← Stay Paid Podcast
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Foreign.
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Today, we are answering your burning questions in real estate, business, marketing and more. On these episodes, we take live calls from listeners of Stay Paid. If you want to have your question answered live here on the show, make sure to follow us on Instagram @staypaid podcast. Submit your questions there or you can go to remindermedia.com ask and we will get you scheduled here on the show. My name is Josh Dyke, chief marketing officer at Reminder Media, joined by Luke Acre, president of Reminder Media, and from the number one team in Lynchburg, Virginia, Stephen Acree of the Acre Brothers Realty team.
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A
They said number one mid size team too in Virginia, you know, so I don't know what mid size is, but you know, you are mid size, Stephen. You are mid sized both in team and in personality.
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B
Yeah, for a second. Our caller, first caller today is Corey calling from Michigan, I believe. Corey, welcome to Stay Paid. How can we help you?
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C
Oh, great. Well, thank you so much for having me. So I'm in my fourth year as a realtor and I've been like kind of slowly growing, building a good foundation because I work, I've been working part time, working also at my brokerage with some marketing and things like that. And I can't keep up. Like I need to go full time because I'm naturally growing, which is great. So my husband decided to join me. So he just got licensed this summer and I feel like I have like shiny things syndrome where I'm like, okay, there's all these things we need to do to grow because now we're putting all of our eggs in one real estate basket to support our family. And I'm like, where, where do I need to focus first to grow the quickest? So I think that's kind of just in general. My question is I want this to take off. I see the potential for it too. And there's just so many things that you need to do and I'm just feeling scattered and overwhelmed.
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A
Thank you for sharing. Are you ready? You're gonna have to get a counselor for you and your husband. Family business, I'm telling you right now. We know it all too well here. Reminder Media is actually a family business too, but Acree bro, of course I mean family business. So it's, it adds a different dynamic. So good luck on that journey. I will give you a sub point tip on that is make sure you have defined roles and who you are. Obviously you are, you know, the same type of person authentically, but your role, you know, we made Stephen the CEO of Acre Brothers all the Investments, all that stuff. Because if not, then I'm going to try to act like the CEO there versus like me and Reminder Media, me running Reminder Media. So it's just very important to define what are the roles, what are the expectations of each role? What do you expect out of your husband? What does he expect out of you in the work environment? That will help. But that's a sub, you know, point here is, you know, I guess let me ask you this. How much volume have you done? And you know, this year, like, what's your transaction count, volume wise? It gives us an idea of the size of your business.
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C
Yeah, sure.
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A
And then we can give you the right advice based upon that.
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C
Yeah. So this year so far I've had 17 transactions and I'm just shy of 3 million in sales. I'm 2.999, 400.
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A
Awesome. Yeah, well done. So, okay, so is the majority of that from your sphere? The majority of that business or where is it coming from?
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C
Yes, a lot of it. Some of it's been my sphere. This year's been the first year we. My, my husband has business experience, so he's like, let's pay for some leads. So this was the first year we paid for some leads, so. So I would say probably maybe 30% of those are paid leaves, but the rest is from my sphere and my own marketing.
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A
Love it. And then two question, follow up questions on that which will help me, you know, determine what you should be doing on your paid side. Where are you getting the leads from for paid? Like, where are those coming from?
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C
Zillow.
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A
No. That's great.
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D
Yeah.
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A
You say like it's a dirty, dirty word. Yeah, bleep that out.
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D
Zillow.
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A
No. Okay, but you're not a flex team. It's just a Zillow. You're not on Flex. So you're just Zillow leads coming in. You're just getting Zillow leads.
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E
Yeah.
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A
Okay. And then your sphere. How big is your database?
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C
It's probably something I need to work on. I know CRM is like right up there because I haven't really found one that I love.
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A
You're answering your own questions, Corey. I love it. That's the beautiful thing about coaching. You can get people to answer their own questions.
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C
Now. I hit a goal with my magazines, though, that I won't do anymore without at least 100 recipients. So I did expand that because I started with like just the minimum and have been growing that as I grow.
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D
More people, the amount of times I hear the CRM, I Haven't found one I love yet. Is like the truth is, is like the best one is the one you use. It's just so true. You just gotta dig in the one you commit to. You know, we switch it. I'm switching an agent, actually a million dollar producer. Incredible. But she's like, I use dot loop and I only could use dot loop.
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A
And I'm like, and she's doing a million in gci. Have you like a million and. Yeah, and not just a million of.
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D
That's right. And it's so funny because I'm just like, I loved dot loop too. We switched over to DocuSign and I haven't even batted an eye. It's just the first onboarding of that is tough. You just gotta use it. And same with CRMs, you know, you just gotta learn.
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A
So my, you're doing great. One, congrats.
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D
Right?
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A
17 deals, you know, four years in, you're doing, you really are doing fantastic. Your husband's coming on board. You really, you kind of know the answer. But let me spell out for you what we would do because that's the only way I can answer it is like in the trenches right now. You're in the salesperson phase. You are the talent. And it's by your hustle and by your talent. Right. That you are producing. You've got to start traversing to where you go from just being the salesperson to trying to get to being the business owner. That's ultimately where the road you're on. And in order to be the business owner, you've got to start replicating and figuring out from a process standpoint what is working and what's not working. So that starts with like your sphere. I can't tell because I don't know how big it is. But that's action item number one. You must get your database into a CRM that you use. On average, 7% of your database will transact a year. So your goal is, hey, can I get that database up? Because that's just in that database. Let alone the average person knows three to five other people that are going to transact. So that's referrals. So if I'm you, I would go, you and your husband should immediately systematize, what's our CRM? How do we get our database? How do we get a cadence? Thank you for using the magazine. Hey, your magazine's going out either quarterly or bimonthly. You have a drip going out, but that is going to be at least 50% of your business should be Coming from referral and Repeat business. So 50% is a good target. Mark, you're paying for leads. Fantastic. Right? You're paying from Zillow. Zillow tends to be expensive. It just depends what zone you're in. But they are. They do tend to have way better conversion. So I don't think it's a bad thing that you're doing Zillow at all. I think it's actually a good thing. But you need to make sure you're tracking your conversion. Do you know what you're converting, what your cost of lead is, cost of acquisition, to your actual income that you're making? If that is a 4 to 1 ratio at least, then keep doubling down on that spin. There's nothing wrong with that. As you grow your database, because you want to see your database grow. So 50% of your deals are coming from a firm repeat business. You double down your spend in Zillow. The problem with Zillow is it's expensive and it's very much in the moment. It's not brand building. So you should consider adding a third pillar, which would be majority of people would coach you to go to a geographic farm and start building a farm out. So maybe there's a couple communities. Where are you located, Corey?
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C
I'm in Jackson, Michigan.
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A
Jackson, Michigan. Okay. So, you know, there's probably a couple communities there that you've already identified that you would love to be the number one agent in those communities. If I'm you, I would identify those communities. Look at turnover rate by going to your mls, and turnover rate is simply how many homes sold in the past year in this area. And then try to go to Google or USPS website can sometimes give this to you and say, how many rooftops are in this area? And divide the number of sales by the number of homes and that will give you turnover rate. And historically, people say you should try to farm to areas that have a 6% turnover rate or greater. And you know the area better than the gurus. So the main thing I just want to make sure you do is you look and don't farm an area where homes don't sell. Farm an area where actually transactions are happening also in the mls. Make sure you look. If you're going to do a geographic farm, make sure you look and go, who owns this area? Right. So you think of Stephen, like Tina, right, in your area. She owns a neighborhood, right. She does majority of her deals Farmington. So you'll probably see on the MLS in Lynchburg area that Tina and her team Hurt their name shows up on all these transactions in Farmington. There's. That's your indicator that, oh, there's competition in this, in this farm. Doesn't mean you can't beat them, but it tells you you're going to have to spend more. You're going to have to get. Exactly. You're going to have to get out there with the sweat equity. So here, if I step back for a second, I would go from a lead generation standpoint, you're doing good. You need to get into systems, processes and measurement. So that's your next phase of the business. Especially because you're bringing in your husband and now all your eggs are in one basket. You've got to know what's working, what's not. First step, CRM. How many people are in your database? Try to see how many of your deals come from referrals. Second step, Zillow. Track conversion. Track cost of acquisition, which is how much did I spend to get this deal to the table versus how much I made? And then if that's a 4 to 1, double down on it. Third step, take the overflow of money that you have, if any, to start a geographic farm. Yeah, yes, I see the face. I don't have any overflow. Well, you have sweat equity, so you could potentially do a geographic farm through circle prospecting. If you listen to our podcast, we did an episode a while back on circle prospecting. We've closed 26 deals this year at Acre Brothers. From circle prospecting, which is just purely calling around a neighborhood like our farm or around our open houses and essentially seeing if the people are interested in hearing a cash offer on their home. And that then tells us if they're interested in selling or not. And we have a whole episode, people can go reference on that. So overall theme is you're doing amazing, but you gotta start systematizing what you're doing so you can speak with confidence to your numbers. Because confidence gives you the ability to execute. Confidence comes from clarity. Clarity comes from tracking and knowing your number. So pick a CRM. We use Follow Up Boss. Any of them could see your interactive is great. I've heard good things about Bold trail. Follow Up Boss is fantastic. Use the one your brokerage gives you for free, commit to it and start tracking that. That's my answer. Stephen. Josh, would you add anything?
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D
No, I mean, honestly, I was perfect. The only things I would add is like Zillow. Your cost of acquisition from the the beginning is a lot of money. But if you can be career focused instead of you know, year focused, you know, those people are going to turn into repeat referral business later on. And so everything has to be focused around that CRM. If you want to go back to there, where you go, you know, you've been in the business four years, imagine what four more years will be. And these Zillow leads are turning into double transactions. And so don't ever lose focus. A lot of people lose focus when they're paying for leads. They don't become clients. They don't become actual repeat and referral business. They treat them as a one and done. And then you can imagine, you know, you're paying a lot. At one point, we were paying 18,000amonth for Zillow. And but a lot of those turned into transactions now five years down the road. And so my cost upfront was a lot, but we focused on repeat and referral, and those are turning into more money in the end. So I think that'd be what I'd add. And then the second thing is make sure you're compounding all your. All your efforts. So if you're doing the geographic flow farm and you're getting listings in a neighborhood. Well, if you're trying to own a neighborhood, you got to make sure you get the listing, and then you do the open house for the listing, and then you do the door knocking, you know, for the listing. Because everything's about doing one activity to get multiple different avenues of money flow. And so I would add that as well. Luke.
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A
Yeah, that's a great. That's a great thought. It's like the same can be applied to your sphere is like, make sure you're really leveraging that sphere. So you first get the database, then you're marketing to that database, but then you can go, well, who else is in my sphere? Oh, all my partners. Like, all the local partners that I have, Title inspection, insurance, financial advisors, the estate planning attorneys. Like, how do I get them into my sphere? And then how do I do a client event and then make those businesses part of my client event for my sphere? And we have a bunch of podcasts kind of on these different topics. But ultimately for you, it's. You're gonna feel overwhelmed, like we all do. And the only sanity there that will never go away in the sense of that the feeling of like, oh, am I doing enough? Am I not? Well, at least it has never gone away for me, right? It's not gonna go away, but what will be your stabilizer is your clarity of your data. And where most agents fail, both on the money side from budgeting and from. On the operation sides of lead generation and lead conversion is they don't run, they don't keep track of their numbers. They don't know their database, how big it is. They don't know how often they're touching it. They don't know how many referrals came from what people. And that's the mundane work that us salespeople who are so talented are bad at, because we like to talk to people and we like to help people. We don't want to sit there and crush numbers. But in a world of AI Corey, there's no excuse.
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D
There's no, there's no balance in this career. There's clarity. And that's such a good distinguisher because like you, if you do have the clarity, when you have the emotions of the up and down in this business, it won't knock you out because you have clarity on what you're trying to accomplish. So, yeah, get back, get that clarity. Exactly.
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A
And every day you need to put it into your everyday activities. This data entry, this budgeting, these type of things. Because I have just found if it doesn't happen like every day, like the balancing of the checkbook. Right. The balancing of the accounts, it won't happen. And then you'll come back a week later and you'll go, what was that? What was that? Where did that come from? That is what will happen. And so it's like, you don't. Nobody wants to function in practicality because we all think there's this. Some business magic that's out there. It's like, no, no, no. The people who win are the ones who just, they just kind of go, well, that needs to be done. I'm going to do it every day. And they just, you know, whether it's dialing the phone to their leads every day or balancing their account every day, just add it to your calendar. Live by your calendar, and you will, you will succeed.
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E
Yeah.
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A
And get a good therapist for you and your husband. Good luck on that.
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C
We, We've been, We've had a lot of interesting life experiences and we're excited to work together. And we've been, We've done counseling before, but, yeah, it's all. I mean, one of the things that he's been saying as we've been starting to work together, which I think speaks to what you just said, is he's like, you need to work proactively instead of reactively, because I can tend to, oh, this person needs this. Oh, you know, oh, I've got to take this phone call and then I, by the time, the end of the day, I'm too tired. I don't want to look at numbers because I'm a creative people person. But he's good at numbers and he's good at systems. So I think this is going to.
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A
Be a good, that's going to be a great marriage. Maybe you guys should get together and you know, you know, get married. Yeah, no, it is great. And, and the best part about family business in my mind is it's, you know, you don't have to worry about trying to inspire somebody to the why because everybody's just bought in from day one because they get the why, right? I mean, this is the family, you know, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to support and grow something. So I love that. Congrats on all that you've done. Thank you also for calling in and listening to show. I mean, it really is. You're doing all the right things and generating business. You just now need to track it, systematize it, replicate it, track it, replicate it. That's it. That is not sexy. That is just brick by brick. And if you get stuck, you don't even have to go hire a coach. Now you can go to ChatGPT and say, take on the expert role of a real estate coach. You're incredible at operations. This is my pain point and what I'm struggling with. Please tell, please ask me five questions that would help you clarify what's going on and then give me advice of what I should do. And you literally have a coach right there in your pocket that can help you systematize these things.
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E
Yep. All right.
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C
Thank you so much.
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A
Yeah. Thank you, Corey. I appreciate you calling in. Let's connect on social.
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C
That'd be great. I'm a little crazy on there.
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A
Yeah. All right. I love it. Have a great one. Thank you.
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C
Thank you.
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A
Yeah, she was amazing. You could tell they're, they're going to do really well. I mean, if her husband's good at operations and numbers, they'll do really well. Because she is. That's what I'm saying. 17 transactions in this. Yeah. Part time in this market where nobody is, you know, majority of agents are not getting 17 transactions. She's already done 17, so she's already very good. All she needs to do is know exactly what's working and put fire to that.
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D
Everyone wants to scale, but they get so lost because it's not a balanced industry. So you feel so confused daily and Then you don't get any action done. So it really is that clarity which comes back to the database.
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A
All right, we're going to go to our second caller on the show. We got Klaus calling. And Klaus, welcome to Stay Paid, man. Thanks for calling in.
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F
Absolutely. Glad to have me.
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A
Yeah, Klaus, where are you calling from?
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F
I'm actually in West Palm beach right at the moment. I'm working in West Palm beach right at the moment. I'm in Murphy, North Carolina.
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A
Okay, well, lucky you, man. Palm beach is a great area. Now tell us, how long have you been in real estate?
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F
I've been in real estate for almost 30 years.
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A
Okay, 30 years. So long time veteran here. And then how's this year been for you? How many transactions or how much volume have you done?
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F
Say that again. I'm sorry.
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A
That's okay. How's the year been for you? How much volume have you done or how many transactions have you done?
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F
The year? The year. I dialed a little bit back because I'm concentrating mainly on helping other agents at the moment.
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A
Sure.
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F
I think I have done so far 10 transactions, which is on the low side.
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A
He's dialed back and he's done 10. So you're, you're crushing it. Great job.
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E
I know.
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A
Yeah. So many people are struggling right now. So you're helping agents. Is that your business? Are you a coach for real estate agents or do you have another business that you're doing for real estate agents?
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F
Well, I'm, I'm attracting agents to our company and doing that, I'm really helping them, scaling their business. That's a way to, you know, to give back.
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A
Got it.
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F
After 30 years, I think I acquire a lot of knowledge and seeing what's going on in the market and the difficulties agents have, I think it's just fair to help and give back to them because it's.
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A
I love that, man. Klaus, you're my type of people, man. It's all about giving back. Impact. What's your question? What can we help you with to help you with your business and help the agents that you're helping?
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F
So, so as I said, I'm, I'm helping agents, mostly agents who already have experience. But if you're a brand new agent, if you're, if you're just started or let's say you have been in business for a while, but, but you're, you didn't really do much and like, like social media, branding, lead generation, I mean, there is so much stuff out there for new age and that it gets completely overwhelming. And what Would you advise a new agent? Where do you start? I think if you, if you look help for help from your broker. We know all, all the, the training they have. It's really mostly on the legal side.
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A
Yes.
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F
How do you fill out a contract?
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A
They want to help you from getting sued. I'm going to throw it to Stephen and Katie here in a second but I just want to frame up the, the thought of this and get you guys thought on, on with agents. The struggle is this, is that everybody knows it's a relationship based business. In order to build relationships, that's a long term game, that is not a short term game. So that is what we would call brand building which is not instant gratification, it's relationship driven. But then you struggle because the natural tension is well, I've got to eat, Luke, I've got to pay my bills today and I need deals. So now you got to have the other side of the equation which is well, how do I get deals today as I'm also building my brand. So Steve, I'll throw it to you and Cody and you guys give us your thoughts because you're running the number one team in Lynchburg, Virginia.
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E
Yeah. First, before we start, Klaus, you've been in the business for 30 years. What did you do when you first started?
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F
I fell in a gold mine this way. I had absolutely no clue about real estate. I spoke broken English. Not saying my English is perfect today, but I started at an ERA office in, in, in Florida and they had a HUD contract meaning they were the hot broker and, and had all those HUD foreclosures and, and I joined him because they offered great training. But six months later I, I had no deal done. I know how to fill out all the shit. But as I said I didn't, I didn't get any leads and I joined another brokerage and I talking to them, I said well I was at ERA Bucksnet. He said oh my God, why did you leave? They had the HUD contractor. I said well that didn't help me. And the way it was it you HUD allowed an agent to do open houses on foreclosures, but there were three agents. They grabbed all the open houses for every weekend. So you never got one, right?
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D
Sure.
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F
And one of the agents at a new company said well why don't you do them from Monday to Friday and instead of weekends because nobody do it doesn't during the week. And I said well that's an idea. So I started doing open houses every night at 5:00 clock five days a week, never worked the weekend. And I got it pretty quick that, hey, I don't not sell those hot houses. I get clients I can sell houses to. And man, it worked. I mean, became the year, became the number one agent within two years.
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D
Let's go. Yeah. And you know, I'd frame it up with two things. So the first thing is like if you're a new agent in any market, like you're, you're an action time, right? Because you're coming in with no database, no brand, no experience, right? And so you're going to come out, come in and have to take action. The second thing is we're in the market right now where it's requiring even for the seasoned agent to take massive action. And so you have to go in with understanding a couple principles. So one stat we pulled up for our team today is 49% of buyers say they want their realtor to find them a house. Right. That is the number one thing that consumers want from their agent. The second thing is the market that we're in is we're in such a low inventory market. So what that means is if you get the listing, you're going to have that listing under contract, right? And so if we're in, in an action based market, everything is going to go be about going out and getting that inventory. And that comes from phone calls, that comes from door knocking, that comes from open houses, all the things that require no money to get into the business. But it's the grind, right? So the only thing that people need to hear is if you're a new agent is you've got to get to work. And we were just on the call with someone else, just talking about, hey, you, you're starting with brand, you need to start with database, right? You need to start with putting people into your CRM and then following up with those people. The real estate industry is all about your lead and lag measures, which is why 87% of people fall, agents fall out of the business is because your lag measures are so far apart from your lead measures. And so if you're getting in the business, don't be discouraged if you are six months before getting your first listing because you're probably doing the right activities. You if you have a scheduled out, I'm going to go door knocking this day, I'm going to circle prospect this day. I'm going to hold open houses every single Sunday because it will compound from there. So once you get your first listing, the key to this right in Compounding your business and compounding it fast is you better be doing extremely good marketing. Which comes down to, okay, I get this listing, I'm going to go door knock the entire neighborhood and invite neighbors to this, this open house. Then I'm going to ask them if they want numbers on their house to see what it's going to sell for. Then once you do that, you're going to hold the open house and you're going to get leads and you're going to follow up with saying, hey, you know, I just door knock this whole neighborhood. I'll let you guys know if anything else comes up on the market. Right. I'll get that to you guys first. And then you're going to follow up with the people once it goes under contract that you door knock to, right? To say, hey, I just wanted to let you know this, this went pending in two days and we've got multiple offers on the table. All of this good stuff. But it's just an action based market and if you're a new agent, you're already having to take massive action. So if you're going to get into the business, just know that it's the grind. But you know, in five years, like Luke talks about it all the time, this is a repeat and referral business game. Right. So if you're doing all the right activities and putting people into your funnel, you're going to be extremely successful once you hit that, you know, that five year mark.
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E
Yeah. I think the beauty of it is, Klaus, like your answer to what you did 30 years ago is really the same answer as it is today. So you already have exactly what you need to tell new agents, which is what did you do? You know, you started doing open houses on weekdays. No one wants to do that. Right. No one wants to do a week. Right. But what do you have to do when you need business? You go take action. So find that pillar. You know, Stephen just went through a couple. Find three pillars that you're diving into. Open houses, door knocking calls, whatever it is, your sphere, sphere stuff will be one of them. But find what you want to do and then go all in, do open houses every night on the weekend. And then like you said, it took you what, two years to become a top agent. It wasn't instantaneous either. It takes time, two years to get to that. And that's amazing, by the way. Two years is also a very short timeline to become that top up. But those are. The simplification of it is, man, just focus in on three pillars and take Action on them. Do them.
- [27:11]
A
Yep. Super. Well said, Klaus. I would encourage you, all the agents, you know, with Reminder Media, we've worked with About A. About 150,000 agents at this point. And we find that where basically everybody falls down is inconsistency and consistency is a sign of a lack of, like, a schedule and a commitment to that calendar. And so Stephen and Cody just gave great advice that I'm sure you agree with and you're coaching agents with being a top producer yourself. But to make it really practical for the agent, they need to pick, like Cody said, one thing that they're going to focus on and master, and that might be Circle Prospecting. I would encourage everybody go listen to an episode we just did with Stay Paid on Circle Prospecting. Acre Brothers has already closed over 12 deals this year. Circle prospecting can be free, so you don't have to spend any money doing it. But the one thing you have to do is put on your calendar. I will prospect for these two hours every day. And that can be the action that if I were sitting down with you, Klaus, and we were in it together, coaching agents, I would sit down with the agent and map out their calendar for their week and say, if you commit to this calendar, you're going to have success because 99% of people will not commit and be consistent. And you know, the. My solution always in business is act, track, pivot. Act, track, pivot. So you take action, you track your result because you can't improve what you don't measure and then you pivot. And the pivoting is sometimes totally a 180, but most of the time it's literally just a 2% turn, 5% turn, where you're just making a little iteration on the activity you're doing to refine it and get better. So I love that you're helping agents. I love that you're calling in as a top producer man. I appreciate you being on the show. Make sure that you follow us on social so we can. I would love to talk to you more and see how we can help each other more. But I really appreciate your question, really appreciate you calling in.
- [29:14]
F
Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
- [29:19]
A
We're going to go to our third caller calling in, Ms. Ali Goldwater. Ali, thank you so much for calling in to stay paid. Welcome to the show.
- [29:27]
G
Good morning.
- [29:29]
B
Good morning.
- [29:30]
A
Good. We are doing fantastic. Where are you calling in from, Ali?
- [29:33]
G
Northern Virginia.
- [29:35]
A
Northern Virginia. What parts?
- [29:36]
G
We're close one about 30 miles south.
- [29:39]
A
Of D.C. okay, so Stephen and them are in Lynchburg Virginia. So, you know, a couple hours. And we grew up. Steven and I grew up in Fluvanna county, which is outside of Charlottesville. Yep. So we grew up there. So I'm up in PA now with Reminder Media and the Stay page.
- [29:55]
D
You're a Yankee now?
- [29:56]
A
I guess so. I don't like it. I don't know. But, Ali, how long have you been in the business?
- [30:01]
G
I. I decided after working for an investor in 2020, why not, right?
- [30:08]
F
I got my license.
- [30:09]
A
Okay, so got your license. And how has 2025, the first quarter, been for you? How many transactions or how much volume?
- [30:17]
G
So I've had an amazing start to the year. I wrote down my goals, and one of them was to have and sell a listing over $2 million. And I have one under contract now.
- [30:28]
A
Let's go. Love hearing that. Awesome.
- [30:31]
G
Speak what you want, right?
- [30:33]
A
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you got to put it out there. So what can we help you with? What's your question? How can we help you grow your business?
- [30:38]
G
So I've been actually asked this in relation to mine, so I would love to know your take. What is the one misconception people have about your field? And how would you like to clear that up?
- [30:51]
A
The one misconception people have about our field. So we have two different fields. So Stephen and Cody are running the real estate business, so it'd be interesting to get their take. And Josh and I are really running a marketing company. I think the. The biggest misconception with marketing that we run into all the time is expectation of result.
- [31:11]
B
Oh, that's what I was going to say.
- [31:12]
A
Oh, there you go. So we're thinking alike. Meaning I think when people sign up for marketing, they expect instant gratification. Yeah, but if it was that easy, we'd be on a beach, you know, somewhere. Right. Retired. And it's constantly fighting the expectation. I think there's a valuable lesson there for anybody growing their business. And this would apply to you. Ali, in the real estate business is relationships live and die by expectations. And the expectations that you enter in with when you're having that, you know, listing presentation with the seller or the buyer's consultation and how you set that expectation will dictate not only the experience they have, but ultimately what will dictate for you the referrals that they will give you in the future. And so the question I always ask myself is, when we sell Ali to come be a client of Reminder Media, or we sell Cody and Steven to use our marketing, what is the expectation that we're giving to them? And how do we make it so it's a solid expectation, so we basically over deliver. Because if you over deliver and you do the unexpected, that's what creates raving fans. People rave when they get the unexpected, and a lot of times they get unexpected bad service, and that's why they rape poorly in bad reviews. But what you're looking for is, Ali, how do you, as a real estate agent for this $2 million one that you have right now? You already have got that said and done, but let's say it's the next one. How do you do what others don't say? They expect you to list their property, they expect you to sell it. They expect you to get the price they want. They expect you to negotiate. All those things are amazing, and you do it. But no one raves about getting what they expected because they feel they're paying for that. How do you do something that's unexpected in the. In the process of the buyer's journey? And that is what will create raving fans. And that's what causes people to not only come back and use you, but tell their friends and family and write great reviews, views. That's my take on the marketing side. I'll pass it over to you, Cody.
- [32:56]
D
Yeah, I say for the agent side, it's really just like the idea that you can be educated in real estate and that you're just going to receive business. Right. And it's like people come in all the time, they take the test and. And they're honestly really smart individuals and they come, set up shop and they're just expecting business to come their way. So that's the. The number one disconnect for the consumer. It's that, you know, that you can just stick a sign in the yard and put a listing up. Right. And it's just going to sell by itself. Which just doesn't understand. They don't understand the action that it takes, the massive communication. Right. That it's going to take to get the listing sold.
- [33:31]
E
Which for our side of things, I take it more of like, hey, they have a misconception, but doesn't mean that it's not true to them. So what we need to do is provide. Improve our value of what kind of like Luke was going off of expectations to prove.
- [33:44]
D
Sure.
- [33:45]
E
I mean, I get why putting, you know, your sign in the yard and, you know, three years ago, that worked.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah, right.
- [33:51]
E
That worked. So it's not necessarily a misconception in that point, but where we're at now in the market, like, you need the value add that a realtor brings of having off market buyers ready and all the marketing and all the resources that a realtor has. But that's what I would say.
- [34:05]
A
Do you find you guys prove that out by data in your listing presentations and stuff like that? Is that how you build a point?
- [34:11]
D
You know, I was going to a listing appointment. I actually lost a listing appointment for the first time in a while because I wasn't in the game and first trip in a while. Yeah, Yeah. I sat down with Cody. I was like, man, I need to revamp my listing presentation. I need to. And the first thing I did was I went online, I grabbed my stats for how many listings we had sold over a hundred percent, you know, of list price and went into the appointment, showed in the data and got that $730,000 listing. So it is. Yeah, it is about that.
- [34:41]
E
Yeah. And the appointment, like they should be thinking what value are you bringing? And then you should be showing this.
- [34:47]
D
Is the value that I bring.
- [34:49]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think that's well said. Hopefully, Ali, that gives you some answers to your questions. Anything else we can help you with in growing your business before we let you go?
- [34:58]
G
No, but I would love your contact information. Maybe next year. I have one down. I don't really use service down the rad for that.
- [35:05]
A
Absolutely.
- [35:05]
D
Same with you. Same with you. Yeah, we'll get it after this call.
- [35:09]
A
Yeah. So you want to. Ali, if you're on Instagram and Facebook, if you're not, you should be. Let's friend up. Let's connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and if we can help you, we'd love to. We really appreciate you calling in and giving your question because this not only hopefully helps you, but it's going to help everybody who's listening.
- [35:24]
G
Yeah, I would definitely send this out to folks I know because I, I think the importance of doing something outside my comfort zone. So here I am.
- [35:32]
A
I love it.
- [35:33]
D
Yeah.
- [35:34]
A
That's why you're already killing it. That's why you're already killing it. Congrats.
- [35:36]
B
Have a great day.
- [35:37]
G
Thank you so much, guys.
- [35:38]
A
Bye bye now.
- [35:40]
B
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you all so much for listening. You can get all of the show notes for this episode@staypaidpodcast.com for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Steich.
- [35:50]
A
Guys, I'm Luke Acre. You know, I would encourage you listen back because there's so many golden nuggets dropped. Your business is really your database. That's really your business. It's your client base that is the value. And so you should constantly be asking yourself, how do I add to that database? How do I make sure that is a clean database where I have true relationships with those people? Because you really don't need a ton of people to have an amazing service based business. You can have 150 people and be a top producer in pretty much every service based industry, but they've got to be 150 true relationships. So go and look at your database and ask yourself, when was the last time I added a new name to this database? That is your action item for this episode. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every business, it's top producers. Take action. Take action on that today. Sam.