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Stay Paid Podcast
Viral Video Real Estate Sensation Shares His Strategy
00:37:06
In this episode, we unpack strategies for social media growth and dive into the story behind the viral video phenomenon Breathing Realtor®, which is rocking social media and real estate. We explore feeder markets—an underutilized lead-gen...
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- [00:01]
Luke Acree
Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast, where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
- [00:11]
Joshua Stike
Welcome to Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Stike.
- [00:13]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
Joshua Stike
And before we bring on our guest today, we'd love it if you take a minute to subscribe to Stay Paid on Apple Podcast or Spotify if you're not already subscribed. While you're there, drop us a review. We will read it here on the show. Joining us today from Lynchburg, Virginia, Steven Acree and Cody Smith. Smith, from the Acre Brothers Realty team, the number one.
- [00:32]
Luke Acree
What do you guys think about having these guys on the show? I don't know if they're bringing our views down. They think they're the looks and the humor.
- [00:39]
Steven Acrey
Now, Luke, you're gonna get some more reviews.
- [00:43]
Joshua Stike
We'll do a Spotify.
- [00:44]
Luke Acree
They'll be like, kick them off. Kick them. No.
- [00:47]
Cody Smith
They're the only reason we're staying.
- [00:49]
Mike Heggy
Yeah.
- [00:51]
Joshua Stike
And joining us today, our special guest is Mike Heggy. Mike is a dynamic realtor that's a has a proven track record selling luxury properties and consulting relocating buyers in the Charlo, Huntersville, and Lake Norman areas. As a former nurse, he has applied those skills to ease the stress of the process with the help of his team to make an incredible experience. He is a founding team leader at Compass Pridemore Properties and consistently ranks in the top 100 realtors in the national market. Mike, welcome to Stay Paid. Thanks for being here.
- [01:18]
Mike Heggy
Hey, appreciate it. I feel like you guys, if you can just kind of, like, introduce me that way, when I get home every day, my kids kind of have, like, a healthy awareness, you know? Well, even put some way to make me feel good. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.
- [01:30]
Luke Acree
It'll be like walking out at ufc. That's how it will be when you're coming home. The intro, you're also known. I mean, Josh didn't say the main title. You're known for being the breath guy because you had this video go viral on, you know, Instagram and probably other platforms. I saw it on Instagram, and I think it has millions of views on there. Explain a little bit about that. What was the video? Why do you think it went viral? What has it done for your business?
- [01:57]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, I mean, like, like many other people have been putting out content for a long time. You know, you always hope to have something like this happen, but you're not prepared for when it does. And so it wasn't really overnight. We had been having a lot of reps just putting out videos and trying different things. And so if you're not familiar with the video, you literally can Google breathing Realtor and unfortunately I'm the top ranking keyword so I'll take that as a badge of honor. You know, the SEO juice is in my favor at the moment. The video was produced on July 8th and that's when it launched. It was literally within a 24 hour time period from shooting. And it's a very random, you know, just me. Everything that you would, you'd say in a video you take out. So it's just me breathing. Literally. That's all the outtakes. So I think that self deprecating humor. The caption was my Gen Z editor, I sent her the video and this was she sent back to me. And I think that landed for a lot of people because there's this timeless tension between generations. So making fun of employee, employee relationships and the generational gap and perspective. We didn't realize it was going to land and so when it did, people were coming out of the woodworks, just news outlets. Gary Vee's team came out. There's a lot of press behind it. It was super cool, super grateful for those opportunities that Today show and so we just kind of ran with it. So I think the traditional media connections led to more opportunities. We've had people, clients, referrals, other agents that I'm super grateful for saying I think of a guy in Charlotte. Well, you're the guy so I'm going to reach out to you because I don't want anybody else or I like your personality, what have you. So we're trying to lean in those opportunities and just ride the wave. So it's been fun.
- [03:45]
Luke Acree
Yeah, I mean you really have been consistent because I went and took a look at your social after all that and you have been putting out a lot of content and you do a lot of great content and you get good amount of views. Have you found that it has upped all of your views on your future videos or you're going through the like we've gone viral before on TikTok but then we went into the death of like, you know, we'll have a video do. It's not even that viral, like a million views and then it's like 400 views and you're like can't get this to work. What is going on? What have you learned from the virality and have you been able to transfer that to other videos? Any tips for us?
- [04:22]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, I Think when you have something like that happen is you immediately got to get together with your team and figure out like dissect it and then lean into that topic, whatever it is. So the spoof or the spinoff videos that we had were all in an effort to try to capture some of the wave and keep them there. Because I didn't want to be a one hit wonder. I wanted to have like some, you know, I mean again we've been putting out content for a long time. We never had, never saw something like this coming. But in the end of the day we leaned into the Gen Z, like you know, kind of entire shtick, if you will. And so me walking through house tours talking about no cap, you know, or like, you know, this clinically delulu or put a Victorian child into a coma, you know, those are all the Gen Z, you know, vernacular. So I had to get a crash course. Fortunately, our Gen Z editor is Gen Z and she knows that very well. So I'm literally just reading or just saying it, projecting. But we did the first time, first.
- [05:21]
Steven Acrey
Time I heard no cap was from Chandler on her team. And it's so funny to see the generational gaps.
- [05:26]
Luke Acree
I was like, what, what, what are you talking about here?
- [05:30]
Steven Acrey
So many of them.
- [05:32]
Mike Heggy
Oh, totally. No cap. I mean that's definitely one. Or like just a simple bet. At first I'm like, are you taking a bet? I don't follow, I don't get it. But we leaned into that and then you're right. I mean you have this kind of like overarching success. And then what was interesting is because the breath piece, the caption did not have English. So influencers like in India, China, Japan, Brazil, a lot of our international clients said, hey, this guy that I follow did a remix of your real in my, my language. Because I follow this guy because I'm Brazilian or I'm Japan Japanese. And like so the, the, the crazy part is a lot of the views were coming from international. Like when I look at the insights, it's unbelievable. So that the, the blessing of that is that now there's new awareness that never. But you know, the secondary maybe down downside is like the next video is in English. So I'm not sure it's really going to land, you know.
- [06:31]
Luke Acree
Yeah, I don't know how you retain that client base, but maybe I guess you, I mean, referrals internationally, when you look at your deals, are you seeing, did you see growth in like referrals from specifically from agents and you know, international stuff like that?
- [06:48]
Mike Heggy
Oh yeah. For sure. But we had, we did put it on TikTok, but someone ripped the video on Instagram and put it on her own TikTok. Like it just copied the video and put it out and then it went viral on her page. And so then like when we posted it late, we didn't post it all at once because, I mean, again, when something like this happens, you're trying to figure it out, sort through it. And so the subsequent videos stuck on TikTok. I really had not been a big TikTok user prior to that. I mean, I was just kind of on it, but maybe haphazard, mainly Instagram. And, and so when we put it on there, that's when it kind of took off on the other videos. So just, you know, it's different based on how the algorithm picked it up. But the international business on TikTok, specifically people that were relocating in the area from international to our area, that was one that I just didn't see coming. And it was, it was more prevailing. Even though the viral video was on Instagram. I had a lot of our clients and again, news media outlets and things picking up on Instagram, but the actual buyers that were coming came from TikTok. Wow. So I don't know if the algorithm is pushing it further or just more meaningful to that particular audience. Maybe there's more Gen z users on TikTok. That's another video right there.
- [08:01]
Steven Acrey
When, when you, the video, were you already at 30,000 plus followers or did that skyrocket?
- [08:07]
Mike Heggy
Your. No. What's, what's wild? I'll be super transparent with you guys. And I've kind of shared this. Like two years ago, I built a page like all the wrong way. I paid to play, I paid for followers and got to 80,000 people. And then I said, this doesn't feel right to me because once you're in that loop, you have to keep doing it. And I just said, I'm going to cancel it all. I'm going to strap it and start over and do it completely organic, the right way. And I'd been working on this, the page you see now, for two years, all the right things showing up, consistently posting, doing all the things. And then this hit. And so for me, it was like very, very thankful that, like, wow, you know, I never thought, like, when I scrapped a page, I'd spent six figures on that old page and six figures on Instagram and like to scrap it took a piece of me. Yeah, yeah, it was really difficult, but it obviously paid off. We went from 2,000. I think we're just under, like, we're at 33,000 or something like that on the personal page.
- [09:03]
Steven Acrey
But how long. How long of a time frame, you know, was that? Because, you know, that's what we'd like to get our social up to because it's also something you can show in listing appointments. And I think it does mean something. And then the other thing is when you're sharing the stories of closings and you have 30,000 plus, you know, followers that are seeing your story, it feels really good to the client. So how fast did that happen?
- [09:26]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, July 8th, the video launch. And I think we had grown, like, I think it was 3,000 people overnight. I mean, like, I woke. I went to bed and woke up the next day and it was like. And it just seemed like I couldn't keep up with all of the things. And then there was a period of time where VA was trying to comment, and I didn't realize there was 100 comment list, you know, cap. And so they shadow banned me at about 21,000 people within, like, I think it was 60 days, maybe 90 days. And because we were commenting, we're trying to keep up, like, just to keep, you know, I guess, momentum, make sure people feel like we heard them all the things. And so then it took like a week. And then ironically, that same week, Instagram business reached out their page, wanted to feature the video, wanted to talk. And I said, hey, I'd love to talk to you guys. I'm really thankful you reached out. Is there any way you can unlock my account, please? Is there. Wow. Is there any way? I don't know if you have Zuck on, like, you know, like standby, but if you can, like, figure that out. And so I don't, I don't know if it helped at all, but the next day it did unlock, so. But it, it was kind of wild. I mean, it grew really fast from July to date. Is that time period.
- [10:35]
Steven Acrey
That's sick.
- [10:36]
Luke Acree
How do you think about content now? Like, are you trying to post every single day? Or you have a. You know, you mentioned this Gen Z video editor and stuff like that. That's doing it for you. Like, how do you. Because Steven and Cody, I'm assuming you guys problem knowing, you know, working with you. It's like the time that it takes to stay consistent and post every day. Do you have a methodology or framework you follow Mike in order to keep up with posting or.
- [11:02]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, you guys ask good questions here on the podcast. So maybe that's where you staying Paid. And then your backdrop, like, take action. You just take action. It's consistent, right?
- [11:12]
Luke Acree
That's what it is.
- [11:13]
Mike Heggy
I love it. So I think consistency is really the key when we, when we brainstorm ideas, we're. We're thinking about it from the vantage point of like, what's worked, what's an angle, who's our audience, and like, how do we get create those different buckets of content? So right now we're pivoting a little bit because, like, we had a lot of the Gen Z buyers, but we have luxury sellers, and while they like the humor, it's a little bit different audience, right? Yeah, yeah. I can't go in there and say, I'm going to take your $5 million listing on God. Where do you sign? I had to pivot a little bit with like some of the content we were creating to where I can still show my personality. I still do, obviously, because I think being personal is like a huge piece. I mean, we knew like a few years ago you guys are smart. You knew that, like the standard branded templates that real estate companies put out, like, I don't think anybody looks at those, you know, like, oh my gosh, my mom liked it again, I'm so thankful. So we knew that we had to do something different. And I think that was where kind of the comedic relief, we just started experimenting. It was a B testing. Tom Ferry talks about that too. Just a B testing and trying different stuff and seeing what's going to land and what resonates.
- [12:36]
Steven Acrey
Where do you market your listings at? Do you market it on social as well, or you just keep that purely authentic humor, that kind of thing?
- [12:45]
Mike Heggy
That's a great question. The listing videos, when we have higher profile listings, I think the listing walkthrough videos are still getting a lot of traction. People are curious about homes. They want to see the inside of homes, making it creative. I think YouTube has been a big piece. We've been slowly building that there, but we predominantly do it for the ad feature, you know, like targeting out of market, relocating feeder markets to our market with those listing videos. So it's been kind of a strategy that we've been doing for some time on social. There's definitely a tee up, like teaser stories, clicking links, like trying to get the engagement up of like, you know, are you curious about where this is located? Send me a dm, hit me up. We've got access to this private list that nobody else has, like really leaning into that story. And then when we post, it's like a run up where we've tried a lot of different things, but on social, certainly as a mechanism where we want to showcase the listing, but we're trying to do it in a creative way versus, like, come on in, check it out.
- [13:45]
Joshua Stike
Welcome.
- [13:46]
Mike Heggy
1, 2, 3, banana street. You know, just doing, Doing. Trying to do some different stuff. So I'm equally excited to learn from you guys on what you guys do for listings.
- [13:55]
Steven Acrey
The same thing, man, when we keep hearing this on our pod on this podcast, is the private listings. Right. The exclusive listings that no one else gets access to. Like, we've seen that probably the last three people have said that. And so, you know, when you're in a low inventory market, the problem is we. We have an incredible brand here, and we're doing a lot of, like, paid ads. So, like, the views that we get are extraordinary. People know us, but we don't have our organic social up. I want to get that. That list together. I want to build that up, because when you do the exclusive list for that, I could see a lot more lead flow coming through. But, yeah, we're doing a lot of.
- [14:32]
Luke Acree
Similar stuff that plays into Instagram. Like, you guys doing your own little channel on Instagram. You know, that's the Sharon or Jimmy Mackin deal of the week.
- [14:43]
Cody Smith
Yeah.
- [14:44]
Luke Acree
Concept. And that could be a way to organically build that list. One of the things, like, one of the people on your team, Adam.
- [14:51]
Steven Acrey
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Luke Acree
He does a good job at his social. And I liked his video he just put up of. What was it? This is what $615,000 can get you in Lynchburg, Virginia, and, you know, a nice little tour of the house. Like, I feel like those videos are doing well. I think you guys should test, like, almost like, guess the price of this home and put that in your story. So the same, like, take that nice home that Adam did and go, how much do you think this home is worth? 400, you know, you know, 475. 600. And that gets interaction with people. And, you know, obviously that will feed the. The algorithm. But that's one thing I go that people I see really like tours of house. Right. They call it. What is it? House porn. People like the tours of house a ton. And that's the title of the video right there.
- [15:37]
Joshua Stike
Yeah, they got that on YouTube.
- [15:38]
Luke Acree
Exactly. Put that on.
- [15:39]
Mike Heggy
On YouTube.
- [15:40]
Cody Smith
Now this podcast is banned. Thanks a lot. Yeah.
- [15:43]
Joshua Stike
Kids say prawn.
- [15:44]
Luke Acree
Oh, okay.
- [15:45]
Mike Heggy
There you go.
- [15:49]
Cody Smith
So do you think it should focus you on instead of doing, like, the Acrey Brothers brand that just do Steven Acrey, like, The individual, like, yeah, what.
- [15:58]
Steven Acrey
Do you think about that? The personal versus. Yeah. The business.
- [16:01]
Cody Smith
Yeah, business for personal. Who would you.
- [16:03]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, man. That's again, great questions here. I love the collaboration. I love this like, you know, cohort. I feel like I'm in the room with you guys and we could tap beers right after and see Luke.
- [16:13]
Steven Acrey
He likes us.
- [16:14]
Luke Acree
Exactly. Mike's just trying to praise you guys so we keep you on the show.
- [16:20]
Mike Heggy
He's like, give me the referrals. Exactly. No, you guys are great. The, you know, when we, when we did the collaboration on the viral video, we actually had my personal page tagged as a collaborator. I've never seen this happen, but it went so viral that Instagram took me off as a collaborator. I'm still tagged. I was able to pin it to the top of my feed, my personal page. But I have tried. No short of. I mean, I can't tell you how many times of trying to re add me as a collaborator. And the most that it will do on that post is just a tag. So I think if you want to collaborate. Yeah.
- [17:00]
Steven Acrey
Do you know why that is? That's interesting.
- [17:03]
Mike Heggy
Never seen that happen ever before. And the only thing I can attribute is the analytics. They couldn't keep up, I guess. I mean that's just my guess. I really don't know. I think if you can tag your personal and the business, like we try to make it easy for our team too. If it's a team post, we're going to hit the collaborator button to make it easy for them and it expands the reach. You know, like when this, when this comes out, there's any clips, you know, tag me. This is good.
- [17:29]
Steven Acrey
How many people do you have on your team to do this kind of operation of social?
- [17:35]
Mike Heggy
We have 25 active producing agents. On the staff side, we have three people that touch the team account and my personal account. There is three people that touch that as well.
- [17:45]
Joshua Stike
Okay.
- [17:46]
Luke Acree
Is that what they do full time is like social and other administrative stuff or they touching it like they're agents as well, but they have access.
- [17:56]
Mike Heggy
The Gen Z editor, we pivoted to an employee role, to a 1099 role. So she's still with us, but she does more contracting and so she still touches a page. Our VA, who is full time, we hired like five years ago. She's fantastic. So we, we have. And she does a lot of things, not just social, but social media is probably 60% of what she does. And the rest of it might look like email, newsletter, back end marketing stuff because she's got a graphic kind of mind. We hired her as a video editor, by the way, which is a great hack for virtual assistants. Not marketing, not social media video editor. Because if you can find someone that's a va, that's a video editor, they're very technically savvy and they can figure out the other things that you can normally be trained.
- [18:42]
Steven Acrey
Yeah, that's great.
- [18:43]
Cody Smith
That's really good. That's the harder probably thing to know is that. So that's smart.
- [18:47]
Mike Heggy
Totally.
- [18:48]
Steven Acrey
Everyone says they know social media. Yeah.
- [18:51]
Luke Acree
I can edit in canva. I want to go back for a second because, Mike, you said you, when you did the listing videos, you advertise them to feeder markets to your market in Charlotte. Is that working? And if it is, like, how do you choose the feeder markets? Is it just your institutional knowledge based upon your history? Like, can you give us some tips around that? Because I think that's a great idea.
- [19:18]
Mike Heggy
Totally. On Redfin, they have migration pattern. Like, okay, you can track that. Prior to maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago, How Money Walks was a really good source. It was at the census data level. Unfortunately, that map seems to be broken and it was free. So I didn't like, you know, I'm sure they. They crashed. Somebody crashed a course so they couldn't update the census data or something happened. But we kind of institutionally knew where our feeder markets will go. We would know that, like on social. From insights on certain videos would track. So there's kind of a multitude of different sources, but for us in Charlotte, we have the halfback syndrome, where people come from northeast really cold to Florida, which is really hot and expensive, and they come halfway back to the Carolinas. So we knew that, like targeting there, that's just. That's a common thing in our. In our market. And then also California, people that want to escape California, and we would run ads that say, why are all the Californians leaving?
- [20:22]
Luke Acree
That's so great.
- [20:25]
Steven Acrey
Yeah.
- [20:26]
Luke Acree
Catches you right in. So. And then when you're looking at that, like, do you guys. What's the type of spend that you would do monthly that you feel has been worth it for you? Just even if it's a range. So people know what it would take to do something. Something like that.
- [20:41]
Mike Heggy
I think when you have a really strong listing, it makes it easy because you want to spend money. You know that it's going to like you're investing money and not spending right. And if you're going to invest in video and you believe in video, and that's Part of why you're here and you're, you know, learning and growing. You're willing to put the dollars in for that listing to get it staged and prepped. And you're showcasing the story on social. You're doing the listing video. So once you have the video, the question is, where does it go? And a lot of the sellers would ask, like, it's great, Cody. You guys brought up a really good point, like, how social you could utilize, the number of people in your audience and, like, what kind of reach you're going to have on YouTube. What we do is make an unlisted video, and then we target through Google Ads, we target those feeder markets where we type in, you know, those locations. I think we're running like two or $300, like, you know, a month. It wasn't like, something crazy. And then we did sell this past year a $2.5 million house that way. And then prior to that, I had a repeat customer from years ago that called back. It was a double end deal. And then we just resold the property and helped them buy something else. I think all in it was like $10 million worth of business from this one concept. So it. I mean, it. It worked. And they were from San Diego, and they saw the ad, like, wow, the San Diegans leaving California. And they're like, that speaks to me. I want to get out of California, and I want to get to this amazing property. And it resonated with them. So it did work.
- [22:06]
Luke Acree
Yeah. I love that. I feel like you guys market Stephen and Cody because it's a college town. You could play maybe a little bit different angle, but where are the students coming in from and targeting even parents buying investment properties and stuff like that. There could be a different angle there.
- [22:23]
Steven Acrey
Yeah. What was the place that you got the data?
- [22:27]
Luke Acree
Redfin, I think you said for migration.
- [22:30]
Mike Heggy
Redfin. Redfin Migration Patterns was one. How Money Walks was a website. It's not operational now. I don't believe the census data is where they pulled it from. And then anecdotally, like from, like, your insights page with certain listings, you'll see, like, where people are drawn to and where. Where they're finding the properties. And we just kind of started tracking where that looked like. And then AB testing. I mean, for us, the halfback phenomenon was strong. So I imagine in Virginia, you know, you guys kind of know, like, it starts with people, like, around, like, the closest city to Lynchburg, Virginia, is that Richmond.
- [23:07]
Steven Acrey
For you guys, close to be Charlottesville and Roanoke. The biggest city would Be Richmond.
- [23:13]
Mike Heggy
Gotcha. So, like show Charlotte and Raleigh are often in the conversation is two and a half hours from us. Wake Forest is an hour and a half from us. So even starting like within the state and kind of capturing like Virginia as a whole and sometimes can be really interesting to like test with to see if you know what kind of interests are coming from those local feeder markets that are like confusing Charleston and Charlotte, which happens to us also a lot. Yeah. Yeah, so got it.
- [23:44]
Luke Acree
Yeah, that makes so much sense. So, man, I feel like could talk to you all day. I want to just dive into the topic a little bit on. You have 25 team members and man, building a team is so hard. I know. Stephen, you guys have been through the ups and downs of building a team. How have you gone about trying to find all star players and then keeping the people on the team? Are you a heavy standards person? Are you just, you know, try to build the roster And I don't mean that in a negative way. It sounded negative. It's just like that's a real strategy.
- [24:17]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, we're, we're not a leads team, we're a collaborative team. So we were a brokerage prior to calling ourselves a team within Compass. So I think that's an important distinction because we view ourselves, my business partner and I, being active in the business, we look for more collaboration with partnership deals. So if it's outside of our geography, as we've grown our own personal practices or development projects, we're in. We don't want to service everybody and we're not the right fit for all of our clients. You don't go to Starbucks to have dinner. You know, you kind of know what your niche is and you, you, you know, you tend to build around that. And the people we brought on, a lot of them because we're a brokerage and because we had long standing history in Charlotte, most of them had 10 plus years experience. So we cater to more of the agent that has been stuck for a while and is frustrated and need mentorship and coaching to help them get to the next level. We're really good about identifying who is our avatar agent. And the second agent is someone that's been in business a long time, very tenured and respected, but they're just tired of doing all the back end stuff. They want camaraderie. It's very difficult, as you already said, building a team and riding solo and being around a good camaraderie and culture where you're having events regularly. We're kind of putting on laying Out. We do a corporate tailgate with the Panthers. We've done every home game for six years. That's just the red carpet. All they have to do is show up. There's beer trucks, there's Bloody Mary bars, there's nine parking spaces. It's not like chucking a truck on the back of a hitch. Not that there's anything wrong with that type of tailgate gate, but we, we, we have a lot of fun and we're tied in with the Panthers also. So we have the game and the, you know, it's a whole like day of setup. So I think a lot of our agents like that and it's just rolled out for them. They don't have to think as much. They just show up and they interact with their clients, which is what they're good at. So I think it's like really getting really clear on who the avatar agent you want to bring on is and then like taking stuff off their plate they don't want to, you know, they're not good at or they don't want.
- [26:14]
Cody Smith
To do when's that next tailgate party.
- [26:19]
Mike Heggy
And you guys are always welcome. It's every home game the same spot. Same spot.
- [26:26]
Steven Acrey
Yeah. When you say like take off stuff off their plate, what is the leverage, you know, points that you would point to the most? So like for instance, we have a level up system on our team to where you close a certain amount of volume, you get contracts written for you, you get a showing assistant, you know, so on and so forth. Is that the kind of leverage that you're talking about?
- [26:46]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, I think at a team level, the personal assistant pieces are left to the agent themselves to hire out. We have internal TC that you can forward your paperwork and kind of everything gets done for you. So there is that aspect of it that we offer the marketing support, just the listing launch. A lot of details that go into that, as we all know, from preparation of the listing to managing once it's live, to broker open house to the email distribution. So our team can do all of that willingly and happily for, for our agents. So I think we try to take those pieces where normally it would bog an agent down, like trying to do all these details like that. And we would try to take that away. And it's not necessarily a, a minimum threshold. We try to give a big acknowledgement also like, you know, quarterly top producer lunches and we're having end of the year dinner and like, you know, again the client events, having access to that. I think our team is really big on the time with Scott and I, my business partner and I. So we're going through our one on one kind of business planning. We have a team sales manager. We hear time and time again she's 20 plus years in the business and she is just a rock star. And our agents, all the deal doctoring and all the things day to day she handles for us. So I mean I think those pieces have been invaluable.
- [28:09]
Steven Acrey
Yeah. What are you just curious? I'm just trying to get like an organizational, you know, kind of chart, you know, for this. What are your splits for your agents? How do you run it? Do you run it more like a brokerage or is it more like a team split?
- [28:21]
Mike Heggy
Man, if I could do it all over again, the number one thing I would do from learning from that mistake is, and this is just because of being a brokerage, transitioning to a team, any broker owner that's in that case there's got to be like a give and take. You can't scratch it all and start over. When you have OGs that are kind of been there and help you build a brand, you know, you want to honor that. And so because of that everyone is on a different arrangement. I think what I would do differently is whatever company that someone joined as a team, allow that to be taken off the top and then anything left have a flat split offer the same either across the board or like you said, if you hit this threshold, you get this. But it would make it from a profitability probably my estimation of 3 to 4x.
- [29:02]
Luke Acree
Yeah.
- [29:03]
Mike Heggy
Just from that. But yeah, same Difficult. It's difficult once you build it, you.
- [29:08]
Steven Acrey
Know, it's like do you decide to keep going grandfather people in, you know, do you decide to split to a tier system rather than it just be the same across the board? There's a lot of those questions. We ultimately decided, hey, we want to, you know, keep everyone the same and then have it be a little bit of a tier system with leverage but not splits. So you know, our agents are making more when they get more leverage, but that's it.
- [29:35]
Luke Acree
That makes perfect sense. I was at a dinner last night with a bunch of business owners and they were talking about this study that was done on CEOs that are decisive and just make decisions imperfectly versus CEOs who make better decisions. And the ones that were decisive and did decisions imperfectly well outperformed. Like multiple X's outperform CEOs who made the better decisions in the study. And I thought that's super interesting to this Point of every. Notice how, Mike, you had the same pain point that Steven had, and you're both trying to grow the teams, but at the end of the day, you have 25 agents and Steve, and you have a big team. And you've made it there because you made the decision and moved imperfectly because you would have done it differently looking back. But you got there and you're outperforming the person who's trying to set up the perfect. I guarantee it. The perfect splits right in the beginning because you can't. You don't. Some things you cannot get without experience. You just don't know. I was telling Steve today that a different Steve. I was telling Steve today in the office, like a common, like, example, it.
- [30:47]
Mike Heggy
Right.
- [30:47]
Luke Acree
You're running it right now. RIT probably has low morale, a losing culture right now because they haven't been hitting their sprints and the products getting out on time and all that stuff. And years ago, I was the guy that would say, don't fluff tickets. Don't, you know, don't give yourself more time. You should be doing more. Like, it was all about set higher standards. You know, if you think it's going to take eight hours, it should only take eight hours. Don't give yourself 10 hours. Now I know. Well, in theory that sounds right. You tell that to anybody, they're like, yes, that. Don't fluff things. That. No, no, no. Now I know. No, you should actually fluff things a little bit. Let people actually win. Because when they win, they get juice and momentum and then they'll win again. And then you can squeeze down a little bit slowly over time. But trying to run it to perfection in the beginning was the wrong move. But in. But that sounds terrible when you say it out loud of like, yeah, fluff something. Take a little bit longer. It sounds horrible. But in practicality, because of experience and after talking now to a ton of people who've been through the same pain as we have with it, I realized, oh, yeah, if you allow your team to go into a cycle where they're not winning, where they're not hitting their sprints, where they're not, then you. That's a death. Like.
- [32:08]
Steven Acrey
It'S the tiers of business, too, because, like, when you're small, you can do what you did in the beginning. Right. When I think about me as an independent agent and then having one buyer's agent, one assistant, like, I'm operating in that way, and then you get a little bit bigger and the ship moves so much slower on decisions. And if you crush the morale of your team, not hitting those targets, then it just compounds from there in a negative way. So it's like this development that you have to change and shift with every place of your business.
- [32:37]
Luke Acree
And it's always everything in life is moderation. Everything in life is push and pull. So it's not like you fluff too much or not. There's still that balance, but it is 100%. You have to create a winning culture. And winning comes from literally winning, like hitting, doing what you say you're going to do, and accomplishing things and print. And so it's just interesting how when you study and look back on my own experience in running a business and then listening to others, you just go, yeah, yeah. There's some things only experience will teach you, because theory would make you think the complete opposite until you actually go out and do it. But, man, Mike, this has been amazing. I'm trying to get back to asking people. Early on in our podcast, we used to ask everybody this question, which is, knowing what you know now, what advice would you go back and tell your younger self? Like, what would you tell them now with all this experience you've had?
- [33:31]
Mike Heggy
Yeah. Wow. I think looking back 20 years ago, when I got in this business, I thought that running hard without any kind of, like, you mentioned the fluff that came from experience. Like, it's not that we need fluff, but when you find passion from things that, like, give you energy, I'd probably spend more time with that because business ended up happening later on from the things that I was naturally drawn to when I was doing things that didn't fit who I was. So, for example, someone said, door knocking. Okay, door knocking, right? Suddenly go, door, knock. Let me do a bunch of open houses. But that didn't give me energy. Versus I'm really into fitness and jiu jitsu and, like, that community. Like, it's just like second family and it's natural. And because I'm showing up, I never thought I was interacting with 50 people, 100 people at any given time throughout the week. And those, they're like brothers, you know, or sisters. So, like, we're training along each other and we have that common interest. And I spent a lot of time doing what I thought was, like, the best, the shiny penny thing versus, like, really examining, like, one. Finding a solid mentor early helped me, but then listening to everything that they had unique perspective on and then find things that gave me energy. So I spent too much time, like, years and years doing things that I Hated to do. I was never going to do it well, because it just wasn't who I was.
- [34:55]
Joshua Stike
Mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Before we close out, let people know how they can connect with you.
- [35:01]
Mike Heggy
Yeah, absolutely. Guys, again, thank you so much. Mike Hagee in Charlotte, North Carolina and Asheville. You can find me on all the socials at Mike Haggie Real Estate or at our team page at Pridemore Properties.
- [35:13]
Joshua Stike
Awesome. Steve and Cody, thank you so much for joining us. Got anything you want to plug on before we.
- [35:18]
Steven Acrey
Absolutely. And on this podcast, not the phone number. Follow us on social. Avery Brothers. And then follow me on social. Stephen Acrey.
- [35:30]
Joshua Stike
Awesome. And thank you all so much for listening. This episode comes out Monday before Christmas, so Merry Christmas.
- [35:35]
Luke Acree
Merry Christmas everybody.
- [35:37]
Joshua Stike
Hope you guys all have a fantastic holiday. Thank you so much for listening to Stay Paid. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to head on over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify, drop us a review. And the best way to help out the show is to simply share this episode with somebody that you know. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us@podcastremindermedia.com and of course you can follow us on social media as well. We are at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Stike.
- [36:01]
Luke Acree
Guys, I'm Luke Acrey. Mike, thank you so much, man. Really appreciate your wisdom. Looking forward to many more conversations. You are an absolute beast. So really appreciate it. So many golden nuggets shared. Here is my action item for all of you. Referrals are the name of the game. And I think people underestimate agent referrals and out of state referrals because we get kind of hyper local focus, which is good. But there's an opportunity for you. And so this action item from this podcast, you should go to Redfin and you should look at the migration data and you should look at where people are coming from, migrating to your area and see is there an opportunity for you there to start reaching those communities because you can be known as that expert. YouTube is a great way to do it. I know a lot of great agents that have come on this podcast that get a lot of referrals from relocation based upon YouTube. But remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in every business is top producers take action. Take action on that today.