Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast we're talking with Daniel Inman from up in the coastal areas of Virginia.
Daniel's a newer real estate agent. He served in the military, then trained as an engineer, but realized he didn't want to go down that corporate route and wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, so he chose real estate as his vehicle.
It's been really interesting to watch his development and see everything unfold here as he's establishing all the tools, habits, and systems to create a Listing Agent Lifestyle approach to building his business.
We got to talk about all five of the business elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, and the lifestyle elements of daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace. I appreciate Daniel's transparency about his thinking process and about how he's going about it, and I think most people will be able to see themselves somewhere in this situation.
If that is you, and you're in a situation where, like me and Daniel, you just find the thought of a business that requires you to chase people and manually prospect every day, to be soul-crushing, then you're in the right place. I wrote the whole Listing Agent Lifestyle book for you.
Once I discovered how marketing could create a systemic approach to a business, a relationship-based approach, the whole world opened up and it changed everything.
So, enjoy this episode. There is a lot to take away from this one.
Links:
GoGoAgent.com
Be a Guest
Listing Agent Lifestyle Book
Listing Agent Scorecard
Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep163
Dean: Daniel Inman.
Daniel: Dean Jackson.
Dean: Hey, there he is.
Daniel: I am here.
Dean: Well, welcome. So I'm very interested to hear the Daniel Inman story and see where we can take it from here.
Daniel: Sure. So Texas-born and raised for most of my life. Moved to Norfolk area because of the Navy. I met my wife here, got married. Did two tours in Iraq. Came back, got out, and decided to stick around. Went to a local college here. I got a civil engineering degree. And then I decided let's not put that to use, and get into real estate.
Dean: Civil engineering, there you go. Yeah. That's a real people business, huh?
Daniel: Well, it's very uncommon to find many engineers that can talk to people.
Dean: Right, exactly. That's kind of funny.
Daniel: So I didn't fit in too terribly well. I did fine on all the courses, did pass, obviously got my degree. But it wasn't ... I got out, did some interviewing, and decided I want to be an entrepreneur. I was like, "Okay, well, I could start at 55,000 and in 10 years I'd be making 120, but I have to follow that path. I have to do what they say. I have to check their boxes off." So that's why I was like, "All right, I want to get into real estate and do my own thing."
Dean: So was real estate your first, that's the first entrepreneurial venture, or did you do something else and then end up coming to real estate?
Daniel: Well, after the Navy, not really, I had helped a buddy of mine do some tree business for a while, waited tables for a bit. I was a full-time stay-at-home dad while I was at ODU. So wife was bringing in the bacon at that time, and now she's looking to me to start doing it. But when I was young, I was always entrepreneurial. I stole magnets from my dad's work and would sell them at school.
Dean: Hey, there we go. You got to be careful now. Society's very loose with statutes of limitations and stuff now. You might not want to say that on the record here.
Daniel: Oh yeah. That's okay, yeah.
Dean: So how long has it been now since you've been in real estate?
Daniel: Sure. I officially got my license last April, so about a year-
Dean: Wow, okay.
Daniel: First six to nine months was tough. My gritty, I want to do it myself mentality maybe did me in because I probably would've done better just going and joining a team for the first year or half year to get more deals under my belt and get a little more guidance.
Dean: Right, get some experience. Yeah.
Daniel: Right. So I did two deals in my first I think six months. But between when I made the switch ... I switched from Keller Williams over to briefly eXp and now with Realty ONE Group, which is the major one out of Vegas, but I'll be doing nine I guess between the switch and now. I have two closings coming up here shortly, so things have really picked up. Some of the hard work is paying off. Well, actually I've just learned that you've got to be a marketer and a business owner first, and everything in a second.
Dean: Well, that's the truth, isn't it? Yeah, that's really, no matter what business you're in as an entrepreneur, it's about the marketing. You're never in that business, per se. You're in the marketing of that business.
Daniel: And I will say, sorry, go ahead.
Dean: No, I was going to say, how did we end up getting connected here? How did you come across our world here?
Daniel: Well, that's the perfect segue. So when I was briefly trying to figure out which business or world I wanted to get into, and real estate just was the one I ended up picking, I was listening to Dan Sullivan's Exponential and Joe Polish. And then I loved how you guys thought about stuff. I was a huge fan of this ELF business, easy, lucrative, fun, and a huge fan of the idea of cow pies.
Dean: Yeah, that's right.
Daniel: So I find that ... You've mentioned it a few times on the podcast about the less that you can pull yourself out of and put people in the place of, the better the business tends to do.
Dean: Yes.
Daniel: So I would say I got kind of segued into it because I'd listened to just about every real estate podcast that was out there. And just about every single one is segment off from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00, smile and dial. Then you-
Dean: Get out there and do your prospecting.
Daniel: Yeah. And if you're not, then you kind of get guilted. It's like, "Shame on you. You want to be successful, but you're not doing these things." I'm like, well, I hate prospecting. I don't mind calling people. Circle dialing is the worst, especially call into this neighborhood and ask people if they want to sell.
Dean: Yeah. I get you. Well, very good, so you're in the right place for sure. So what's been your approach so far now then since you discovered marketing? What are you applying, and what's working for you?
Daniel: Sure. It's funny, I don't know if you got the email I sent Diane, but I had a whole two-page thing of notes prepped for the podcast. So that was one of those things where one of those things I had mentioned was the incoming calls-only piece. So the difference between linguistic judo versus seducing people with value.
Dean: Yes.
Daniel: And so I was very, very, very interested in this idea of it's not being lazy. It's being smart and efficient of going, "All right, how do I create a business, how does 95-plus-% of my business incoming calls only?"
Dean: Yes, right.
Daniel: And it allows me ... I have two kids, 11 and nine. And I want to spend time with them. And I just so happen to love the wife that I'm with, and so I want to spend time with her. So this is just very, very attractive to me. So that being said, and you'll learn very quickly that I tend to talk in a circuitous route and probably expound more than I need to. But, yeah, so the world's most interesting postcard I have done and implemented. It's already automated with Diane, so it's easy.
Dean: Yeah, perfect. This is part of the thing. You're in the perfect situation here, that you've got your feet under you a little bit. You got, what, coming up on 18 months' worth of experience now. You know the moves. You know how to actually do transactions, right? If you've done nine now, you know your way around all the paperwork and you've had all those experiences here. Now, it's really about systemizing and creating the processes that are going to keep the main elements working.
So the thing that we focus on with this Listing Agent Lifestyle approach is to balance or systemize the five main things that you need to do, which are getting listings and multiplying the listings that you do have, getting referrals, converting leads, and finding buyers. And roughly in that order is the way that we approach it, where because it takes some time to establish and really take over a neighborhood, we want to start that process of getting listings as fast as you can. So have you chosen an area that you want to focus on?
Daniel: So I was, yeah, go ahead.
Dean: Getting listings specifically? Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah. I have. I was in the forum, and I had posted up my little Excel spreadsheet that I go on about, "Here are the past four years of sales. Here's how many homes are in there. Here's what the turnover rate is for each one of those years. Here's what the average transaction price is. Here's what the cost of mailing cards into there is." And then one of the questions I think I had was one you had mentioned it, it takes time to take over a neighborhood, so what should we expect in year one, year two, year three, year four, year five? Because we are looking at it as a long-term thing.
So does it start with 2% market share, 4% market share, then six, then eight, 10, all the way even up to 20, right? So we can get one out of five in that neighborhood.
Dean: That's what I would look for is look to whatever that means. I go into any market like that, looking for you to pick something that you plan on dominating. And by that I mean that you're making a long-term commitment to that area. And you've seen now the five-year results that we've done with the case study with Tony Kalsi. And what's been really fascinating about that is to watch the steepness of the curve going up as in year five the number of transactions and the volume increasing as we go. And the depth, because we track when people came in.
So we look at it that in those numbers, in all of the transactions that he did from September of 2017 to September of 2018, the transactions they were people that had responded initially to the postcards in each of the years leading up to it. So from in 2013, in '14, '15, '16, '17, and '18, so they were people from every year that had reached their gestation period. So that's the value of the equity that you're looking at there. So it's been really neat to see and to monitor that.
What I often see happen is that people get impatient and bail before they reach the point where there's fruit coming from the trees kind of thing, right?
Daniel: Right.
Dean: They're planting an orange grove, but they're keep digging it up and looking to see where the oranges are. And if at three months there's no oranges, they get antsy and bail. So if there's-
Daniel: Well, I'm 100% in agreement with you there. I think you have to have the mindset of this is a three-year thing.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that's kind of the thing. So I'm looking at it now that we've got the five-year case study, and one of the things I'm really excited about is we just got Diane, we activated her license again. And Diane's been a very successful Realtor. That's how we met. She was one of our money-making websites clients. And she got to a point where she wanted to not be actively involved in real estate sales, per se, and be with her kids. And so she went through that period and then came to work with me when we were starting to grow GoGoAgent.
And it's been interesting to see her be excited in seeing the results that other people are getting kind of thing and realizing, "Wow, we could be doing this here." So we activated her license and we're now two months into we've got three different areas that we've chosen here in Winter Haven for her, so documenting all the stuff that we're doing with both the postcards and Facebook and all the follow-up stuff.
So it'll be an interesting thing to see now the first year of this, so people can play along at home and monitor what's happening. But knowing that it's not ... The difference is that it's not about making any prospecting calls. It's not about that. That's not what we're looking for here. And the price for that, it's completely possible, but the price for that is patience, because what happens is that people want to send out postcards and get a listing this weekend. And the reality is that we're playing a little bit different game. I want you to look at dominating this market.
So the outcome that we're looking for is that you get calls from people who want you to come out and see them. Like Diane's already been out to see two people so far who have both called her and been very complimentary about her marketing. And that makes a difference and I don't want to call it marketing, her information that she's offering people, her approach.
So we're committed to documenting how it works the way we do it. I can show people now, because a lot of times they'll look at this five-year case study with Tony and start to see, "Wow, that's amazing. I want that." But they want that kind of result right anyway. And even with Tony, the thing that was notable about it all is that he mailed for five months before he got his first closing.
Daniel: Right.
Dean: Yeah. And that's takes some longevity. And that was really-
Daniel: That was exactly why I got the getting referrals, the world's postcard was like, "Well, this is easy. These people know, like, and trust me already. And if I can get half or a third of what our goal is, that 20% return on relationship, then I can use that to feed the rest." Now, I'm kind of in a unique situation. I get to use my wife's income to live on, so I get to pour everything back into the business.
Dean: I love it.
Daniel: But that was my immediate thought was like, "Well, if NAR has consistently for years and years and years said that two-thirds of every deal comes from either a repeat or referral, why in the world are we spending two, three, four, five, $10,000 with Zillow to capture a 3% to 5% of the market?
Dean: Right. That's exactly right. So that's where the real value comes in. And by the way, when I talk about those five elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle that I say, I put number one as getting listings because it's really such a short amount of time that it takes to get that up and running and on autopilot, right? There's really not wake up, like you said, and block off three hours a day for prospecting. It's not about that. How it works is block off three hours total. Let's do the research, pick the area that you want to be in. Let's get the addresses, the names and the list of the people. Let's set up your postcards, set up your landing page.
Let's mail the postcards. And prepare your initial packages, meaning all the report, the information. Get your support materials together. We've already done all of the creative part of it for you so you just have to set up, personalize your newsletters and your cover letters and your "How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast" book. And then do the print out, do all the research for what's happened in Cypresswood or whatever you chose for the last 12 months. And then that is all you need to do now, right?
You just now then wait until next month and send out the next postcards and send the newsletter to everybody that's responded. So you have a lot of time now to move down this list. The reason that I put that getting the Getting Listings System established first is because it's the thing that's going to be the undergirding of all of this, that it's the thing that's going to have the long-lasting-
Daniel: Right. It's the first domino.
Dean: ... every single month ... Yes, exactly. Now, if you've got listings, then we move on right away to let's multiply your listings here. So do you have any listings right now?
Daniel: I have two, one that's about to sell here shortly, one that I can't figure out why it's not selling. But it's not necessarily in an area that I want to dominate, meaning I don't want to have to drive 45 minutes to get to that market if I don't have to.
Dean: I gotcha. Okay, yeah, yeah. So part of thing, and so you're going to pick and choose the ways of what you want to focus on. But ultimately if you had a listing in an area where you want to establish yourself and get more business, we would be looking at what can we do while you've got that listing to multiple that, to get as much as you can out of that listing by focusing on finding buyers for it, maybe finding the buyer, but certainly finding buyers who are going to buy another home like it or in that price range or in that neighborhood? And then getting additional listings and getting a referral from the seller, all of the things that we talk about that go into your listing multiplier index.
And then once you've got that established, now your top 150 is again one of those things where all we need to do is get the list of them together. How many people are in your top 150 list right now? Have you got up to 150?
Daniel: So I'm stretching Dunbar's number. I have 194 in there.
Dean: Okay, perfect. So it'll be interesting to see. And the way that we focus on those is the people who local people that if you saw them at the grocery store, you'd stop and have a conversation with them. So as long as they all meet that requirement, then that's a good base to draw from here. And all we want to do, again, is systemically we want to set up a pattern of every month mailing them the world's most interesting postcard. So how many months have you been doing that so far?
Daniel: Just mailed our third month.
Dean: Okay, great.
Daniel: And streamlined it with Diane. She's going to email me at the beginning of each month with the little blurb at the top, "I'm working with a couple from blah, blah, blah. I'm doing this." And as long as I give her that custom language and then an updated CSV file, and she takes care of the rest.
Dean: Okay, that's awesome. And so all those types of people that you're working with, that's what'll drive what we say in that on that portion of the postcard there. So that's cool. Of the transactions that you've done, how many people have come from what would be your top 194?
Daniel: Probably three. The rest is internet. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. So that's what we're looking for now is to establish that all of those people they know that you're in real estate, you're on the top of their mind because each month we're going to be sending them the postcard. It's very distinctive, interesting in their mailbox. But the more important thing is that each month we're programming them to pay attention to the conversations that they're hearing.
So what's been happening so far? Have you had anybody call you or comment or refer you so far?
Daniel: Yeah, so I found it really, really fascinating. This is one of the reasons I talked to Diane and even got on this call is we were chatting about how to use both the postcard and Facebook to overlap, because I've been retargeting the 500 people that follow my Facebook page as well as a postcard. And just about everyone that I run into that I hadn't seen, whether it's at church or something else.
Dean: Literally. That's what's funny. I love that, yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, literally, yeah. "Oh, hey, Dan, I just got your postcard. And I see you're blowing it up on Facebook." And it's like boom, wham.
Dean: Yes. So that's awesome. So now you're starting to see that people are paying attention to it. They're noticing. And all of a sudden, one day, they're going to be in conversation with somebody that's talking about buying a house, and they're going to immediately think of you. And you're going to get these calls. That's pretty exciting. I love to hear that.
Daniel: Yeah, for 170 bucks a month, I don't think there's a better ROI.
Dean: No, you're exactly right. And that's the thing. When you look at it that this is the third month for you of doing that. What's the average commission check that you would get from a transaction?
Daniel: About 7,500 bucks. Where I'm wanting to get doing Getting Listings is going to be more like 12 or 13.
Dean: So you look at that as that's $7,500, and what we're talking about is spending $175 a month times 12 months, so we're $2,000 roughly, right-
Daniel: Mm-hmm .
Dean: And it's inconceivable to think that over a period of a year that that number of repeat or referral or direct transactions that you get from that group of people is not effective. And that's really one of those things where you look at it and it's a no-brainer. And that's why I look at getting people established on that as fast as we can because it's going to make the difference. Now when you couple-
Daniel: And that's why I did it first.
Dean: Yeah. When you couple that with this idea of what you've seen in the GoGoAgent members area we talk about Market Maker Monday, where you're kind of establishing this habit of every Monday thinking through, "What have I got going on this week? Who am I showing houses to? Who am I going to see about selling their house? Or what's going on in the news that might be something that is going to influence the conversations that specific people on my list are having?"
And to reach out to some of those on a very specific basis. Has Diane showed you how to set up your Google Map layer for to drop a pin?
Daniel: Yeah, I've already done it.
Dean: Oh, you have? Okay, perfect.
Daniel: Yep.
Dean: Yeah. So have you done any of that kind of things yet of some of the Market Maker approaches?
Daniel: So three times I've done where I just, off the top of my head, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be showing homes today. Let's see if it's anywhere between a mile or half a mile from someone else's house." And I'll just say, "Hey, Zack, I'm over in your neighborhood showing somebody houses today. You know anybody that's trying to sell a three-two here coming up soon? They can't find anything in there right now."
Dean: Mm-hmm. That's great. And what kind of response do you get back even if it's people saying, "I can't think of anybody right now, but I'll keep my open mind"?
Daniel: Yeah. Basically that. It's just like, "Can't think of anybody right now, but if something comes up, I'll let you know," just those types of statements.
Dean: And that's the thing. So we've kind of planted that seed now that that has some legs to it, that for the next couple of weeks anyway if something comes up like that, that's going to immediately be refreshed in their mind. You know?
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
Dean: So all of that stuff, even though it might not be somebody with a three-two, it might be somebody talking about buying a house or selling a condo or something even adjacent to it, the fact that they're noticing that this conversation is about real estate and they're thinking of you, that's what elevates the possibility that they're going to refer you. And that's really-
Daniel: The idea is the jingle that you keep mentioning.
Dean: I know. I mean I can't tell you how both startling and amazing it was at the same time, because as a marketer I had to applaud the effort of it, the fact that as soon as somebody said "Same-day carpet," my mind right away went to the Empire Flooring jingle. So I realized that's just total-
Daniel: Yeah, any of those marketing things you kind of do that.
Dean: That's total reinforcement of what we're doing there. So you're getting all of those things established here. Now, what are you doing about buyers? How are you finding and converting the leads that you have right now?
Daniel: So I remember I bought and paid for this online course about how to do your own Facebook advertising and mixed with ClickFunnels and how to set up the form and get the thing and then set them up on drip campaigns so that they get reached out to. And the original one that I tried was down-payment assistance. Now, the benefit is that you can get the leads for two, three, four, five bucks. The downside is that down-payment clients are some of the most difficult ones to get a hold of, get to trust you, convert.
So I'd say I did nine deals. I had nine deals fall apart between from after the home inspection something happening between last year and this year. And it's just disheartening. Two of them were because someone went out and bought something a week before they closed and ruined their financing, and it was a down-payment purchase, so they didn't have enough wiggle room to continue to qualify. So I just was like, "All right, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. This is just so much work for ..." It's easily 70, sometimes $100,000 below the average price point. They don't generally appreciate the effort and time and energy you're putting into it for them.
So I kind of discontinued that. I have six or seven people that I'm working with throughout the rest of the year. But I've stopped doing it. And I went with a company called Platform CRM, who is helping me with my Facebook advertising and doing video advertising. So right now, outside of that and getting referrals, that's the only getting buyers things I'm doing.
Dean: Mm-hmm. Excuse me. So part of the real way to create an ecosystem here is to start now thinking about how could you find the buyers for the area that you're doing Getting Listings in right now? So tell me about the houses that you chose. Tell me about the area that you chose for your Getting Listings mailings?
Daniel: So two main areas, and I'm going to be starting it next month, is a place called East Beach, and here I'll even pull up all the stats for you here. So it's about 550 homes. The average ... It got developed about, I want to say, 15 years ago. But it's a higher-end kind of a beach community. The average transaction price in there is about 600,000. The turnover rate in that is somewhere between 4.5 to 5.5% over the last five years. The downside, and this was actually one of the questions I had for you in the Getting Listings, is what if another agent has 20%-plus market share? Do we just not care and just go in there and say, "Hey, we're taking this over, get out of the way"?
Dean: That's why I was saying, there's somebody else.
Daniel: I like it.
Dean: There's somebody in Cypresswood that's going to be very surprised at what happens with Diane over the next 12 to 18 months. So yeah, you can't be concerned about that. You gotta go in and ... You look at Tony Kalsi has become the number one agent in his entire, in that MLS district because of expanding out to that whole thing. The thing that is the most important, the best accessory that you can have to amplify and speed up the process of your Getting Listings program is to have the buyers, to have buyers for homes like the ones that you're trying to get listed.
It's almost like you want to in advance, you want to start finding the buyer without depending on them to list their house with you to do it. Most real estate, most listing appointments kind of go down this path of, "Well, let me tell you about our marketing approach. And here's what we're going to do as soon as we list your property. We're going to do this, this, this, and we'll expose it here, here, here," all these things to give people this confidence that you're going to get to the finish line, which is the check in their hand. That's what they really want. Nobody wants to list their house. They want the check.
That's why I say the number one thing that you could bring to any listing appointment is your personal checkbook would be the number one thing. If you went into a listing appointment and there were five other agents that had just gone before you and you went in and said, "What a beautiful house you have here. How much would you like for it? And when would you like to move?" And they said, "We want 600,000, and we want to close in, be gone in 60 days." "Perfect. I'll take it." And you wrote them a check.
There's no chance that they're going to list with any of those other people because they got what they wanted. Even if, and I always say this, even if one of those people is their mother or their cousin or their best friend from high school or the Realtor that sold them the house in the first place, none of those things matter because what trumps everything, everything is self-interest no matter what. It's just business. That everybody all of a sudden it's not that sense of loyalty that they're going to list their house with their mom or their cousin or you if you're a friend if they got what they need, right?
Daniel: Mm-hmm.
Dean: So that's where…
Daniel: So are you bringing that list? You're saying, "Hey, I've been looking for buyers, I've been marketing specifically to this neighborhood for the last five years."
Dean: Yeah. What you have right now, though, what I would be looking for, too, is, yeah, to be able to go into people and say, "Yeah, look, I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago, and right now I have a list of 450 people who are looking for homes like this. And I sent a quick email to them before I came over here to see you, and these 10 people would like me to send them information about your house as soon as I find out about it," right?
Daniel: Ah. Ooh, that's super sneaky.
Dean: That now you've got-
Daniel: I like that.
Dean: Where you've got a real thing there. Or when you start now finding buyers and steering them into that neighborhood, every time you go into that neighborhood, you've got a Google Map layer with all of the people who've responded to your Getting Listings postcards and you go in and you send an email to them saying that same thing, "Hey, I'm showing houses in Cypresswood this weekend. And I remember looking up your house when I sent you the Cypresswood report a couple of months ago. I'm not sure what your plans are, but I thought I'd reach out and see if maybe I could tell them about your house." That-
Daniel: I love that so much.
Dean: That's the only kind of outgoing phone call or email or outreach that I would ever make to those people because it's never ... It's all about, "Hey, I've got what you potentially want." If you're a seller, then that's going to be encouraging to you, right? You're going to maybe say, "Oh, yeah, well, we weren't thinking about it right now, but maybe this could ..." For some people, that's going to accelerate things. And that gives you a chance that nobody else has.
And while you're doing that, what I would also look at in those areas are I would also drop a pin layer on the houses that were expired as well, ones that were on the market over the last three years and didn't relist to also adopt those as my secret inventory.
Daniel: Would those be getting a postcard.
Dean: No, I wouldn't. They're getting the Getting Listings postcard because you're mailing that to everybody in the neighborhood. But what I'm saying is potentially when you are showing houses this weekend, whenever you've got a real... Whenever Diane is going to be showing anything in Cypresswood, that's going to be the thing.
Daniel: I had a real quick question.
Dean: Yeah.
Daniel: So I was having a little bit of trouble trying to figure out which neighborhood should I be targeting. So all I really did was take the average of the last four or five years of price point and the average turnover and multiply them and then just do that with all the neighborhoods I thought were good and then just took the highest number of those.
Dean: And that's fine, too. But part of the thing is that ultimately you're going to, you want to go to all of them ultimately if we're looking at the next five years for you. But one of the good things that will be helpful to you is if you can have something that is a category as well. So if it happens to be a golf community or like what we've done. Cypresswood is a golf community. Lake Ashton is an active adult community. So we can now supplement these things by looking for buyers who are looking for golf course communities. So we can do a guide to Winter Haven golf course communities. And we can do a guide to Winter Haven 55-plus communities. And we can do-
Daniel: So it's more about being specific to a genre or a type.
Dean: Well, it helps. Yeah. Because now that allows you to expand out whether it's townhouses or whether it's oceanfront homes or oceanfront condos like what we're doing in South Beach or oceanfront homes. When you look at it that you mentioned the beach area, is there a good number of beach properties where you are?
Daniel: Yeah. It's Hampton Road, so we have lots of waterfront property. And you could do something like inlet waterfront property, so on the bay and that type of thing. You're going to get a lot of really big, expensive kind of almost like estate-style homes, they're going to be 1.2 million to 4 million plus. Or there's a really, really well-known area in Virginia Beach that I wouldn't mind targeting that's about 3,000, 3,500 homes. It's called the North End of Virginia Beach. And the average transaction point in there is 775. Turnover rate is about four or 5%.
But it's an enormous amount of homes. There are only two agents in there that have eight or 9% market share. And the rest it just seems like there's two or three deals per agent that actual. It's like, man, that'd be an awesome place to take over.
Dean: Right. And that's kind of a cool thing. How many homes would there be that would be oceanfront would you say?
Daniel: Specifically oceanfront?
Dean: Yeah, looking at the pinnacle of it.
Daniel: If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between seven and 800.
Dean: Yeah. So that reminds me a lot of Kenny McCarthy in Cape Anne. There's 900-and-something oceanfront homes in Cape Anne. And Kenny's been doing this for several years now and every year has people who've been on for three or four years that are responding, that are listing and selling now. So that's kind of a ... I always look at that, too, as ... My approach immediately is to take something in the middle of the bell curve or on the front slope of the bell curve where there's more activity and it's kind of a transitional thing that would maybe be appealing to first-time buyers or the smaller-home move-up buyers, and then they're buying something to the right of the middle of the bell curve as they're going.
So there's a lot of benefit of establishing yourself in that transitional point on the bell curve of the distribution of the price ranges. But then the next thing that I look at is going all the way to the end, going all the way to what's the most desirable thing in ... What are the most expensive homes in your area, whether it's the oceanfront condos in South Beach or the oceanfront homes in Newport News or in Virginia Beach or wherever you want to establish there or the lakefront homes in Winter Haven? That's the other, the third market that we're going to establish, so we'll have a golf course community, active adult community, and the lakefront homes will be the three main target areas there.
And so that helps you then where now you can start establishing and looking for buyers who are looking for an oceanfront home. And that's where you start to do these things. Now, those things it's where I love to ... It depends what your war chest will allow kind of thing of going into something like that. But the payoff is big, because they're going to be the most expensive homes. How much would the oceanfront homes be where you are?
Daniel: Yeah, you're starting at one and goes up to probably the most expensive I think in our area, six or seven. So probably going to be between one and a half and two and a half.
Dean: Yeah. So you're looking at 25 or $40,000 per transaction in that neighborhood, right?
Daniel: Yeah. I won't be offended at that.
Dean: Yeah. But you start to look at that that it costs you the same amount of money to mail the postcards to the 800 oceanfront homes as it does to mail to a smaller lower price range. So, yeah, that's where I go with that. And you look at them as they're completely different approaches because the person looking for the oceanfront homes is different than the person looking for the three-bedroom, two-bath mid-range home.
Daniel: Yeah, higher-end client’s home. Yeah, different client for sure.
Dean: Yeah. So that's an exciting opportunity there, just when you start looking at that kind of triangulation, being able to go that route. But that's, you're in an area where it's nothing but upside where you are. You got a long runway time-wise in terms of your career if this is the kind of thing that you want to establish in. And it's a very exciting time. It's like you're planting oak trees now that are little.
Daniel: Yeah, I see this as a minimum of 10 years.
Dean: Yeah. So that's kind of exciting. I love to hear that. But is that something that would excite you to see about the oceanfront and waterfront and establish yourself on the edges of the market that way?
Daniel: Sure. I think I probably, if I'm honest with myself, I'll face a little bit of internal, "You're not ready to list a million-dollar home," type mentality. But all my listings now, the two that I have and the one I have up and coming, I've kind of already mentally said I'm going to have a brand, so professional photography, a staging consult, professional pre-inspection, home warranty. All that stuff is going to be paid by me, Facebook advertising and that type of stuff. So I want to have this brand of doing a very, very good job for my clients.
Dean: Mm-hmm.
Daniel: Right?
Dean: Yeah. It's kind of exciting when you start to think that you don't have to get the ... Most of the time, people think, "Well, I don't have any million-dollar buyers because I don't have any million-dollar listings," or whatever. But if you can go out and start finding the oceanfront buyers, that goes a long way. And the waterfront, same thing.
Daniel: Right. I agree.
Dean: So I think that's a cool opportunity for you.
Daniel: I'm curious, Dean, I know that Diane's been doing a little bit of it, and we talked a little bit about it I think in the mastermind of implementing an video into or Facebook video advertising into can we target the same Getting Listings group on Facebook. That way, they're getting a land, sea, air effect thing going on.
Dean: Yes, exactly. That's what we've been doing. Exactly. So you've been watching that in the blog that that's really ... That's the exciting thing, right? And we've actually seen an increase in postcard response when we did the videos as well. So it was like we timed it so that the video and the postcards were arriving at the same time. And so it amplifies stuff, right? So we had Diane doing the right out in front of Cypresswood saying, "This is Diane reporting live from Cypresswood."
And that showing up in your news feed, if a news crew, what it kind of looks like because she's got that kind of presence and stuff, that if a news crew shows up outside your neighborhood and it shows up in your news feed, you're immediately going to be drawn to that, right? So you're going to watch it. So the awareness is going to be higher when now, "There's that postcard she was talking about."
Daniel: Right.
Dean: Yeah. And so that's raising the awareness of it. And we get responses from both the Facebook ads and the postcards.
Daniel: I think that's super cool, because I paid a videographer to come and film a closing of mine and basically had him edit it, put music, make it really nice. And then it was a two-minute video or less. And then I basically retarget everyone that's in my buyer leads as well as sphere of influence and referral. And I've gotten a ton of response on it. Obviously my mom shared it because my mom shares everything I put on there, but I was surprised at how many people liked, commented, and shared that.
Dean: Sure, absolutely. And that's what goes on. But you got to be careful and balanced that the video is of value to them. Rather than showing that you had a closing or highlighting that people are happy about you kind of thing, that's the different thing than, "Here's what's happening in your neighborhood, and if you're thinking of selling..." For her to even say on that thing, giving people the scoop, if somebody wanted to buy in Ruby Lake right now, there's nothing for sale. And that kind of giving them that inside scoop but always offering the report, "Here's what to do," that's what we really want to focus on, too, and in combination, doing all of that.
But once you establish that micro-target, that micro-audience, then all of it, all of that stuff, just a mix of what you were talking about-
Daniel: It's such an easy way to gently touch people. They can watch the videos and they can get the postcards. They can get the report. And there's not a whole lot of asking going on. It's almost like, "Here, have this, here, have this," and they're going to watch the video they don't have to engage with you at all.
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly right. Once you get into that realization that what you're in, the business you're in is connecting people who want to sell their house with people who want to buy a house just like that one, that's really the thing. And it's not about having to sit there tapping your heels waiting for somebody to list their house with you so you can get to work. Let's start finding the buyers now. And that way, you've got an ongoing pipeline of it. It's kind of a really great thing.
That's why if you were doing that down-payment assistance ... Or we've been establishing stuff with a, "Here, we have USDA, the zero-down loans," so not down-payment assistance, but just if you're in this area you can get zero-down homes. And so establishing that as a way of finding first-time buyers but then to support that with doing the Getting Listings program in the areas where the USDA-eligible homes are so that we've constantly got this triangulation going on where we've got this pool of buyers that are looking for homes in these areas.
The USDA territories, the map is very clear on where these homes are. You can only buy homes in that area that qualify for the zero-down. So to be able to have your own secret inventory of those homes is an advantage.
Daniel: Right. Yeah, I like it all. I like it.
Dean: It's all pretty exciting. We've touched on all five of the main things there, all the elements of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, and doing it all in a way that's zero prospecting, zero cold calling, zero feeling like you have to push yourself and hustle hard. You're hustling in terms of creating and establishing value for people and assets, but not just on a hamster wheel chasing people.
Daniel: Right. Yeah. And this kind of goes into the underlying pieces because I've listened to all your podcasts and most of them twice, the idea of daily joy and abundant time and I do feel a certain amount of anxiety of getting my business up and running. And I was just talking to my wife the other day about this was like, "But, man, there's zero joy for me in cold calling, zero."
And I'm thinking, man, if I can pour the money into the attract style business that I need to over the next two or three years and I just really set myself up ... Could I go out and cold call, and could I get good at those scripts and those dialogues so that I can, like I said, linguistically judo them into a corner and get them to do business with me? But I didn't do that with my wife. That's not how I started my relationship. I had to earn it and seduce her and do the things necessary to build a good relationship.
And I think it's just funny that we do this in sales. There are so many sales positions where it's just you got to beat the crap out of the client to get them to do business with you. And it just sounds like a miserable way to have a relationship with someone.
Dean: Absolutely. Gotta close, close, close, close. Yeah, that it's somehow your fault they're not ready to buy right now, the biggest decision in their life, and you're somehow going to, like you said, linguistically judo them into it. That's not the thing.
Daniel: Yeah. I just find it so silly.
Dean: But you are making all the right moves, my friend. So I think this is going to really play out well for you.
Daniel: Dean, could I make a potential future podcast request?
Dean: Sure, absolutely.
Daniel: And you already kind of do this already, and I think you already actually know Perry Marshall's 80/20 principle.
Dean: I do.
Daniel: Sales and marketing.
Dean: Yes.
Daniel: Yeah. Because I've heard you mention it I think on maybe it was the Procrastination Podcast or the Marketing Podcast. I'm not sure, because like I said I've listened to them all.
Dean: Well, we've had Perry on I Love Marketing a couple of times.
Daniel: Really? I gotta go back and listen to that one.
Dean: Yeah.
Daniel: But I think because most of the stuff in the Listing Agent Lifestyle it is kind of centered around that, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Daniel: The getting the postcard up and running, that is a probably third-degree 80/20 rule, the 80/20 within the 80/20.
Dean: Yes.
Daniel: There's no better way if you were to just set up a repeat and referral business and get 30 deals a year simply from the postcard, goodness gracious is that a leverage item.
Dean: Yes, absolutely.
Daniel: So I guess the request is just to maybe dive a little deeper into, "Here is why we leverage these things, that there is 80/20 within the real estate business, and this is how we do it and why."
Dean: Yeah. Part of the thing is that the thing about if we take as an example the world's most interesting postcard and your top 150, well, the fact that it's all of the effort is literally in the first month of it, the big thing, the only things that we have to do are getting the list of your top 150, which is for most people if you don't already have that, that's a real source of wiggling for people, because it takes just some time. That's why we established the easy button for this that we can do the whole thing for people. It takes maybe three to five hours to get 150 people identified and entered into your GoGoAgent database and established, and then to set up your postcard first time.
But then there's virtually five minutes' worth of effort that go into subsequent months of it. So it's like just getting people to realize that 80% of the work is in that first... And I'll say it, I think that it's either five hours on your own total of doing the whole thing or it's one conversation to get that going. But then it's just every single month it goes out and you don't have to think about it. That's what really makes it out.
So I'm glad that you're at 194. It'll be interesting to see what happens. But I try and get people to even start with 100 people. If we can get them to a point where they get 100 people that they know that are being programmed to pay attention to the conversations that they're hearing about real estate. That's $1,000 a year to do that whole thing for 100 people basically. It's the highest value.
Daniel: And like you had mentioned, the piece, after a while once you get whether it's a virtual assistant or your own assistant, hey, every closing just make sure this address and name goes into the CSV file that goes out updated.
Dean: That would be the goal that if I get people to start with 100 and then each month keep adding until you get to 150, because you're going to realize, "Oh, yeah, that person, that person." You're literally going to run into people at the grocery store and be like, "I forgot about them, I forgot about them." Yeah.
Daniel: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Well, last thing for you, Dean. I just really appreciate everything you do and who you are and what you've been trying to establish and creating businesses that are just drastically different from processing-based businesses. It's not like I'm trying to denigrate those businesses, but for the rest of us that want to I guess live out every piece of that Listing Agent lifestyle with the abundant joy, our daily joy and abundant time, I just don't know of a better way to do it.
Dean: I don't either. And I appreciate you saying that because the frustration that I see for people is that if they are in a hurry and they think that doing a prospecting-based business is going to get them there faster, it's just that the sad thing about it is that there's no way out of that, that at some point you're going to have to transition into a lifestyle-supporting kind of marketing, easy, lucrative, and fun business, because what I learned, this is from personal experience of ... I used to be ... I started out doing just that, cold calls all the time. And what I realized, the wake-up call that I had was that as soon as you stop doing that, it stops, too.
If you're only focused on finding people who are looking to do something right now and then working with them, you're dooming yourself to just continuing at that level for the long term. So it's better to start now.
Daniel: You know what I think it is, Dean? And you and Joe talk a lot about addiction. I think cold calling prospecting is a dopamine drip. You get this immediate feedback and feel good of, "I won. I won this conversation. I won the listing appointment. I beat out those 30,000 other agents making cold calls. I got it." And doing the world's most interesting postcard takes an adult-level style of patience and discipline. Yes, not only is it better leveraged, but you're not going to get the dopamine drip unless you run into people at the store. It's just not as immediate.
So I think it's kind of you go to the gym whether you feel like it or not. And this is just a discipline. It doesn't necessarily feel good.
Dean: But even that, that's the encouraging thing that you do get these encouragements. How did it feel when you literally ran into someone at the grocery store, and they said, "Dude, I got your postcard"? You feel like, you get that dopamine hit, which is cool, too, because you know that-
Daniel: Yeah, I had someone tell me. They said, "Hey, I got your postcard, and I have all three in my bathroom. I use it as my bathroom reading material."
Dean: Absolutely, right? It's the greatest thing. That's what I'm saying. And the great thing is that where are they going to pull out this knowledge? The things that we're showing them in the world's most interesting postcard are all interesting talking points, right? So they're going to use them in conversation. And so they're addicting and linking you to conversations so that when they have a conversation as soon as somebody mentions real estate, they're going to think about you. It's almost unfair really how it works. But just the getting people to buy into that and execute that's the biggest thing.
So I'm excited that you're on board and that you're executing. And I can't wait to see it all play out for you.
Daniel: I'm excited to finally make it out to the mastermind this next year and get to meet everybody.
Dean: Awesome, yeah, end of February, we're going to be in Orlando. So it'll be exciting to meet you.
Daniel: Yes, sir.
Dean: Cool.
Daniel: Thanks, Dean. I really appreciate you again and appreciate you diving deep into the business and guiding me here.
Dean: Thanks, Daniel. I'll talk to you soon.
Daniel: Take care, Dean. Bye.
Dean: And there we have it. What a great episode. We really did cover everything that we talked about there. And I think that a lot of people are going to find themselves in this episode. And if that's you, great place to start with this is to go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com and download a copy of the Listing Agent Lifestyle book. That's the first place. Get yourself, it's a short book. You can read it all in one sitting. But it'll give you a great overview of everything that we're talking about here, kind of the manifesto for this Listing Agent Lifestyle approach to business.
Then listen to the very first episode, Episode Zero of the Listing Agent Lifestyle, where I go in depth and explain this approach to growing your business with a marketing approach. And see if that fits for you. And then if that's appealing and intriguing to you, then come on over and join us at GoGoAgent.com. You can come on in. This is where I'm building the community of people who are all taking this approach to building a really great business with a marketing approach to it.
And we've got all of the tools for you to reach all of those goals, the Getting Listings program. We've got the Listing Agent Multipliers, all of the things that you need to do to get referrals from the people who already know you, like you, and trust you, like the world's most interesting postcard. That's all in the GoGoAgent community there. Talk about converting leads. We got all of the tools that you need to both find buyers, find sellers, and convert those leads.
We've got landing pages and auto-responders and toll-free voicemail and texting capabilities and all around a wonderful members area where we have all of the educational things that you'll need to do it and a wonderful forum where you can talk and connect with other agents from all over the world that are applying this same thing. It's no money to try GoGoAgent. It's a 30-day free trial, no credit card required. You can come on in, use everything, see what it's all about. And if you want to continue, it's $79 a month, less than $1,000 a year to have access to all of those things that can help you build an amazing business.
So if that all sounds like you, I'm really looking forward to meet you. And we're in there every day. And I look forward to seeing you join us.