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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
On today's episode, you'll hear from the most recognizable real estate resource for the south side of Chicago. This is the be a marketer podcast, real estate edition.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer.
Dave Charest:And at Constant Contact, we're here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. As you might have noticed, today's episode is actually gonna be a little bit different. But, hey, before you go going crazy, it's gonna be alright because Kelsi Carter is still here. Right, Kelsi?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And the crowd goes wild.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yes. Kelsi Carter is here and happy to be here. Hi, Dave.
Dave Charest:Hello, Kelsi. What are you gonna tell us about today's episode?
Stephanie Alfonso:Well, today's episode is actually the first in a limited series that we're dedicating to the real estate industry. You may remember from episode 72 when we were joined by Stephanie Alfonso, our senior director of vertical innovation at Constant Contact. Well, we're excited to say that she's back for these episodes.
Dave Charest:Yes. Good old episode 72. Now not only is Steph gonna be back to bring her real estate expertise, of course, to the show, but she's also lined up some really great conversations with some big names in the industry. So let's say hello to Steph. Steph, are you out there?
Stephanie Alfonso:I am here. Hey, guys. So excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you.
Stephanie Alfonso:I am so stoked just for all the guests that we are gonna be bringing to this series, especially today.
Dave Charest:Yeah. This is really cool. Now if you're listening and you're saying, hey. I'm not in the real estate industry. I'm gonna skip this one.
Dave Charest:Well, I'm gonna tell you right now, and we're all nodding our head in agreement here that this is gonna be a mistake if you skip this one because there are so many business and marketing lessons in this episode that really can be applied to any business. Steph, I wanna give you the honor of introducing our next guest here today.
Stephanie Alfonso:Oh, for sure. And in honor, it certainly is Marquis Lemons Ryle. She is my goodness. So many things. She is a real estate keynote speaker.
Stephanie Alfonso:She is a podcast host. She is a chief artificial intelligence officer at Remarkable LLC amongst many other things. She truly is a rock star, and it was indeed an honor to be able to sit with her. She is somebody whose career I personally have admired for many, many years and just such a force in the real estate industry. Deep roots spanning generations, which we're gonna hear about.
Stephanie Alfonso:And, just, yeah, certainly has become a pillar in the space. She brings decades of experience and just has an inspiring perspective on achieving business success. And, honestly, I think you guys will both agree. Her humor is infectious, So she's just somebody that you just want to listen to and conversate with forever and ever. So it makes it no surprise that she is a sought after global speaker.
Dave Charest:Yeah. This really was a a fantastic conversation that, I mean, to be honest, just went by way too fast. And, we covered some pretty interesting things that I know you're not gonna wanna miss. Right? We talked about the one thing holding real estate agents back.
Dave Charest:We talked about how good agents become great agents. And she also brings up something she's actually never said publicly before. So if you're a broker giving leads to new agents, you're gonna want to pay attention to this episode. Now as I mentioned, there's lots to love about this conversation with Marquis. You can tell she really approaches business from this entrepreneurial mindset, something that's, well, as we'll find out, in her blood.
Dave Charest:Let's go to Marquis.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:I'm a proud Chicago 5th generation entrepreneur who birthed a 6th generation entrepreneur. I was raised to be an entrepreneur. My family celebrated 70 years of being in business this year. I went to college and earned a undergrad degree in hospitality management and immediately went to grad school and earned a MBA degree in marketing. I started teaching on a collegiate level at the age of 25, teaching hospitality management courses, and quickly realized that I was too young and did not have enough experience to be in the classroom.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It was a lot of theory, and I don't teach theory. I like to I don't think you should tell people to do something you haven't personally done. And so I told myself I was gonna go get me some real experience, and I would come back to the classroom at the age of 40. Well, I went through a bitter lawsuit with my family, came into the world of real estate as a loan originator. I wanted to feel like a stay at home mom and earn an above average income, and decided to pivot from the lending side of business to leverage my real estate broker's license because I would earn more money per transaction.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So it was a true business decision. And within 3 years, I wanted to volunteer more and serve on boards, and my mentor, Frank Williams told me, he said, look here baby down, no one ever forgets the name of the person standing at the front of the room. I believe that you should become a licensed, pre licensed, and continuing education instructor. So in 2006, I became a licensed pre licensed instructor and continuing education instructor in the state of Illinois. And because I had already started to accumulate a lot of designations and certifications, I then start teaching those designations and certifications.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So 2006, I went from never standing in front of a real estate classroom but having teaching experience to teaching designations and certifications, and I realized that if I changed my title and learned another skill set I could charge more. And so it was a licensed instructor, then I was a trainer, and then I was a speaker, and then I realized if you become very good at storytelling, you can be a keynote speaker, which actually was always my sweet spot. So today, I'm a global keynote speaker in the world of real estate, but I'm also a prop tech investor. I'm a author 30 time published actually, I am the publisher. So I've published 30 publications in which I am the author, and I believe in repurposing my content.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So I'm going to suck every ounce of
Stephanie Alfonso:juice
Marki Lemons Ryhal:out of everything that I create, but I'm gonna create it in video because video is the only form of content that you can repurpose without recreating. That's kinda how we're here. Yeah.
Stephanie Alfonso:Oh my goodness. It's so inspiring, and I feel like it can go in so many directions. In one of the videos that I watched of yours, Marquis, you said that your grandfather told you that competition is healthy for business. Yes. Give it all away.
Stephanie Alfonso:Mhmm. And, I'd love to hear you just talk about how you implemented that into your life. Just kind of expand on that a little bit because I I loved because I've seen you on stage and I've watched your videos and I'm in the real estate world and I've always kind of looked up to you and and the way that you teach. Going back to how it started, how has what your grandfather said, how has that impacted your business model? A little
Marki Lemons Ryhal:bit more background about my grandfather. So my grandfather came from Mississippi with nothing. One pair of shoes with holes in them, and he did not graduate from 8th grade. However, him and 3 of his brothers all died self made millionaires independent, but 3 were from the barbecue business and one worked at UPS and made investments in stock before they went public. So it kinda give you the idea.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Mhmm. And so understanding that this man had the capability to provide for his children, his grandchildren, he retired my grandmother. Mhmm. I understood and I remember standing at his cash register saying my granddaddy make more money than the Goldblatt Brothers because he had more money in his cash register than Goldblatt's had in theirs when I was looking in their cash register, right? So he tells me this story and I knew at the time that, well, Famous Dave's Barbecue, there's a picture of Lamb's Barbecue on their wall, we're a part of their decor because when Dave wanted to open Famous Dave's, he came to Lamb's Barbecue, and there are a lot of other barbecue restaurants in the city of Chicago that when they wanted to go into the barbecue business, they went and had a talk with James Lemons.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And so my grandfather showed me, he taught people how to trim meat, how to make their barbecue sauce, he put moo and oink which is now they're no longer in business, but a famous meat establishment here in the city of Chicago, he was their first customer until the day they closed their doors. So a lady came to me and asked me about the barbecue business and I didn't know if I should tell her about it, and I called my granddaddy and he said he said to me, Marquee, competition is healthy for business, give it all away. It makes you recreate yourself continuously. So in the world of real estate, I am willing to share anything about how I make money, how I not only repurpose my video content, but essentially how I even repurpose my income. And for me, people probably gonna be mad about this statement.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:People where being in business for 50, 60 years, 80 can barely walk as a badge, that's not a badge to me. No, I'm being honest, right? I have a retirement date in mind, that means I have to be a good steward of my money. And in being a good steward of my money, what do you do with all this income that you have for real estate and how do you repurpose that income? And so I'm willing to share with people not only the strategies that I use because I'm viewed as being innovative and I am innovative, right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:How being innovative puts you at a running start over your competition to create systems for longevity? So I'm willing to share all of that. What I've noticed is that only 10% of the people will take it and implement, and then people wanna shortcut the system. Right? When I listen to what people tell me to do, this is how I have these blockbusters is what I would call them, things that a lot of other people don't obtain in the shortest amount of time.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It's because someone told me how to do it, and I did it exactly the way they told me to do it. So you can give it away, doesn't mean they're gonna implement it, and it doesn't mean that they're not gonna try to take shortcuts.
Dave Charest:Right. I was just gonna say, I mean, I think that's the big thing that you always find. Right? Is that, you know, I kinda came up in, like, content marketing. Right?
Dave Charest:The idea was, like, yeah. Give value. Let people know. Don't just give them like, just don't lead them to the thing, but actually give them the stuff. And everybody's like, well, I don't wanna give it all away.
Dave Charest:And the reality is, to your point, most people aren't gonna do anything with it. Right? They're still gonna enjoy it. They're gonna like the content. They're gonna share it.
Dave Charest:They're gonna do those things. But whether or not they actually take action and I think that's the end of the day, the thing that separates the people at the top from the 2 people at the bottom, right, is actually taking that action.
Stephanie Alfonso:It makes a whole lot of sense when we think about the real estate industry and just kind of the natural inclination of real estate agents. 20% of the agents are doing all the business, and that's a problem. Well, maybe to not agents. To other agents, it's like, alright, fine. I'll do the business.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right? But it does hurt the industry, you know, when we think about how there's a decline of real estate agents and on all of that going on. But and I don't wanna get ahead of ourselves, but that's something I do wanna discuss is you're putting it out there. You're saying, hey, listen, this is how I built my success. This is what will help you to be successful.
Stephanie Alfonso:And yet you're saying that only about 10% of agents are actually mimicking that or taking that wisdom and that knowledge and actually implementing it When it comes to marketing, because that's so much of what you talk about, Marquis, and how you coach and what you say to do, and you speak very plainly. You're like, listen. If you want this to happen, you need to do this, this, and this. Have a good day. And I love that.
Stephanie Alfonso:What is it that's holding agents back? Why do they struggle with their marketing? Why, in today's age, where showcasing their value is more important than ever before?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Why aren't they doing it? What's the struggle here? So I wanna read something to you before I answer your question, and it comes back to kinda giving it all away. So I meet a young gentleman at an event, and this is the text that I got from him yesterday. Thank you for the changes you suggested I make to my pitch after Chicago to show that my software isn't just for us.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And to me, the angle was that it was focusing just on being black. Right? He said, I did so and won a $125,000 last Friday. K. Now I never met this gentleman a day before in my life, okay, but I thought that my marketing skills would help him to reposition for the purpose of winning pitch battles because everyone needs to see themselves in the pitch battle, not just Black folks, right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And I probably could say it in a way as a Black woman that no one else could say it, right? But if we come back to what is holding real estate professionals back, I'm gonna tell you first an unrealistic expectation and here's why I say it's unrealistic. They don't understand being an entrepreneur. They watched HGTV, they don't understand, no for real, they don't understand sales and marketing, the pre licensed real estate curriculum does not teach you how to sell real estate. So they have to be an entrepreneur.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:There's an entrepreneurial mindset that must come from this. And to me, any new licensee who asks their broker owner for leads already does not understand their position here. That 10% is not waiting on their broker to provide them leads. Either they are attracting those leads or they're buying their own leads because they understand what their book of business is, which might be different from their broker. Right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So they got a business plan and they work in that business plan. So not only do they not realize they're entrepreneurs and they're responsible for their own business and they are fiduciaries, okay, to every person they work for regardless of the brokers they align with, there is a lack of consistency. We are inconsistent, but that 10% is consistent. They live by a schedule. They have, as my son would say, being successful in real estate is doing boring things consistently.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It is boring, okay, but we have to consistently do boring things. And when I talk about consistency, my son is a licensed real estate broker who took until December 19, 2023 to become consistent, but let me tell you what being consistent for essentially 10 months can do for your business. My son right now is number 1 in units sold in our office, and did 6 figures in 6 months once he decided to become consistent. And so I'm looking at agents. In in our brokerage, I'm the number 3 attractor.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:I'm seeing what their numbers are, and I can tell you a lack of consistency is your business killer.
Stephanie Alfonso:So it's interesting when you talk about if an agent is asking their broker for leads right off the bat. That's a red flag. So kinda flipping it a little bit. When you're speaking to an audience of brokers, where does that lead your conversation as far as what they should be doing for recruitment and retention? Because that's a big deal.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Let's come back to this whole conversation. Right? Mhmm. 1, I believe that every broker should do lead generation because I believe that lead generation is a retention tool. Let me be clear.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Here's the problem with the new agent. Okay? And I've never publicly said this, so this is gonna be breaking news here with you. Mhmm. Love it.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Why? Why as a broker would I ever invest in lead generation and give the lead to the least likely person to close it in the entire office? The new agent doesn't know bupkis about a real estate transaction. So I'm gonna use my hard earned dollars as a company, attract the leads, and not give it to the most likely person to close, then that means I'm a dumb business owner. It means I'm wasting my money.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Okay? So, no, I'm not giving the new agent, not a lead of my I've never referred a lead, a highly valuable lead to a new licensee with the exception, let me be clear, of my own son that I had to hand walk through the deal. So I didn't give him that lead as a real estate professional. I gave him that lead as his mother. There's a difference.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:K? And so unless you're my son that I made a promise to when he was 7 that I will support him in his real estate endeavors because he told me this is what he was gonna do, then I'm not giving you that means that I'm a dumb business owner. And so everybody wants these leads, and what people don't understand, it is not advantageous to any broker to give the new licensee the lead. They're the least likely person who will cross the finish line and also the better the leads you give, the better the leads you receive because they're gonna give you feedback and you won't get another referral. And so it's kinda anti and no one is telling, you know, you come here.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Yeah. I got leads for you. Why would I spend money on leads and give them to you? I'm just not gonna do that.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right. Right. No. It's important. And and a lot of that's all that mindset, the broker mindset, the agent mindset, I mean, how are we really recrafting that in the industry?
Stephanie Alfonso:Because it's almost crazy the way so many are doing it.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Well, I'm a tell you this is also crazy. So let's talk about compensation, and it's only because I got this beautiful screenshot that when I tell you it was a gut punch to me when I read this, what this agent stated is it calls steering and it allowed everyone to collect the same amount regardless of experience, skill, or knowledge. Right? So imagine when we did have cooperating compensation, you could come in day 1 with 0 experience, and because we saw the cooperate and compensation, you can make the same amount off of the deal as someone who has 5 decades and 1,000,000,000 of dollars in sales experience. Make that make sense?
Stephanie Alfonso:Make sense.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? And so I'm not giving you the lead because you shouldn't make the most amount of money because you don't have any tenure. You don't know where the forms are in the MLS. You don't know about the addendums. I should not do that.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:But as a broker, and I need to point this out, we have 253 agents. The number 1, number 2, number 4, and number 6, I'm responsible for being at the company. Why? Because I'm preaching this lead generation. You are an entrepreneur.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:You need to have landing pages, sales funnels, follow-up emails in place for your company if you wanna continue to eat. And the person who has the most leads can create the most streams of viable income. It don't have to be one stream because I took a database and I've created multiple streams of income. One of those streams of income, at the time, let's say my database was about 13,000 people, I turned around, created a new product, and earned a $123,000 in less than 14 days because I had a customer relationship management system and I was nurturing leads. That was in addition to.
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. In the market, that's what it comes down to. Right? When we think about it, it's one of the things that I'm always teaching is, listen. Your mission is to build your list.
Stephanie Alfonso:That's your job is to get out there and build your list with as many streams as possible. Right? Build it and then nurture it. Build it and then nurture it. That's it.
Stephanie Alfonso:That's your job. Now we can break it down into how we're going to do that. And that's where I come in. Right? Teaching marketing, you know, skills and strategies and all of that.
Stephanie Alfonso:And, yes, sometimes it's the most simple things that are the most effective. You send a weekly newsletter once a week. You have follow-up emails. You have SMS campaigns, and you're working on filling your list as many as many ways as possible. So we're completely aligned on that.
Stephanie Alfonso:And, you know, I think that if we're thinking about who your target audience is, Marquis, who are the people or what kind of agent is if you were to fill an auditorium right now and you were like, this is my one chance to make the most impact on this industry, who would be in that audience?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:That's an interesting question. I'm gonna say right now, I would want brokers. Mhmm. Because the real estate industry has shifted so much and because real estate is a local business, I have the opportunity to travel 100 nights out of the calendar year. So I'm not just seeing what happens in Chicago, I'm actually going all across the world really, and I'm bringing that information back to our brokerage which is why we're the number one franchise in our system, right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And so it is the ability to have brokers there where I'm sharing the overall best practices globally because some of the things that I've even said on this podcast, people don't have that same mindset. Right? And my mindset, I am clear, is different, but it's because I was born and raised as an entrepreneur, and I treat real estate as a business. But it's not just how I was raised, it's also because I've gotten out of my own way and I'm innovative. So if you think about how is a mid aged overweight woman, a prop tech investor, and is an AI specialist, Right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:That defies the norm because people think I'm a mid aged woman when I walk in, and I can see how they turn their back and pivot their conversation. And then they realize, oh, wait a minute. She might be someone, and then they turn to me. Like, I I physically see the change in the room. Okay?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So people can't tell me it don't exist because I see it every time. Right? They I've come in, I'm short, dark, and round. Right? So now only am I mid aged, right, overweight black woman.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? I'm discounted walking in the door and I tell everybody it's the discount that makes me exceed all the expectations.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right. Right. You're like, mhmm.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Watch it. Yeah. She 50 something. She got kids. I'd look I'm the same age as her oldest child.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? They do all of that. And then I started talking about, well, because we're doing this, we increased our income by 283% year over year, and they're like, well, how you do that? And well, this is how we do it, right? So never I would say that, never discount the person, right, but I would have brokers there, and I would focus on entrepreneurship.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And when I focus on entrepreneurship, it's not just entrepreneurship. Because I was a pre licensed instructor for 12 years. I understand licensing rules, regulations, fair housing, and the code of ethics. A lot of people do not adhere to the rules, which then means they'll come up with something innovative that will put them out of business. It can be innovative, but it needs to be ethical.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And a lot of people, since the NAR settlement agreement, have come up with a non ethical, non DOJ abiding concepts. Yeah. I can't do that. Yeah.
Stephanie Alfonso:And that's where some people get hesitant of being innovative. Right? They get nervous. Well, if if I use this content creator, is it gonna abide by the fair housing laws when it's doing my listing description or this or that, or, you know, you get paralysis by analysis. So how do you teach people to overcome that?
Stephanie Alfonso:You know, I'm afraid of AI. I hear it all the time. I teach a class called AI magic showing, you know, ages, how you can be stronger, faster, and, and multiply yourself if you just leverage these simple tools. Cause we have to now. Right?
Stephanie Alfonso:In order for us to be able to cover all those bases. How do you get people to get over that fear and how do you encourage those in the industry on which avenues to use AI if they have a choice? Right? A lot of times they don't realize they're using it. But if they're going to say, I need help with my marketing, how do you guide them?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Well, the number one thing is everybody's using AI, period. We've been AI ed for at least a decade now and consistently for the past 24 months, period. So you have a choice, either you're gonna aid other people in making money or you're gonna leverage the twos to make money in your business. When I think about how people become paralyzed, I wanna go back to the Realtors Code of Ethics article 11. You're supposed to be competent.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:How are you competent when you don't understand technology when 90% of content consumed is gonna be from a mobile device in the palm of your hand? And so I hear a lot of excuses all the time. When this comes to being ethical and lawful, right, ignorance is no excuse for the law. Or let's go back to when I the day I got my license and I actually read the paperwork, it told me that I was responsible for keeping up with the changes to the rules and the regulations. That means that in the midst of everything, it is my responsibility to keep up with these rules.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So when people tell me that they don't wanna use it and they have all of these myths, it means that they're not competent and they haven't kept up with the changes to the rules and the regulations, but it also lets me know that they've positioned themselves to make the least amount of money over time. See, I wanna make the most amount of money in the least amount of time, but if you're not using these tools, you're responsible for positioning yourself to make the least amount of money over time.
Stephanie Alfonso:Wow. Yep. You did it to yourself. That's right. That's right.
Stephanie Alfonso:Again, I love the way you put things just so plainly. Right? And it's almost a lot to take in sometimes because when you're face to face with agents all the time, it's like you see their struggles and you understand it, but you just wanna shake them sometimes and go like, hold on. Listen. This is not the end of the world.
Stephanie Alfonso:Go meet yourself a commercial agent friend and go have a sit down. Right?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Yeah. And I preached that this past weekend. I know you did. There are agents who avoid me because I am the no excuse zone. Like, I I will listen, but it's only so many excuses.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:I'm not the person to talk to if you're coming from excuses because, you know, they'll say, well, you're married. Yeah. But I was a single unwedded parent who took her baby daddy off of child support for 9 years. So me being married, I was killing it without a husband. Okay.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:People say, but you got this. Yeah, I do have that, but, well you have this, but, no, let me explain something to you. It was a struggle. I financially have lost everything 2 times, went through a bitter lawsuit with my family, did take my son's father off of child support, the man has never contributed more than $5,000 to a total 28 year old Ben, and I sent them to college. You see what I'm saying?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So bypass me with the excuses. I had to make a sacrifice. And I'm still often ridiculed because I am gonna spend a 100 nights per year on the road, and I do leave a husband and a 17 year old. That 17 year old though, National Honor Society straight a student, and he didn't even have to be that way because that's not a mandate for me for you to be a straight a student. I want you to be a good person.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? That's just who he is. Okay? And so I think that I'm happily married. Don't know any other way to be.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? But I get to travel. I get to focus on my business, but my husband understood that when he married me.
Dave Charest:I'm curious as to so your point about, like, multiple income streams. Right? I think particularly when you're first getting started, it's easy to just really focus on, like, the very narrow. Okay. I need to sell houses, whatever it is.
Dave Charest:And so you're focused there, and you're not really thinking of the bigger picture and thinking of, like, okay. There are other things that I can do to bring in income as well that kind of revolve around that. And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, particularly if you keep it focused on maybe that new the new agent. Right? Like, how should they be attacking this to think more holistically and think about how they do make more money over time and not just rely on that one thing?
Dave Charest:Does that make sense?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Yeah. And I wanna give you an example to tie this in.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:In the midst of the NAR settlement agreement, What I'm telling real estate agents to do now is focus on all sources of income to infuse into the real estate transaction. That means we have gift funds, we have grants, we have down payment assistance, we have EAH which is an acronym for employer assisted housing programs, we have seller contributions to closing costs. Now everybody's focused on number 5, but it's for others. Right? So when I think about my real estate business, I'm thinking in the same identical way.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:If I got this one deal, how many streams of income can I extract from this one thing? Right? So we got 5 and everybody focus. Don't number 5. No.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It was 4 other ways before that. So an example would be because we're doing a podcast. In 2019, I started Social Selling Made Simple. I then took that podcast and repurposed it into The Modern Real Estate Professional, that was my first international best selling book. Because I wrote The Modern Real Estate Professional's Guide to Success, then I was asked to come in on numerous other books like The Secrets of Top Real Estate Agents, which essentially was buyhomes.com before they were acquired and some other books, Latino Women in Real Estate.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So I was able to then come in as essentially a guest author, write the ford for other publications. But in that first book, I learned how to publish. So now I have 30 publications and 6 are international bestsellers, and the 6 are all derived from podcast episodes. Okay? Because I'm an international best selling author, I was able to increase my speaking income within the 1st 30 days, was able to increase it by 40%.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Now it's very possible I wasn't charging enough in the first place. Okay? So I'm taking that podcast to write these books, which is a standalone stream of income. It's actually my 4th stream of income. And so for me, when I'm talking to real estate agents, I need them to understand, and this is something that is being talked about by every national franchise, how are you diversifying your income?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:K. I actually am one of few agents who still profit share at another at a company that I get and get residual incomes from another company. My residual incomes are paid directly to my corporation that are then routed directly to my SEP IRA. So I'm not taxed on this residual income because it's passing through my company to fund my self employment pension plan. So everything that I look at, when I told you I wanna extract from it, I want to extract as much as humanly possible.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So how many ways can you leverage your real estate license? Here's a example. Licensed in Illinois and I was licensed as a broker in Indiana. I let my Indiana broker's license go because every deal I had ever done in Indiana was based on a referral. So my number one rule right now is do not get a second state broker's license anywhere because I don't really wanna learn what street divides the values of the community and it's going to pull my attention from everything else that I'm doing.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So I'm not getting an additional state license. I'm only going to do referrals while I focus my attention on my business.
Stephanie Alfonso:That's good advice, and it's advice you don't hear very often.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Oh, you don't hear it. And here's when I practice that. I have lipedema, which is a, fat disorder. So I tell people this is no ordinary fat. This is extraordinary fat.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:With me saying that You look great
Stephanie Alfonso:and you look healthy. You look amazing.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And let me say this, and I am all those things, but I tell people I'm small in the waist, baby, but wide in these hips and thighs. Okay? So, I decided that I was gonna have surgery. Surgery was very expensive. Now I could have taken the time to understand all of the rules and regulations around insurance.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:This is what I decided to do. Double down on my business, earn the skills and the money, pay for the surgery out of pocket, don't worry about if you get reimbursed because you'll be able to take that skill set to make more money in the future. Me being a lipedema expert and how to get refunded on the insurance is not my book of business and I didn't want it to become my book of business. And so I took the time to acquire new skills that would serve my business for years to come and paid for the surgery. Didn't I get the reimbursement I was supposed to get and told myself I wasn't gonna be mad because I had the skill set that can make me more money.
Stephanie Alfonso:Wow. Okay. So you are dynamic. You are eccentric. You walk into a room.
Stephanie Alfonso:I know you're there. You even have a voice that's, like, recognizable. Okay? Like, I'll be, like, in a lobby, and I'll be like, oh, Marquis speaking. Like, you you just know.
Stephanie Alfonso:But, obviously, you were created for this, and you've worked really hard, obviously, to back up the natural pizzazz that you have. Mhmm.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And
Stephanie Alfonso:I think that's just that's wisdom in life. Right? Is to take the natural pizzazz that you have and optimize it, which I think optimization is probably your middle name in every aspect of your life. But what do you say to the thousands and thousands of agents that are listening to this podcast that are saying, you know what? I'm a Constant Contact customer.
Stephanie Alfonso:You know, Constant Contact. They are known for helping a small stand tall. I am a small business. I do have the entrepreneurial spirit, but video, really uncomfortable with it. You know, maybe they're brilliant and they're just struggling with the whole aspect of the marketing component, which is like 99% of what we're doing in the industry.
Stephanie Alfonso:How do you help somebody like that? They're saying, like, video is not even their thing. Like, do you encourage them to make video their thing or do you help them to find their thing and double down on?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:No. I think everybody should create video content, period. I mean Okay. The numbers if you want the biggest bang for your buck in the least amount of time. And we live in a world today of artificial intelligence, so there's no excuse for not having video content when you can do faceless videos and you can do deep dubs and deep fakes.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So once again, this is the no excuse zone, but let me tell you about this 6th generation entrepreneur. I told you Skyler wasn't doing anything. He didn't become consistent until December 13, 2023. He posted his 1st viral Instagram video. If we were to go over to his page right now and look at 60 videos, I would tell you that only 6 have his face in it.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So 90% of his content does not have his face nor does it have his voice. But since December 19, 2023, he's added over 1300 contacts to his customer relationship management system. He has an email sequence. I got an email from him yesterday with what I thought was a genius business strategy that he sent to everybody inside of his CRM. And so what I am clear about when I look at our 253 agents and I look at number 1, number 2, number 4, and number 6, they create video content.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:That's all I can say. So I'm pointing out, and here's what's crazy about them, and they all focus on down payment assistance programs, which is something that a lot of agents won't do. Do what other people don't do, but I will say this, I realized, 2015, so about a decade ago, that I could not compete at that time with the Zillow and the Homes.coms of the world, not when it comes to ad spend. No real estate agent can. K?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:What am I going to do that they don't do well? How am I gonna differentiate myself? The reason that my face and my voice are well recognized on the south side of the city of Chicago is because I've created more video content than any other agent on the south side of the city of Chicago, period. I'm gonna venture to say I'm the most recognized, okay, Because it's not just my face. You create video, it's your audio.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It's your audio to text transcription. So they reading it, they hearing it, they seeing it. Okay? And video is the only form of content that you can do that with, but I did it because I understood who I couldn't compete with. And I know that Zillow and homes.com don't have 2 feet down on the ground creating video content every single day.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Not on these south side streets they don't.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So what are you gonna do that's different? How are you an entrepreneur and everything you do is like what somebody else does or you do the bare minimum?
Stephanie Alfonso:It's so true. I mean, it really comes back down to having the mindset of a business owner. Right? Business owners. I've had people say to me before, you know, like, oh, you're you know, with Constant Contact, you guys are for small business.
Stephanie Alfonso:I never realized you were for real estate. And it kinda makes you chuckle.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Landing look. Email marketing and landing pages. I'm a say it again. In less than and I even got the picture, so I wanna get these dates for you. $123,000 because I have a customer relationship management system that actually changed everything on that platform now, we will end this year with an additional $1,000,000 in income, an additional $200,000 per year because I had a customer relationship management system with an email list.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And that's not my number one source of income.
Stephanie Alfonso:It's all about, are you nurturing your list? Are you intently growing it? And are you nurturing it? Are you an email influencer? Are you sending out SMS campaigns?
Stephanie Alfonso:Well, I have a whole class on that right now, Marky. SMS marketing. What does that mean? Oh, I do SMS marketing. I send texts to my clients.
Stephanie Alfonso:No, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on one second. This is the missing piece to your marketing strategy, right? The trifecta. We've got email, we've got social media, and we have SMS marketing.
Stephanie Alfonso:We just won the, Inman award for best use of AI in a marketing platform. Right? Right. It raised roof for us. But the thing that's amazing, what I love about it, and when we submitted this, because I've been in the industry and working for other tech companies and I know what agents are using or what they're not using or what they're spending so much money on and it's not working for them, it really come down to something very simple.
Stephanie Alfonso:Constant Contact has really done a great job to say, what is the most important thing for an entrepreneur and how can we take most of it off of their plate and do it for them? Right? Which is where AI comes in. So, of course, you know, our platform, if an agent's having an open house, you go ahead and put the details of the open house and it'll literally create the marketing the emails, the landing pages, the social media promotion, the follow-up campaigns, the SMS for those who are opted in the whole thing. And then as the business owner, as the CEO of your company, you go through and you go, yep, well, that looks great.
Stephanie Alfonso:Go. Done. Right? It's off my plate. If you are doing the fundamental things that if you just said, hey.
Stephanie Alfonso:Come to my email class or come to my text class, people will be like, well, that doesn't sound very intriguing. But those are the fundamental things that working together are gonna cause the fire in your business is what is going to scale you. And so so much of the things you talk about, I'm like, man, if people would just take those nuggets.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Thinking about Constant Contact. Right? The landing page. My son can tell you his opt in time, they're coming at 2 am, 3 am, so when you're asleep, and you then fire that email off to them, right, or the SMS, right, and you're gonna get substantially more engagement on your SMS than you're going to get on your email, but you wanna have these systems because when people talk about mailbox money or money in your sleep, if you don't have this, you're not gonna ever create that. I like to get up and have more money in my every morning I get up, I have more money in my bank account.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Right? It's a joy, but you have to build it. It's not gonna build itself. No one's gonna build it for you because you have infused AI. You've made it as easy as humanly possible for someone to build a business.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It doesn't get any easier than right now in this moment because of artificial intelligence and its ability to repurpose and automate what are some very hard tedious task. If I I didn't even have I had a spreadsheet back in the day. Right? And so now is that time, right, for them to set that up. I was very shocked with the percentage of licensed real estate professionals that use Constant Contact, but Constant Contact is so easy to use and everyone knows it as the email marketing, but you all have landing pages.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:You need landing pages. Forget oh, I probably shouldn't say this. Forget your tired website that you have not updated. A landing page is what you need, that is what is going to generate the leads. I don't know how many times to preach this, but last year I added 15,000 contacts and it was because of a landing page, not because of the website.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:I got a website. And, look, my landing pages are infused in my website, but it's that landing page that made it ring 15,000 new leads.
Stephanie Alfonso:It goes back to there's so many fundamentals we're not doing, but I think that having people like you in the industry, just being that voice, not only, you know, are you inspiring folks to say like, hey, I didn't start here. I had my struggles, but I've learned how to maximize the things that are gonna actually make a difference. And to your point, I think that is why we have so many agents that are using Constant Contact. Listen. When I came to the company, I was shocked.
Stephanie Alfonso:I had no idea. And then I go to conferences now and everyone's like, woah. Constant Contact's showing up. Since when did you guys become a real estate tech platform? And it's kind of like we've always been here.
Stephanie Alfonso:You know, of course, we're putting energy behind that because we really feel like we're in a moment right now to really step that up. And, you know, what's really cool and I wanna I know I'm overtaken, and I want Dave to be able to chime in as we start to wrap up. But I've been in the space to where, you know, back in the day, curated content was the thing. It was like all these companies were creating this done for you content. And, honestly, 10 years ago, I would even teach it.
Stephanie Alfonso:Like, listen. As long as you're on social media, that's what matters. Top of mind marketing. Sure. The article is about 3 easy steps to changing your cat litter, but it's fine because at least you're on social media.
Stephanie Alfonso:And that was enough for the moment. Well, then, of course, it got to the point where, you know, algorithms change. And if you're posting about 3 easy steps to changing your cat litter, no one's liking or sharing that. And the algorithms basically are like, okay, you don't exist. So now agents have to be authentic.
Stephanie Alfonso:So scary. Right? Oh my gosh. Now we have to be authentic. I don't have time to be authentic, even though I'm selling my brand.
Stephanie Alfonso:I am my business. So it became a struggle and less and less agents were being active on social media with any type of authentic contact. Well, now enter AI. And AI is now giving agents the ability to still be able to produce authentic, more organic, hyperlocal content. You know what I mean?
Stephanie Alfonso:Like, so whenever I'm with you, like, no more excuses when people say, oh my gosh, Tech is so complex now. It's making the industry harder. No. No. No.
Stephanie Alfonso:No. It has never been easier for you to put your marketing hat on. 90% of your marketing can be automated. You know that.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Yes. Then today.
Stephanie Alfonso:That's right.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:It is gonna get easier. That's right. This is the easiest day Yes. In my 54 years of living to use technology.
Stephanie Alfonso:That's right. And, hey, if the average realtor in the US is a 56 year old woman, this is the best day of our lives.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:And they are.
Dave Charest:I'm hoping you can maybe walk us through something here.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Okay.
Dave Charest:Because I think you mentioned some interesting things. Right? Video, of course, you've mentioned landing pages, you've mentioned CRM, you've mentioned kind of all the pieces in there. For someone listening, what does that process look like? Right?
Dave Charest:Because you're mentioning all the tools, but how do you put it all together to then have money come out the other end? What does that look like?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:So I'm gonna do a call to action for my son, Skyler Lemons. Skyler Lemons Real Estate over on Instagram. Skyler's going to post a vertical video. Okay? He's gonna have some great music and sometimes it will have his voice, sometimes it will not.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:He's gonna use a third party tool called ManiChat. ManyChat is gonna respond and then send that person a DM, linking them to his website. What we know is that for every 3,000 views he receives, he gets a lead. When they click on that link in their DM, it's taken them over to the landing page where they can subscribe to his down payment grant list, or they can schedule a $25,000 grant qualifying call. It's a consultation.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:K? And so he took the video demonstrating you can own this house for $1600 per month. He set the automation up. They come over to his landing page. They're inside of his CRM once they give their email, first name, and last name, and now I wanna say he probably has a 12 part email follow-up system, and once a month, he sends a SMS message.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:They all have additional call to actions. Every last one of those emails demonstrates the ability of leveraging down payment assistance. One of them is a lady who earned 6 figures, interest rate I wanna say 6.5, and she walked away from the closing table with over $3,100 So he's given them these emails that they could see themselves and the possibilities of coming to the closing table with little to no money but acquire homeownership. Thank you. That's the process.
Dave Charest:I love it. I love it. I because I think that's the missing piece oftentimes. Right? Because, like, it's very easy.
Dave Charest:Particularly, I think, with social too because you get into the sense of it's easy to do things, but you have to actually do do things that move people forward versus just kinda taking the action. So I love that. Thank you for explaining that. If there was one thing you were starting today, what's the first thing you would do?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:I'll create a video.
Dave Charest:I I walked right into that one, didn't I?
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Oh, yes. I did. I would create a video. Come on. Let me tell you what.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:No. Actually, one of my publications, 6 figures in 12 months, I think that every person should reach strategically out to 8 people by 8 AM based on their Ford, their family, their occupation, their recreation, and their dreams with the purpose of getting them into their CRM and being able to reach out to them. So if I was coming into the business today, I'm gonna go to my social platform of choice where my client hangs out, and I'm gonna strategically reach out to 8 people by 8 AM.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that conversation. And, Steph, I wanna go to you. What stood out to you from this conversation with Marquis?
Stephanie Alfonso:Yeah. Number 1 is confidence. You know, confidence is built through grit and purpose. And I really felt that Marquis embodies the confidence that comes from that resilience and that hard work. She maintains such a perspective, reminding real estate professionals to view themselves as the business owners that they are, and they are focused on profitability.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I really love that kind of the owner business mindset first. Right? She really focused on that idea of creating multiple streams of income. It's really all about just asking the question.
Dave Charest:Right? Like, what are the ways that you can extract the most from what it is that you do? What else you got for us, Steph?
Stephanie Alfonso:Honestly, consistency. I I would say that's the big number 2, that consistency is your path to greatness. Marquis emphasizes the importance of a disciplined schedule. As a matter of fact, you know, she gives the advice to agents to reach out strategically to 8 people every day by 8 AM. Now that takes some discipline.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right? But that's what's gonna elevate their success.
Dave Charest:Yeah. You know, time and time again, we hear from everybody that that consistency is so important. And so even if you just think about Marquis' approach to video content. Right? It's really the thing that is her content engine, and so she's consistently using the video, the audio, and the text to just reach more people and open up new opportunities for herself.
Dave Charest:And she just gets that message in front of the people that need to read it, hear it, or see it. Right? And, really, video is really the only form of content that allows you to do that. And so, I mean, I don't know, Steph. It might be time to start thinking about adding video to your marketing strategy.
Dave Charest:Right?
Stephanie Alfonso:Absolutely. And it is time to stop living in the excuse zone, right? This is a no excuse zone. Success requires sacrifice. Marquis is very clear that real estate professionals need to embrace growth and innovation, particularly around video.
Stephanie Alfonso:A lot of agents really hold back with leveraging new technology and just getting out of our own way and start having confidence to be in front of that camera.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Marquee's mindset here was really something else. I mean, people often wonder. Right? Like, what's the secret to success?
Dave Charest:And I'm sure Marquee would agree here. It's you just have to do those things that other people won't do. Right? At the end of the day, the tools are there. You just need to use them, And it's that idea of taking action that's really gonna allow you to differentiate yourself.
Dave Charest:So, Steph, final question here for you when we start thinking about what we heard here today. What's the one thing our listener can do to take action based on this episode?
Stephanie Alfonso:Everyone needs to incorporate video right now. Right? And start incorporating video in your marketing strategy. How do you do that? Set aside time.
Stephanie Alfonso:Right? Maybe write down 5 ideas of questions that your audience would want to know and hear from you. How can you answer that and brand yourself as that community expert, the industry expert, and just hit that record button.
Dave Charest:Yeah. I love that. And I'll just add one thing to that, Steph. Don't overthink it. Don't think you need to get all this fancy equipment.
Dave Charest:You've got a phone on your device that is completely serviceable in this area. Just start there. Get used to doing it. Get yourself more comfortable. And then once you start to see those things getting better and working for you, you can think about upgrading, but don't let that be an excuse not to do it.
Dave Charest:So there you have it, friends. Steph, thanks so much for joining us for this episode.
Marki Lemons Ryhal:Thank you. Next time.
Stephanie Alfonso:See you guys.
Dave Charest:I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcastdot.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's rate this podcast.com/ba m.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.