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Stay Paid Podcast
Tom McCormack on AI, Storytelling, and the Future of Real Estate
00:42:36
From HBO to high-end homes, Tom McCormack has built a career around storytelling, relationships, and leadership. In this episode of Stay Paid, Tom, co-owner and senior partner at Resources Real Estate, shares how his background in television shaped...
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- [00:00]
Tom McCormick
Foreign.
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Josh Dyke
To Stay Paid, your number one sales and marketing podcast on a mission to help you close more deals and keep more clients.
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Luke Acre
I like how you say number one. Number one. You self proclaimed number one. You're number one self proclaimed.
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Josh Dyke
I had a team's message pop up as I was reading the intro, so it blocked part of it.
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Luke Acre
You're like, I don't even. I have to read that we're number one. I can't even say it with conviction.
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Josh Dyke
We are your number one sales and marketing podcast to help you close more deals, keep more clients and build the life of freedom you're working towards. But that can only happen if you're willing to take action today. My name is Josh Dyke, Chief marketing officer at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acre, making fun of my intros, President of Reminder Media and our guest Today is Tom McCormick. Tom is co owner, senior partner and broker of record at Resources Real Estate, a premier award winning independent brokerage serving central and northern New Jersey. His firm has won Multiple awards including Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private companies, who's who in Luxury Real Estate and are proud members of the leading real estate companies of the world. Tom, welcome to Stay Paid. Thanks for being here.
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Tom McCormick
Oh, thank you for having me. Pleasure, Tom.
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Luke Acre
And I'm excited to have you on the show. You started off and I was kind of researching you, you started off your career in production, right? Television. I think you even had a stint with HBO doing some stuff and stuff like that. I'm curious what inspired you to make the leap from media television into real estate? And is there anything that you have brought over from that career into like your client communication or how you think about real estate?
- [01:33]
Tom McCormick
Absolutely. So my career journey from start to finish has felt accidental every step of the way. I never aspired to work in television. I never aspired to work in real estate. But nevertheless, I had successful careers in each of those areas. So back in the day, many decades ago, I was working, I worked at HBO for many years. I was on staff in their on air promotion department and then subsequently worked for many years as a freelancer working on a lot of documentary programs for them, eventually working with a branding company with folks that I met at hbo, you know, television branding, that kind of a thing. And I decided to move out of New York in 1999, I guess it was, and moved south to New Jersey, just across the New York harbor, south to the beginning of the Jersey Shore area. And I was working remotely way before it was a thing with a graphic designer who lived in Westport Connecticut. And together we were, we were approached to launch the Style Network, which was one of the offshoots from E. Entertainment Television. And we did that for a few years. And when there was some shake up, you know, personnel wise, we had to kind of reconfigure and I had to make the choice, do I want to commute to New York? Plug for our area. It's a really great easy commute to New York City. But I didn't want to do it. And so I had to figure out what was I going to do. And I sort of stumbled across an ad for a career seminar in real estate. And I went to it and I thought, yeah, maybe I could do this. And honestly, I kind of tried to self sabotage myself at the beginning from even going to that career seminar. But I did go, I got my license, I connected with the broker that I worked with for many years, Carolyn Diacon. She actually created and launched Resources real estate. In 2010, I got my broker's license and became partner. But my transition from one to the other was, it was interesting because a big part of my career in TV was what's called production manager or line producer. And basically that role is somebody who has to look at all of the moving parts, anticipate everything and anything that can go wrong, from the most minutia thing like we're out of coffee to major, you know, the camera fell off the truck or something and you have to be prepared and you know, to talk about, you know, yeah, you had to just know like, how do we resolve this situation? Because the clock is ticking, we're spending money every minute. And so when I got into real estate, I realized that was the definition of a good agent. Somebody who can anticipate all the things that might go wrong, prepare for them, understand how contingencies can work against you and for you, and look to see how I could leverage the skills that I learned in television production, which was a lot about communication, it was budgeting, it was detail, it was follow up, it was organization and how could I put that to work in real estate? And it's really, really helped me greatly. The other part, you know, you mentioned marketing. The company that I worked for for many years called big fat TV and they branded ESPN, ESPN2, Cinemax, all sorts of different HBO projects. And I learned a lot. Even though I was not a creative in that enterprise, I was learning a great deal about storytelling. And my feeling is in what we do in, in any kind of marketing is we're telling stories and especially as it relates to Residential real estate. We got the best stories. I mean, I've always wanted to, you know, have a private, only realtors allowed kind of, you know, TED talk moth experience where people just tell all the outrageous things that we as agents encounter. The way people behave, the way people treat each other, the way people. It's just an amazing human, you know, observation post. And so we have to be careful what stories we tell and what we don't tell. But I. It's part of the reason why I've. I've been doing this for over 20 years. I love it.
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Luke Acre
Yeah, it's so. It's so true. We had a agent on Stephanie and what does she have, what is it called behind me? Lockbox, I think, or something like that.
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Josh Dyke
And it is real estate horror stuff.
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Luke Acre
Yeah, it's real estate. And man, they are hilarious. What, what happens to real estate agents on house tours and stuff like that? It's just so funny. And then you are, I mean, basically a psychiatrist and a therapist for. For your clients so much because that's. It's such an emotional game. I'm.
- [06:53]
Josh Dyke
Well, what's an example of the. Before we go off that, what's an example of the storytelling and how real estate agents could learn from that in their marketing to their clients?
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Tom McCormick
Well, I think it depends on which side of the coin you're on. If you're representing the seller, if you're representing the buyer. I think if you're representing the buyer, part of the story is anticipatory. It's like, what is your. As the buyer, what's your future story supposed to look like? What are you hoping your story is going to amount to? Is it. Is it raising a family? Is it, you know, is it have to do with living on the water, living in this, you know, spectacular home? Is it more about investment, you know, and building wealth? If you're telling a story about a property, I think a lot of that is, you know, we always say we're not selling homes, we sell lifestyle. So a big part of the story is what kind of life can. Can someone live here? You know, and sometimes it's very important, I think, to learn that from the current owners. Like, tell me what you really, really love about living here. And it may have nothing to do with the actual house. It may have to do with, well, all my kids grew up here and they could ride their bikes on the cul de sac or whatever it is. And I think the more that you get into the human element, it's just much more meaningful. And I think you know, not to switch topics so much, but with the advent of AI and AI is everywhere and you know, you can't escape it. It's almost like enough already. I know it's brand new, but I'm overwhelmed by it. I've immersed myself in this to try to really get ahead of the curve because I think it's going to be important for our agents in order to compete and I think it's going to be important for our clients as well. But the thing that keeps coming home to me is the human element. That connection is really our job security. There's so much work that's going to be done by AI, so what is something that they can't do? And it's that real human relationship. We have a thing here at Resources Real estate. Like you, what I love about real estate is it brings people from all different walks of life. Most have had at least one other career before they get their license. And so everybody brings something different to the table. And some may be more tech savvy than others, some may be more social media friendly than others. But the point is you have to rock bottom care. We only want to have agents who care. This is not strictly transactional, this is not strictly about making money. And I don't apologize, we make money, we enjoy that. But you have, you have to give a crap. You know, you really have to care about working with.
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Luke Acre
And people can sense that it's personified. Even if you're not saying it, it subconsciously is resonating with people. They know when you have commission breath, they know when you don't really care. And that's why the agents, when you talk to any top producing team, any top producing agent, it always, never fails that the majority of their business is sphere based business. Relationship based business is another way to say it. And you just see that constantly because ultimately you start to realize not only is it a better business to to be able to work off relationships ultimately, but it is the only way to survive year after year and build an actual brand. You guys have built such a successful independent brokerage and you know, Carolyn, who you built it with, I'm curious, like what were the greatest lessons you took away from her as you guys built this business? And what are some of the things that stand with you that you want to continue on for what I would call the next generation of leadership and as you're trying to raise up the company?
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Tom McCormick
That's a great question. So I joined. Carolyn was in the business for probably 20 plus years by the time I first met her and from the first meeting we just hit it off. And when I joined her, she had just started resources not too long before, so there was only one or two other agents in the.
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Luke Acre
Wow.
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Tom McCormick
And one of the things that she said, which I'll never forget and I still say it to our agents now, you know, post Covid so many people don't want to even bother coming into the office. And I loved coming into the office in part because Carolyn would always say, don't ever feel like you're eavesdropping because every bit of what you hear in the office is education. So if I'm on the phone with a client, with an attorney, with an inspector, with another agent, it's all great, you know, information for you to have and that it really was, it's, I, I think the best. We place a huge emphasis on agent training and professional development. But there's nothing better than to be in proximity to a top agent while they're working, who's not giving you any tips. They're just saying shut up, listen and watch. And it really, it's, it's, it's fascinating. And I think part of what has always pleased me about being a real estate agent was that observational opportunity. And what I mean by that is I used to say to people, I absolutely love my job because it is the most interesting opportunity to watch people. Like when I lived in New York, I used to love being on the subway and just watching this sea of humanity walk by. Like not even.
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Luke Acre
Yeah, I'm sure you see some wild things there on the New York subway.
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Tom McCormick
Totally. And so the same thing is true in real estate. And I said, you know, you, you, you work with people, you get to know people intimately. I mean I've, I've been privy because they volunteered what their bathroom needs to look like, what someone's bathroom habits were. I'm like, I don't know if I really needed to know that. That's certainly not on my job description. But they share things with you because you're in it. You, when you're a listing agent, you see people, the way they live, that even their best friends never, that's so true for their friends. You know, you see all the warts and all, all of the idiosyncrasies and sometimes totally dysfunctional aspects of your clients lives. And you have to hold that sacred, you have to hold that private. And it's fascinating. And I would say just around the time that people start to get annoying, you know, right around the 2 1/2 3 month mark if you find them a home. Yeah, yeah. If the market's good, you've closed the deal. Go with God. Call me in a few years when the divorce comes through.
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Luke Acre
And call me when the divorce comes through.
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Tom McCormick
Two deals. And so then. But the other part of it is you want to. Well, you have an opportunity then to pick and choose because there are some people who you say, oh, I really like them. Like I want, I want to be friends with them. So you have an opportunity to grow it. And so the relationship aspect, because we all know, you know, past client referrals are everything. You want to keep in touch with everybody, but not necessarily to the same extent. And that not to give you a plug, but the magazine, you know, these are ways that I have found over the years. I can keep in touch with the folks that I'm just, you know, I'm not going to call up and say, you want to go for a beer? You know, the people I do want to call up for a beer, they'll get the magazine too, or whatever, the marketing. But part of being successful, part of lasting as long as we have, is figuring out time efficient, cost efficient ways to really keep that relationship at least aware, having them aware of it. Because sometimes they, they move out of the country or whatnot, and it becomes even more challenging.
- [15:17]
Josh Dyke
Yeah, I know there's no simple answer to this, but we get this question a lot. And since you guys are in luxury, I would love to ask you. We have a call in show so people will call in and ask us questions. And one of the questions we get a few times is how do you break into luxury? How do you break past that barrier to go into that luxury space? If you could, if you could give one piece of adv to the listeners out there who are thinking about that, like, what would you tell them in terms of being able to get into the luxury space? What's the most important thing?
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Tom McCormick
Well, you have to connect the dots from here, but I think, you know, with, with anything, you have to be really good at what you do. You have to, you have to have skills, you have to have a process, a communication style, whatnot, at whatever price point. Right? So that when, when the opportunity arises where you do have an opportunity to work with somebody who has greater wealth and in luxury homes or whatnot, they see you as viable. Right. Because everybody starts somewhere. And there are some markets where people start out, you know, selling $2 million homes, but our market is very, very broad. When I got started 20 plus years ago, the median sale Price in our county was maybe 300 and change or something. Now I think it's 8 or 900. I got into luxury a because I was working in a market that had that opportunity. I was not part of it. I was working in an adjacent town that was lovely, that I thought was undervalued, that had great potential. And what I did was I brought the fact that our home base was in a town that was more known for the high end and say, I can bring you that luxury experience even though your home is not at that price point. And what wound up happening was I started to meet more and more people, people who were downsizing, maybe from the big houses and come and say, oh my God, look at this view of the ocean, the, the view of the Manhattan skyline in Atlantic Highlands. And so I was able to develop a higher end clientele for that specific town. Carolyn, she was actively selling in the town where our office was at a higher price point. I took every opportunity I could to do open houses, you know, to whatever, to try to find people. And what wound up happening, the true thing that changed my career in a major way was there was a property that another agent had in the office. It had been a fsbo. She got it listed and she had some issues with the client who. And I don't think it was really the agent's fault. And as a result, the client called Carolyn and said, I don't want that agent and basically was firing that agent and she wanted out of her listing agreement. And Carolyn said, well, why don't I, why don't, why don't I introduce you to Tom? Tom can help you to take, take over this. So this property was very, it was a great, great location. And I got the listing and it was a handful. Got it sold on the very last day of the list go and sold it to a developer who then built, well, what he thought was a four and a half million dollar house sold for considerably less. But I had this listing that lasted a very long time, but it was vacant and it was fabulous. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous home. And I had open houses on Wednesday nights, I had them on Saturday mornings, Sunday afternoon. I developed such a reputation within that market, even though I hadn't sold anything. And it really, truly helped me.
- [19:26]
Luke Acre
Yeah, it's like taking advantage. Obviously, you know, when you get the listing, leveraging that listing to get your next listings is so critical from a marketing standpoint. I'm curious too, because you're such a great leader in the independent brokerage space and you guys Have a great brand and you've built an unbelievable company. What is the way you think about the competitive landscape of, you know, big brands and big brokerages? And how do you stay competitive and nimble? And what do you think the value prop is there? Speaking to all maybe our independent broker owners out there that listen to this show and as you know, we have a big partnership with leading revenue, which we love those guys and everything that's happening there. I'm just curious your take on like, hey, how do you stay competitive as an independent? Why would you make that choice? What is the value props there that you see in this competitive landscape?
- [20:23]
Tom McCormick
You know, it's a great question. It's something that we talk about a lot, you know, since we've been members of Leading Re, which are all independent brokers worldwide. Well, not, not all brokers, but everybody within the membership who've been accepted are independent. And to me, the independence has always, always been important. You know, we've been members of who's who in luxury real estate and within that network that's across different types of brokerages, it's not just independent, it's a lot of big box real estate as well. And what, what Carolyn and I always worked on was to say, how do we leverage our independence? Basically your question, and one of the biggest pluses I think is the word you just used, nimble, that we can change on a dime. If the market shifts, we can shift with it, not in reaction to it. Three months, four months, five months later, when the whole settlement was happening, we got way ahead of it. So much so that our agents were saying they were going out to broker open houses and agents from other companies were saying, what are you talking about? I haven't heard anything about this. How come you know so much about it? And I think it's really important as an independent to understand that it's harder in a lot of ways because you don't have somebody who's spoon feeding you everything. You have to really be proactive. It's something that I actually enjoy, like the whole AI thing. I'm trying to get ahead of the curve. So we're not just working in reaction to it. But being an independent to me means we don't have to send a memo to corporate to ask for permission. Independent means if my agent, you know, one of my agent is going on a listing appointment, you want the owner of the company to join you, I'll be there. Right?
- [22:28]
Luke Acre
Yeah. That's a great value prop.
- [22:30]
Tom McCormick
Well, Mr. Caldwell, you know, or Mr.
- [22:32]
Luke Acre
Bank, even from the just brand perspective of, you know, the owner. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Of leaning in to that really hard of going, hey, you know, our owners involved. Our owners, you know, not saying the other big brand owners aren't involved, but it's your point exactly. It's like they can't travel across the nation going to listing appointments. So yeah, that is a unique value prop.
- [22:55]
Tom McCormick
And that hyper local understanding, I think counts for a great deal. Not to say that agents at, you know, big bucks agencies who are local here don't live locally. They do.
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Luke Acre
Right.
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Tom McCormick
But we, like you said, we lean into the fact that we're.
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Luke Acre
But it's the perception of the consumer that that's the real angle. It's like, and we're talking marketing obviously in a way, but it's like, you know, that is so important that hyperlocal. It's not that the other big brands aren't hyperlocal in the sense that they have people that live in the community too. But it's. You can position your brand as like, this is all we do. It's kind of that sales pitch of the new agent going to the listing presentation and basically going, you don't want Tom because he has 30 listings. You want me because I only have one and that's you, and I'm going to put my effort into you. It's like that same angle of going, this is all we do. We focus on this area. We are born and raised type idea here. This is what. And you position the brand, Our owner will come to a listing presentation that's powerful. It's very powerful.
- [23:53]
Tom McCormick
And, and you know, I like to say we're not trying to be the biggest, we're trying to be the best at what we do to service our agents, to service our clients. And I think, you know, technology, you know, during my term in real estate has shifted everything. So 20 years ago, there were a lot of companies out there that had proprietary systems, proprietary technology that was very powerful, that was very compelling for a brokerage to say, well, I can't develop that, I can't find that. But that's all changed. You know, you go to Inman, you go to any, you know, real estate convention and you go to the vendor floor and basically everything is available to everyone. And what that means to me, going back to that idea of being nimble is if a big brokerage who's like across every state in the nation with thousands and thousands of offices and agents, if they want to shift on their tech stack, I mean, think about the logistics of that, you know, sometimes it's legal compliance issues with a given state. Maybe it's, you know, just the market driven. We only have to be concerned about our agents here, New Jersey. So when something comes up, if there's a new piece of technology that looks really hot, it's like I don't have to go ask permission, I don't have to check to see if the folks in Michigan are going to be able to play well with this. It's like, hell no, let's do it, let's do it today. Let's get started. So that has helped us, in my view, remain independent. There's very few independents out there anymore because they've all been gobbled up by, you know, the bigger brokerages.
- [25:43]
Luke Acre
It's why disruption can. We've been talking about this with Reminder Media. We're nowhere by the means big, by any stretch of the imagination. But in the marketing space we would probably be considered one of the bigger organizations. You know, 300 employees, stuff like that. It's hard for us to be nimble and we see that as a weakness and a threat to us that there can be an up and coming organization. Like, you know, my brother Dan, who does a lot of our marketing into web and all this stuff over the weekend he built, using replit AI, he built a whole new application to help agents post Facebook ads onto their feed from their MLS feed. I mean it's, it's amazing. He built it in two days on replit. And I go, oh my gosh, the threat to us that for us to try to get that into our tech stack and into our organization, you're like, oh, we're good. Yeah, it goes to a crawl. And so I'm like, oh man, we have to allow our organization to be able to live on the edge where it's just like, hey, go do your thing. Live on the edge if you break things because otherwise we're going to die. And I think the whole world to circle back to your point, the big brands better figure out how to live on the edge and let things move rapidly. And maybe you're a little bit more decentralized because with the world of AI, you're not going to survive. Yeah, it's going to move too fast. It's going to be where you can just over a weekend spin up an application and if you don't let that innovation take place, you're going to be the blockbuster and that's a dangerous place to be.
- [27:16]
Tom McCormick
But think about it also when you're talking about the big box brokerages. These are huge corporate entities. What is one of the largest departments of any corporate entity out there? It's the legal department. Can you imagine? And it makes me laugh because I know a lot of people who've gone into corporate law because they feel like it's a much more sane legal career than, you know, working for a big litigation firm or something like that. And I bet you these folks are all losing sleep because they're like, how? Like this is a genie out of the bottle that no one has ever seen before. This is not controllable. This is not something that we can easily reign in. This is like everybody's on Chat GPT every. I was. I couldn't sleep the other night. I got up 2:30 in the morning. I was on ChatGPT for four, four hours. You know, and I think from a standpoint of. Of how do you manage that corporately? I mean, it's something that we're thinking about even though we're much smaller. You know, we need an AI policy, We need guardrails. We need to say, these are things you ev. You can never, ever put into Chat GPT, you know, and these are ways that we're going to protect our data.
- [28:34]
Luke Acre
It's getting wild. I was talking to Ethan, he's our CRO here, and you do this, Josh, but he has started to journal with the AI every day where on his way home from work, he tells it about his day and on his way in, he tells the AI what he's going to do today. And he's literally talking to his AI and asking the AI, give me your perspective on what I'm thinking. And he was just sharing with me this morning on some of the moves, strategies we're thinking for our sales process and how AI was telling them. Hey, I think the option you're choosing is the most naive option. And as we started to talk about it in our office, we were like, yeah, the AI is kind of right. It is the most. And I'm like, this is insanity that you're going to. And it's just starting to pick up. I don't know if you're still doing it consistently, but it's going to become commonplace that if you're not sharing your day and everything you do with your AI to get almost like a therapist or almost like a business coach. Like, imagine that resource where it can tell you what and it knows your whole day. I mean, it's just a crazy world we are moving into and you're going to have to adapt to be competitive.
- [29:42]
Tom McCormick
Well, I forget if it was, you know, responding to you guys in preparation for the podcast or it might have been something else. But, you know, we've been using ChatGPT a lot to help with agent bios on our website. So I thought, oh, I need to get a little blurb about me. And I said, you know, you know what? Who am I? You know, please, please tell me, who am I? And it came back because I've used CHAT GBT to just sort of brainstorm on creative ideas that have nothing to do about real estate. You know, I'm a, I'm a songwriter. I do some writing on the side. So the, the bio was not just about real estate. It was about. And, you know, his, his creative influences have helped him to achieve. And I'm like, like, no, I didn't tell you.
- [30:29]
Josh Dyke
With the personal and professional.
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Tom McCormick
Professional crossover, it's like, it's like, Tom.
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Luke Acre
You gotta go ask it what your. Your blind spot is going. Knowing what you know about me and everything I've written to you. What is my blind or top five. We've done that. It's pretty shocking.
- [30:43]
Tom McCormick
I brutally honest idea.
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Luke Acre
It only is powerful if you use it all the time. Right. And it, like you said, it gives you your personal takes and all this stuff, but it is, it is wild. That's why, you know, OpenAI is working on whatever they're calling it, the agent, the wearable device. That's why they hired Johnny Ives. The wearable device that you will be able to wear and it basically intakes your life and from there now it can think of what it can do for you and help you with. Because it's intaking. Everything you're intaking. And you're just like, yeah, when we get there, that is going to be something else.
- [31:19]
Tom McCormick
So are you, are you saying like a body cam? You know.
- [31:22]
Luke Acre
Yeah, it's basically what they're talking about, like in the, you know, obviously hired Johnny Ives. Yeah, it's basically they're trying to design it. I have no idea what it will be. But, you know, it's like a lapel or, you know, like a ring that you wear. Right. Obviously we all have the Apple watches we're wearing and stuff like that, but it will be intaking both visually and audibly what's happening around you and what you're saying. And then think about that. Then it has. You can recall any memory. You can recall conversations. You can like, you just go. The privacy concerns that, I mean, just. The world is going to be wild here, which is nuts. I'm curious just to kind of go deeper on this. Independent brokerage versus versus Big brand. Recruiting is such a big thing in real estate. Yeah, you and I joked before we got on. It's like always be recruiting. Like recruiting is always a thing. How do you try to go about recruiting and retaining agents? Have you found any ways to be more successful than others in trying to get top talent to join the team or identify up and coming? Like, would you rather get a college grad versus a vet agent? What are some of the ways you think about recruiting?
- [32:37]
Tom McCormick
I wish, I wish I had a great answer for that. But I think, you know, we've hired brand new licensees, we've hired, you know, top producers from other companies, people who are new to the business. You know, in a lot of respects it's easier because we. Our value prop for our agents is we do a lot of training. And I do the train. Most of the training I do. Personally, what I like to say is I'm not proud. I have made probably every mistake there is to be made in real estate and I want to have my agents benefit from my school of hard knocks. Not everybody has to go through that to learn. And we've seen it year after year. Like where, I mean, one of the biggest two examples, I had one agent who, she was related, I think, to an agent who was working at another company. And she said, should I come work with you? And he said, no. He said that, you know, I had to learn everything on my own. Nobody told me anything. It took me two years before I felt like I was on solid ground. And he's. He's a killer producer now. He said, go to Resources Real Estate. We were across the street. He said, they train their agents.
- [33:56]
Luke Acre
Wow.
- [33:57]
Tom McCormick
Another example, there was an agent from Sotheby's. And I saw her and I said, oh, how's. How are things going at your new listing in Mama Beach? And she said, she's, oh, I just got an offer. She goes, but she goes, I was kind of upset because it was a newbie. And. But she said. Then I asked her, you know, who she worked for? And she said, resources real Estate. And she said, I just said, oh, you're good, Tom. Tom trains his agents. So to me, that.
- [34:25]
Luke Acre
What an amazing testimony. Yeah, that was incredible.
- [34:28]
Tom McCormick
And that to me is everything. Because I realized when I was a newer agent, I just presumed that everybody knew a whole lot more than me. And it gives me such pleasure when one of our agents comes into the office and says, you know, it's really weird. I've got this deal going with so and so, and she's been doing this, what, 15 years. She didn't know. Boom, boom, boom. Right? And it's like, yeah, don't, don't presume, you know, and you've got a rock solid, you know, foundation. So that to me is very appealing. More so from, you know, for the newbies, you know, the people who've been doing it maybe two or three years who want to level up a little bit, the people who are already killing it, they don't feel like they need anything. So you have to kind of figure out what works best for them. One of our other value props is support. We have an amazing support staff. We have graphic and production designer on staff. We have online marketing coordinators, social media coordinator, transaction coordinators. So we really are trying to take the weight off the agents so they can just get out in the field and build those relationships and follow up on the relationships, because that's really where the money is made. It's not you sitting, you know, on Canva, trying to be creative and come up with your own postcard. Please don't. We have somebody who's actually much better at that and they'll take care of it for you.
- [35:55]
Luke Acre
Yeah, it's the leverage. It's like, it's similar to us. Like when we're selling to agents, you know, I teach my sales team. It's like, you got to find out where their pain point is. And if you're talking to a top producer, you know, the pain point is time. You know, they want to leverage more freedom and time into their life. And your job is to show them how you can give them time back. And they will pay for that all day long because their time is worth way more than doing that task themselves. I'm curious, have you found any good? I'm about to go speak to, I don't know, 600 or so broker owners at a conference here this next week. And I'm just curious, have you found any good, like, outreach strategies they want me to talk about? I'm going to give them, you know, a funnel for recruiting and how to think about recruiting. Because I'm a marketer and I love sales and marketing. And it's like people don't have. They have funnels for lead gen for their buyers and sellers, but they have no funnels created for their legion of recruits. And it's. Have you found any good outreach strategies? Whether it's masterminds or a calling and getting a cup of coffee like Is there anything that you have found or is it purely just referral?
- [37:03]
Tom McCormick
I think, I think it's follow up for one. You know, we're all, it cracks me up. A lot of our agents, you know, they'll get an online lead and they'll say, oh well those, those leads were a waste of time. And, and it's like, well, why do you say that? Because they never call me back. Like, well, how many times did you call, like text to them? And I called them and I sent them an email. It's like, well, repeat, repeat. A friend of mine who was in mortgage years ago, we were out for drinks and I said, what's your company's policy for following up with, with a lead? And he said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, how many times, you know, are you required? And he was like, I don't understand the question. And I said, well, because here like we, we had to come up with like a minimum, like you must follow up at least six times.
- [37:54]
Luke Acre
That is amazing. What a golden nugget. Yeah.
- [37:57]
Tom McCormick
And so he said, he go. I said, so what, you know, what's your policy? He said, you call until they tell you to stop. Call. He said, you never stop. If they don't say anything, you keep going. And I was like, you know what, why not? And the thing is, everybody thinks, oh, I don't want to be a pest, I don't want to be that pesky salesperson. It's like, hold on, these people self identified.
- [38:25]
Luke Acre
Yes, exactly.
- [38:26]
Tom McCormick
This is not cold calling. They said, I want information about this property. You're not doing your job if you don't absolutely find a way to connect. And if you think about how many times I try to always put our agents in the shoes of the consumer. How many times have you reached out for information about something and you weren't available five minutes later when they called you back, but on the third time when, oh, I guess I really should take this call, they pick up. And that's really what it's about. Understanding that it's not all about you. They're not consciously trying to ignore you. They're just busy life happens, right? So you have to look for those opportune moments where you can sneak in and get the conversation going.
- [39:11]
Luke Acre
What was it? Who was it that told us the you you call until you get one of two fingers, thumbs up or the. We all know the other things. Maybe it was Jared James. It might have been.
- [39:22]
Tom McCormick
I'm going to write that down. I like that.
- [39:24]
Luke Acre
One of two fingers, either thumbs up or the other one. That's amazing.
- [39:30]
Josh Dyke
Don. This has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us here on the podcast today. Before we close out, do you want to let people know how they can either connect with you or learn more about resources real estate?
- [39:39]
Tom McCormick
Sure. Resourcesrealestate.com resources plural resourcesrealestate.com has lots of information about, you know, who we are, our history, our marketing. You know, if you're an agent looking for more information, we've got sort of career paths, depending on what your personality traits are and, you know, would love to have a conversation and learn more about about you guys. So thank you guys. This has been fun. I really enjoyed it.
- [40:05]
Josh Dyke
Thanks, Tom. And thanks to all of you so much for listening. You can get the show notes and the video of this episode over staypaidpodcast.com if you like this episode. Do us a favor, head on over to YouTube.com reminder media, subscribe to the channel and give this video a thumbs up. And the best way to support the show is simply to share this episode with somebody that you know. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcastmindermedia.com and of course you can follow us on State on Instagram. We are at Staypay podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Josh Dyke.
- [40:33]
Luke Acre
Guys, I'm Luke Acre and Tom, thank you so much for coming on. It was awesome, man. Looking forward to even getting to know you more. Running such an incredible brand. So it's really impressive to watch and excited to get to know you and what you're doing there. Here's my action item for everybody listening to this. Right? Because you can't walk away without an action item. You got to actually put the work in. And I think Tom said something that's so critical. It's also his value prop. And oftentimes it's easy to hear the value prop of training and kind of gloss over it as like, oh yeah, okay, everybody trains. But that's not the truth. Like, we've been in this industry for 20 years now, worked with over 153,000 real estate agents. Tom's been in it for decades. You're hearing a professional speak and is shocking the lack of training in this industry and that hurts the whole industry, right? Because consumers then get experiences with bad agents. Here's my action item for you. Do you have on your calendar every single day where you are dedicating at least 30 minutes to educate yourself on the market or on something in real estate? I know we do this with Acre Brothers Realty Team. Whereas every day you have to come in and not only look at the market and actually update yourself on what has transpired and what has happened, but you have to educate yourself on something in real estate. Because the education. If you want to display confidence for people, you must have competence. Competence does not come from self proclaimed affirmations. It comes from putting in the work of education. So my challenge to all of you guys is spend at least 30 minutes a day this next week. Challenge yourself to do it for the next 30 days, actually investing in your education. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every business, it's top producers. Take action. Take action on that today.