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Scaling a referral based real estate business has it's challenges. How do you get in front of the friends of your friends in an environment that allows you to create a relationship while getting all of the contact information that you'll need to stay in touch? This episode discusses the many opportunities from offering your clients housewarming parties. Be sure and get the checklist offered by Josh in the Think Bigger | Real Estate Facebook group.
Show Notes
Hey, welcome back to the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. My name is Justin Stoddart. I'm your host and my goal, and my mission really, is to help you think bigger and grow yourself so that your business can follow suit. I know that when that happens, you're going to have more options, including the ability to have a greater impact, which is I think fundamental for any of us that want to have a great life. I'm excited today to have a fellow big thinker, with me today from Nashville, Tennessee. Let me tell you about him here just a second, but the topic we're going to cover is house warming parties and what a gold mine they can be if done right. So, I'm excited to have Josh Anderson of Josh Anderson Real Estate Group with me today. Josh actually started his business in 2006, which is, probably, what some would see as an inopportune time to get into the real estate industry. But he's thrived. He did 86 million in volume last year between four agents. They did about 215 transactions and his business is 75% referral/past clients. So, he obviously does some things very, very right and well. Josh, I'm excited to have you here pouring value into the Think Bigger Real Estate audience. Thank you for your time today.
Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.
Yeah. I know Josh came highly recommended from a friend of mine and Josh has, let me just kind of lead with this: Josh has a great business that services a lot of referrals from agents, both gives and receives. So if you ever have business in Nashville and you need a great agent, Josh is your guy. So we'll get that out of the way. So Josh, you, aside from being a dad of two young boys, which I'm sure it keeps you on your toes at home, I'm sure, have a very robust real estate team. Tell me, how do you keep balance between the two? That's a passion of mine is home life, being a great leader in the home and outside of the home. So tell us how you find balance among the two.
Yeah. You know, I don't know that I believe in balance, but I think that there's a lot of counter balance that goes on. It's one of those things that you just work around. I work our schedule, very rarely do I work after hours. I don't do a whole lot of weekends. One of it's just doing it and there's times when we have to be in really good communication with husband and wife in so far as who's grabbing the kids.
I love it. That helps It sounds like you've got a great partner in crime.
We're going back and forth and we've got the NFL draft is in town this week and we've got lots going on in Nashville and lots going on in the family part of it. So, it's really just kind of counterbalancing. There's times when the kids come up to the office with me if it's on a weekend or after hours and it helps that my office in my house are 300 yards apart.
It does.
Well, yeah, it's just a lot of counterbalancing and making it work.
Great. Awesome stuff, man. I think great leaders like you are going to create the next generation of great leaders. So thank you for sharing that. Let's get into this concept of house warming parties. I'm enamored, enamored with what you're doing. I hear too few agents doing this and I really think there's a gold mine. Walk us through this concept of a housewarming party. Do you do it for all of your clients or just those that ask for it or those that agree to it? What does this look like?
Yeah, so we offer it to all of our clients. There's a pretty decent amount that don't take us up on it. You know, for whatever reason they're like, "We're too busy... kids... whatever." We've done them for a long time, and we go in and out of doing them at very high levels, or doing big volumes of them versus not. We just did one this past weekend. So it's really great timing on talking about it. It's one of those things that, because so much of our business, is past client and some type of referral, it's the perfect piece for us to finish the transaction, thank them for allowing us the opportunity to work with them and also getting to meet all their friends or their family or whoever's at that housewarming party suits, you know, we really kind of take it and run with it the whole way and do everything for them.
So paint this picture. You've got a past client or an existing client, I should say. I'm actually trying to eliminate the word past client because you want to service them in the future. But this client, right, who's now happy with your service, they're in their home... how many people, for example, this one you had this past weekend, how many of their friends and family were at the event?
So that was the one this past weekend. They had 44 people that RSVPd and I think 100% of them showed up. So it was really awesome. You know, most of them are somewhere... We've always kind of said, we've looked at it and said it's about $250 or $300 that we spend and about 20 to 25 people usually show up. This one was a little bit different. He's one of our top, top referral sources and clients. And so we spent a little bit more with this particular housewarming party. So, we had more people, more food, more drinks, more everything. We usually do real invitations. We also do a paperless post or an e-vite, but our goal is we're capturing all of their contact information because that's who we want to work with and we do all of it to make it really simple.
If it becomes a big chore for the client, they're not going to do it. The whole idea is that we're selling, and we sell it throughout the transaction, we tell them, "Hey, you know..." halfway through the transaction, that it's going to be so great once you guys get settled in and we're going to do the housewarming party for you guys. You aren't going to have to do a thing. So we kind of talk throughout from start to finish and after. So, this particular housewarming party was probably two to two and a half months post-close. So it gave them plenty of time. They did a couple of things after closing and so it gave him time to do that and get really get settled in and the house really where they wanted it to be to entertain and have people over. So, we do invitations, we do the email invite, we call them, we text them. We just want to make sure that everybody shows up that is supposed to be showing up. So it's a good turnout and it's a win for everybody.
So you get from them a client list or guest list. Then, you guys reach out and say, "Hey, on behalf of our client, we're hosting a housewarming party for them. They've requested that you be there. We'd love to have you." Then follow up with of course phone calls and emails, just to remind them, I'm assuming that's kind of what that looks like, the logistics?
Yeah. And it's nothing about real estate. It's literally just reminding them and making sure it's on their calendar and you know, there were three of us that were there from the team. That's partly key also is somebody from the team has to be there. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be me. I happened to be at that one because it was a friend and you know it was during the day on a Saturday. It was from 12 to 4, and it was just awesome. We had it catered, we had Chewy's, it was great. When we first started out people were throwing out all kinds of crazy ideas. So we do themed party. So, it's Mexican, BBQ or pizza just to make it really cool. From there, that creates the whole theme of the party. So Mexican food, Mexican Beer margaritas, all of those things.
Compare that Josh, with four hours that people spend at an open house where you're hoping to get a few people to come in and potentially have some buyer leads. But again, these are cold leads. I'm not downing the open house strategy. I think it's a good one, but now, there's proof of concept all around you. You're standing inside what you did for this client and you're with them. Typically when people come in to an open house, they come in for a few minutes, right? Maybe they stay 30 minutes, if they love the place and there's really an engaging conversation, but we don't get a lot of time with them. You're saying that there's a several hour period of time that you have a chance to interact with these people? What typically comes from that?
Yeah, we pretty much always get at least a couple of referrals out of it because like you said, it's proof of concept where we're inviting their friends. So it's a really easy conversation. And we probably had at least 10 real estate conversations and those were all woven into other conversations. But you know, the natural conversation was like, "Oh, well, how do you know [so and so] who happened to be the homeowner?" "Oh, we helped him find this place and we helped them sell their last place." And they're like, "Oh my goodness, we're looking right now..." "No, we don't have an agent..." Or, "We have an agent, but we were not committed to them." Or, whatever it is. So it makes the conversation really easy.
Again, very different, right? It's very warm.
And for the amount of time and energy, maybe a little bit more money, but for the same amount of time and energy as an open house. I mean, I'm already talking to people that are my ideal clients because I already know who my current client hangs out with and it's just a built in network of... these are leads. Even if they're not now business, it's still the type of clientele that I want to work with.
Because you've mailed them something, you've got their name, both spouses, you've got the email address, you've got the mailing address, like you've got everything you need. And like you said, they're peers of somebody who's been a good client already. So you've already qualified them as in the right demographic of people that you relate well with and you serve well. There's so many reasons why this makes so much sense.
Yeah. And I think nobody does it. I'm happy to provide, whoever wants it at the end of the show. We've got a house warming checklist.
Cool.
So, I mean, it's pretty simple, but it's, it's one of those things that it just helps hit all those check boxes or making sure when we go to these events, we do everything. We bring everything, whether it's, you know... Like this client in particular really wanted sonic ice. That's one of his things. He doesn't like Red Solo Cups, so we didn't get red solo cups. He's in the music industry and there's a song about red solo cups. So anyway, you know, it's stuff like that, knowing all of those things. We bring koozies that are branded and we bring our corn hole boards that are branded and a tent that has our name on it. So it's all like little pieces that are branding us.
Man, that'd be golden, if you could share that. I'll put that, for those that are listening, in the Think Bigger Real Estate Facebook group. I'll upload that in there so everyone will have access to that. It's really, really valuable stuff. When you say agents typically don't do this or don't do it consistently, is there some other reason why they don't, some other reason why you guys had to overcome something that made this easy? Other than, and maybe it's just the checklist and you just had to figure out the system so that you could do it, but is there anything else that people might be missing? They might run into a wall and be like, "Oh, this is harder than I thought," that you guys were able to work through.
Yeah. I think it's just a system and a process and we have the leverage of doing it. So being on being a team and having administrative people that can help us in the background, set it all up... it makes a big difference. So one of our, my listing coordinator was the bartender for that. That's what she used to do. So like that was built in. Then she helped bring some things over. I went over there Saturday morning at 9:00 AM to make sure certain things were there. And so it's all those things help and I think that that's overwhelming to an individual agent. The idea of putting it all together when they could be lead generating, and what really they don't understand is, we were lead generating, and we get the lead followup and we already knew some of them.
Now we know all of them and it's easier to send out an email and a thank you from that. So I just think that a lot of agents individually don't have the time or energy to do it or they don't think that it would be a good use of their time. It's just something we stumbled on because early on I was helping a lot of first time buyers and they happen to be friends of mine and I was like, "Hey man, you know what we should do once you move in and get settled in? We should just have a party over here." And then it kind of turned into a housewarming party of like being strategic about it.
Yeah, man. Yeah. Such great wisdom. I really, really appreciate it. Josh, this has been been awesome. And I know there's a number of topics that we could talk about that we could extract from you. It'd be wildly valuable for the audience. So I'm gonna extend here, while I have all kinds of witnesses, I'm going to invite you back to be on the show at a later time because I feel like there's tons of value that you can offer people. And again, super grateful for this bit of nuggets that you've given us on housewarming parties. It's fantastic. So, I'm going to put up here on the screen if I haven't already. I don't think I have yet how to get ahold of Josh's team. So info@joshandersonrealestate.com. Is that right? Did I put that up right?
Perfect.
Okay. Awesome. So please reach out to Josh. If you have any business in and around Nashville. What a tribute to the level of service that you offer, right? Your clients will obviously have a good experience if you're willing to throw a party for them afterwards and they're willing to put all their friends in front of you. It's a good testament to the kind of service and business that you guys have. So, again, I want to thank everybody today for tuning into this episode of the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Having people like Josh just cements the value that I can bring to all of you. So thank you again, Josh for your time and attention today. And, uh, I look forward to connecting with you again soon, man.
Thanks. Have a great day.
Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.
Yeah. I know Josh came highly recommended from a friend of mine and Josh has, let me just kind of lead with this: Josh has a great business that services a lot of referrals from agents, both gives and receives. So if you ever have business in Nashville and you need a great agent, Josh is your guy. So we'll get that out of the way. So Josh, you, aside from being a dad of two young boys, which I'm sure it keeps you on your toes at home, I'm sure, have a very robust real estate team. Tell me, how do you keep balance between the two? That's a passion of mine is home life, being a great leader in the home and outside of the home. So tell us how you find balance among the two.
Yeah. You know, I don't know that I believe in balance, but I think that there's a lot of counter balance that goes on. It's one of those things that you just work around. I work our schedule, very rarely do I work after hours. I don't do a whole lot of weekends. One of it's just doing it and there's times when we have to be in really good communication with husband and wife in so far as who's grabbing the kids.
I love it. That helps It sounds like you've got a great partner in crime.
We're going back and forth and we've got the NFL draft is in town this week and we've got lots going on in Nashville and lots going on in the family part of it. So, it's really just kind of counterbalancing. There's times when the kids come up to the office with me if it's on a weekend or after hours and it helps that my office in my house are 300 yards apart.
It does.
Well, yeah, it's just a lot of counterbalancing and making it work.
Great. Awesome stuff, man. I think great leaders like you are going to create the next generation of great leaders. So thank you for sharing that. Let's get into this concept of house warming parties. I'm enamored, enamored with what you're doing. I hear too few agents doing this and I really think there's a gold mine. Walk us through this concept of a housewarming party. Do you do it for all of your clients or just those that ask for it or those that agree to it? What does this look like?
Yeah, so we offer it to all of our clients. There's a pretty decent amount that don't take us up on it. You know, for whatever reason they're like, "We're too busy... kids... whatever." We've done them for a long time, and we go in and out of doing them at very high levels, or doing big volumes of them versus not. We just did one this past weekend. So it's really great timing on talking about it. It's one of those things that, because so much of our business, is past client and some type of referral, it's the perfect piece for us to finish the transaction, thank them for allowing us the opportunity to work with them and also getting to meet all their friends or their family or whoever's at that housewarming party suits, you know, we really kind of take it and run with it the whole way and do everything for them.
So paint this picture. You've got a past client or an existing client, I should say. I'm actually trying to eliminate the word past client because you want to service them in the future. But this client, right, who's now happy with your service, they're in their home... how many people, for example, this one you had this past weekend, how many of their friends and family were at the event?
So that was the one this past weekend. They had 44 people that RSVPd and I think 100% of them showed up. So it was really awesome. You know, most of them are somewhere... We've always kind of said, we've looked at it and said it's about $250 or $300 that we spend and about 20 to 25 people usually show up. This one was a little bit different. He's one of our top, top referral sources and clients. And so we spent a little bit more with this particular housewarming party. So, we had more people, more food, more drinks, more everything. We usually do real invitations. We also do a paperless post or an e-vite, but our goal is we're capturing all of their contact information because that's who we want to work with and we do all of it to make it really simple.
If it becomes a big chore for the client, they're not going to do it. The whole idea is that we're selling, and we sell it throughout the transaction, we tell them, "Hey, you know..." halfway through the transaction, that it's going to be so great once you guys get settled in and we're going to do the housewarming party for you guys. You aren't going to have to do a thing. So we kind of talk throughout from start to finish and after. So, this particular housewarming party was probably two to two and a half months post-close. So it gave them plenty of time. They did a couple of things after closing and so it gave him time to do that and get really get settled in and the house really where they wanted it to be to entertain and have people over. So, we do invitations, we do the email invite, we call them, we text them. We just want to make sure that everybody shows up that is supposed to be showing up. So it's a good turnout and it's a win for everybody.
So you get from them a client list or guest list. Then, you guys reach out and say, "Hey, on behalf of our client, we're hosting a housewarming party for them. They've requested that you be there. We'd love to have you." Then follow up with of course phone calls and emails, just to remind them, I'm assuming that's kind of what that looks like, the logistics?
Yeah. And it's nothing about real estate. It's literally just reminding them and making sure it's on their calendar and you know, there were three of us that were there from the team. That's partly key also is somebody from the team has to be there. Yeah, and it doesn't necessarily have to be me. I happened to be at that one because it was a friend and you know it was during the day on a Saturday. It was from 12 to 4, and it was just awesome. We had it catered, we had Chewy's, it was great. When we first started out people were throwing out all kinds of crazy ideas. So we do themed party. So, it's Mexican, BBQ or pizza just to make it really cool. From there, that creates the whole theme of the party. So Mexican food, Mexican Beer margaritas, all of those things.
Compare that Josh, with four hours that people spend at an open house where you're hoping to get a few people to come in and potentially have some buyer leads. But again, these are cold leads. I'm not downing the open house strategy. I think it's a good one, but now, there's proof of concept all around you. You're standing inside what you did for this client and you're with them. Typically when people come in to an open house, they come in for a few minutes, right? Maybe they stay 30 minutes, if they love the place and there's really an engaging conversation, but we don't get a lot of time with them. You're saying that there's a several hour period of time that you have a chance to interact with these people? What typically comes from that?
Yeah, we pretty much always get at least a couple of referrals out of it because like you said, it's proof of concept where we're inviting their friends. So it's a really easy conversation. And we probably had at least 10 real estate conversations and those were all woven into other conversations. But you know, the natural conversation was like, "Oh, well, how do you know [so and so] who happened to be the homeowner?" "Oh, we helped him find this place and we helped them sell their last place." And they're like, "Oh my goodness, we're looking right now..." "No, we don't have an agent..." Or, "We have an agent, but we were not committed to them." Or, whatever it is. So it makes the conversation really easy.
Again, very different, right? It's very warm.
And for the amount of time and energy, maybe a little bit more money, but for the same amount of time and energy as an open house. I mean, I'm already talking to people that are my ideal clients because I already know who my current client hangs out with and it's just a built in network of... these are leads. Even if they're not now business, it's still the type of clientele that I want to work with.
Because you've mailed them something, you've got their name, both spouses, you've got the email address, you've got the mailing address, like you've got everything you need. And like you said, they're peers of somebody who's been a good client already. So you've already qualified them as in the right demographic of people that you relate well with and you serve well. There's so many reasons why this makes so much sense.
Yeah. And I think nobody does it. I'm happy to provide, whoever wants it at the end of the show. We've got a house warming checklist.
Cool.
So, I mean, it's pretty simple, but it's, it's one of those things that it just helps hit all those check boxes or making sure when we go to these events, we do everything. We bring everything, whether it's, you know... Like this client in particular really wanted sonic ice. That's one of his things. He doesn't like Red Solo Cups, so we didn't get red solo cups. He's in the music industry and there's a song about red solo cups. So anyway, you know, it's stuff like that, knowing all of those things. We bring koozies that are branded and we bring our corn hole boards that are branded and a tent that has our name on it. So it's all like little pieces that are branding us.
Man, that'd be golden, if you could share that. I'll put that, for those that are listening, in the Think Bigger Real Estate Facebook group. I'll upload that in there so everyone will have access to that. It's really, really valuable stuff. When you say agents typically don't do this or don't do it consistently, is there some other reason why they don't, some other reason why you guys had to overcome something that made this easy? Other than, and maybe it's just the checklist and you just had to figure out the system so that you could do it, but is there anything else that people might be missing? They might run into a wall and be like, "Oh, this is harder than I thought," that you guys were able to work through.
Yeah. I think it's just a system and a process and we have the leverage of doing it. So being on being a team and having administrative people that can help us in the background, set it all up... it makes a big difference. So one of our, my listing coordinator was the bartender for that. That's what she used to do. So like that was built in. Then she helped bring some things over. I went over there Saturday morning at 9:00 AM to make sure certain things were there. And so it's all those things help and I think that that's overwhelming to an individual agent. The idea of putting it all together when they could be lead generating, and what really they don't understand is, we were lead generating, and we get the lead followup and we already knew some of them.
Now we know all of them and it's easier to send out an email and a thank you from that. So I just think that a lot of agents individually don't have the time or energy to do it or they don't think that it would be a good use of their time. It's just something we stumbled on because early on I was helping a lot of first time buyers and they happen to be friends of mine and I was like, "Hey man, you know what we should do once you move in and get settled in? We should just have a party over here." And then it kind of turned into a housewarming party of like being strategic about it.
Yeah, man. Yeah. Such great wisdom. I really, really appreciate it. Josh, this has been been awesome. And I know there's a number of topics that we could talk about that we could extract from you. It'd be wildly valuable for the audience. So I'm gonna extend here, while I have all kinds of witnesses, I'm going to invite you back to be on the show at a later time because I feel like there's tons of value that you can offer people. And again, super grateful for this bit of nuggets that you've given us on housewarming parties. It's fantastic. So, I'm going to put up here on the screen if I haven't already. I don't think I have yet how to get ahold of Josh's team. So info@joshandersonrealestate.com. Is that right? Did I put that up right?
Perfect.
Okay. Awesome. So please reach out to Josh. If you have any business in and around Nashville. What a tribute to the level of service that you offer, right? Your clients will obviously have a good experience if you're willing to throw a party for them afterwards and they're willing to put all their friends in front of you. It's a good testament to the kind of service and business that you guys have. So, again, I want to thank everybody today for tuning into this episode of the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. Having people like Josh just cements the value that I can bring to all of you. So thank you again, Josh for your time and attention today. And, uh, I look forward to connecting with you again soon, man.
Thanks. Have a great day.
Creators and Guests
Host
Justin Stoddart
What is Think Bigger Real Estate?
The road to success for real estate agents is well-marked. The road to significance is not. Here, we help you to Think Bigger than just your business. We inspire you to seek success AND significance, income AND impact. We do that by interviewing the biggest thinkers and highest achievers in the real estate industry, extracting the secrets to having it all.