← Stay Paid Podcast
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Stay Paid, your number one sales and marketing podcast, on a mission to help you close more deals, keep more clients and build the life of freedom you're working towards. But only if you take action today. My name is Josh Dyke, Chief Marketing Officer here at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acre, President of Reminder Media. And our guest today is Jake McLaughlin. Jake is the CEO and co founder of ReferralMate, the fastest growing referral exchange platform built exclusively for Realtors. As a top producing agent in 2025, he achieved over 25 million in sales, specializing in short term rentals and apartment buildings. After recognizing the inefficiencies in the referral process, Jake launched ReferralMate, which now serves over 12,000 agents nationwide, transforming how referrals, excuse me, Realtors connect and collaborate. Jake, welcome to Stay Paid.
- [00:52]
B
Thank you guys so much for having me. I appreciate it.
- [00:54]
C
And he's an overall stud. You and I connected over Instagram, what, a few months back, six months ago or something like that, you had connected. We're able to jump on a call. I was just so impressed by our first call, man, of hearing your story and your journey. I was like, I gotta have this guy on the, on the podcast. I would love for you to share kind of with the audience, like how you got into real estate real quickly and then we can talk about like, what's driving the success for you right now as a Realtor, because it goes without saying, I feel like I say it every show, every real estate agent out there is struggling, it feels like, except the top 5%. And here you are in that top 1% of real estate agents. And so I want to get into what's working for you. But can you tell us how you got into real estate in the little bit of that journey?
- [01:35]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I got into real estate in 2020. I went to college for a semester. And the reason I went to college is because I thought I was going to go to the NFL, that maybe that's the, the secret to my real estate. I just have, you know, a lot of optimism. Very, you can't tell now, but I'm, I'm five foot nine and not that fast and not that big. So NFL was definitely a stretch, but I'm, I don't know, I guess a very optimistic guy. So I went to college, thought I would go one day to the NFL, obviously never made it, dropped out after a semester and I was going for sales and marketing, but I was watching all these real estate videos in my classes. I was like, oh, every real estate Agent's rich. I'll just do that. So I dropped out at the same time. I dropped out before the craziness with COVID happened, but after I dropped out, all the colleges shut down anyway, so I was like, oh, nice. I got out pretty easy here. Um, and then, you know, I. I took about six months to do my course. Um, and I just. I. I just got into it. Um, I didn't have any families or friends or anything that were in real estate before. Um, but when I got in, I just. I had no money to spend on marketing. I didn't even know what, you know, flex leads were opcity. So I just. Just started, um. I just realized you could call people through my MLS with the tax records, and I just. I cold called and I got yelled at, and they cursed at me. But beautiful people. You're probably going to get a couple of them. So that's.
- [03:04]
C
How long did it take you to get to your first transaction?
- [03:08]
B
It took me six. Took me seven months to sell my first house. And that house was actually from an office. I was doing, like, office hours at my previous brokerage, and some lady called, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, here we go.
- [03:22]
C
You're like, thank you, Jesus. Thank you. It's like, I'm dying here.
- [03:27]
B
Exactly. I was like, oh, man. This is. This is when the money kicks in. So sold the house for $64,000. And after the brokerage split, I made, like, $970. And I was like, okay, this is.
- [03:42]
C
I've been lied to by all the HGTV millionaire listing shows. Okay, so then who convinced you to make the calls? Like, was that something you watched on YouTube and you're like, okay, I'll make these calls? Or did you have a broker or kind of mentor tell you, hey, get on the phone and make calls to these tax records? Or. Who convinced you to do that?
- [04:00]
B
No, it really was just like, YouTube in general. And that's how, again, I got into real estate. I was just watching the videos during class in college. So, yeah, everybody was like, just cold call. It's easy, and everybody will sell their house. But obviously, we all know that's not true. It takes a ton of reps. But, yeah, I didn't even know what scripts were. I just would, like, call and introduce myself. So definitely a big learning curve. But I feel like I'm. Get on the phone now.
- [04:26]
C
So you got your first deal, you know, six, seven months in, but it was, you know, 900 bucks or whatever. Right? And so you're obviously starving at that point, you don't have money. What gave you the ability to keep going and where did you put your efforts in next that allowed it to start taking off for you?
- [04:43]
B
So when I was in the beginning of real estate, I was still working, you know, full time. My dad has a little like a flooring company, so I was cold calling all day. And then, you know, if I had to, like, go rip out furniture at, you know, an apartment building or, you know, go replace padding, which. Flooring is a very. It should be on dirty jobs because houses that have a bunch of cats in them, like that cats go to the bathroom on the floor. So it was definitely not the ideal job. And that's honestly what motivated me to actually really start focusing on the calls. And then what, what changed is I was just tired of being broke. I was tired of doing flooring and, you know, being in dirty houses. And I. I just started calling every day. My. For myself. My. My call numbers were 20 per day. And of course, you know, some days I did 20, most days I did like 13. But eventually, if you call for a month, you'll probably get two or three people interested. One turns into a listing. And as you guys know, if you, if you're a realtor and you sell one house a month, you're living pretty good no matter what market you're in.
- [05:48]
C
Yeah, you're in the probably top 5%, at least, of real estate agents nationwide. So you obviously were good on the phones. Were you calling Fizzbos and expireds at that point or were you calling Circle prospecting still kind of that idea of just random addresses based upon things that were happening?
- [06:05]
B
Yeah. So I honestly, I did everything if they're. I'm from the Poconos, so it's not, it's not a very popular market. Like, there's not that much going on. Especially like, you know, before, like, there's a little bit of a boom here for short term rentals, but before that really kicked in, it's not a busy market, so you'd be lucky if you got, you know, three or four FSBOs per week listed in, like, all of my area. And then the same thing with expired listings, like, there weren't that many. So I actually, I started with Fizbos because that's what YouTube told me to do. But I realized pretty quickly that FSBOs are just typically people who want too much for their house and don't like agents. So that was. Don't start with fizz bows. That's. That's my Advice because it'll, it'll beat you down pretty quickly. But then I got into expired listings and I went back the previous 18 months, like in my market, because I was like, well, they didn't sell. There's a good chance they still own it. And you could check in the tax records, obviously, if they still have it. So I went through all of the expireds across all of the Pocono region, which is probably 30 miles or 40 miles wide. So it's, it's pretty big market. But then I guess I didn't have my script down. That didn't really, really work extremely well for me. And then I just started circle prospecting. I, you know, transparently I picked the community with the most money. It's called Lake Harmony Estates. And I smart called every single person. And I still have the relationships to this day. And something with that, you know, maybe a little tip for agents out there that want to do the same thing is if you focus on like the ultra luxury communities, which, you know, it's always relative to your market. If, if this community was in Miami, it would be the cheapest community. But in that area, when you're, when you're focused on those top producing markets, I'm in top little pockets of your market. It, in my opinion, you find people, if you're a hustler, you'll find people like you and they will appreciate it and they will like you. I've had so many people like lakefront, three, four, $5 million houses, taking calls with me off of a cold call. And then, you know, like I said,
- [08:10]
C
because they probably have gotten there themselves by doing that, by, you know what I mean, by grinding it out and hustling. I've seen the exact same thing. Yeah, we're almost scared of calling the luxury and the rich because we think they're going to look down on us. And they're the ones that a lot of times appreciate it because they had to work so hard to get there.
- [08:25]
B
Yeah, they're the best. They're my, my favorite people. And I still. Just yesterday I was talking with a guy I cold called like five years ago. We're going to work on listing his, his lakefront property in that community that I called, called for, you know, somewhere around 4 million bucks. So. Yeah.
- [08:38]
C
So good. So when did you, like, when did you make this switch? I mean, you've obviously made it massively because you've gone all the way to creating a platform called ReferralMate, you know, dot com. But like, when did it start becoming sphere based or when did that, when did the realization come up for you? Or maybe it you still just cold call, like, when did it switch to this whole referral mentality for you and what led that transition?
- [09:02]
B
So jumping back into my story a little bit, that will answer the question for you. When I, I started in the Poconos, as everybody knows by now, I sold there for about two years. And this was like I said, I got, you know, pretty good at it. You know, I. With COVID the boost in the market, short term rentals in the Poconos, like, it was, it was really busy for me. And I did, even though it was my, you know, first, second year in, I did really well. And then we picked up and moved across the state to Pittsburgh. That's about 5ish hours away from my original market. I moved there and I was like, oh, perfect. I'll just, I'll teach agents. I'll make a lead gen platform for agents and instead of getting my own, you know, business, I'll just get them business and then shave off a percent of it or charge a monthly subscription. So picked up, moved out of my market that I was doing really well in, moved to Pittsburgh and I started a lead generation company and I was charging a couple hundred bucks a month to agents. And just like anything when you first start, there is a massive, massive learning curve. So went from downtown condo, like one of the best condos in the city. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm just saying these details so agents know, like in everything there's ups and downs. So I was like on top of the world. You know, rooftop basketball court, you know, penthouse gym, all this cool stuff in this, in this condo. And two years later, I'll, I'll send you guys a screenshot you could pop up two years later, left Pittsburgh with $30.56 to my name. So from the Poconos, doing extremely well, moved to Pittsburgh. By the time I leave Pittsburgh, I have this Legion company I have to shut down because I'm burning money. I'm walking dogs on the app called wag, which is like you walk the dogs and you pick up after them. So downtown condo to picking up after strangers dogs. So it's. But that kind of led us into referral, mate. I realized, you know, agents don't always necessarily want to be paying out of pocket for leads. And there's a lot of like, you know, very expensive lead generation platforms. And when I was going back and forth to the Poconos trying to, you know, fix this, all I Had a lot of referrals, and I would just throw them on Facebook. And it was kind of inconvenient for me, so I looked for a platform, couldn't find one. And, you know, one thing led to the next. Here we are.
- [11:18]
C
Okay, that makes sense. So you had a lot of referrals still in Pittsburgh, but you were now back in the Pocono, so you needed to refer those leads out to some other agent or. The opposite, actually.
- [11:27]
B
The opposite, yeah. So when I was in Pittsburgh, obviously I'm licensed in all of Pennsylvania, but I never sold a house in Pittsburgh. When I was scrambling at the end, I was trying, you know, I joined the mls. I was trying to cold call and, like, it just wasn't working. So we picked up and moved back to Philly, which, as you guys know, is pretty close to you. So I could have better access to the Poconos.
- [11:46]
C
Yep. And did. And when you moved back, you got, you know, back into practicing real estate as well as doing referral mate.
- [11:53]
B
Yep. So at the end of living in Pittsburgh, I was just doing the commute, like five hours back and forth. My car. The reason I had to do WAG was because my car was a piece of crap. And I wasn't. I wasn't allowed to do Uber. Like, they didn't accept my car. So I was driving from Pittsburgh to Poconos five hours each way in the same day to show listings or, you know, I'd stay at my brother's house, my mom's house or something. But yeah, like, then the car would break down on the way home. And it's called. I found out a little bit about cars during all of this. Within that, you know, three or four month period where I was commuting back and forth. I had a flat tire, my battery died. My window on my driver's side. Now this is winter in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, my driver's side window broke twice, so stuck down for one of the rides back. So I was just like.
- [12:41]
C
And you're showing. You're going to show people properties or go do a listing presentation? There's nothing like that to influence your confidence. You're literally. You can't roll up the window.
- [12:51]
B
One thing, one cool thing about the Poconos that saved me is a lot of the times people aren't there because it's a vacation market typically. So I would pull up to, you know, a million dollar property and I call the owner. I'd have my, you know, my one suit that I had on all tucked in and probably wrinkly a little bit. But luckily a lot of times you don't meet the owners here because they're from Jersey or New York or Philly. So, yeah, it was.
- [13:14]
C
Well, what type of volume? Like, when you went back and you started doing the Poconos and your community, you know, doing the commute and everything like that, what type of volume did you do in that year? Or transactions like, give us a feel for where you ended up there.
- [13:25]
B
Yeah, so that was 2024. I started 2024 with, as you guys know now, like 30 bucks to my name. But then I ended that year. We also got married in October of 2024, but I ended that year with. I was just looking back at all of our tax stuff. I think I ended up making like 79,000 or 82,000 or something. So, you know, not a crazy income, but from like essentially zero to that. I think I probably ended somewhere around maybe seven or eight million dollars in volume.
- [13:57]
C
And then was that volume still coming from you doing cold calls or had you had enough relationships at that point? When you were communicating, you were getting more referrals in sphere at that point?
- [14:10]
B
It was. It was everything.
- [14:12]
C
Okay.
- [14:12]
B
I. I started getting into social media too and doing home tours and I. You could go back and look, they are not good, but they. They bring you clients. So I was doing home tour videos, putting everything on social media, like, I guess. Yeah, you were hustle calling, obviously, everything. Calling all of my old clients.
- [14:32]
C
Yeah, it's a great golden nugget for people of just like, you know, obviously one of the great things about being broke is it causes you to become resourceful. You know, when you don't have resources, it causes you to become resourceful. And you just literally hustled and started doing everything. And then last year, how much volume did you do last year?
- [14:53]
B
So I ended 2025 with just under $25 billion in volume.
- [14:58]
C
Yeah. Sick, man. That's unbelievable. So let's transition then to this whole referral mate platform. So I'm getting the gist of why you created it, because you are. You have all these referrals that you could give in the Poconos. You're in Pittsburgh, you're throwing them up on Facebook. There's not really a good platform out there. Walk us through what led you to wanting to create the platform and dive in that way.
- [15:20]
B
So honestly, the original idea for it was I could get agents to join this and I could build, you know, a small to medium sized network with a couple hundred people on it, and I could basically I'm in Pennsylvania. I have no business. I'm thinking, like, if I could build a platform, I could probably start getting myself referrals rather than having to go to Facebook. So I could refer out on my platform to agents across the country, and I could essentially build my own referral network to really cover PA or at least, you know, the Pocono, Philly side of Pennsylvania. And that was the original plan. But then we launched a wait list. I thought, you know, I thought I'd have 70 agents join it. We got the wait list up to almost 3,000 agents from a couple posts on Facebook. How to hear. Yep. And then I convinced my wife to drop out of college. She got accepted into a doctorate program for psychology. I convinced her to drop out and, you know, code. Teach yourself how to code the platform.
- [16:16]
C
That is sick.
- [16:17]
A
What created the. The interest. Like, what do you think really drew people in? How did you go from expecting 70 to all of a sudden ending up with 3,000?
- [16:26]
B
I think it's just consistency. Like, when I made just, like, all the Facebook posts, like, I leveraged the thing that I was trying to beat by using it, and I would just make posts, and I made the first one. And the wait list was literally just a squarespace website with an email. Like, put your email if you want to join a referral network. And the first time I made the post, like, maybe, I don't know, maybe 150 agents joined from this Facebook group than just I would consistently post and post and post. And the reason the waitlist got so big is because I thought I could build this, and then I could, you know, figure out how to code it. And it'll take, you know, three weeks. Turns out it took my, like, she's genius. She literally got accepted to a doctor program. So it took her dropping out of college to build the platform. But, yeah, it's. I just leverage Facebook groups. I haven't spent a penny on marketing. Still.
- [17:16]
C
Yeah. That's so crazy.
- [17:17]
A
And you missed replit by a few. By a little bit there.
- [17:20]
C
If you were.
- [17:21]
A
I know today you could do it.
- [17:22]
B
Y. I actually mess around with those. Literally, I mess around with those platforms all the time. I'm like, build a referral network for cars. And it's like, two seconds done.
- [17:31]
A
Yeah.
- [17:32]
C
So walk us through kind of the. The pain point that you're solving with this referral mate platform. Like, what's the pain point that you believe it solves?
- [17:42]
B
I think it actually, we want to become more of a referral operating system than just a referral Exchange Network. And we just, as I was telling you guys a little bit earlier, we just brought in a new CTO that is taking us from just a referral network to an actual operating system. Right now, anybody could go join the platform. It's free. But basically what it is is a job board. So you could post a referral, you could apply to a referral, and if the posting agent wants to work with you, they'll select you on the platform. But the next phase of that is tracking referrals, managing referrals, being able to message agents on the platform, specifically signing referral agreements before you pass the client's contact information. And then, you know, step by step by step. Yeah, it's the way that I try to explain it to agents is, do you need referral me to survive? No, but it's the same way. You don't need a CRM, because post IT notes exist. So if you have post IT notes, you technically don't need a CRM. But CRMs exist for a reason. So that's, you know, the way that I like to lay it out for agents.
- [18:46]
C
It makes so much sense too, of you're essentially allowing an agent to post up that they have this referral, and other agents can apply to receive that referral and show essentially their resume is what I'm, you know, thinking. And then that agent now can interview those people who applied just like a job, and choose the best one that they think will serve their clients the best. Yeah. What a great idea. And that did not exist. You could not find that.
- [19:12]
B
No, I. There's. Now we have a bunch of replit or lovable users that appreciate our idea. Yeah, exactly. We definitely have competition.
- [19:22]
C
Serious form of flattery is what we've been told. We've had, you know, a bunch of people come behind us and, you know,
- [19:28]
B
do what we do.
- [19:31]
A
Start marketing.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You really. It. I guess at the end of the day, it just validates the idea, which I think is a good thing. But when we first started that, like, there was literally nothing. Because as you remember, when I first started, I'm like, I just want to be able to send referrals out. Like, I don't want 100 people tagging each other in the Facebook comments, all tagging the same person. We call those fan clubs. We get a little bit of hate for that, but there is no way. So prior to us, a referral had to be posted on Facebook, and then you had to find the person. You had to message the person, call the person. Then you needed to Send out a referral agreement, and then your broker had to sign it. And then it was just. This is one of the last forms of anything in the real estate market that wasn't touched. And another way I like to explain it is the way that Zillow replaced newspapers is how ReferralMate is like going to operate the referral ecosystem. So another thing I say, when agents ask, why do we need this? I'll say, would you rather Zillow or a newspaper? So we're really trying to modernize the entire process.
- [20:34]
C
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Have you tracked how many transactions have been done on the platform? Do you guys track that of, like, referrals that are happening right now on your platform?
- [20:43]
B
Yeah, so we don't track close rates. That's something that we're building out in phase two, what we're going to do is actually pool public data so we can track. That's another thing. A lot of referrals go unclosed, but you don't know if they close or not, or the client got taken care of. So what we're going to build into ReferralMate is we're going to be tracking public data to see when a seller closes. And then we're also. Which literally guarantees if your referral gets closed, you have a legally binding contract to get paid for it. And I understand, I've sent referrals out. I forget who I sent them to, and it just kind of gets forgotten. But the average referral fee in the US is 30% of the average commission. So 400. $400,000 house. A referral fee on that is $3,000. And the agent who referred that out is getting $9,000. So that's. That's a lot of money to just kind of be up in the air. So right now we don't have any closed data, but from our posted data, meaning the agents who posted referrals and selected an agent, we have $293 million worth of referrals exchanged, and that comes to a little bit over a thousand referrals.
- [21:51]
C
That is amazing.
- [21:52]
A
From 12,000 users right now, Correct?
- [21:55]
B
Correct.
- [21:56]
A
Yeah. That's wild. When did it officially launch?
- [21:59]
B
So we launched 16 months ago. We launched in September of 2024.
- [22:05]
A
Okay, and what do you attribute that growth to? Did you just market really heavy? Was it word of mouth?
- [22:10]
B
Like, honestly? I think, luckily with ReferralMaid, it has a network effect, just like Facebook. It really only works if there's a lot of people on it. So the main key to the success was starting with that Wait list because if we just launched it, we'd have, you know, 30 people join at a time or a week. It doesn't work. So the wait list was huge in the beginning. But then, you know, we've made partnerships, obviously talking with guys like you. We have a really, a decently sized Facebook group that's like 99 realtors. There's 10,000 agents in that. So we just tried to really build the moat. Like what's our competitive advantage? And our competitive advantage is I'm a realtor. I'm, you know, yep, humbly a top producing realtor and I could leverage my experience, come on shows like this, podcasts, make posts and coach and teach agents. Whereas our competition who put our, you know, idea into a chat bot and like, you know, copied us, they can't necessarily do that. They're investors or wholesalers or something. So I think that's, you know, what really led to the growth we have. And we, we have some exciting partnerships coming up, so should continue to go.
- [23:22]
C
What advice would you give an agent when selecting a agent they are going to send the referral to? Like what are some of the main things you believe you should look for when selecting another agent to help your clients?
- [23:36]
B
Yeah, so I think the most important thing is picking an agent that isn't necessarily the top producer, isn't necessarily the brand new hustler. You have to find an agent that matches your client. So let's take my brother for example. He was a marine, he was in the military, he's a realtor now, but let's just say he's still in the marines. I know my brother, I know that he will work best with a jack dude that was ex military. That's, you know, tatt it up. I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily pick, let's say myself or I wouldn't necessarily pick, you know, the, the brand new real estate agent that's a hustler because you have to pick people that speak the same language. So when you are posting a referral and finding somebody for it, whether you know your clients, ex military or they, you know, prefer to speak in Spanish or they're ultra luxury or they're a first time homebuyer, you really want to find that agent that could connect to them on a personal level. Because just like your clients, you find the people who are like you, you don't want to refer, let's say hypothetically a 93 year old grandpa to a first time home buyer that just got out of college. It just doesn't Mesh, you want to find the person that's a really good personality fit for your client for your referral.
- [24:50]
C
Yeah, it makes so much sense. Yeah, because you hear these horror stories. I just heard one the other day. I think the, I forget if it was on a webinar or it was on our call in show where they had referred one of their people to an agent and the agent has done a terrible job and she doesn't know what to do. And I said, well, you have to go have that hard conversation with that agent and you just have to tell them like it is, like, hey, this is, you know, the reality is like, my clients are not happy with the service that you're providing. When you see like the referral, you know, breakdown of at least in your own experience. Because I know you're not tracking totally to close for agents, but where do you feel like from a servicing standpoint when you get the referral? What's the key to impress that client that was just referred to you? So when someone refers you on the platform and says, hey, you need to use Jake, what are you trying to immediately do in your kind of service level to really get yourself attached to that client and do an incredible job?
- [25:50]
B
Well, what I like best with a referral is, well, first of all, you have to, you have to be fast. You can't get a referral. And then four days later, just like any, you know, client that gets introduced to you, you can't reach out three days later. And then on top of that, my preference is to get a warm handoff. So let's say, Luke, you referred a client to me. I'm not, I don't want to just basically cold call that client and be like, hey, you know, your buddy Luke sent me over. I'm a realtor. You ready to buy a house? That's not very good the way, the way that I like to do it the best. And anytime I collect a referral, what I do is I'll ask for the referring agent to just make a group chat. I think text is a little bit more personal. Emails are, you know, kind of formal, not super my style. So I just ask for a warm intro over a group chat. If you prefer email, it doesn't matter. But then when you do that, it's Luke giving me a client all in one place. So there's no question. So I think that's, that's the way that I prefer to do it.
- [26:49]
C
Yeah, we've seen that hold true even for our business with reminder media. So we'll have you know, you, Jake, give us a referral to another agent, and it's like, we can call up Josh, that agent and say, hey, you know, I work with Jake at Reminder Media, blah, blah, blah. You know, he referred me to you. But the closing rate on that is so much lower than if I get Jake to text Josh with me in it first. It's just that natural trust because, you know, people are, you know, rightfully so cautious and suspicious of whether or not this is real or not. There's this lack of trust and credibility right away built there. What's been, you know, kind of just picking your brain as a business owner. What's been the hardest thing in growing referral mates that you didn't expect that as you've been trying to grow this platform. Because we have a similar thing, you know, totally different angle, but similar thing. And trying to grow a platform in real estate.
- [27:36]
B
I think the hardest thing for us has been people calling us scams.
- [27:42]
C
It hurts.
- [27:44]
B
I'm like, like, there's me worse things than a scam.
- [27:48]
C
But yes, somebody told me to take a for sale sign and shove it up my ass one time or something like that. I forget what it was.
- [27:53]
B
Hey, you know, sometimes you just have
- [27:54]
C
to know it was over a chat or comments.
- [27:57]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think the hardest thing, and like you said, you guys completely relate to it. When you're building something real inside of real estate, you're competing with the 99 of people who are, you know, just, you know, giving crappy leads or, you know, scamming people. The real estate industry has so many scams in it. And that's why, you know, transparently, I do more stuff like this now, because when you have a face behind the brand, it solves that problem. Like, nobody calls Ryan Sirhan a scam.
- [28:30]
C
Yeah. Here he.
- [28:31]
B
He sells coaching, one of the most, you know, scammy businesses in the world. And nobody calls him a scam because they know who he is. But that's been the hardest thing. Like, you know, competition's fine, we could beat them, but it just stinks. Like, you know, you post something and then three comments like, oh, this guy's a scammer. He never messaged me back. I'm like, we did a hundred plus referrals last month across all platforms. I got over 2,000 messages last month. I want to answer everybody, but I can't. So that's where, you know, personally, I need to lean more into that personal brand and, you know, more stuff like this.
- [29:05]
C
Yeah, it's so Hard because you're so dependent on the user's execution when you have a platform. And that's why it's like you always constantly got to be upgrading your tech and your, you know, client success coaches or whoever you have, because, you know, getting people to actually take action. Hence our whole genesis of this podcast has always been the pain point for us is that, you know, you can have the best platform in the world, but if people don't use, doesn't matter. And it's kind of like the signing up for the gym membership and never going. And Planet Fitness built a whole model around that, you know, pricing it low enough that you would sign up and never go. But that's really been the pain of, like growing any platform substantially is that getting people to actually use the platform, which requires discipline on their side, which you can't control. Totally. So, you know, that's been the pain point for us. So this has been such a great episode in the sense of, like, I love your story of literally going from broke to success to broke again to back to success and constantly, like pivoting and doing things that whatever it takes to actually get the job done. I'm curious, knowing what you know now, what advice would you go back and give your younger self?
- [30:24]
B
I've let me preface this by I am not a recruiter. I've recruited two total. I won't even say my brokerage. I've recruited two people total to my brokerage, my brother and my friend from high school. The reason my brother joined is because he got out of the military and he got a blue collar job and he didn't love it, so I brought him to my brokerage. And then a friend from high school was at a brokerage, didn't love what it was, so him and I partnered up. So the reason I say that is because if I could go all the way back to the beginning, not only would I focus on selling real estate, I personally, I know this might be a sin to say to agents. I would, I would recruit. And the reason I would recruit is because it actually builds that passive income. Even if you only bring a couple agents in on those months that are slow. I have slow months. I haven't sold a house in the last three weeks on those months that are slow or weeks that are slow or quarters that are slow, if you bring in just a couple agents, you could very easily float your expenses. So if I could go all the way back, the two things I would do, I'd recruit and I would do social media because anything beyond that is hard. The cold calling beats you down. I've done the doorknob, the door hangers. I've done everything. And my best clients have come from social media. So I recruit to protect my bottom end and then I would do social media. I would lean into that as hard as I could localize Facebook content. I could, you know, if we have time, I could dive into that. But if you recruit to cover your bottom end, to basically float your expenses and then do social media, if I could go back, I would do that.
- [32:01]
C
Yeah. It's great because you also think like, essentially social media is sphere marketing. That's what I tell people. It's like you, you're gonna get some. Obviously that's not seer in the sense of like they're maybe relocating to that area and they find your content and stuff like that. But majority of it is your community. It's like farming essentially to your community of people that follow you and that know of you or have a friend that follows you and stuff like that. So such good advice, man. Love.
- [32:26]
A
Awesome. Jake, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. Obviously. Referralmate. Co. Is that the website you want people to go to? Anywhere else? Anything else you want them to know about?
- [32:35]
B
No, just come join Referral Mate. It's completely free. The only thing you have to pay is a referral free. A referral fee that you agree with the referring agent up front. So we don't take anything from you. It's completely free. Come join awesome.
- [32:46]
A
Love it. Thanks again for coming on the episode and thank you all so much for listening. You can dive deeper in this episode and get all of the links and the videos over@staypaidpodcast.com if you enjoyed this episode and want to show your support, head on over to YouTube. Follow Reminder Media. Give this video a thumbs up and the best way to support the show is simply share this episode with somebody new. Refer us out out. Give us a referral to the podcast. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcast remindermedia.com and follow us on Instagram. We are at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Josh Dyke.
- [33:18]
C
Guys, I'm Luke Acre. Jake, man, really appreciate you coming on the show. You are the real deal. I encourage everybody go follow him because not only is he a top producing agent himself, everything that he is putting out is really good, good stuff. And so I really want you to go learn from him, Follow him, join Referral Mate. Because he's growing it substantially, and it's pretty amazing. My action item for everybody listening to this is, do you actually have a referral network of agents that you are getting referrals from and referring people to? And that should be part of your pillar in your business? As you think of your lead generation pillars, you have your obvious, which is your sphere, and you're getting referrals from your sphere and repeat business. And then you might have something like maybe running Facebook ads or Google PayPal, pay per click, or farming. But referrals from other agents should be a pillar of yours. So go build that platform or get on referral mate and get your platform of referrals coming. And remember, the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in any business is top producers take action. Take action on that today.
- [34:26]
B
Sam.