← F.I.R.E.D UP with Krista Mashore
F.I.R.E.D UP with Krista Mashore
How he built his business by focusing on local businesses and building relationships, Ep. (936)
00:11:39
In this podcast, Chris Pesek shares his incredible journey from being a struggling agent to becoming a top producer in Central Texas. Based in Dripping Springs, Texas, Chris talks about how he built his business by focusing on local small businesses...
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Transcript23 lines
- [00:00]
A
If you don't bring them value, they don't remember you. But if you bring them value and you don't ask for anything in return, you're gonna get stuff back from them. It's. I mean, law of reciprocity, right?
- [00:09]
B
Hey, everyone. I hope you are just as fired up as I am. I have Chris Pasek, and he is from Dripping Springs. I'll let him take the rest. And I cannot wait for you to hear from him. I've known him for many, many years. His biggest problem right now is he has too many listings. And unfortunately, we don't have a lot of buyers. So stick around and let's get ready to be fired up.
- [00:28]
A
Hey.
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B
Hey, Chris. How are you?
- [00:30]
A
Hey, Chris. I'm doing well. How are you?
- [00:32]
B
I'm great. I'm. I'm happy to have you here. So, first of all, everyone write this down because you ever have any referrals, you want to send them his way. So, Chris, tell us where you're from, name of your company and all that good stuff.
- [00:42]
A
So I am based in Dripping Springs, Texas, which is just outside of Austin, Texas. Company is Pek Properties. It's my cousin and I and. And about seven other agents right now. So growing. Growing slowly but surely. But yeah, Central Texas is where I live, where I work and just get stuff done here.
- [01:00]
B
I know, I know. And so that's awesome. So you were a single agent. When I met you and coached with you, you were single. So it's kind of cool to see you're growing. So tell us a little bit. First of all, what are you doing right now that you are seeing that's working the most? And it might not just be from right now, might be from accumulation of things, but kind of talk to us about your journey, where you were at, like, how you've transitioned and how you. How you've kind of gotten there. Because right now, agents, as you know, we're having trouble. I just read a statistic that it's been the worst real estate market since 1995, and you don't seem to be doing so bad. So tell us exactly. Kind of give us the, you know, the story.
- [01:38]
A
Gotcha. So, yeah, and I'll go back. Basically, I'll kind of start the story where. When. When I signed up and joined you for coaching at that point in time was just trying to figure out what I was going to do with social media marketing, because it didn't really make sense to me. I knew I needed to do. It just. It didn't make sense. So that's When I joined. Joined you, you know, learned all about Facebook and the marketing in Facebook and how to run those ads and location domination and all the things that you teach and the. The little spin that I put on it at the time, since Dripping Springs is a pretty small community, I mean, there's a lot of people here, but overall, it's a small community. What I did at that time is really, really leaned into going small, going local, and really getting to know the local small businesses. And that's kind of been my focus over the. Over the last five years. Because if people. People don't know. I joined Krista right as Covid was getting kicked off in 2020. Perfect timing. I was like, oh, crap, this is going to be great coaching. And it was. It was because 2020 and 2021 were some of my better years. But anyway, that the way that has evolved now and what's working for me really right now is still going all in on local businesses and really just trying to explain to people, or not explain to people, but to show people that I bring a lot of value. And one of the value ads that I give these local small businesses is teaching them some of the things that we got from you in terms of marketing their businesses on social media. So, you know, right now is a pretty tough time in real estate. But the local business owners, when I'm talking about, hey, stop running boost ads, you want to set your ads up this way, this is what you want to do to engage your audience. That's stuff that. That they remember. And, you know, people. People don't really. If you don't bring them value. I find out more and more now, if you don't bring them value, they don't remember you. But if you bring them value and you don't ask for anything in return, you're gonna get stuff back from them. It's, I mean, law of reciprocity, right? So that's the big thing right now, loving on local small businesses. And I've gone extra deep now with my. With my clients and my, you know, that list of people. You know, I've got a couple things if you want me to talk about, you know, some of the things I'm doing for birthdays and anniversaries and stuff.
- [04:01]
B
Explain to me. First of all, I'm trying my thing here. First of all, explain to me when you say I'm going all in with local businesses and you've learned how to run on Facebook ads. So I've seen Chris really, really progress. Explain like, more in detail what you mean about going in on local small businesses? So kind of explain it and like, so that they really understand what it is so they can like, you know, do it on their own if they want to.
- [04:27]
A
Yeah, I got you. So this, this, what I'm going to start off with is still kind of in the ramp up phase. What I found is that local small businesses really have no clue about marketing. They're good at what they do, right? If they're a restaurant, they do that well. If they're a brewery or a distillery or winery, they do that well. And, but they don't really know about marketing, at least not most of them. So when I have conversations with, with the business owners and usually it's pretty easy because business owners live and breathe their business. So they're there. And so going in, meeting these people and just asking them about, you know, what basically what challenges they're having with marketing and advertising, the vast majority of them will tell you, well, it's just hard to get the word out. It's really hard to let people know that we're here. And you know, because everybody has options, right? We're 20 minutes, 25 minutes from downtown Austin. There's a million things to eat in Austin, right? So restaurants out here, it's hard to get people to come to them and understand that there's an option there. So what I, what I kind of coach them on, and I use that term lightly, but what I, what I coach them on is one, how to engage with the community on Facebook and making sure that they're a part of all the, all the local groups, making sure that they're posting weekly specials, you know, anything special that they're doing on, on a given night, if there's a change in the menu, making sure that's out there. And a lot of times they're scared of that because they're just like, they're. That's so much work. That's so much work. But explaining to them, hey, you know, take the step, look, start posting on Mondays and then once you get Mondays down, then go Monday and Wednesday and then add another day. So that's one thing I'm helping them with, is not really a social calendar, but it kind of is a social.
- [06:12]
B
Calendar, more like an awareness too. So basically. And are you also running ads with them? So, so basically everyone, what we teach in the program, that coaching program that Chris joined was we teach basically agents how to be a marketer. So my philosophy is, you want to be a top producer, you have to be a top Marketer. So people are posting on their business page or posting on their personal page. They're creating content, and nobody's actually seeing it. So what we teach people is how to geographically digital target people to make sure that you're showing up all the time in their nude feeds. And then on top of that, once you get their attention, how to take that attention and turn it into a listing, and then make sure you actually get the appointment with all the resources. So you've done that for yourself. Magnificently. Now, are you as a part of this? Because it's funny. I'll tell you in a minute. But is a part of this what you're now showing you're helping them with, or you're like, kind of collaborating as a part of what you do? Because that was a part of our whole strategy was only local businesses run an ad campaign as a joint effort and be what we call a community market leader.
- [07:12]
A
Yep. And so, yeah, there's kind of a couple of different steps to that, but, yes, first of all, yes, showing them, look, this is how you run an engagement ad. This is, you know, these are the areas you want to target. And, you know, with these business owners, we're literally targeting a zip code. That's it.
- [07:28]
B
Yeah.
- [07:29]
A
Here to know. So I'm teaching them that, look, you can run very targeted ads. And, you know, we show them interest. And, you know, look, if you're. If you're a brewery, a local brewery, you want people who have an interest in beer, so you may as well target those people and showing them that you don't have to have a large ad spend. And yes, helping them set up those ads and run them, and then look back at the analytics and find out, you know, hey, are they doing any good? You know, are you. Are you asking people when they're coming in the door, hey, how'd you find out about us? And are you getting that feedback? You know, I saw your ads on Facebook.
- [07:59]
B
Yeah.
- [08:00]
A
Yes. Going through that part of it with them is definitely something that I'm doing and have been doing now for about eight months with those local businesses. So that's kind of the first part. And I'll either go to the next part of what I'm doing, or if you want to stay on this for a little bit.
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, go ahead. No, you can go to the next part. I want to. Yeah. So what's. What's. What's. What is. What's that?
- [08:21]
A
And, and so you've known now for a while that during. Again, during COVID this is when Most of this stuff started for me. I was running. Everybody calls it a podcast here because, you know, they don't know, but, you know, live shows on and now as well. And so we were doing that to help these businesses when they were hurting so badly during COVID because, you know, I mean, everybody remembers you couldn't go in. You had to get takeout stuff. Right.
- [08:44]
B
It was a huge initiative for us. I remember when Covid hit, I was like, okay, guys, here's what we're doing. Like, we're. And we immediately, you know, just had a. Had a. Had a plan of attack. And it worked so well because, number one, it was so quick. You guys were already comfortable with the digital marketing. You already knew how to do it. So it was just like, such an easy process. But, yeah, and it just. It's cool to see how long it's still working so far in advance, you know, it is.
- [09:06]
A
And I've. I've kind of turned it a little bit. So at the time, I was working with another Realtor in the area, and we were kind of collabing on it, and I got a lot of feedback that it was the same thing over and over. It was me and that Realtor, and it was just kind of our favorites, whatever. So we. We. Well, I. I cut that off. But then this past year, again, I was talking to a good friend of mine that's a business owner out here after another local business, and he's like, yeah, man, the economy is really bad. People don't realize how much small businesses are hurting again in Dripping Springs. And I didn't even know that. So when he and I were talking, I was like, okay, I'm bringing back the show, but I'm going to do a little bit different iteration of it. So now, again, on Monday nights, we're doing it, but I'm meeting people through the Chamber of Commerce. That's one of the other things, you know, join. Join your local chamber. But I'm meeting the local businesses there, and I have it set up now to where they go to my calendar, they get on my calendar. And Every Monday at 5:45, I have a live show, but instead of being the same person every time, I have the local business owners on. And it's just like this. I run it through streamyard, and I've got the same set of questions. I try to keep it 15 or 20 minutes, but every Monday, there's a different person on with me, and we're promoting not only their business and talking through, hey, you know, what do you do at Martin's Dripping Spring Pharmacy. But also asking those owners, you've been here for a while, what are your favorite local businesses? And giving them a chance to shout out other local businesses. So that's where that show has gone now. And what I'm how's it doing? It's doing really well. I mean, most of these I'm without running ad spend on them and. And I'll get to that in a second. But without running ad spend, most of these things are between 800 and 1200 views in the first week.
- [10:51]
B
Great.
- [10:52]
A
So it's a lot of engagement and what I do through Streamyard is I run, I run this all on my Facebook page. I don't put this on YouTube, but I know that if I'm running it to my personal Facebook page, my business Facebook page, then when I go back and run ads and post, hey, I got this house that I just listed or we just dropped a price, all of those people that are engaging with those videos and watching those Facebook is going to push my content out to them for free. That's what does when you get that engagement, when they know that you've got an audience, they're going to take your stuff and spread it a little bit further on Facebook. So not running ad spend behind that. But I'm still getting a lot of eyeballs just on my normal day to day posts. So that's, you know, that's kind of that part of it on the.