: Do you know him, Lil Nas X? You see him all up in the clubs when you're out there in Buckhead? Yeah. There you go, perfect. So here's this kid- Here he is, living at his grandmother's house, dropped out of college, and he's looking online for free beats. And beats are the part of the track that the rappers rap on top of. Now, he not a musician, he doesn't make beats or do anything like that. So he's searching online for free beats on YouTube, finds this one that this kid in the Netherlands had made. The kid's living at home in his parent's house, in his bedroom making beats, and he ends up selling this beat to Lil Nas X. Because you get the free sample on YouTube, then you can go to BeatStars and get the beat so that you can be licensed to use it. And the story is an amazing thing, how it all took off. I'm going to show you one video here so we can see it, the story of Old Town Road. This is a New York Times article here, are we good to go with the sound too?
Crew: No.
Audience: Oh, we're not yet, okay.
Dean: I must have zoned out. Okay, so later we'll have that. You do? Okay, no problem. So this kid's living at his parents' house, making beats, gets this beat discovered by Lil Nas X. He makes the song Old Town Road, releases it on December 5th of 2018, and it starts going out into the internet and gets picked up on Tik Tok. Somebody decides to put together a old tally yeehaw challenge on Tik Tok and the song goes viral, and it starts to show up on the Billboard country charts. So it's a country rap song, and it shows up on the Billboard charts. And Billboard says, "Wait a minute now, this is not really a country song, we need to get this off here." So they take it off the charts, Lil Nas X is tweeting out, "Somebody get me Billy Ray Cyrus."
And you immediately start to think, "Well, what's more country than Billy Ray Cyrus?" So Billy Ray Cyrus gets involved, does a verse on the song, and the song goes to number one on the Billboard charts and stays at number one for longer than any song in the history of the Billboard charts, 19 weeks at number one. And this from two kids, in their bedrooms, collaborating together with someone who is widely known in the country and the music world. It had a lot of notoriety around it, but anybody could do what happened there, anybody has that as an opportunity for them. When you start to think about where you are... and that's why I say to people is, "Your situation is almost certainly somewhere on a spectrum between Kylie Jenner, with every advantage in the world, and Lil Nas X, living at home at your grandmother's house, running your business from her closet." Everybody's somewhere between those two poles.
And if they can do it, to have this amazing outcome, we can do it too, there's nothing stopping us. And the real lesson is that we can create anything that we want to create. Lil Nas X had a video that I played that had a prediction. It was January of last year, he put a video out and it was just when Old Town Road had been released. And he was talking about... he was excited that he just released it, that's it doing pretty good. And he's eating pizza, just talking, like a live Twitter stream kind of thing, and said, "But it's just starting, I got 3000 Instagram, I've got 2000 on YouTube, and I don't even think a thousand on Spotify yet." But he said, "Check back with me in a year and we're going to see what happens." And then he put out a video just a few weeks ago, same, in January, checking back a year later. And in that year, he's created the number one song ever, he's got 8 million people on Instagram, however many on YouTube, 30 million Spotify subscribers, the number one song in the history of the Billboard charts, two Grammys, and a Super Bowl commercial. And it's like, what a year, right?
And I say all that up to kind of set the stage, to do our introductions and check in from the year. And some of you have been here... how many were here last year? So about, we're about half and a half. So I'd like to hear what half of you who were here last year have done in your year so far, to see the thing. And so let's do this. We've recording everything, as always, here, and what Richard needs for us... Not so much so that we can hear, a little bit that we can hear because we're a little bit a bigger room here, but everything that you say, we want to get on the recording of this too. So that means that we have two microphones here that we can pass around, and Diane will be here, but let's go. I just want to kind of give you a brief introduction, the thing that you are working on right now, the thing that you've had the biggest result with over the last 12 months, and the thing that you're excited to work on or take away over the time together here.
So let's start with Tony.
Tony: Hi, hello.
Dean: There we go.
Tony: Can you hear me?
Dean: Yeah.
Tony: It's working, okay. My name is Tony, I'm from Toronto, Ontario, I've been working with Dean now for seven years. I'm implementing getting listings, listing next door, and I'm also doing the GoGo Agent info box flyers on for sale signs. So out of the three, the one that's really been getting the most amount of revenue for me is getting listings, and in the last 12 months... I have the numbers for you, Dean. It's just over $200,000 in revenue.
Dean: And so we're up now... If you've seen on the blog, I post, as we update each year, Tony's infographic that shows the results. And so now that puts it up to a million two-
Tony: 1.2, yeah.
Dean: 1.2 million over the time period. And what's amazing is to see all of the longevity of it, like the people who responded six years ago still now listing their house, which is-
Dean: Still, now listing their house, which is pretty amazing. Cool. What's the thing that you want to work on here that you got?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to expand the Getting Listings area. I want to just do more areas. And online, offline. Just continue tweaking that and expanding because right now we're at around 21,000 homes. Probably want to double that in the next 12 months.
Dean: Yeah. That's awesome. And the good news is that there's no bafflers in the way. I mean, you could, just saying, you could literally mail 41,000. You don't need to get special approval or work your way up because a lot of times-
Speaker: Just a little bit of organizing with our postal service, but, yeah.
Dean: I love it. It's very cool. Always expanding and consistency.
Speaker: Yes.
Dean: Yeah. Very exciting. Yeah. You keep going. I want to just have you introduce yourself. If this is your first time, this is Dylan that you may remember from the listing agent lifestyle podcast episode recently. Yeah, it's a chance to introduce yourself, where you're from, the things that you're working on so far, what you're hoping we can-
Speaker: You gave me a good introduction. I'm from Vegas. I'm new to all this. I just started implementing the Getting Listings two months ago, and that's really my main focus for the next 12 months, to get some more traction on that and get my own infographic like what Tony has, the same sort of numbers.
Dean: Yeah. Dylan was sharing last night that he keeps that infographic out, that's his inspiration every time he gets thinking, looking at it and going, "Stick with it, stick with it. This is the one." I told him that we had someone that I suggested having a line that says, "You are here." So that's for month three to draw the line. I literally had that conversation with someone where they had the print out of the thing. And I said, "now take a rule and draw a line at three months. And then at that line go, you are here." And that's where you are and realizing that Tony didn't do his first transaction until month five. So a lot of times when you're just starting out on these things, it can feel like, "Well, this has taken a long time," or "Maybe I should switch areas. Maybe I don't have the right area." But you keep that up as the inspiration. So, very exciting. And you've got, from what I note, the world's most interesting postcard is going out.
Speaker: I'm sending that out. I'm working on getting that up to 150 people. I think I'm at 80 now, after we last spoke. So I'm still getting traction on that, a lot more activity from previous clients that I hadn't heard from in a while. And obviously, you can't directly correlate it, but it does seem that they are connected somehow.
Dean: Yeah. Awesome. That's what's going to happen. You notice a lot of these things that you start doing, that things will really build their own momentum. So what's the one thing that you're really hoping to take away from here?
Speaker: Changing my lifestyle a little bit more. I've always been more of a buyer's agent, and I'm really looking to switch over to listings and upping my price range a little bit on those listings.
Dean: Perfect. Okay.
Jeff: I'm Jeff from Olive Branch, Mississippi. I've been in real estate for three years, been doing getting listings for eight months, still waiting on the first deal to come through. And I just want to make sure that what I'm doing, the followup is right. I mean, I think I'm following everything. I just want to make sure that that's all going right. And I do have Getting Listings going, the world's most interesting postcards going. I think I'm up to about 125 and beginning to be in more spontaneous conversations with folks afterwards. "Hey, I just got your card. That's great information." And so it's creating some conversations.
Dean: Yeah. That's awesome. Now the way we measure, you look at the things like the world's most interesting postcard, is that it's very rare that it's as overt as, "Hey, I got your postcard, and I'm talking with a first time buyer. Can you send me the book?" What often happens is that you start seeing that things start happening, that you get more conversations like that, or you get more referrals. And at the end of the year, when we measure your return on relationship versus previous years, you see that it's up, just because what we're doing most importantly with this is that you are in front of people who are... Every month now you're programming them to pay attention to conversations, and it's not just the conversations that we're talking about on the backside of the card here. So, cool.
Barb: Good morning. I'm Barb from Annapolis, Maryland. I've been here since Christ was a small child sitting in my seat. Obviously I'm not to the Kylie Jenner point yet, but I'm still here. I think I want to expand my Getting Listings. My Getting Listings is doing great, and I do do the input box on my signs and everything else, my URLs, my GoDaddy URL. People come by, they pick up the flyers, they do get information. And it's all part of setting me apart from every other realtor in my area. So what I'm working on now is the Getting Listings for my high-end waterfront properties. So it's a little bit different to step that up when you're talking to sellers about having a flyer box on their yard sign.
Dean: Well, you know what's so funny? We did that same thing. So I helped Joe Polish was selling his house in Paradise Valley, and we put an info box flyer. It's a $3 million house with the amazing view of Paradise Valley, and we got a lot of response from that because it's the road where his house was was a way people are going to get up to Camelback Mountain to hike. So we ended up... That was, I want to say, four years ago now, right around now, right when the Super Bowl was going on, because we ended up, we mailed out some Just Listed postcards to all the homes in the valley that could look up at his house. And then we did the info box flyer, and we ended up generating 80 leads between the postcard and the info box flyer and had 20-something people come to an open house on the Saturday before the Super Bowl. So it was, yeah.
Barb: That's interesting.
Dean: Yeah. And I mean those are the things that most people, they're still... There's still the logic in that people are often driving around neighborhoods, and they see a house that they're interested in.
For whatever reason, most people are not using info box flyers. And if they are, I often... Once a year, I'll go on a little safari trying to find info box flyers, and I'll drive around Winter Haven. And I'll look around, and I'll see how many houses do I have to go to before I find an info box flyer? And often the outcome is that it's listing after listing with nothing. And then I'll find an empty info box flyer, a box, and then I'll find one that's just got a printout of the MLS, printed all cockeyed and wet usually. And then very rarely do you ever find anybody doing anything that would be helpful for them.
Barb: Well, on the how-to, as to what you're talking about, Diane is the master of doing all that for me.
Dean: Yeah, that's the thing, everybody agrees. That's right.
Barb: The easy button works.
Dean: Yes. And that's it. We could be your seed laboratories here for your Kylie empire. That's it.
Barry: Thanks, Barb. Barry, operating in Oakland and Berkeley, California. Our business last year did exactly what we had hoped it would do. It wasn't our best year, but it was close to it. My wife and I are partners. We have two part-time agents who work with us. We do a monthly postcard that we write ourselves. It has much in common with the world's most interesting postcard, but it's more personal and more direct to our marketplace. We refer to this as our $200,000 postcard because that's just about how much it generates every year. 70% buyers, 30% listings.
I'm also a general contractor, and about five years ago, we started offering remodeling to our listing clients, which was great because the clients who came to us to list and sell their homes were people we've known for a long time. So there was a built-in high level of trust. And to date, over the five years, we've done about nine remodels and added probably $2 million in value to those nine listings with the remodeling that we've done. And we would price the remodeling, such that if we invest at a dollar, we would get $2 back in terms of sales price, and it always worked out that way or better, and everyone was really thrilled. So that's fun. I can't continue doing it that much longer because of my age. And I tend to do a lot of the work myself and supervise the crews very closely. But it's been very profitable, and it's been a lot of fun.
We have a small property management business. It generates enough money. Rents are very high where we are so charging only a 5% management fee, it generates much more than our overhead for the business each month. Plus then the add-on maintenance and things like that, that's a very nice slice of the pie.
And for the future, second quarter of this year, we're going to be all in with the Getting Listings program and to try and find an agent to partner with to build a team so we can kind of ease out of the listing business and just concentrate on the marketing and have an agent help work that with us, once we make the initial introductions and presentations and get the listing. So very excited about it.
We've always been very technical. We've always been on the Internet. We got through the recession by doing a Sunday morning tour of downtown Oakland condos every Sunday morning at nine o'clock for six years. We sold over 110 condos in Oakland. It got us through the recession, and now we're trying to become as well known in the Oakland Hills where the price point's about double.
We don't need to do a lot of transactions in our market because the average price point that we're looking at... We have enough listing business already committed this year to equal last year's GCI.
Dean: Wow.
Barry: And these are people from our sphere, and the average price point has got to be somewhere between a million and a half and 2 million each.
Dean: That's awesome.
Barry: So we're kind of excited about the future.
Dean: That's great. This is a really exciting thing to hear that you've got a business that has a lot of equity, we call it, that you've got the equity of these long-term relationships and consistency of purpose. And that goes a long way. That's exactly what Tony's got with the Getting Listings. He's got a mature thing that, because he stuck with it, is continuing to do it, Ron's in the same situation. You start to see it's like compound interest, that the longer things go, the more accelerated and dramatic the ROI is. So, yeah. Awesome. Cool.
When we talk about getting referrals, we'll break down maybe some of the different elements that you're doing in your postcard versus ours. And there's one of the things is I look at this, and I want everybody to realize that I don't feel... I'd love when you guys are all innovating or doing something different. What my job is to do something that you will do, right?
I would love if every one of you would put your spin and your heart and your effort into creating something unique for your marketplace every month. But the reality is you're not likely to do it. So as a baseline, what I set out is something, is what can I do that you would do, and that even we go beyond it, that we could do the whole thing for you. It gets to the point where every week we talk about the Easy Button as we go, but for the world's most interesting postcard, it's at the point where you just need to scrawl the 150 names on a yellow pad, and we can look up their address and enter them in your GoGoAgent database. We can prepare the cards and mail them for you every month so you don't have to really do anything. But could you get... We'll talk about your ROR, and we'll go dig deeper into it when we do the Getting Referrals and the-
Barry: I have a self-reinforcing substitute for will power at home. It's my wife, who had a corporate communications career, and she has this written usually the first week of the month, sometimes the last week of the prior month. And she hounds me for what we call, in the orange box at the bottom, Barry's tech tip. And she hounds me and she hounds me. And she finally sends me an email early in the morning saying, "Barry, get me this week's tech tip, and get it off to the printer." And we can talk more about detail. But she writes this every month from scratch, and that's the part that most people don't have. It just arrives in my inbox, and I send it off to the printer.
Dean: So you've got a who.
Barry: It's way cool. It's way cool.
Dean: Perfect.
Penny: I'm Penny from New York, not the city, the country. Not too long ago, a few months ago, I actually had somebody who was probably responding to my first Getting Listings mailing, which I don't even know how long ago that was. That was, when did you start this?
Dean: Yeah, 2006. Chuck Charlton just had exactly the same thing. Somebody responded to his first mailing in 2006, and he just listed their house. This was right before Christmas.
Penny: Exactly. Exactly. And that's how long this has been going on. And she said "you mailed to me every month", and what's kind of interesting is there's a lot of repeats, of course. The newsletter repeats, and I have a bunch of stuff that I always supplement with, that I do in January and February. So she cycled through my crap quite a bit. And I walked in the door, and she's like, "Okay, we're ready." And it was the easiest listing I've probably ever done.
Dean: That's great.
Penny: And the struggle is, I'm sure this is nationwide, but our market is so fast. We have no inventory. And I'm looking at the the points. I want those listing multipliers, but it's just so hard to get, to not have it sell right away.
And I don't know, I'd love to hear from everybody in the room how they work on that listing multiplier.
Dean: We're going to do a whole session on it.
Penny: Because yeah, we don't have the ability to do any of the coming soon stuff or anything like that. It's outlawed in the infinite wisdom of our board. But that's something that I definitely want to do this year is get that happening. And I also want to... Right now I have five or six Getting Listing areas, and I'll drive around, and I'll go, "Oh, oh, this is a good place that I should start in." And then I keep driving, and I forget it. So I want to get this year probably four more going. And what I'll say to anybody who's new is just do it, just implement. Joe Stumpf used to always say, "You can't innovate until you implement." And so don't try to put your spin on stuff until the stuff is spinning.
Dean: Right on.
Zach: - talking about -
Dean: Right on.
Erik: Probably Zach.
Dean: Are we in the surrender cycle, Zach? We'll find out when we get-
Zach: Maybe.
Erik: Okay. You can coach me if you can't hear me, let me know because I tend to get a little quiet. I'm Nanci Garnand, I'm from Northern Colorado, the art world Loveland. And you can have your valentines be stamped with a cachet. Just send them to us, and we'll get them out for you.
Anyway, I am doing another remodeling. I've been doing my Getting Listing cards. I've hired a marketing assistant, and she's religious on getting them out. What I'm not doing well is the follow-up, and I'm used to having agents do that for me. And last year I went to no agents, just me. And so now I'm training new agents and probably will turn down the volume for a while and actually maybe turn it off a little bit because my business has picked up with past clients. I'm getting to double-side things. It's a horrible problem to have.
Dean: I know.
Erik: That's why I was a little bit late this morning. I was finishing, we're working on an offer.
I love all this stuff, and I know a little bit more what I need to change to get it to work again. But the next thing that I'm working on is I know that the content delivery is my key thing. I've been in business for 25 years now. I have the stories. I need to share them and set myself up as the expert to come work with.
We're creating newsletters. We're sending those out. I love the flyer boxes. I use them all the time. It's part of the marketing, the just listed, just sold cards. My focus on a team is more to training agents than having agents stay with me. They don't appreciate the team leader after a while. They want to do their own business so let them go do it. And I still believe in newspaper advertising, it's the brand marketing that helps me. So they see me in all many different places, and they don't always know where they found me, but I know because I go into the database, and I see where they came from.
And then to help my marketing, I'm moving into a new neighborhood. I'm very excited about this. It's the golf course neighborhood. There's going to be a thousand new homes, 260 custom homes, and I'll be one of the first 30 people living there.
Dean: Oh, wow. Way to go. That's an exciting time because yeah.
Erik: It's actually, in case y'all want to come visit me, it's a TPC golf course. It's in Berthoud, Colorado. It's called Heron Lakes, and we have the Korn Ferry Tour in July. And it's just an amazing... I've learned so much about golf by hosting a caddy.
Dean: Right, right. Very nice. Yeah, that's so cool when you can get at a thousand homes in a named community like that. That's pretty awesome. I like that. Good.
Erik: I'm Erik. My wife and I own our own company in northwest Austin, Texas. Where we are there's tons of people moving for tech jobs. So if you know somebody that's moving to Austin for software engineering, they probably want to move to our neighborhood, which is a good problem to have.
But I'd love direct mail. We mail out a newspaper to somewhere around 16,000 homes right now. So I spent a lot of time on the content and all that, trying to do the horoscope effect a little bit. And so, as we've expanded, it's been a little bit harder because the people in our original farm were kind of celebrities there, but trying to establish the authority somewhere else has been a little more challenging than I hoped for. So that's a little bit part of it.
And then, because we have so many businesses moving to our area, that everybody thinks their home is going to be worth a billion dollars. And so the inventory of homes is a little bit lower. So things that I'm working on is the market maker. I can get people... If I've got a buyer looking for a house, I can get people to call me, but if it's not a good fit, trying to convert them into a listing, I haven't been nearly as successful with that. So I could use help there.
And then kind of the tone-
Dean: Part of the thing, what really differentiates you on that situation is to not try hard to convert them into a listing, that you're honoring the thing that the reason that you got them to call was because of this buyer. And if that doesn't work out, often the thing of treating them then, adopting them like a Getting Listings lead, where you're continuing now to send Get Top Dollar newsletter, the updates, the things, and keeping them on that market maker mindset, that every time you do call them, it's because you've got a buyer for their house. When it is time, there's no reason that they would ever call anybody else because every time you call, you've got the buyers. You're not just trying. I think deep down everybody that calls on a postcard or reach out that says, I've got a buyer, deep down, there's this skepticism that he probably really doesn't have them. They probably are just trying to get me to list my house. You're not trying to do that. That goes a long, it goes a long way.
Erik: I actually put in a PS that I'm not doing that because I figure that's the conversation that they're thinking in their mind, but I'm only really started doing that in the last couple of months. And so the mindset you're talking about is probably good because what I've also found is a lot of times when they're calling me, they're not really even ready to sell. They're kind of like, "Well, we're thinking about it at some point in the future." And so, yeah, it's not immediate.
Dean: Awesome.
Erik: But then kind of the tone, I'd love to talk to anybody that does write their own things because the market is so hot.
Speaker: ... their own things because the market is so hot. I feel like if I'm a total cheerleader, then nobody will ever sell their house. And if I'm negative at all about something, then they're not going to hire me because I'm not a cheerleader for the market. So I'm finding it's a little challenging to walk that tightrope a little bit.
Speaker: Okay. And that's cool. I've got a lot of good thoughts about that because you're driving the balance between if you're being a cheerleader for the market that you're often perceived as trying to get people to list their house. Any of this thing where you're trying to say the market's hot, now's the time to sell, prices are up, or interest rates are low, time to refinance. Any of those things that are really trying to move somebody into a direction is perceived differently than being a reporter of the actual stuff of what's going on. That's why the reason, when we do the offering people the report on the Winter Haven lakefront house prices, is the objective data different than, "Let me tell you what your house is worth," or my opinion of value.
So people value the objective data. It's like having access to the real stuff. But where you can educate and motivate people is by sharing the stories of the people that you're helping in a way that's like the lessons of it. And then whenever you're ready, those are the most powerful words that we have is, "Whenever you're ready, here are three ways we can help you," and making it easy for people to jump on board. So we'll talk about those cookies and stuff, but I'm excited that you're here. The newspaper that you send out, do you write all that, or do you subscribe to a system?
Speaker: So it is a subscription thing, but I customize all the stuff. Which is a lot.
Speaker: Hey Zach, can you hand him the mic for a sec?
Speaker: Sorry. It's a company that does it, but I have tried to do the horoscope effect and actually want to swipe right almost everything that's in there. One of the challenges that I've had, because my wife is my superhero and does all of that stuff, is as we've expanded into other neighborhoods, I've sort of reduced the horoscope effect from our one neighborhood, so that we're not tripling everything. And maybe that's where it's harder to get kind of traction without having that stuff. So I'm having to be careful about that because it can be time-consuming where I'm now basically a content writer and all that.
Speaker: Gotcha. Okay.
Zach: I'm Zach Pasmatic from Atlanta, Georgia. Had an exciting year as I always do. Is that close enough?
Speaker: That's good. Thank you.
Zach: I celebrated my 40th year selling Atlanta one yard at a time. And so I'm starting to think about what's next.
Speaker: Let's go two yards at a time this year.
Zach: Well, we're also selling Atlanta, one floor at a time.
Speaker: There we go. Perfect.
Zach: In our high rises.
Speaker: I like that.
Zach: I sent you an email just a minute ago with a link to the high rise. I don't know if you could pull that up, my high rise guide. So we publish the High Rise Guide, a guide to high rise living in Atlanta. Both of my listing partners, one of 10 years and one of 12 years, left because their wives were transferred. The one that went to Costa Rica is doing lead follow up for me 15 hours a week. So he's still working. And so I've had to actually go on listing appointments.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Zach: I know. I know. It's been a real bitch.
Speaker: Do you wear your seersucker suit when you go, that Southern gentleman suit?
Zach: No, I'm more Brooks Brothers. But yes, I do wear my suit every day, and we started another 10,000 home farm with new postcards, the getting listings postcards.
Speaker: So how long has it been with the high rise one now?
Zach: The guide, well first we did a hard copy of it. But then when we decided to go electronic with it, we realized that when you click on the building, everything in the MLS pops up. So people really don't like the paper version of the guide, and everyone loves the electronic version because there's 84 buildings and each has a direct link to the MLS, and everything for sale, sold, or for lease. But the high rise guide leads were twice as much. They were at $400 a lead. So I sort of slowed down a little bit on the home price reports for the high rises. And it took a long time to figure this out, but a lot of millennials do not check their mailbox. And so they're always full. And the post office doesn't deliver mail to a full box.
Speaker: Once it's full?
Zach: Yeah. They can't put it in, so they send it back. And so I did bring some of my CMAs that I send out, the monthly report as well as one report that when you sign up for the CMA, for anyone to look at. And I started the weekly market watch email. I copied Connie. And where is she?
Zach: Well, I know that. Yeah, so we've been doing that. And okay, there's the guide. We built it in Issue, which is a pretty nice program to build something in. And so if you click on the building, it'll go right into the MLS.
Oh, there you go. Where'd you get that? Yeah. That's the smaller version. We did the use 11 by 17, which was nicer. I might click on one more of those. I just want to be sure that-
Speaker: I did, I would click on one and we got the things 12 properties. Yeah.
Zach: So that takes you right into my BoomTown CRM.
Speaker: Perfect. Yeah.
Zach: Yeah. And so people really like it. And we, we have that link on everything that we send out.
Speaker: I like it.
Zach: - email. I think Atlanta high rise
Speaker: the high rise, the high rise guide.
Zach: .com.
Speaker: .com.
Zach: Yeah. The high rise guide.com. Perfect. But we refer to it as the guide to high rise living. And if you look at that picture on the front, that took a Dean's intervention. So that's just looking through one of our, through one of our units to the outside.
Speaker: Yeah. See, this is the thing I said to Zach earlier, that one of the things that we want and what we use are iconic pictures that are the point of view of the person who wants this as the thing, because why would somebody want a high rise? It's not to come home every day and look up at this building that they're trying to coming home to, it's to be in the building, looking out over the view that they can have. Right? So having this is like, nice. And you've got a few different ones that you,
Zach: well, that's actually a stock photo that we bought, but we changed the outside-
Speaker: to be Atlanta?
Zach: To Atlanta.
Speaker: Yeah. That's awesome.
Zach: And then we have another one that looks right through the kitchen to the countertops, living room. And then you see the outside.
Speaker: We would notice, it's funny, you say a stock photo, because we noticed in, I was in Australia in November and at the four seasons in Sydney, they have in the thing, every window, everything that you have out the window is a picture of the, you see both the Harbor bridge and the opera house in the thing, but there's no window in the whole place that you have that view. It's just funny because you can see one or the other, but not that view.
Zach: Yeah. Stock photos are great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Zach: We use a lot of them. And this year, I'm going to start the home buyer workshops. I felt like I have to compete with Zillow to get buyers. We stopped using the flyer box; We just found them to be ineffective.
Speaker: For everything or for your-
Zach: For our property, our houses for sale. Yeah. It just, it was just ineffective. And I think what caused me to stop it was we sold a home to a dog walker who called. She bought this $400,000 home. And then when I asked her, well, I asked her when she called in, how did you find me? And she said, I found you on Zillow. And we successfully sold that home to her. But what she did not do is she did not call the phone number off the sign. It was not my sign. She did not. She went right to her Zillow app, looked up the property, there I was, and we sold her the home. And so why would a buyer that's like standing in front of a home, not call the for sale, sign the number on the for sale sign. It's just, the world is changing. And I think that's all I have.
Speaker: Awesome. So I want to talk about the triangulation of this. As we start to talk about the category domination, because the best thing that we can do is bookend the getting listings like he's doing with the high rises. You're doing all the getting listings, postcards and everything in there.
Zach: Yes and no.
Speaker: Yes and no?
Zach: Yes and no. Because the cost of doing a 200 and 300 different runs for each building, make it ineffective. And at $430 a lead, it just was not effective. And so we have done it by the area like Midtown or Buckhead, and so that's a little bit more effective, plus if you think a lot of people moving to Austin, they're moving to Atlanta too. We now have more high rise apartment buildings and condo towers. Probably twice as many. And so these kids are moving to Atlanta paying, you know, $2,500 a month for a one bedroom. So now the card goes to them as well. And so it's, we're getting some of those buyers, some of the cards.
Speaker: Cool.
Susan: Hello.
Speaker: Hi.
Susan: I'm Susan. I'm from Springfield, Ohio. I'm new here. And I just made a cross country move. I had a great business in Springfield, Ohio, and I decided to move to Fort Myers beach, Florida.
Speaker: Hey, look at you.
Susan: So with a lot of help from these guys, I'm still running the business in Ohio. Struggling though. Struggling because I'm not busy here like I was there. And so mentally struggling. I planned for it financially, but I still can't stand the lull. So, I call Priscilla every day and almost tears and trying to figure out what to do next to start over -. Yeah, well.
Speaker: It's got to be on sudden buyers and sudden money. Yeah.
Susan: Yeah, I am.
Speaker: Either one.
Susan: So I have no idea what to do to start over. I'm here to figure that out.
Speaker: I love that. That's exciting to have the whole, you don't often think about like dropping into a place and what would I do? You know, starting-
Susan: Cry.
Speaker: Cry.
Susan: I mean, I moved to paradise, so that's one good thing.
Speaker: That's the greatest thing. Exactly.
Susan: I enjoy working. I enjoy being married to my job and I don't like not having anything to do. And I don't like being the bottom on the totem pole. So it took me a long time to get where I was at and I liked it there. So I'm trying to figure out how to still make money there and also take really diligent care of those clients because they mean a lot to me, which has been difficult because I'm not there and nobody can do things exactly like I can. So I've lost a couple. It's been challenging. I work 24 seven when I was there. So it's very hard. If somebody is not available to show something, my clients are having a hard time adjusting to that. And I haven't even really officially made the announcement that I moved 1200 miles away yet. So I'm not even sure how to do that and not chase everybody away from my old market. So I have a lot to figure out.
Speaker: Yeah, how long has it been?
Susan: One month in one day.
Speaker: Oh, Okay. Oh perfect. So, I think just from my, like the immediate perspective, do you know people in Fort Meyers or what?
Speaker: Yeah, well, my son lives there and he works for Verizon. And he's always been my single best referral source, honestly. He's 26 years old. And I think I've sold a house to all of his friends and people that he didn't even know in high school, so.
Speaker: See this is the great thing, what you have right now. And it's perishable. Is you are legitimately new in town and I would be riding that wave to meet as many new people and influencers, as you can, while that's fresh, that lasts probably six months. After that, you can't really say, well, I'm new in town. Like you can't ride on that. It's almost like everybody loves- you know, yourself when a realtor gets their brand new license, right? Like in the first time they're coming, oh I'm a brand new realtor and what advice do you have for me? You feel like you want to help that person because we're, it's like you to see these full grown lions when the little new lion comes up and starts bugging them or starts tapping on them, but they just know, oh, he's new.
He doesn't know that I'm the king of the jungle here, right? But the thing is you really feel that empathy to help people, right? And I think that the two things that I would get to work on immediately are building your top 150. You want to literally meet the first 150 people so that you can do that. And do you. Like part of that thing we had, do you remember Zach, Glenn McQueenie came? We did an event like this in Toronto and Glen McQueenie's written a book called the McQueenie method, which is really about picking. And he called it the McQueenie method, because it's going to be about you, that you pick, what are the things that you really like to do and just get involved and be you around. So you're expanding the people that you get to know and network with, and that way you're adopting them into your-
Susan: Well, and as you know, more than anybody, Florida is a very transactional-based business. And I'm not used to that. I have very close relationships and that's why I work for Chris. Cause that's how he runs things and what he helps with. So those relationships have always proved to be great for me. And now I'm in a market where that doesn't matter.
Speaker: Right? Well now the great news is you're in Ohio and living in Fort Myers and I guarantee you, there are a lot of people with homes in Fort Myers that live in Ohio. And so finding all of those people, if you did a search in the tax records on-
Susan: Oh yeah, I've been doing all kinds, weird things, but I'm stuck -. I feel stuck because I don't want to chase everybody away from Ohio at the same time, I'm picking people up in Florida and I have a lot of social media followers. So I've had a hard time not announcing where I'm at, what I'm doing, what's going on and trying to capitalize on that. But I'm afraid because I don't want to lose the people in Ohio.
Speaker: Is there a chance you'll go back.
Susan: No.
Speaker: Then let it go. You got the faster, like it's holding you back from-
Susan: Yeah, just cut the ties, let all the money go.
Speaker: I'm not saying not cut the ties, but guess what? I'm in Florida now, you know? And that's really, yeah. I think you're going to find that people are going to be happy for you. You still have the relationship with them, you know? Yeah. But you can't let it, you know, you can't straddle and have one leg in Ohio and one in Fort Myers. If you're, if the future is-.
Susan: But I need to for a short time.
Speaker: I love it.
Rena: Hey there.
Speaker: Hi.
Rena: My name is Rena and I live here in Florida. I'm originally from Springfield with all of these guys. I moved here about 10 years ago and I'm new to this. I'm just learning to navigate my way through the GoGo account. My main focus is trying to get some more listings and I have postcards going out to one area right now.
Speaker: Are you in Melbourne?
Rena: I live in West Melbourne. Yeah. Sorry about that. On the East coast. So a lot of my referrals, my kids get for me through their friends parents. So, I'm just. Yeah.
Speaker: Cool. Well, you're in the right place.
Rena: Thank you very much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Chris: I'm Chris McAlister and all these people I bribed to come this year. I came to getting GoGo Agent last year for the first time. Our folks, our agents have done a tremendous job in a fairly short period of time, building very impressive businesses by referral, and everything we've done as a company, everything we've done for the past five years has been around those relationships because relationships are infinitely more profitable than transactions.
But where we're hitting a wall is at some point you've got to figure out how do you bring more people into that before unit? And then the other place where we're hitting a wall is, I've relocated to Columbus from Springfield. My son-in-law John is in Columbus. So we've got to get off the ground in Columbus. Susan ran off to Florida. So we need to get off the ground in both Fort Myers and Melbourne. And my whole thing with the getting listings program is how do we get good at it or make it work so that you can wash, rinse, repeat in new markets and help people get off the ground quickly and supplement the whole working by referral attitudes. So we started with Rena and June park in Brevard County this year. We haven't gotten a lot of traction yet, but we're going to learn why that was this weekend and that's the year.
Speaker: Awesome.
John: Hello. My name is John Stire. And as Chris said, I am his son-in-law. I just changed careers about a year and a half ago. I got my license. We do property management. Chris actually purchased a property management firm in Columbus. Like he said, he is from Springfield. I am from Columbus. I grew up in Columbus. And so when I got my license, he asked me to come on and help him with property management. So I've been doing that for about a year and a half. The broker who was a part of the business that he purchased and was running the property management there stayed on. I've been working very closely with her and we've been getting listings and working with investor buyers together. And so we're doing well on the property management and working with the investors, but we want to kind of branch out.
We've identified eight, nine, 10 smaller neighborhoods that are close to our office. Columbus is changing a lot right now. And so we've got a lot of neighborhoods that are really turning around and shifting. And we want to enter into those neighborhoods where there's not really a lot of presence right now because there wasn't a lot of activity going on and we're seeing a lot of change there. And so we want to kind of establish, you know, we're here to represent buyers and sellers in these neighborhoods. So I'm here because I want to learn how to effectively do that and kind of establish us as the go to brokerage and also realtors in these few shifting neighborhoods where people are moving to. We're seeing a lot of flipping and new home builds in these neighborhoods. They're kind of an urban area, but a lot of people are moving to Columbus every day. I think it's kind of like Austin and Atlanta. So we really want to, we see an opportunity and we want to strike on that.
Speaker: So much of that is being aware of what's going on in your environment. Like really when you look at where you are and squarely assessing with a longterm lens, what's going to be, what's going to be the story of the twenties for this market, where I am. I think it's going to be a different story depending on the city where you are, or the state.
Like I look at, we were talking last night, if you look at Florida at a macro, you look at Florida and itself, that Florida is poised to grow by six million people over the next 10 years, which means that it's growing the size of Orlando every year. It's adding a new Orlando every year for the next 10 years. And then you couple that with that there are right now 10,000 people a day turning 65. That's going to be true for the next 12 years as the baby boomers, all reach 65 and you put the two of those together. And at some point turning 65 and retiring and moving to Florida, if you're in the Northeast is almost like mandatory military service where you like, you know, you okay, you do your time. Now it's time to come down to Florida. So there's a lot of like moving sidewalk for people coming into Florida.
Dean: Moving sidewalk for people coming into Florida. If you position yourself, Fort Myers is a name brand in Florida. I mean, it would be one of the top 10 places that people would consider, because compared to other areas, it's affordable. It's on the beach. It's got a lot going for it, all the intercoastal stuff. There's a lot of things going. Looking at your area, and seeing what are the trends that are going to drive the next 10 years? Like Zach saying, all the people moving in, Zach's Atlanta becoming a tech hub, and Austin, going to double in size in the next 10 years, and positioning yourself in front of, and able to take advantage of all of that. That's good. You're a strategic thinker like that.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm excited. We're excited about really establishing ourselves, and really putting down roots in these areas, and then, maybe in five, 10 years, people, well, maybe they don't want to live in such an urban area, but we'll get the clients back again.
Dean: Awesome.
Speaker: Thank you.
Dean: Very cool.
Priscilla: Okay. I wasn't expecting to talk.
Dean: Oh, my goodness.
Priscilla: I thought this was just for the people who have already been here.
Dean: Uh oh.
Priscilla: I'm Priscilla Sims, and I also am with this group of wonderful people. I've been an agent for 26 years. You can see where this is leading. I'm going to hold the roots down in Springfield, Ohio.
Dean: There you go. Perfect.
Priscilla: But the reason why I'm here is, I do 95% of my business by referral. And there is a lake community that Chris and I are going to break into, and start doing the mailers, so I wanted to see what exactly what's involved, and how it's been working with other people.
Dean: Perfect.
Priscilla: That's all I've got.
Dean: Okay. That's great. Welcome.
Ron: My name is Ron Reed. I'm from Wisconsin. Been at this since, what, 2016.
Dean: That's it.
Ron: I'm on the trajectory of Tony.
Dean: You are here.
Ron: I am here.
Dean: I love it. It's a great idea for you though, to hold up these infographics, and see where along the line are you, just to see if you are on track.
Ron: Yeah, absolutely. That famously got my first listing in the first 30 days, literally started playing with house money. After that, systems have made me hundreds of thousands of dollars since then. Looking back a year, last year, I really honed in on the market maker idea and habits. I was able to attribute $50,000 to that in 2019, with absolutely no spend, so it was completely free money, for the most part. This year, really want to get more into that execution arbitrage, and really start to put in some about the listing next door, and find another 50,000 in the business this year, to add on top.
Dean: That's great.
Ron: Continue, expand getting listings. I had scaled it back a bit, and now, scale it back up and go beyond.
Dean: That's awesome. Good. And I'm excited you've brought some blueprints here, for when we talk about multiplying listings. We're going to have some cool stuff to share, so I love that.
Renee: Hi, I'm Renee Nelson from Eugene, Oregon, and I sell commercial real estate. And really, these systems, they plug and play into commercial real estate.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah.
Renee: And I operate a small commercial boutique. One of my niches is 1031 tax deferred exchanges, helping people exchange out of multifamily. Oregon, just added rent control for the state, so that's starting to make a lot of multifamily owners nervous, but they're so comfortable where they're at right now, that they can't figure out what they want to do, or if they want to move. Yesterday, on the plane, I solidified a $4 million listing. We put it actually under contract, using your silent market opportunity.
Dean: How nice.
Renee: In the university. I've been doing a postcard mailer of U of O apartment prices since September, and there's a lot of activity-
Dean: You may remember Renee as a listing agent lifestyle podcast guest, where we talked about this.
Renee: Yeah, yeah. And you gave me a lot of great ideas, so I've been implementing it, and I'm really cutting a niche in that market, because I only have about four commercial competitors, and we all come in and out of the market, but nobody really dominates it. That's what my path is this year.
Dean: Yes.
Renee: I have a $16 million buyer right now, that I have under contract in campus, and they want to buy another 16 to 20 million, so on the plane, I was like, okay, I think I need to do some postcard mailers to apartment complex owners in campus, saying this is on the silent market. It's under contract. Would you be interested in talking to me, because a lot of them are slow to respond to the apartment mailer price report requests. I think I need to switch that postcard a bit. That's one thing that I'm... And then my ultimate goal for being here is, I want to create a who team. You always say, just ask yourself who. Who should be doing this? Who do I know that would do this for me? That's what I'm here for two days is, to create a who team.
Dean: That's a great way to think about it. If you know what needs to be done, then your next question needs to be, who can do it. If you don't know what or how to do it, that's a big piece. But if you, especially if you've got something that you know what needs to be done, and you can make a list of the process that goes with it, you should definitely not be doing that. Somebody should be doing, or... I hate to use the word should, could be. And I'll say should. Yeah. Yeah. As an encouragement for you. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah.
Lance: I'm Lance Whipple. I am in Davenport, Champion's Gate, right here.
Dean: How was your commute today?
Lance: I took off early, and got here early, because I anticipated. It took me 20 minutes just to get onto I-4 from where I live, at exit 58.
Dean: Isn't that amazing? There's this one strip of I-4, between Disney World and Highway 20, is Champion's Gate. That's like, for some inexplicable reason, is completely bumper to bumper at all times.
Lance: But we have a diverging diamond going to be put on exit 58. It's going to solve all our problems.
Dean: Is it?
Lance: Hopefully. Yeah.
Dean: Okay, good.
Lance: Nice to meet you, Renee. I was born in Eugene, so most of my business comes from referrals and organic. And when I say organic, my testimonials are coming back to kiss me with three or four deals a year.
Dean: Nice.
Lance: As people from around the world find me and call me, which is really cool. And just a couple of months ago, and I started listening to you about 18 months ago, and with the last conference I started to do the world's most interesting postcard. And sometime this year, I can't remember, I looked up all of my past customers, and one of them is an attorney in Ontario, and I might've had three likes on photos on Facebook of them coming down to use their vacation home, where they would post something. And I'd like it. That's the total contact with them. It took me a while to find their home address in Ontario. I found it. I sent them the card. All of a sudden, an attorney from their firm calls me, and they're under contract for a vacation home down here.
Dean: That's great.
Lance: And I know it's directly result of the postcard.
Dean: Yeah. Of course.
Lance: Which is awesome. And I've been struggling with figuring out where I want to start my getting listings program, because I'm probably a little too strategic for my own good. I'm in the vacation home area. I picked a couple spots that I thought would work, but I just never liked the numbers. I didn't like what I would get into, and the kind of work I would have to do-
Dean: Oh, gotcha.
Lance: For it, but it made sense, but I just could never do it. And I'd like to sell some new vacation homes.
Dean: I was just going to ask, in this area, there's a lot of new construction stuff, and all the builders will cooperate with you. It's sometimes the easiest thing, because all you have to do is introduce them. Right?
Lance: Most of the buyers are coming with realtors, from referral partners that are exterior, and they're paying large referral fees. Brazilians, UK folks, the UK folks are back in the market again. And I was looking for a community where there's enough existing listings, but still I can do the category match up, and have the new... And I went to a presentation last night, where DR Horton is opening up another hundred homes in the community. And I think that's the community that I want to try. And I'm here to get my mind wrapped around going on that.
Dean: Okay. Good.
Lance: That's where I'm at.
Dean: Awesome.
Matt: Hey, everyone, I'm Matt DuChene. I'm from Portland, Maine, and I work with Mike here, so I've been writing stuff down on what I want to cover. Chances are, he'll pick up where I dropped off. But listening to all you guys, we're doing a bit of it all. We're doing the getting listings postcards. We started about four months ago, I think, five months ago in these neighborhoods on the coastal side of Portland, higher end neighborhoods, four to 500,000 average price, up to a million, depending on the home. We do a lot of YouTube, trying to get buyers, and just create our brand in the area. We got Facebook buyer ads that Mike puts together to pull in buyers, and his son is our buyer agent now, and he's going over all those.
Do the world's most interesting postcard. And then to elevate getting listings, not only the ones that responded, but anybody in the past, last year, I was circle prospecting a lot, making a lot of connections. Now I'm reaching out, saying, hey, at one point, you were interested in your home's value. We're already marketing to your neighborhood, which a lot of times is not true. They're just like that one person, but I'll make a custom getting listings, and send it to them, because we already have the process down. Why not use it for them, as well? And then we do market maker Monday. It's not usually on a Monday, but we are looking at, okay, we have a list of these people looking.
Just like all of you, inventory is tight. It's really hot market. I mean, was it Monday, I had a buyer looking at a place in Falmouth, Maine, for a half a million. The place came out that day. We booked a showing for 5:00 PM. By noon, it was under contract. Couldn't even -. It was interesting. We're doing the super signature, got that on all our emails, book a tour for your free pinpoint price analysis. We do the weekly newsletter every week, and we do a YouTube. It streams to Facebook and YouTube live. It's a little quick market recap, a little news thing. Mike embeds that as a video into it, and then we just have a transcript of what we talked about, along with the super signature.
Dean: That's great. Every week you're doing that? Yeah.
Matt: This week, we'll see. We'll try to pull it off, I guess.
Dean: Right, right. I was just texting with Chuck Charlton last night, and today is the 10 year anniversary of when he started Milton Daily Homes, sending out a video every single day.
Matt: Mike showed me that, and that's what inspired us.
Dean: Awesome.
Matt: To give context to our market, it's about 300,000 average price point, depending on neighborhoods. It's really neighborhood specific. I mean, you go a quarter mile, and the price has changed. And we're 62,000 people in Portland, largest city in Maine. Everyone's moving to that area. The rest of Maine is languishing, so obviously we're trying to make money there. And then we're also taking our time to call expireds, fisbos. I mean, we spend at least half our time marketing. I'm a year in, 54 weeks, I think, to be exact. Mike's about the same. We're just trying to go from a new agent to influential, as fast as we can.
Dean: That's awesome.
Matt: And I think, she had mentioned creating a who team. I think that's [inaudible 01:28:09], so I'm going to try to... It's an opportunity for us to try to leverage ourselves more. Mike's got a lot of great ideas. I help implement them. And then, if we can get someone to do the basic easy, put the mailings together, and stuff.
Dean: Having the who team is really... That's the total freedom thing. Like the funny thing is to see the difference between the SEED Laboratories factory tour, the 200,000 facility, where everybody's jammed in. Everything is a bustle of activity. The whole thing, every inch of it is optimized for execution. And then you contrast that, and you see Kylie Jenner's office tour, and it's just this cavernous art gallery type of space, with a playroom for her daughter, and a conference room, with fur around the chairs, for her creative team to get together, and be on the white boards, and just this amazing, peaceful Zen., Nothing going on there except the creative work of... No urgency in that environment, but she's got a who team of hundreds of people in this 200,000 square foot facility, working on her behalf, that she has nothing to do with. She just interacts with her friend, Laura, who owns the factory.
Matt: In my mind, that would be ideal. I don't know if we need all the fur, but at least, plan what we're doing, and to have people execute it.
Dean: That's awesome.
Matt: And then I know we're struggling with just the time. It's like, patience is not a virtue of mine. Mike, maybe not so much, either, and it's like, come on. We're waiting for things to pop off. And just yesterday, or two days ago, we just dropped another 1700 postcards to a little more blue collar-ish neighborhoods. 350 to 500K. And I live in a part of Portland. Our office is in the middle, on the other side, and I drive right through these neighborhoods, and my friends live there, so I know them really well. I feel good about leveraging our getting listings postcards there.
Dean: That's awesome. You guys are poised. It's good.
Matt: Yeah.
Mike: Good morning. I'm Mike Wiseman, Matt's partner. And like you said, from Portland, Maine, and I think Matt covered really everything, what we're doing. And I think the overarching goal that we have, the longterm vision, is to get all of this running, it basically can run, with or without us. We don't have to be there all the time. It becomes a lot of whos, and we're giving them directions. Speaking to what Susan mentioned, I came to Portland, Maine, knowing nobody, a year and a half ago. I was transplanted. That's why, if you watch the videos, I do a lot of like, so Matt, tell us where we are. I'm like, no idea where we are. He's the guy. He has the local knowledge. He's there. He's from Maine. He's been there 10 years.
But what we've been trying to do, what I've been trying to do, to the bigger picture is, take everything Dean does, and we're running that as closely as possible, without clown shoes. No clown shoes. I guess Dean can tell that story later. And then bring in a lot of other things, like Facebook marketing. Like Matt said, we do go after the traditional expired, but I use different methodologies. Because like I was telling, we were talking last night a bit. I can buy any house if you give me terms, and that's true. You give me the right terms, I'll buy anything.
Dean: Right.
Mike: Right? That's how I call expireds.
Dean: One dollar down.
Mike: Whatever it is.
Dean: A hundred year amortization.
Mike: But people do accept. I have four appointments next week, that are owner financed, or lease-purchase, all from expireds. They'll go into Dean's system. They will become the next monthly reports. It's that idea that Dean has drilled into my head of brand. Right?
Dean: Yes.
Mike: Buyer response effecting now decisions.
Dean: That's right.
Mike: If I can build the brand with these people, there's a lot of ways, like what Susan's talking about, coming to a new area, and we're happy to match them with you on it, but you can use a lot of other... Normally that would take much longer pipelines for traditional buyer leads, or Facebook leads. But I can bring in Facebook leads at two bucks a day, all day long, buyer leads, in my market. The - markets might be five, six, $7. But they're slower. But if you have the followups in, and building that brand, then it works.
Dean: That's awesome.
Mike: That's what we're trying to do is, just start to just bring a lot of moving parts together, and hopefully something comes out the end, and it's been working.
Dean: I love it.
Mike: Thank God for that.
Dean: That's great.
Mike: Yeah. Yeah. We have that. From our first guy, from actually, my first mailing. That listening is coming live. We've already done pre-inspection. It should be live April one. That's like a six and a half, 650 on that listing. That was from the first mailing, four, five months ago.
Dean: Yes.
Mike: We know that works, and then we'll be with house money on -.
Dean: There we go. You're right on track. Yeah. I love it. Okay. We'll keep that there. Let's go to Steve, and then we'll take a break. Yeah, Steve was out when we got to...
Steve: I'm Steve Jones, from Calgary, Canada, and my business in Calgary, I have an executive management company. And we typically would cater to oil executives, although our market has been changing. I also have a real estate license, and I do residential real estate. I say I do. That's not actually true. I'm here to work on developing my who team, which seems to be... There's a who theme going on here. But I made a goal almost two years ago, in the rental properties, never to talk to, or to meet any person who rents from us. And within those two years, I've broken that rule twice. And I say it's okay, because they were grandfathered in. They were tenants who existed prior to me making that distinction. I've done the same thing now with the real estate that I do.
Anything that's new business, I've made a determination that I don't, and won't, deal with them. It's been great to have these other people that I can rely on, who emanate the same level of service that I represent, without me actually going out and doing it. But I found that I love to sit in the areas of the things that I really enjoy doing, the creative components of the marketing. And I say, creative, I model everything that you do. And I utilize everything that you provide and supply. And before I got into real estate, my background was marketing. That's what I went to school for. And I worked in an ad agency, and the ad agency was driven by, we took people's money to make pretty things. And I always felt there was a misgiving for that, because we didn't drive results.
That legacy has followed me a little, and over my career, I have business owners that will constantly just seek me out, knowing my background, and ask my input. That's where I've been able to help them, and give them some instruction, based on the modeling of the things that you give to us. I'm excited to continue to look at developing my who team. We have now writers and creatives.
Dean: I like that. Yeah.
Steve: And it goes hand in hand with how we do our property management company. I do nothing, but we have, like anyone else in the business, we have housekeeping, and maintenance, and leasing agents, and accounting, and all of that stuff. It's been great just to reside in the areas that I choose and want to do, and feel fulfilled by doing.
Dean: Yeah. Daily joy. Abundant time.
Steve: Yeah.
Dean: Those are the things we were talking about with the lifestyle-
Steve: And then financial peace as a result of that.
Dean: Absolutely. Yeah. Very exciting. Well, it's good to see a mix of new people, and people who've been for a while. The rest of the two days, we're really going to dig into all of the elements of the listing agent lifestyle. And we're going to, I would say, and we were talking about it last night, that when we go through these, we're going to talk about each one of them individually. We'll go in depth, see exactly what's working, what people are doing right now. And if we were to cobble together, combine together, somebody in the room is excelling at every one of these. And if we could combine everybody together into one super agent, it would be amazing what could happen. That's our intention here. You get the chance to see and touch and talk about, and hands on with everybody who is actually implementing everything, to see what fits for you, to take the next level here. Let's do this. Let's take a break right now, take a 15 minute break. We can go out, stretch your legs, and we'll come back, and we'll dig right in.
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 be a guest link at listingagentlifestyle.com. And if you'd like to join our community of people who are applying all of the things we talk about in the listing agent lifestyle, come on over to gogoagent.com. That's where we'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 free, truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days at gogoagent.com. Come on over, and I will see you there.