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/RealEstate is a bi-weekly podcast where we chat with agents and experts in the real estate space to find out what strategies are working for them, what tools are powering their business, and how they are maneuvering shifts in the industry. Join host and marketing aficionado Chris Whitling as he uncovers the tips, tricks, and tech ambitious agents can use to take their businesses to the next level.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:06
Unknown
Maybe flipping the script a little bit. Okay. Like where people wasting their time that they should. Just like. Here comes the soapbox. The entire industry is stupid. Okay.
00:00:21:08 - 00:00:40:22
Unknown
Hello and welcome to Forward Slash Real Estate. I could give you the whole normal intro, but, we got, like, a recurring guest. Todd. The audience doesn't need an introduction, but you should probably give them an introduction. I'll give a little bit in case we got a new new watchers, new friends here. I'm Todd Tramonte. I've got a real estate brokerage and team here in the Dallas-Fort worth area.
00:00:41:00 - 00:00:59:11
Unknown
And then we also coach and consult with real estate teams and highly productive solo agents all over North America. I'm broken in the way that I love to look at a business from the business level. I enjoyed being an agent in the early days and helping buyers and helping sellers, but really where I felt like my God given gifts were.
00:00:59:11 - 00:01:19:11
Unknown
And the things that I like to do are construct and build and solve for growth. And so that's where Chris and I have historically geeked out a lot on the marketing side, but also just on the kind of contrarian viewpoint of, hey, everyone's going this way. Let's go that way. And I think we'll probably do that on today's call.
00:01:19:11 - 00:01:38:10
Unknown
But if folks need credentials to believe I'm not totally full of bull. We do over $1 million in GCI every year. We have for a long time we've done multiples of that. We do it with a small, tight knit team. We're not really geeked out on agent Count. We want productivity per agent, and then we have great staff so people can have a great lifestyle.
00:01:38:10 - 00:02:00:12
Unknown
We say you should build the business that supports the life you want to live, and we believe that for our team members, coaching clients, friends, listeners, viewers, all that good stuff. And, we do a radio show, podcast, all that kind of stuff. I heard that you might have an event coming up here, I do. Yeah. We'll do real growth summit, our seventh annual conference in partnership with Real Geeks, Real Geeks, has been our headline sponsor since day one.
00:02:00:12 - 00:02:26:13
Unknown
In the earliest days, it was the Real Geeks user conference, and it kind of in some ways still is. It's a place for real geeks, users and non-US ears to gather. We kind of rebranded last year because there were more and more non users attending just because they wanted to grow, and they were hearing that this is a an event built by our real estate team for real estate agents and teams, meaning there's not a ton of in your face sponsor pitching type stuff.
00:02:26:15 - 00:02:47:20
Unknown
It's intended to be the event that I want to go to. Now I host it and lead it with real geeks, but I also want to attend it, and I'm in the back with pen and paper taking notes a ton. So we'll probably talk about it more as we make our way through. But it's September 15th and 16th this year in Dallas, Texas, with a cocktail party welcome event the evening before on the 14th.
00:02:47:20 - 00:03:06:08
Unknown
But it's a blast. It's a ton of fun. We hang out, we eat, we drink, we're Mary, we talk about growing businesses. We solve each other's problems. It's the most generous group of real estate professionals I've ever encountered. And 20 plus years in this business. And I've been in some pretty great groups. People tend to share their very best, and then they ask others for their very best.
00:03:06:10 - 00:03:28:04
Unknown
And it's an incredible group. We have great stuff from the stage. We'll interview the CEO of Real Geeks. We do every year, probably get Chris in the product team, in the marketing team up there as much as we can. But there's also outside speakers and panels of just what's working for people. It's a lot of content. One complaint we get once or twice each year is it's almost too much content.
00:03:28:06 - 00:03:46:19
Unknown
So take a break when you need to take a break, go to lunch, grab coffee, get a donut or whatever. But the goal is to just give people as much. Grow your business stuff, and give each other our best stuff, and we'll do that over, you know, two, two and a half days, two days, plus a cocktail party and, well, have a great team, great time together.
00:03:46:19 - 00:04:07:01
Unknown
My whole team is there helping me. Hosted a lot of our coaching members come and share their best stuff. So we mingle, we hang out, we we help each other grow. I love the event every year. You know, it's it's great to, you know, meet agents from around the country and learn. And like I just have to underline exactly what you said there of you know, people are very open with what's working, what's not working.
00:04:07:01 - 00:04:25:09
Unknown
Things. They're workshopping things. They're, you know, they're experimenting with, so it is a really great environment to hang out in. And we really do recommend that people bring your whole team, the people that bring their teams get the most value. They come back with connectivity and camaraderie and shared mission and like ready to go storm the gates.
00:04:25:11 - 00:04:41:20
Unknown
And several teams have been doing that for six years now. So this will be your seventh. Yeah. No, that's really cool to see the whole teams come in and, you know, you usually have like multiple sessions. You know, and so it's like the teams break up into the different sessions and, you know, everyone comes back with a little piece of the puzzle.
00:04:41:20 - 00:05:02:13
Unknown
It's it's really we got a topic for today so we can get into it. All right Todd so the, the the headline that I was sent is Attracting business versus Chasing business. And I feel like you got to start with a little bit of explanation on that one that sounds like kindergarten level stuff, but in reality, I talked to hundreds, if not thousands of real estate agents and team leaders.
00:05:02:13 - 00:05:24:10
Unknown
Usually the the more productive in the community across the United States. And people don't get this. I mean, they intellectually understand it, but they're not implementing. They're not building based on this, on this comparison. So I'll just define what I mean by each of those things. Right? A raise your hand if you're sick of grinding and chasing crazy people.
00:05:24:12 - 00:05:48:13
Unknown
Two hands. Right. Like the person that can't afford to buy, the person that doesn't know what they want. The person that wants you to show up when they say show up and they don't show. Like, of course nobody wants that. That's the chasing side. Now you can be very successful with chasing. I'm not saying never chase. What we do say is attract as much as of your ideal clients as possible, and chase when you must, chase when you need to.
00:05:48:13 - 00:06:13:03
Unknown
But for example, I would define chasing as like cold outbound prospecting of expired. I'm not saying don't do it, but I'm saying that's not your best thing you could do. It's not where your ideal home run perfect right? Fit client. Most profitable, most preferable, most connective, most engaging, most fun clients going to be. But you know, there's probably some listings over there.
00:06:13:03 - 00:06:34:12
Unknown
But I gotta chase 37 people call them the day they expire, and I'm one of them. Right. So we're chasing we're kind of begging them to give us two minutes to put our best foot forward, whereas chasing, I mean, whereas attracting looks like I'm asleep, I'm at a ball game with my kids and the phone rings, hey, I've been watching your stuff, have been listening to you, have been reading.
00:06:34:12 - 00:07:02:06
Unknown
Hey, people been telling me about you. When could we get together? Do you have any time that I could get on your schedule this week? It's just a completely different positioning to attract ideal versus Chase kind of anything. Just imagine for a second, deep breath. Imagine that 80 plus percent of your business was inbound, attracted ideal prospects. What does that even mean for you?
00:07:02:08 - 00:07:21:16
Unknown
What's your ideal prospect? What's their price point? What's their budget? Look, are they all cash? Are they borrowed? Are they a veteran? Are they doing a condo, a townhome, acreage property? Waterfront? Are they selling and buying or are they just buying or are they just selling. Are they renting. Is that your ideal? Yeah. So I mean, as the marketing guy, this is making a lot of sense to me.
00:07:21:16 - 00:07:39:20
Unknown
I mean, there's some other marketing words I could throw out that that it sounds like. But, let me ask you, like, a prerequisite question. And, you know, the way that this first came into my mind is like, how do you know the type of a type of client and how to talk to them, if you, like, haven't been into the Thunderdome.
00:07:39:22 - 00:08:03:18
Unknown
Right. But maybe there's another question that you can answer there, which is just like, how do you know how like, how do you know, like the type of client that you want to serve? The easiest indicator of who you love working with? Yeah. Who do you hate working with? Who sucks, who's not fun at all? You're like, man, I like I'm not saying engineers are bad people, but there are some people that, like, I do not like working with engineers.
00:08:03:18 - 00:08:20:22
Unknown
There's so many questions, there's so much detail. It's so annoying. Okay, cool. Well, that's that's not it. Then. So we're narrowing down, right? Broke people mean people. Lazy people. Dishonest okay. So that's that's the easiest place to start is who do I know? I do not want to work with. And it doesn't mean terrible humans. It just means maybe.
00:08:20:22 - 00:08:39:18
Unknown
Who do I not tend to help as much? Maybe. What areas do I not really know that much about? I don't really have proficiency. Okay, so I'm starting to zero in on some things. And now it's a question of where am I? Excellent. Where do I kind of lose track of time researching and learning? Okay, that's probably a good indicator of where you could grow a real specialization.
00:08:39:18 - 00:08:56:16
Unknown
So we'll talk a ton about that at the conference literally for two days. But for now I would just say, where are you passionate. What have been some of your favorite past clients or favorite property types or favorite price points? Not just favorite because you made money, but favorite because you delivered a ton of value. You enjoyed the process.
00:08:56:16 - 00:09:17:07
Unknown
The people that were involved with that were generally enjoyable. So now we're narrowing in on some things, and that's how I would start. Now, if we're talking about selecting a niche or a niche, now we're getting not just psychographic the people, but maybe demographic and maybe geographic and things like that. And it starts to become feasibility, turnover, price point, profitability, competitiveness.
00:09:17:10 - 00:09:34:10
Unknown
Those are factors we use to filter what you might focus on. How have you done it like, or if you have a coaching client that is like, I don't know who my favorite clients are and I already like, you know, maybe to lead the witness here a little bit, you know, you already said like, you know, when work doesn't feel like work, you're probably there.
00:09:34:12 - 00:09:50:06
Unknown
You know, that goes a long ways. Like maybe further than this is where I make the most money. Yeah. We call that being in your area of fascination. Right. So what's the thing that you it fascinates would intrigues you? It's so enjoyable that yes, it is still work. Work is work, but it's enjoyable. You lose track of time.
00:09:50:06 - 00:10:12:01
Unknown
You you would do that all day long if you didn't have to do all the other parts that that made that happen, right? Right. But I will say this, if you could do that 50% or more of the time, you will have an incredible business. We've done it through primary, really strategic development of relationships, not just being friendly like people are like, oh, you're so outgoing.
00:10:12:01 - 00:10:39:13
Unknown
You should be in sales, you should get into real estate. And most of us that have done real estate for a while want to hit that person with a wiffle ball bat like, oh, that's all, that's it. That's all that it takes to make it in this unbelievably complex industry. But what I would say is we have attracted people through strategic relationship building, meaning we want to build relationships with people we like that are kind, that were trustworthy, but also we want to, along the way, sort of educate them on who we help and what we do and what we're great at.
00:10:39:13 - 00:11:02:13
Unknown
Without sounding like arrogant dirtbags, we also do that through all of the profile calls that the great world of the internet provides for us for free, right? So it is not a new idea to think about a Google profile or a being profile, or your CEO. Sounds like a little bit of a brand. How about that? If you know one of your past clients is asked to describe to Monti, like, what do they say?
00:11:02:13 - 00:11:19:02
Unknown
Well, we hope they use their own words, but we hope the two primary things that come up are expertise and fun. Right? So like actually have an answer to that question. How many people don't? And this isn't a judgment or an indictment of your acumen. This is just saying, like, have you thought about that? Now here's where I'm careful.
00:11:19:02 - 00:11:41:15
Unknown
I never used the word brand. Chris did. The reason you won't hear me say the word brand a lot is because typically in books and at conferences and events and online content, brand is for a different class of business than most of us. Brand is for Coca-Cola and Pepsi and Procter and Gamble. That doesn't mean it can't be for us, but you have to be careful reading branding books by Al Reese and others.
00:11:41:17 - 00:12:15:19
Unknown
That's not typically for the nine person real estate team or the two person solo business, with a little bit of help from a spouse or a kid or a part time or whatever. Right? So I say literally never do anything for only branding purposes. But always be branding along with what else you're doing. So yes, I'd say branding, but to answer the question more specifically for people watching, listening, you know, reading this thing, we have attracted people through strategic relationship building, educating them on who we want to be and who we want to attract.
00:12:16:00 - 00:12:36:18
Unknown
Who you are has a lot to do with who you'll attract. Also, basic things like profiles. Let's just use a Google profile as an example. If you have two reviews and I have 800 reviews, I win almost every single time. If my reviews all say like I'm good at math, that's okay. If my reviews say I'm so much fun to work with.
00:12:36:19 - 00:12:52:03
Unknown
Like I was inspiring for their marriage and their parenting and their family and their education, and save them a ton of money in real estate and made the searching process easier. And they slept like a baby the whole time. Those are the kind of people are going to be attracted. Like, I don't know, I did not sleep well last time I bought a house.
00:12:52:03 - 00:13:11:08
Unknown
Sleeping like a baby. These things, I never even heard of that. I'm a calling, right? Oh, the math pieces attractive, the relational pieces attractive. So you kind of have to put out brand what you want to draw in. But social proof is the best way to do that. So have someone else say that in a reviews an obvious way, but someone else record a video.
00:13:11:09 - 00:13:32:22
Unknown
Someone else tell a friend, someone else advocate for you at that level. The other ways we've done it are radio ads. I'm in my studio right now. We have a radio show, podcast, YouTube videos, social media advertising, print newsletters, digital newsletters, live events, virtual events. We do all that stuff. And a lot of that is very specifically driven to attract our ideal client.
00:13:32:22 - 00:13:49:20
Unknown
And that sounds ugly to a lot of people. But to repel are not ideal prospects. So if someone's like, dude, shut up, I don't want to become your friend. Just freaking open the door for me. I want that person to see the video, hear the audio, read the blog, go to the profile and be like, no, these freaking people are not for me.
00:13:49:20 - 00:14:06:12
Unknown
Great. Cool. Let's not even talk. Maybe I want to give you the opportunity to just like, button that up. Because I think for the astute listener, you just answered this question, but how are you attracting. All right. So you know, we've done the exercise. You know, you know who you want to attract. Yeah. But how are you doing it?
00:14:06:12 - 00:14:27:23
Unknown
So the simplest way, the most obvious big media way I could say is we're running it literally running radio ads. So for example, there's an advertisement that says we guarantee to sell your home over the average price. And under the average time. And currently we're averaging 7.4% over the average sales price in the area and 32 days faster under.
00:14:28:01 - 00:14:46:19
Unknown
Yeah, average time on market. If you would like to be one of those success stories, go to the website Doctor Money team.com. Okay, so literally someone calls the office on that that's inbound. We have attracted them. Yeah. We put the bait out there. Yeah. But the person that answers that phone in our office is hearing, you know, hey, Chris.
00:14:46:19 - 00:15:02:17
Unknown
Thanks for taking my call. I've been listening to Todd for years. I know what you guys do. We have a home on small acreage in DFW. I know that's what you guys do. One. Could you y'all come out and help us get that salt instead of, hey, Chris Todd money. I noticed you had your home on the market recently and it didn't sell.
00:15:02:17 - 00:15:22:19
Unknown
Well, I'm just curious if you're still interested in selling the house. Shut up. You're the 37th agent to call me today, right? Attract versus chase. This person already knows what we do. Has been planning to call for years. Finally heard the ad at the right time when they're motivated and they're grateful to get on our calendar, they're expecting us to sell their house.
00:15:22:21 - 00:15:49:06
Unknown
That's a pretty lay down conversion there, right? So that is the most obvious example I could say. Now, when you get into the indirect attraction, friend tells a friend, you can only control what you can control. How are you encouraging resourcing and educating the people you know and then subtly, respectfully, ethically training them to promote and advocate for you?
00:15:49:07 - 00:16:11:01
Unknown
You want to know how we do that? Yes, I would like to know how to do that. And maybe actually real fast, I'll put in a plug here because, we've done many episodes with Chris Bastian and, a lot of the way that she very narrowly thinks about her target market. And works to attract them, I think is a very good case study for, what you're talking about here.
00:16:11:02 - 00:16:26:03
Unknown
We love Teresa, and we love. Let's move. Austin. She's been in our mastermind client. You know, coaching client, mastermind member for a long, long, long time. And she's one of the ones that brings her whole team to the conference. Every. I was going to say and conference attendee that she's phenomenal. You know, like, I didn't even have to tell you.
00:16:26:03 - 00:16:43:05
Unknown
You should have her on your podcast. You could just see it. Right? She's incredible. She is a great case study of that and honestly was not there originally. Right. Was kind of everything to everyone in her area and then learned I don't have to do all that. I don't have to work with those people. I don't really need to grind like that anymore.
00:16:43:05 - 00:17:11:05
Unknown
So let's attract, let's work with the people we love working with. But when we train someone to go out and help attract business to us, it could be as simple as me saying, Hey Chris, thanks for the compliment. Hey, next time you find yourself in a conversation about real estate and somebody needs the level of service that you just, you know, celebrated us for, would you mind just getting your phone out, pulling up my number, hitting send and just handing them the phone.
00:17:11:07 - 00:17:28:16
Unknown
But you will never be interrupting me. I always have time for you, for my friends and my my most. My favorite clients. To be honest with you, next time that happens, would you just put me on the phone with them? And then I shut up and I wait for you to answer. And maybe you do part of that.
00:17:28:16 - 00:17:47:12
Unknown
Maybe you do. You know a third of that later. We also train our team constantly. How do we answer the most common questions we get? Hey, how's the market right now? What if you just say tons of inventory that doesn't attract anything? But if that person walks away, like, man, I get those numbers. But he didn't sound like a dork.
00:17:47:14 - 00:18:10:08
Unknown
That's great. Now they're out telling me I got I got this guy that's super sharp, knows the market better than anybody I've ever seen. Also, like not shoving business cards in your hand, you should give them a call. Now you've attracted that. Okay, so I think that the roadmap for the typical real estate agent would be like hustle, hustle, hustle, and then hopefully build enough sphere that they're getting referrals.
00:18:10:08 - 00:18:32:07
Unknown
And, you know, they maybe they're thinking about this and they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm attracting the clients that I that I want. And they're, you know, referrals of past clients and their repeat clients. Like, is that what you're talking about, Todd? And then, you know, maybe the corollary question is like for your business, like how much is like coming from the active marketing you're doing versus these, inbound?
00:18:32:09 - 00:19:02:23
Unknown
Yeah, I'll, I'll answer those in reverse. We do 45 to 55% of our business repeat and referral every single year. So repeat and referral they're kind of different things right. But basically non-paid marketing driven right for you 5%, which for us is usually 80 to 110 transactions from that repeat referral. Now the flip side is virtually all of our paid marketing stuff is attraction marketing.
00:19:02:23 - 00:19:21:13
Unknown
That doesn't mean we would not pick up the call and and outreach to somebody, but we almost never do that. Now, let me ask you really quickly, just as a marketing guy, what do you consider a lead on my Real Geek site, attract or Chase? Oh well, I guess it depends on how that lead got there. Right? Right.
00:19:21:13 - 00:19:42:22
Unknown
It I would say it's in the middle. Right. So they have I've attracted them with pay per click advertising or search engine optimization or maybe I or something else. But. Right. I've put something out there, even if it's just text on page. They have come to me now. It's not quite as authoritative as I've been listening to your radio show for 11 years, but they came to me, right?
00:19:42:22 - 00:20:03:17
Unknown
They gave me their info. I didn't call them cold. We do not call that a cold call. Calling a lead off of your site. Stop calling that. A cold call is not cold. They volunteer their information. So I would say that's kind of somewhere in the middle. We've attracted them to give us their info, but they are not yet like usually really authoritatively leaning into hiring us.
00:20:03:17 - 00:20:26:03
Unknown
Now, depending on how that traffic got to the page, that may may be different. If you got a like viral YouTube video where you're coming off as entertaining and educational and locally, you know, incredible celebrity status that might drive a bunch of people to a link to search some homes, or opt in or get a market report in that that may be heavy, heavy attraction.
00:20:26:08 - 00:20:47:06
Unknown
But I think to put a bow on that, the yelling, the telling your friends and helping your buddies and just doing good business and they refer you is not primarily what I'm talking about. That's the 45 to 55% that you should go to war to protect. You should get every stinking repeat and referral deal you can. I am never, ever, ever saying like marketing over that.
00:20:47:06 - 00:21:12:19
Unknown
We're saying go get all that you can, but then accelerate, expand exponentially. Grow your business through, deliver great systems to attract people that you're not already in relationship with. Even that the people you are in relationship with are in relationship with. We're talking about going beyond that to the the, the great ether, you know, the public out there, but we only want a part of it.
00:21:12:19 - 00:21:34:14
Unknown
That's the pick your ideal prospect part out of the wherever you live, 100,000, 2 million people. How do I get the hundred transactions I need to come in from that? The 250 that the 46, whatever it is that you're going after, more and more we're seeing basically like what amounts to search results, from AI. Right. But when you ask AI, you know, like, hey, what realtor should I use?
00:21:34:14 - 00:21:56:15
Unknown
And it's like, hey, you should use Todd Cromartie because he's, you know, good at, you know, attract or chase. I mean, you might have put a lot of effort into getting that, even though at this point, no one's really sure what happened to attract. I put that firmly in the attract category. And the reason for that is I do not know that you are engaging with my business until you've contacted me.
00:21:56:15 - 00:22:30:00
Unknown
There. Right. I'll call it Chase. You do not know that I am engaging you until I contact you, right? So I've called you, like even a postcard is like. It's a soft chase I initiated. But if you respond to that, that's a decent inbound. Right? So. So Facebook ad, you know, you put a Facebook ad out that says like, hey, I'm this kind of realtor, person clicks on it, comes to website, does a search, submits a lead so that I treat that sort of like a real geeks lead, like a, like a pay per click to to ideate.
00:22:30:01 - 00:22:50:04
Unknown
Yeah. You came to me, but you didn't come to me. Like begging me to come bring a sign out. Right? You came to search houses. You came to get the free download. So if if from that ad, one person clicks and gets a download and plays on the site and goes away, that's that's in the middle for me, right?
00:22:50:04 - 00:23:19:11
Unknown
And if another person sees it and like, dang, this guy's impressive. Goes and googles and calls me attract full feature, you see what I'm saying? Like yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's always a scale. Right. Exactly. Because I think, I think a lot of people maybe will think like, okay, so, I want the person that's like full on bought in, you know, when they come to my site, you know, or it's like they the ideal, the ideal lead is one that's like, wants to transact like this week, right.
00:23:19:11 - 00:23:50:22
Unknown
You know, already has the house in mind, like no work, you know, like, let's just write the contract. And it's so rare. But, you know, I think even with a lot of referrals, the lead is going to require further convincing or reinforcement that these are the reasons why. Right. So whether it's a paid search lead that clicked on your ad because they liked what you saw and then clicked on your, you know, entered their information on the website, because again, they liked what they saw, like the the person's got to match the ad.
00:23:51:00 - 00:24:12:18
Unknown
Right. And and so, you know, I, I can see a lot or maybe here a lot of people listening to this would be like, yeah, yeah, this is what I want. But then still falling into this trap of like, yeah, you know, I attracted this person, but like, they weren't ready to go. Like, you know, on the first call, I was interviewing, Ian, our team leader, and I were interviewing a potential new agent for our team, and we're so selective.
00:24:12:18 - 00:24:33:11
Unknown
We are our own worst enemy that we're the reason we don't add a ton of agents because we're so carefully selective. But she's pretty great. And she said her husband owns a local business. She goes with you. Can I just ask you a question unrelated to this role? And we're like, sure, because how do you have 840 whatever five star reviews?
00:24:33:13 - 00:24:53:06
Unknown
And it was like, like, okay, that's going to take a few minutes to discuss. But here's a couple quick answers. But the point is that is an unbelievably powerful attraction statement as compared to I responded to an ad in a place that I wasn't really looking for an ad, right? The difference is what I call search intent, right?
00:24:53:06 - 00:25:13:00
Unknown
So if I get on Google and I go looking for an agent, and then I see one that impresses me, I'm so much more inclined to call and be happy and thankful that I found it. If I'm out on social media doing what people do, scrolling, goofing off, catching up with friends, whatever, and then real estate comes in out of the side door window or whatever.
00:25:13:00 - 00:25:36:04
Unknown
And I'm like, okay, it doesn't seem kind of intriguing. That's like as good as it gets. Almost there. Right? It's like totally unexpected. Did not go looking for this, but not terrible. That's a different level of attraction, right? Right. So all that to say, I want the full spectrum, though, you mentioned that most people are like, I want the person that calls me and is ready today.
00:25:36:06 - 00:25:59:12
Unknown
Do you want one of them next week? Yeah, I do, I want one, I want two a day, every day, 260 days a year, you know, whatever the math is. But the point is, I don't think I would actually rather talk to you today. But you're not ready till tomorrow. Then talk to you for the first time. Called tomorrow because I had an extra day to nurture you.
00:25:59:14 - 00:26:24:02
Unknown
So if I want to sell a house 365 days from now, I'm thrilled to talk to you today. But we're going to do business 365 days for the next 364 days, or many of them. I'm going to be adding value, building trust, connecting, learning how to take great care of you, maybe getting one or 2 or 3 referrals from you before I ever serve you in the in the transactional sense.
00:26:24:04 - 00:26:47:01
Unknown
And so I view those as little assets of my business, little attraction assets, little landmines that could explode at any time with income and impact. Or maybe I just get to use my God given gifts and abilities to serve you and add value in your life, and you never pay me anything. But then I've helped you. Or then you tell someone and then I help them and get paid.
00:26:47:07 - 00:27:11:13
Unknown
So all of that is about attraction? Yeah. No, I, I really like this, you know, and I think it's probably worth underlining, you know. Oh, I hear this from a lot of real geeks clients like. So even though, you know, real geeks is primarily in the business of, you know, finding people that are out on the web searching for homes and like, giving them, like, really high quality search results so that they, you know, give you their contact information so that they can, you know, so you can contact them.
00:27:11:15 - 00:27:25:09
Unknown
Then, you know, if you're at the if you're at the conference and you're talking to people like one of the fun questions I like to ask is, what is the longest time that you've nurtured a client? You know, and it's like, I'm looking for a high score here. Those are, you know, those are like parades in our office.
00:27:25:09 - 00:27:45:10
Unknown
Yeah, it's like well closed and funded. A real geek lead from 2012. And everyone's like, no, that's freaking me out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, like and I'm just like playing back in my head the highlight reels of, you know, and a lot of times the the answer goes something like, you know, y'all lead came in, you know, stack them on the nurture program.
00:27:45:10 - 00:27:59:13
Unknown
Like talk to them like talk to them a couple times, you know like and in the long span of history it's like, oh yeah. You know, like it wasn't really that much effort. You know, it's like I talked to him this time, talk to him that time. And then it's like they showed up one day ready to go.
00:27:59:15 - 00:28:22:12
Unknown
You know, biggest effort there is the discipline to not give up, right? Right. And you talked to him four times every six months over two years. And ultimately they were like, hey, thanks for thanks for staying in touch. We're ready. Oh, how hard was that? Yeah, yeah. No, I know a couple right now that just bought here in Austin and they like from their realtors point of view, they moved here.
00:28:22:12 - 00:28:39:09
Unknown
You know, I don't know, three years ago talk to a realtor. Decided to not buy like there was probably another, you know, period of time in between then where they like, looked at a couple of homes and all of a sudden they called him and was like, we found one, let's do this. Yeah. And and he's been you've been annoyed with them every time you hung up, every time you talked.
00:28:39:09 - 00:28:59:05
Unknown
Yeah. People are waiting to waiting to waiting. And then they're like, can you show us that one tomorrow? We think we want to make an offer. What? Yeah. Now they don't always go that way, but that's the point. We're building this broad spectrum of ten out of ten of authority, celebrity driven attraction all the way down to the other edge.
00:28:59:05 - 00:29:18:08
Unknown
Which I don't want you to spend really any time in, which is like, grind it out and chase the ungrateful dirtbags. Okay? So stay off that side of the scale. But it's still a broad spectrum from like, well, I attracted them to search, attracted them for data. I attracted them for a tax valuation. I chased them a little bit, but I kind of.
00:29:18:10 - 00:29:33:13
Unknown
They were at an open house, so. Yeah, I, I chased out to the neighborhood and then attracted them to the house. Yeah. Somewhere in the middle. Right. It's all of the above. And so just to clarify, just in case somebody's been watching or listening in there like none of this is new, none of this is what I already do.
00:29:33:14 - 00:29:51:09
Unknown
You're just putting weird words to it. What if what if you put a couple of systems in place and they didn't take a ton of time or energy or a lot of them? Yes. Here we go. I'm all about the action items. Let's do this. Todd. And you doubled or tripled the amount of business that you were attracting.
00:29:51:11 - 00:30:11:03
Unknown
That was the most profitable, the most referable and the most enjoyable business you did all year. What if that was the case? Okay. So now how right. And interrupt any time, Chris, with questions or whatever. But let's just take the Google profile because we all we should all have one by now. And if you don't have one man, this is your wake up call to go get it.
00:30:11:05 - 00:30:33:17
Unknown
I wouldn't say I'm like a fortune teller. I do a pretty good job of reading where the industry is going, and we teach and coach and write about it all the time. But the one time that I'm maybe most confident was when Zillow was really blowing up. I mean, we're talking like 15 years ago, everyone I talked to was like, I got to get every Zillow review, I got to build this profile, I got to play the Zillow game.
00:30:33:17 - 00:30:48:14
Unknown
And I was like, I don't really I don't like the feel of this one. I'm going to go invest in the Google game, which I also do not own. But Google is playing in every industry on the planet, so I think they have less of a goal to eat my lunch. And so we got out ahead of that.
00:30:48:14 - 00:31:04:15
Unknown
We've been aggressive with it. We've been strategic with it. We've I wouldn't even say we're brilliant, but we've been very consistent. I think consistency is one of our superpowers. And so we have really, really, really, really benefited from that. So this is me telling you, if you don't have a Google profile, you need to get one. If you have one, you need to work on getting reviews.
00:31:04:15 - 00:31:25:21
Unknown
You need to work on getting reviews with the keywords that describe who you want to attract, what part of town, what property type, what services, what value do you team level, brokerage level, individual agent level. So if you're an individual agent, this is non-negotiable. You absolutely have to do this. If you're on a team. I strongly recommend you do this together as a team.
00:31:25:23 - 00:31:48:06
Unknown
If you think in some day in the future you may leave the team, that's okay. Call all those people back and just say, hey, I've relaunched over here. Is this would you give me another review? If you're going to be fine, that is way more doable than fighting against the team that you're on and not benefiting from the cumulative momentum agents on my team, and we have an agent that's been on scene like 4 or 5 months.
00:31:48:08 - 00:32:10:07
Unknown
He's signing about a buyer a week right now, literally. And he has the benefit of 849 five star reviews or whatever. It is not the most concern for when it's. But why would he not if he's like, oh, I'm gonna go do my own. Okay, great. You have to. Why do I do that? If you ever go out on your own or the team breaks up or sells or whatever, I get it.
00:32:10:07 - 00:32:34:14
Unknown
You should take you should think about some of the stuff, be loyal and committed, but plan ahead. Then you can go replicate that way. Easier than not taking advantage of all that movement. So if you're a team, do it together. If you're a brokerage, it depends. If you're kind of a connected team ish brokerage, do it together. If you're a massive brokerage where there are multiple teams as the brokerage, train the teams to do this and train the individual agents to do it.
00:32:34:19 - 00:32:56:07
Unknown
And if you have a bunch of solo agents that you have real value for, maybe treat them sort of like a team at the brokerage and have them benefit from the cumulative brokerage stuff, but have them be extra careful in their reviews that their name is in it. Their ideal client content is in there, their geography is in it, their maybe their domain or whatever.
00:32:56:10 - 00:33:19:12
Unknown
So we can all work for mutual benefit here. Okay, so I'm an agent, I'm listening to this right now and I'm like, yeah, man. Okay, this sounds good. I should get some keywords. I should get some reviews, you know, and then it's like, all right. Yeah, I sent the review link, you know, after digging around trying to figure out where that's at, like, okay, Todd, tell me how exactly I do this because I'm getting mixed results here a couple of ways to do it.
00:33:19:12 - 00:33:34:22
Unknown
And there's no perfect one right way. So here's some stuff that I know works because it's worked for us for decade plus. And we do this pretty well. Hey, Chris, I noticed that you hadn't had a chance to do a review on the site yet. No sweat, I get it. Everyone's freaking totally overwhelmed and super busy.
00:33:35:00 - 00:33:49:01
Unknown
Any chance you have three minutes to do that before the end of the work day today? Today I'm traveling. I'm only on my phone. Totally get it to two options for you. Is there, like a day in the next 3 or 4 days? You can just drop it on the schedule for like five minutes and do it?
00:33:49:01 - 00:34:04:22
Unknown
Or would it help you if I summarized your experience with us and just wrote it and I text it to you, I want you to post the review and then if you like it, you just copy paste it, post it. If you want to tweak it a little bit. At least I got you a running start. Would that be helpful?
00:34:05:00 - 00:34:20:21
Unknown
It sounds like GPT, I guess. What? I just got to write my own review now. I do it ethically and honestly and I. I quote things you told me and things that were hard, but now I get to craft. By the way, we have a, we have a this thing called social proof marketing course. It's part of our coaching program and stuff.
00:34:20:23 - 00:34:40:01
Unknown
But one of the things and there's we teach like film writing, we teach the story arc of a great movie, and we really want our, like, our best reviews. We want to follow that. It's not just like Chris is the best. If you don't use Chris, you're an idiot. We'll take those. Those are great. But what we want is like, there's no greater agent in Austin, Texas than Chris Willing.
00:34:40:01 - 00:34:55:11
Unknown
And he made us feel special. But it wasn't always smooth. We encountered some really crazy stuff from the seller, and if we hadn't had Chris, we never would have made it. We would have bailed out and just stayed where we are and kept renting. But Chris and his team were incredible. They had great vendors, great resources. They helped us overcome it.
00:34:55:16 - 00:35:12:18
Unknown
We ended up actually closing early and we saved 13,000. Whatever those little key things that you want to be known for that are true. Now you've written the whole story arc, you've written this incredible little mini movie, mini book story, and you said, hey, Chris, does that do a decent job of representing kind of how y'all felt about things?
00:35:12:18 - 00:35:30:21
Unknown
And what's Chris going to say? Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Better than I would have said it. Right Chris, if I send the link again, do you think you could just click it and paste that in there for me? 45 seconds. Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds good. Yeah. Exactly. I, I like this about the story. It's like, you know, because it's not a great story unless there's a big problem.
00:35:31:02 - 00:35:49:18
Unknown
Yeah. You need the you need the hero to have to overcome. Right. And by the way, you want to make them the hero of the story. Okay. Follow the story arc. By the way, the best way we get those as teams is we have contests. Our people are super competitive. If your people are competitive, yeah. You cannot incentivize the person that writes the review.
00:35:49:18 - 00:36:07:09
Unknown
But I incentivize my agents. I compensate them for all their work. So I incentivize them to get reviews. We do contest for an hour. We do contests for a day. We do contests for, a week. And then we celebrate the winners and we talk smack to each other if you don't win. Okay. So maybe flipping the script a little bit, okay.
00:36:07:11 - 00:36:29:13
Unknown
Like where people wasting their time that they should just like, here comes the entire industry is stupid. Okay, Sean, clip it out. Here we go. On the off, on the on the whole, on the average residential real estate, they're really bad at their jobs. Okay. As so are the brokers, so are the owners. And honestly, I whisper this because it sounds ugly.
00:36:29:15 - 00:36:49:22
Unknown
So are most of the executives write of these great brokerages and things. Okay, so here's the momentum that I the messaging momentum that I started hearing in 2019 and was like, absolutely not. I'm opting out. And late mid to late 2019 when the market was sort of at least in Texas, it was sort of stabilizing, it was less hot.
00:36:49:22 - 00:37:14:07
Unknown
It was started normalizing. We kind of liked it, but it wasn't as juicy. I started hearing coaches, big brand executives, CEOs, team leaders starting to say, look, the industry is changing. We're going to have to start doing more deals at less profit, lower fees, probably. We're probably gonna have to deal with the fact that some of this technology, some of these one stop shops, we're going to have to play ball with them a little bit.
00:37:14:07 - 00:37:37:04
Unknown
So we're going to have to do more and make less. And I'm over here going, no thank you. Pass. Absolutely not. I will not lead that way. I will not coach that way. I will not operate that way. And I will not live that way. And at the end of the day, if if I'm wrong in the industry is that I'm going to find another industry and I'll take my team with me, that we're not we're not stuck to this.
00:37:37:06 - 00:37:55:13
Unknown
So what I mean, what that broad idea means, specific to what you're saying right now. It's coming back. We had the post Covid run up and everybody kind of gave oh forget that. Nope. Just do as many deals as you can. Just answer the phone. And now it's gotten gotten hard again. Interest rates have tripled and people are having to work.
00:37:55:13 - 00:38:13:05
Unknown
And we're starting to hear that again, like, hey, do whatever business you can do. Chase, chase, chase, pick up the phone, make more calls, make more calls, quit being a little baby and just put in the work. You all forgot how to work. Do the freaking work. Do the work, work work work work work work work. Great. I agree on some level you should work and the basics still work, work works.
00:38:13:05 - 00:38:32:02
Unknown
Calling works. I'm not saying don't do that. I'm saying be careful how you do that. If you rebuild your business as a chase, chase, chase business, you're going to work with the crazies again. You're going to be low profit again. You're going to hate what you do again. You're going to not want to do it anymore. The way you're going to act is not going to attract the people you want to attract anymore.
00:38:32:03 - 00:38:49:02
Unknown
The people, the team members, the staff, the vendor partners. So I'm not saying don't hustle. I'm saying hustle with some strategy and do it. Hustle to attract. Hustle to only chase when you have to chase and chase the specific people you want that are worthy of chasing. I think it's a really interesting time in the marketplace right now.
00:38:49:04 - 00:39:10:11
Unknown
You know, because the, you know, in, in the great times, you know, it's like I and we saw this coming out of Covid, it's like anyone can make money. It's, you know, deals are falling from the sky. It's almost just like, how fast can you can you do the thing? You were just talking about it, you know, and now things are hard and you're, you're going to see maybe it's like, not survival of the fittest.
00:39:10:11 - 00:39:26:04
Unknown
It's like survival of the smartest, perhaps. Yeah. You know, and I, I really like talking to a lot of our clients, especially at the conference, about this because, you know, they'll be like, oh, well, I survived, you know, Covid in 2008 and all all the others, you know, I was there. No way brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And kind of like bring it on.
00:39:26:04 - 00:39:48:16
Unknown
Right. Because it's going to narrow the field. But yeah, I think that, you know, while the level of effort goes up, I really like what you're saying about also, you know, applying the sort of, like, strategic business sense to like, what are you doing, right? Like, are you applying the effort in the right places or are you just taking anything you can get?
00:39:48:16 - 00:40:10:17
Unknown
Yeah. Don't change your business. Maybe change your work ethic a little bit, maybe skill build and refine. You should be doing that all the time because the market's always changing. Now I see your Hermosa book in the background right. You got $1 million offers. You know Hermosa says this a thousand different ways probably per week. But he basically says entrepreneurship is not a game of like the hardest working one wins.
00:40:10:17 - 00:40:33:06
Unknown
It's a survival. It's a survival game. It's attrition. Right? It's who just won't give up right now. What we're adding to that is I'm not giving up. Lots of people are giving up. Yeah. Agent Count is really not down that much. But agents paying attention count has tanked. Agents showing up every day has tanked. Agents who have gone back to restaurants is way up, you know, or real jobs, right?
00:40:33:08 - 00:40:54:21
Unknown
My opinion is to say this definitely increase the hustle. Don't forget your work ethic. Yeah, but don't do that as a meat head and just pound pound pound pound pound. Don't do it as like we're switching the whole business. We're a chasing business now. We only want people here to sit, you know, stand up at a standing desk and grind and flex their muscles while they do whatever.
00:40:54:23 - 00:41:13:13
Unknown
What we're saying is put in the work. But but be smart. Put in the work to attract your ideal clients. Chase if you must. Chase when you need to, but still, I'm only chasing ideal clients. One credit client cost me 2 or 3 good ones, right? Well, I just want to go back and like, underline the whole, like, it's not survival of the fittest.
00:41:13:13 - 00:41:44:00
Unknown
It's like survival of the not deadest. Yeah, right. You know, and I was talking to a business here and, you know, way outside our industry. And it struck me talking to the CEO that, you know, his core competency was not going bankrupt. Yeah, right. You know, and it's like, you know, and so, you know, it's so counters like maybe what we're culturally taught of like, you know, yeah, it should be all like champagne and caviar and private jets and you know, yachts and all the rest.
00:41:44:00 - 00:42:07:16
Unknown
But it's like this guy has been able to grind out a successful business for him and his employees. And it's like, it's like one near-death event after the next. And his ability to survive is incredible. I had a coaching client one time like it was so generous of them. They were trying to really hype me to an audience.
00:42:07:16 - 00:42:28:20
Unknown
Actually, I was on stage and they were basically saying, who do you know that's had the same model, the same lifestyle for 20 years in residential real estate? You know, their point was like, oh, wait, you know, then you had technology. The tech, you know, dot com. Then you had, you know, kind of some short recessionary times, then you had Covid, then you had the Na settlement, all that.
00:42:28:20 - 00:42:45:19
Unknown
And he's like, who do you know that's still running the business? The same way? And of course, the audience is like nobody. And they were there like, this is the only guy I knows why I'm coaching with him for the rest of my life. That was kind of their pitch. My response to that is, that takes a freakish amount of self-discipline, though, right?
00:42:45:19 - 00:43:10:06
Unknown
And I wouldn't say instinctively, I grew up as like a highly self-disciplined person, but I've learned the consistency is a superpower. Success is on the other side of hard things, and that showing up every day often beats being the smartest guy in the room. I'd like to do both. I'd like to show Jim Rohn says you can make up for in numbers what you lack in skill, and I teach that in the beginning, before you're the most skilled, you just outwork people.
00:43:10:08 - 00:43:27:08
Unknown
But the goal is to work at a rate that you learn so fast that you become the most skilled. And then in markets like this, I'm also going to outwork, but I'm going to bring the skill and the work and the strategy, and now I'm untouchable. Now I cannot be beat. I attract more than anybody else, and I chase when I have to, and I'm not too proud to do it.
00:43:27:10 - 00:43:41:22
Unknown
So now I'm untouchable. Now I've got the Google thing going. I got my friendships and my networks. I got some social media. I might have some paid media, maybe not. Maybe do a little PPC, maybe a little SEO, maybe a little blogging. Maybe I do some live events or some virtual events, some of this stuff sounds, oh, you can do that.
00:43:41:22 - 00:44:02:02
Unknown
You a big team? No, no. Almost anybody can do everything I just said except for maybe paid ads. And you could probably do some Facebook ads or pay per click or being or Google or whatever. Maybe not radio ads or TV ads or whatever. You don't. Most people don't need to do that. My point is this. This is not it is as simple as it sounds.
00:44:02:02 - 00:44:21:07
Unknown
It's not as easy as some people make it look out to be, but nothing is. If you make it a strategy, make it a deliberate part of your business to build systems, build credibility, build celebrity. We call it's authority, celebrity and expertise. So you want the authority to speak. You want the celebrity, meaning people want to be associated with you.
00:44:21:07 - 00:44:39:22
Unknown
We're not talking about the Kardashians, but it's like, oh, I know Chris. Yeah, he's great. That's what we mean. Celebrity. Meaning that people want to be affiliated with you. That feels like a positive to them. When your name comes up, they want to be associated and then expertise, meaning you can actually deliver on it with real expertise, with real specialized knowledge.
00:44:40:00 - 00:45:03:20
Unknown
When you can do that and you're building systems for for that to attract your perfect clients and the ability to be selective, and then the willingness and the ability to chase to top it off, to balance it out, to hit your goals, to counter certain seasons with certain media, certain seasonality, certain price points or rates or whatever, you can be consistent for 20 something years.
00:45:03:20 - 00:45:23:16
Unknown
You can attract people that will be consistent with you, that don't just love you when things are hot and then blame you when things are not. That can be the name of the game in our world. There's a lot of chasing right now. That's my soapbox is like the industry is reverting back to chase, chase, chase is chase.
00:45:23:18 - 00:45:54:19
Unknown
And you know why? Because brokers are broke and the owners are don't know why they do it anymore. And the executives are trying to find a new business model. I gotta well, I probably should. I don't know that that was for public consumption. A very big venture capital backed, very large technology ish company in the industry is making wildly generous offers to top agents in top markets right now because they're trying their 37th business model because they have yet to figure out how to make money in real estate.
00:45:54:21 - 00:46:09:21
Unknown
But they're in the game and they have a bunch of funding to keep trying different things. Don't do that. How many of us have felt like I had to build and then rebuild and then rebuild and then rebuild? And I'm not saying I have everything figured out. We're still learning all the time, but I have not had to do that.
00:46:09:23 - 00:46:30:10
Unknown
I don't want you to have to do that. To Chris's point, how do you have consistent success over that? Well, you work the whole spectrum and you're strategic. You don't just flip and flop when the wind blows and the market changes, you make the adjustments, but you don't lose your strategy. I think the other thing that I think is important that you said there was like, you don't have to be a giant team to implement this.
00:46:30:12 - 00:46:49:02
Unknown
Now, you know, the when I think about like the people that you run into at Real Growth Summit, like it's a lot of like three person teams, you know, five person teams, that kind of thing. And I think there in the audience last year, there was probably only one, you know, super broker and no one knew she was there.
00:46:49:04 - 00:47:14:03
Unknown
Know, she loved it, by the way. The feedback was unreal. She was like, this is not usually where I am, but this is incredible. Yeah, yeah, she's totally incognito. I don't think anyone knew who was sitting there. Yeah, the point, though, is, yeah, most of the people that I love helping, coaching, consulting with, or just sharing our stuff with are the highly productive person that they want to still call themselves solo, but they've got some help.
00:47:14:03 - 00:47:32:18
Unknown
We call that solo with help. Yep. And then the the emerging scaling team, which is two three, four, five, six people. By the way, my team right now is 12 people and we've got six agents. And we'll do a couple hundred deals and a couple million dollars in GCI. And everybody will spend a lot of time with their family and try to stay healthy and enjoy some time away.
00:47:32:18 - 00:47:59:12
Unknown
And that doesn't mean my model's for everybody, but that's that is actually who does this the best. It actually gets a little harder with the mega brokerage, with 200 agents or 86 agents to be able to deploy and implement this across everybody. So it's a big shift for mid-sized does succeeds better with this wins. You know, how hard is it for a brokerage of 240 people to attract business, attract to who?
00:47:59:14 - 00:48:38:01
Unknown
Now you've got 240 little bitty businesses in one under one logo. That's not. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a cohesive brand, to use your word or group or team or person with all the connective technology and people and parts that collectively attract people like, man, y'all are just different. I want that Todd. Just put in words like, you're going to you're going to tell us a lot about, you know, with the way that you're thinking about the marketplace right now, what is happening in the marketplace right now, because I think we're alluding to it.
00:48:38:02 - 00:48:56:08
Unknown
You know, there's a lot of people feeling some things. Put put words on what people are feeling. Two things. The first thing is I call this market the murky middle. I don't call it the middle. It's not a stable market in between seller's market and buyer's market. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a market. We're on the same block.
00:48:56:10 - 00:49:16:16
Unknown
That house is sort of in a buyer's market type of environment, and that one's in a seller's market environment. How is that possible? Well, a real estate is hyper local. B we're in a market that has anxiety riddled the consumer. Confidence is not even measurable. One consumer right now is a great time to buy. I mean, there's not a lot of competition.
00:49:16:16 - 00:49:33:13
Unknown
There's more houses on the market. Sellers are willing to wheel and deal a little bit. I think it's a great time to buy. I'm buying properties right now. Other people are like, it's a terrible time, rates are horrible and nothing is moving like this. It's between your ears. What are you reading? What are you watching? I call this the murky middle.
00:49:33:15 - 00:50:01:08
Unknown
I think there's actually more consensus among agents than there is among consumers. And the consensus is wrong. Consensus doesn't mean it's right. It just means most people agree. Right? So most agents agree that this market sucks and most of them are wrong. Raise your hand if you raise your hand if you think and I can't see anybody's hands, but do you think that you can hit that thumbs up button?
00:50:01:08 - 00:50:24:03
Unknown
It's okay. We'll see it. Comment. Tom, wherever you are. Like something, whatever. Yeah. The point is, there's more demand for expertise in this marketplace than there has been since probably 2009. Well, I, I want to be an expert. I believe I am an expert. That's good for me. It's good for me that someone's like, I was going to use my nephew, but I think we kind of need a professional.
00:50:24:03 - 00:50:46:12
Unknown
Can you guys come out on Thursday? That's a good thing. I've attracted new opportunity because I was differentiated as an expert, not just someone you know from college, not just the agent in the neighborhood, but like, hey, everything's not selling right away. Buying seems a little tricky right now. I think I need guidance, I think I need leadership, I think I need resources.
00:50:46:14 - 00:51:05:17
Unknown
That's a great thing for a full time, fully committed, world class agent. Guess what? You need to be full time, fully committed in world class or you are in trouble. So that's my first commentary, kind of on the state of the market. The second one is be careful who you let lead you, because the leadership in our industry right now is garbage.
00:51:05:19 - 00:51:24:07
Unknown
Not all of it, but a lot of it. And what I was saying before is they're leading us back to a chasing mentality. They are freaking out about profit margins and they're just trying to solve it with numbers. A recruiting battle more agents, more hustle, more grunt. And again, I don't think any of those things are necessarily wrong.
00:51:24:10 - 00:51:40:13
Unknown
Actually, I would like to hire a couple of agents. I would like all of our people to put in a little bit more repetition of work. Those things aren't wrong, but when those things are just said, siloed away from strategy, then we get pushed to like, just bust your tail so I can survive. I don't know if you're going to make it.
00:51:40:18 - 00:52:01:16
Unknown
Let's squeeze the splits, cut the cost, stop investing in value and just grind, grind, grind, grind grind. So again, I think the marketplace is being misled. And the marketplace is very difficult to read because we're in that murky middle where one house, one neighborhood, one zip code is very, very different from the other. The northeast is different than most of the rest of the country.
00:52:01:16 - 00:52:20:05
Unknown
Southwest Florida has got something they haven't had to deal with in quite a long time, and we have coaching clients in these markets that we talk to every weeks. I've got a pretty good feel for these markets. Not I'm not getting my information from when we see national data. National data is about as unreliable as my daughter with crayons writing a market report.
00:52:20:06 - 00:52:43:15
Unknown
The average across 40 or 50 something states, depending on what data you're looking at, is almost useless. Right? So that's I think that's where we are. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's it's a lot of like the micro doesn't match the macro, you know, like the, you know if you're looking at national averages, you know, like that does not represent where you are.
00:52:43:18 - 00:53:02:09
Unknown
No. You know, like my radio show every weekend about that. Well, the New York Times says and it's like, put it down, sir. Step away from the New York Times. Step away from the New York. I mean, step away from the national averages. They're not useful to you. Real estate is hyper local. Your cousin, who's an agent in Illinois, is probably good in Illinois.
00:53:02:10 - 00:53:21:08
Unknown
Maybe not, but probably. But they're sure as heck not good in Florida. Don't. That's not helpful to you. Get the local expert, ideally a local team and I'm not picking on you if you're not a team, but you probably are a team if you have some help, if you got a good lender and a great inspector that can speak into what's happening and what opportunities and what to warn people of.
00:53:21:08 - 00:53:40:13
Unknown
So we just have to be so careful. So I call it the murky middle, and I'm trying to educate on it constantly. Because what do you do with that? Okay. Thanks, Todd. You just told me it's murky and inconsistent, but what do I do with that? Well, I become an expert. I put in the work, I study, I customize my approach for this seller versus that seller.
00:53:40:13 - 00:53:55:10
Unknown
And this buyer versus that buyer. It's not I don't just have one way of doing things, and I certainly don't operate with no way of doing things. We call that surviving deals or agents all over the place that are just surviving transactions, like just trying to get across the finish line, get a check, get the people the keys.
00:53:55:12 - 00:54:10:04
Unknown
But as you start to understand, if I do that, it benefits someone. If I do that, it attracts ideal. If I do that, it attracts not I do. Then we repeat what's working. We stop doing what's not working, we build systems and then all of a sudden we have a business. And then we have to decide, is this business producing the life I want to live?
00:54:10:10 - 00:54:28:10
Unknown
If not, I should make changes. If yes, I should expand that. Not just more scale, but more of the life I want to live. More freedom, more boundaries, more profit, more impact on people. So that's there's the soapbox. I could have kept going, but I'm going to try to be disciplined here. Well, I think we're we're we're in a nice time right now.
00:54:28:12 - 00:54:43:21
Unknown
We'll see what it is after we edit it down. But I think this is, is a good spot to, you know, pause for the moment and obviously you'll be back because, you know, I think you're still Theresa is giving you a run for your money on, like most frequent guest. And, and it's not just because she lives closer to the studio.
00:54:43:21 - 00:55:04:04
Unknown
It's because she's spectacular. I do, if I can one last. Just all call for the conference. You need to come the real geek staff is there real geeks? Tech support is there. But if you're not a real geeks user, you are equally as welcome and you will benefit just as much. Just about every conversation the real Geeks brings to the table is really valuable for you.
00:55:04:04 - 00:55:24:07
Unknown
With any CRM, any technology, and any marketing, obviously they'd love to earn your business, but that's that's not the only point. The point is we want to continue to be an event where you leave, if not almost overwhelmed, just a little overwhelmed by the amount of opportunity, the confidence, the optimism. You have to fall back in love with your business and the industry.
00:55:24:09 - 00:55:39:22
Unknown
This one is focused on specializing in special agent theme. We want you to leave knowing who is your ideal client. How do I reach them? How do I attract them? If I wanted to chase or needed to chase, how do I chase him? How do I make this fun? How do I attract more people to do that? How do I deal with less drama, more profitability?
00:55:39:22 - 00:55:59:18
Unknown
Increase my value to the client? So they do look at me like a James Bond or a Jason Bourne instead of just the agent they liked the most. Right? September 15th and 16th in Dallas, Texas. Real Growth summit.com. If you're going to bring more than four people, you can email us or through the website. You can contact us and we'll work on some team pricing for you.
00:55:59:20 - 00:56:19:19
Unknown
And we've got some incredible sponsors. Real geeks is our headline sponsor. We'll interview CEO and leadership on stage, find out what's cooking, what's new, how they view the industry in the future, and then we have a ton of fun together as well. So don't miss this if you've been before. Make sure you come back. If you've never been, this is one you really, really want to check out.
00:56:19:19 - 00:56:40:14
Unknown
September 15th and 16th in Dallas real Growth summit.com is awesome. Todd. Thanks as always everyone you know go down. There'll be links down below in the in the description. If you're watching this, wherever you're watching this you know give us a like we read all the comments. So if you leave a comment on Facebook, leave a comment on YouTube, you know, we we will go read it.
00:56:40:16 - 00:56:56:01
Unknown
And that definitely helps us inform, what we do next on next episodes. So yeah. Thanks everyone. And, we'll catch you next time.