← The Millionaire Real Estate Agent | The MREA Podcast
The Millionaire Real Estate Agent | The MREA Podcast
111. The 3-Step Marketing Plan That Closes 200+ Deals a Year with Danny Baron
00:43:58
Loading summary
Transcript66 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. I'm Jason Abrams, and this is the place where we lift the curtain on the world of real estate like never before. Every week I sit down with visionaries, pirates and mavericks. We're here to document, demonstrate, and most importantly, demystify their game changing models and systems. What secrets propel them to the top and how are they living their dreams? This is about passion. It's about strategy. But above all, it's about real, tangible success. So buckle up and let's dive in. This is the Millionaire Real Estate Agent podcast. Let me just ask you this. Did you have 3,500 people at your last client event? Did you have 2,000 people at the one before it? Friends, if the answer is no, then you are in the right place. We are about to hear from a man who's become synonymous with throwing events, doing giveaways, and making sure that the entire world sees it on social media. This gentleman runs a team that does over 200 units year in, year out in Cincinnati, Ohio, Northern Kentucky. Friends, I am talking about none other than Danny Barron. Danny has completely changed the way that I think about client events and I promise he's going to do the same for you. You're going to learn exactly how to use client events as the anchor for a touch program that people are unable to escape. Sit back and buckle up. This is Danny Baron. Danny, how are you, sir?
- [01:53]
B
Jason, I'm great. Thanks for having me on, brother. I appreciate it.
- [01:55]
A
It doesn't even feel like a show. It's just two friends hanging out. So this is going to be an interesting one. Danny. I ask everyone the same question. I say, how did you get into the greatest industry in the world?
- [02:07]
B
Like every realtor, it was on purpose, right, Jason? So for me, I actually came from. I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio, so the background here was very vast. I'm going to throw a word out there that I don't often throw out, but for your audience, they get the real me. I was a homeschool kid all the way through high school, so very connected with sports. I played sports for our local school. I involved at our youth group. We were doing things from the east side to the west side, playing basketball, soccer, baseball, music in the youth group, everything in between. And that's kind of just a picture of my life. So I love people. I went off to college and I found that the best way to make friends was to play basketball. So a very quick story that will translate into what we do. Today. I met a Guy at school, I got his number. I said, hey, I'll text you whenever I start playing basketball. That continued to happen. I got more numbers. I got more numbers. By my junior year, there was a list of 80 guys that I was texting whenever I wanted to go play pickup basketball. And people would come find me and say, are you the guy? Like, you're the commissioner. Like, they named me, you're the commissioner. And what started, you know, as a pickup basketball, me just having fun. I met the friends of the friends. And then what's blown my mind in this industry as we've grown is those people became real relationships as a result of a sport that I like to play for fun. And as a result of that, now I've sold houses to a lot of these guys that I was texting in college about basketball. So.
- [03:18]
A
But you could have went into any field, Danny, how did you end up in this one? Because it sounds like you learned networking really early on, but you could have taken that anyway.
- [03:27]
B
I'll tie it together for you. I took one class in market research in college. I think it was online, just to get by for my marketing degree. Turned out we had a friend in the industry in market research. I became a market research intern, turned into an associate, turned into a consultant by nature of a company that had some shifting parts. I got thrown into the fire and for three years was doing market research and innovation. What did that look like? About 50% of the time traveling to Chicago or LA or Philadelphia. My team is actually based in Philly. And when I was traveling around, what I started to realize, Jason, was twofold job number one. I was the focus group table guy leading the questions with the eight people at the table. And then we would break it down and go in their homes with one on one. I would take client teams from big groups like Johnson and Johnson or Procter and Gamble. I worked with Hershey company. We'd go into these homes and see how people use products. What that really did for me was about 50% of my time. I loved my life meeting and talking to people. But then guess what happens at the end of the project? You get locked in a room to write 100 page report about everything that you found, only to have a client team mark it all up in red and tell you that they heard something different. Because really they're taking it back to their team to get their budgets approved for the next year. And they have a certain thing they wanted to hear from their consumers. I love that. Gary Keller wrote the millionaire real estate agent from A market research mindset. He went and talked to every single realtor that was crushing it across the board and took all those findings and wrote this book that changed my life. But what would happen with some of these teams is they wouldn't actually listen to what the people said. They would want to push their own agenda. And I'll tell you what I wouldn't want to do. Jason, right? Alone for two weeks in my room. So a custom home builder approached me from church. Guess what? We played basketball together, we had golf together. He said, hey, I'm going to be honest with you, brother. I don't even know what you do, but I need you selling my houses. Because when we finish playing basketball, there's a line of six people that want to talk to you. And I don't know what that is, but I want that. Selling my custom homes. Enter Danny into real estate. I spent a year and a half doing this custom home sale thing. My dirty little secret, and this is not a bash on the builder because he's fantastic and he's still a client of mine to this day. I want him back. Six years after I left to start listing his products. I didn't sell a single home for a year and a half. So for a year and a half in a commission based role, $0 were made. All of my savings that I thought I'd probably use to buy a house or something from my market research job, gone. Five years of my career looking in the mirror. Nothing more than what I would probably use the word, a failure with no money in the bank. And I looked at my builder at that point and said, man, this just isn't working. Like, I've considered getting a real estate license. I know you want to shift my job around here to make this work. What would you do if you were me? And I owe him this to this day. He said, dude, if I was you, I would go get a real estate license and I would crush it. And I have to caveat. We were in a new market trying a new thing and I knew taking the job, not as much as I should have, but that it was going to be tough because when you're not an established brand or marketing person in that market, you're gonna have to go gain trust and sell a very expensive product. Let me finish with this and then I'll go whatever direction you want. Five years of failure, right? But along the way, I learned to work with multimillion dollar clients. I learned to write emails. I learned to be a good communicator. I learned to project, manage and make sure the number of sharpies and post it notes were at the job that needed to be. And then I went and learned about houses. From the footers, to the crews working on framing these things to the roofer, to the pricing, to all the details, to the sales, to the follow up. What is it that a realtor does again? We consult on houses and the Lord has given me a crazy journey to get where I am today. I love what I do now because the passion for people, houses and consulting is now my life, dude.
- [06:54]
A
I love it. And this kind of dovetails perfectly because if you didn't know your past, you'd say you showed up today just instinctively knowing how to market to folks. But that's not the case.
- [07:04]
B
That's right.
- [07:04]
A
This has been a journey for you. So, friends, you know what time it is. We are about to unpack a model. Now. You don't have to take the notes. If you're bombing down the highway and you're in the Tesla and you're in a new Ferrari, by the way, again, shout out to the agent in Ohio who just bought a new Ferrari. We got the email. It's awesome. You don't have to take the notes. I'm taking the notes. They come out every Thursday as a PDF. If you don't get them, head over to mrea notes dot com. That's mrea notes dot com. Now, Danny, a dear mutual friend of ours, Michael Rapacki, he has dubbed you the man with the million dollar marketing plan. So tell us exactly how do I market my business?
- [07:44]
B
Here's the thing, Jason. I think it starts with being willing to spend a little money, right? Like I think realtors as a whole, we get this job, we're by ourselves and all of a sudden we're in a position where we're handed a paycheck. Some of us that starts to go just in your personal bank account right away. And you start living off of that money, you maybe don't make the best decisions with that. It's up and down and everything in between. What I've realized, and coming from a business background, is that there has to be a budget for people that want to spend marketing money. And then you need to figure out where you're going to spend it. Now, what's the beauty of real estate? We both know this. We can do it differently, but you have to be consistent. And whatever your lane is, whatever you choose, you're going to have to be consistent or it's just not going to work. So for me Finding a number, whether it's. And you can decide this whether that's 5%, 10%, 12% of your revenue that you want to put back into marketing. For me, 10% is about my number that I want to put back into marketing. And then I have to select what lane from there. I'm going to spend that money. Our consistency comes in client events. And then I've realized over the years it's not just events for us. There's a tie in between kind of three specific things and we have to kind of call it, balance them appropriately. But they all are synergistic and they work together. It's media and social media for us. So we actually have now not one, but two hired full time media people on our team. One runs our YouTube channel, one shoots all of our houses. It gives us a leg up on the quality and the control of all the media that we're shooting. Number two is giveaways we have given away. I was trying to count this up before it came on with you, Jason. Probably $25,000 worth of stuff just online since COVID with different giveaways and our March Madness giveaway annually and giving away gift cards to restaurants and just all kinds of things. And then we do a golf outing that has tons of giveaways and stuff. So that's number two. Number three, which really is the main focus for us because the other two, I just said work within this structure are client events. And here's the beauty, here's the model. I'm not going to hold it back right out of the gates. If you are willing to throw four events per year and get 10 touch points to the people in your database prior, during and after that event, 10 total at any order, before, during or after. And then you do four of those per year. You have a 40 touchpoint plan for your database. And in the middle, you may get the benefit of seeing them in person if they choose to come to one of your events.
- [09:55]
A
Dude, I like it. All right, let's unpack this thing linearly. So, friends, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to choose a budget. Danny decided on 10%. Now, Danny, based on the number of homes y' all sell, that's plenty of money. So congratulations on that.
- [10:08]
B
Thank you.
- [10:09]
A
The first thing you said is media plus social media and you broke it into two buckets just now. Your YouTube channel and then shooting the houses. Or walk me through the way to think about media and social media. And what's the model for that?
- [10:22]
B
The consistency has to be there. And this is where I started my career. I really told everybody before I started doing client events, I just told everyone that asked, well, how did you succeed in real estate? I was like, instagram made me like $50,000 in my first year. I was just willing to put myself out there and do the silly selfie videos and market myself and market the listings and market the closings and post the people. As a people guy, I want to celebrate the people. So it's not hard for me to celebrate them on social media when or to buy them something or an event that they can show up and come to. Because I love seeing the joy of actually their families getting value from what we're doing. So for the social media aspect, it's the consistency. What we have found and specifically in Media with YouTube is that's an adjacent effort to get to different people. So what I think we dominate, Jason, is our people. If they already know us or they're referred to us, we crush it. We stay in their inbox. We give them events. We're really good. We'll get into that. YouTube was an effort to get the relocation person that would never find us online and would never come to one of our events. How do we reach that person to get them into our web of marketing and branding?
- [11:22]
A
Okay, so how do you think about the consistency? How often are you making videos? What are the videos? Pretend I'm sitting out there and I'm like, okay, I buy that. How do I do it? Yeah.
- [11:30]
B
So we just had a closing from a tour of Mason, Ohio. I have a 20 minute video with our full time media guy. He filmed all of his own B roll and drone of our entire area in this neighborhood. I have lived in that area before. So I bring the insight. It's 20 minutes of talking about the neighborhood, the restaurants, the housing market, interviewing local people, which is something that I think that we do that's a little bit different than some YouTube channels. It's not shot on a cell phone. It's a very nice setup, very much like our studio here. We've put the time and money behind it. And now these videos, we're releasing one a week. So we want to be doing 52 videos a year. We want them to be good. We'd rather have really quality content that can be expected once a week than try to do two or three of these a week that aren't going to be great.
- [12:08]
A
I love that one a week. 20 minutes local information, interviews with. What are you tracking to then know that that's either successful or not successful. Or are you just tracking one metric, which is one a week, 20 minutes, and we're going to see where the chips fall.
- [12:23]
B
You know what, you could probably go click on a video from our good friend Ken Posak, and he's going to give you all of the details about what I'm talking about here. But for us, the metric needed to be, we are going to do this for a year and see what happens. Because at the beginning, there is no promise that people are going to find you online quickly with a YouTube algorithm or Instagram, whatever you choose to do. So we knew, and this is, I think one of my superpowers is if I decide to do it, I'm going to do it and we're going to do it consistently. And if we decide red light, green light, long term, that it's not working, we can cut it off and try something else. But our metric was, are we going to get some closings? And in year one, we had some closings. And in year two, we are feel, feeling more leads come in. But you'll hear from the guys that have done this for years, like Ken. It's not year one or two where you're crushing it. If you can continue to be consistent after that and build a subscriber count, which we have seen the plus on that. Jason, I think we're getting close to 3,000 subscribers on YouTube. So someone's watching, someone's calling, and it's turned into real commission dollars. So we wanna continue to lean into that.
- [13:15]
A
I love that, friend. Shameless plug. If you haven't checked out MREA and our new YouTube channel, go check it out. It's rea podcast. Go look and please subscribe and like a video. I love it in video. By the way, friends, when you see how good Danny's studio looks, you're gonna wish you had watched this, right? If you're just listening, go check it out on YouTube. All right, Danny, the next thing you said was, we have someone who shoots our houses. What does that mean?
- [13:39]
B
You know what? I think we're running from this era where people would just go in and shoot cell phone photos. And then we graduated to like, it's expected that someone's going to get a professional photographer. But my question is, are they blacking out TVs, editing in skies, taking three different photos with different exposures and merging them together so that you can see through the windows going outside? My argument would be, the best people that I see in California are doing that. Why is no one in Cincinnati, Ohio, doing that. So we tried to take that step to say, if we're looking on the coast and seeing Ryan Sirhant do something over here, and we're seeing Josh Altman do something over here and all the Norma Realtors in between, what are we going to do to be the first one to do that in our area? And early on that was even just standing in front of our listing saying, hey, welcome to 123 Main Street. No one was doing that. Now I feel like everyone's doing that. So my eyesight is always, what can we do? That's a step ahead. And to be honest, Jason, spending the money to build out a studio and buy the right equipment is something that I don't think a lot of Realtors are willing to do. But for me, that's in that 10% where I'm saying we're going to take that step above and do something that maybe people aren't willing to do. And I think it can make a difference.
- [14:39]
A
Are you carrying enough listings to make having a full time shooter make sense?
- [14:43]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. And guess what? In his low seasons, he feels great about shooting one or two houses in a week and we can have him help edit on some of the YouTube stuff. Or he shoots all of our client events as well. So he's doing four to five to six with our agents now doing some of their own events as well. Even up to 10 events a year where he's turning around photos and videos quick from that stuff. But his busy weeks, we're actually hiring out still some of the houses because his capacity to do more than six in a week is really hard. So, yeah.
- [15:08]
A
How long does it take? You go out and you list a 3,500 square foot home. How long does it take to shoot that properly in your mind?
- [15:15]
B
Great question. Properly is a good word there. We're not doing it without drone. We're not like a matterport tour on every house kind of team we do on our luxury stuff. But for him to get the drone to do a video and to do photos, he's there a minimum of two hours. I personally, seven years into this business and selling over 200 a year now as a team, I am still at my properties for photos. I'm still shoving disgusting toilet bowl cleaners in the closet. I am telling my clients, hey, I'm so sorry if you can't find the thing, check the nearest drawer. Because if you want your house to look better than the competition, you need to let me loose in there for 30 minutes to open up Every window. Take all the ugly stuff off the kitchen counter and put it in the ca. Let the kitchen speak for itself. Unless you've got a beautiful kitchenaid in the corner that can stay. Love it.
- [15:57]
A
All right, man. I think I get now media and social media. The next thing you says were giveaways. $25,000 worth of giveaways, predominantly online and at your events. Walk me through exactly how I should think about it if I've never done them before.
- [16:10]
B
Did you ever try to do an event when you were an event based company in May or June of 2020 that didn't go that well?
- [16:15]
A
No.
- [16:15]
B
We had to figure out a reason and I actually had an events intern who is now our listing coordinator. She's awesome. But in 2020, she was our events intern and said, so what do I do? I didn't know any better than you did. Put a mask on first of all and stop looking at me. And then let's figure out a game plan. So what we did, we started March Madness in, I think it was 2020. 2020. So it must have been early enough on for us to be thinking about that. And when basketball got canceled, this is what it was, Jason. Basketball got completely canceled and we thought we should try to take advantage of March Madness anyway and do all these giveaways. So if people like our page, tag three people, if you share it to your store, you get an extra entry. They could win one of a list of 10 different items. Think the 500 items you would never buy for yourself as the perfect giveaway item. That's my take. The example would be like the yeti cooler. Everyone wants a yeti cooler, Jason. Who's walking in and buying one? Maybe realtors. Like maybe we are the ones that are doing that. But I know my friends are not doing that. And when they win one online from us or at our golf outing, they freak out that they want a yeti cooler because they wouldn't go spend their family budget on a yeti cooler, but they want to have one. So one example of that and you can pick many more and it's all on our page if people want to do the deep dive and research. But it's become an annual event for us because it was so great.
- [17:26]
A
Walk me through exactly how to do a giveaway so that I get the most out of it.
- [17:30]
B
Yep, I'm a big fan of if you have people tagging their friends, it's pushing them to that post. So you have to tag three friends is what we say. I say that you have to like the post. I have had people that we have drawn to win our 6, 7, $800 prize and then they don't win because they forgot to double tap the post. It's really sad. And we really do this honestly. Like if our team is hanging our hat on integrity, we have to pick a winner that actually won and not just select what we want. So. And on top of this, the reality is now we've expanded this giveaway so early on it was a yeti cooler. Now we've done like experience packages. So if you want to give people options, in my opinion, you're going to get more people to enter because they can pick what they want. So our most recent giveaway last March would have looked like the Cincinnati Reds opening day package, the Cincinnati Bengals package, the Woodhouse Spa package, the Kings island amusement park package. And that way all these people entering don't have to like the Bengals to be interested. They can like any of the 10 things and you're hitting a huge audience with that. And we have found now in our research, as far as I know, I believe we're the most organically followed real estate team in Cincinnati with over 5,000 followers. And that's all come from giveaways and started there. But then it's really escalated now into people following us. As we get our YouTube guy, we're starting to spin some of that into social content and it's becoming a much more high quality product to follow and is fun anyway. So giveaways are great for building up your brand new.
- [18:46]
A
This is really smart. So this is going to be marketed and advertised on social media. They got a tag three friends which brings more people to look at the post. Y then they have to like the post. Anything else they have to do. How do they actually register to win?
- [18:59]
B
Yeah, they get that extra boost if they share it to their story. But I tell people in the post, you have to tag us in your story or we might not see that you did it. My team spends about two hours going through and writing down the names on a spreadsheet of who actually shared it and tagged us because we want to do it right and we if people enter that extra entry, we want them to have it. So we then go through and with that you can find online. And this is Instagram I'm talking about by the way. Facebook, I'm sure would be a much different way to do it. But Instagram, this is how we do our giveaways. You then go and there's online Jason, you can find like a Random wheel spinner and you can also find a website that will export a spreadsheet of everyone who commented. So we'll go through and we'll make sure that all the commenting people are on there. We'll add in the people that shared it and then enter them on the random wheel generator and we actually screen record ourselves hitting spin on this random generator. And we've had up to a thousand people enter these and when they win, they freak out. They are really excited. So sometimes we'll get photos or videos back and post those on our page of people that are excited as well.
- [19:55]
A
But you're not asking for anything in return. You're not saying in order to win, give us a referral. And I'm not knocking that if that's how you do it because I've heard some of those models. This for you is just all give and all, just a reason and a way to stay in front of your folks.
- [20:08]
B
Here's the deep rooted belief I have. If we get them into our web, they're going to like what they see. So I think if they're following us on social, we are consistently posting every day, houses, people, events, opportunities, giveaways. They're going to be ingrained. And guess what? I was in the branding world. Do you know how many times people have to see a brand to actually remember the brand? A minimum of seven. Like people have to see something again and again to actually register in their brain that it exists. It's a brand, it's a real thing for us. We're in the world. Jason, if you're in second place as a realtor, how much money do you make? $0. If you're in first place you can make a lot of money. So Colgate or Crest, there's only two but if you don't pick the one, the it makes nothing. So we do not want to be the colgator Crest that's not winning. We want to be the top of mind real estate team. And if you're just providing value, we found that has continued to grow our team.
- [20:56]
A
And how many posts for these events? How many giveaways a year? Ballpark.
- [21:00]
B
Yeah. So we in March we found that four is the sweet spot. If you do a fifth after that or a sixth, people start to get sick of seeing the same thing every week and we like to switch up the prizes each week. So this last year we actually just straight up did $1,000 giveaway on the last week to try to get engagement up and it still was not quite as much engagement as week one, which only had prizes that were worth, like, 500 bucks. So when people start to feel and see the same thing, sometimes they need a little bit of a break. From when we come back to March each year, people are amped up again, and throughout the year, we'll do different giveaways of yetis or hats or whatever else with a gift card to our local. Jeff Ruby's is our number one steakhouse here in Cincinnati. So trying to give away stuff like that at different times where it's a little less expected, but in March, people know what's coming from us.
- [21:41]
A
I like it. And by the way, March makes sense because your busy season begins kind of April, May, June, July. So you're getting big. Top of mine, top of mind, gang. If you're out there and you're gonna do giveaways, please check with local attorneys, check with your brokers, make sure that you follow all applicable rul. This is an industry that is regulated, and you want to make sure you play by the book. Danny. You then get into events, and this feels to me kind of like the anchor hitter. Of these three, you're going to have four a year, 10 touches, a combination of prior, during, and after. Unpack this for me. Talk me through the way you think about events. Why do you even do them?
- [22:18]
B
TPCA compliant is my first phrase. So anything I say from here on out, Jason, that's going to apply. Let me tell you a story. When I got into real estate, I've given you the background. I loved people. I wanted to be with people. I was throwing these basketball events, essentially without thinking about it. I traveled the country in a job where I was bored by myself. And then I came back and got in with the homebuilder. And I loved the industry, but it wasn't working. I got into real estate, and my team leader at my office suggested to me that I should throw a launch party. And I had never considered that. I had heard from other people in real estate that you should be dialing up some power notes and sending those out to your top people. And she said, hey, I have seen people kind of like you. She said, people like you that throw launch parties. And her suggestion was, hey, like, you can buy out, like, an open bar for two hours and just have people come hang out. I'm a baptist worship leader. I don't drink. So I'm like, okay, how do I spin this now into my world? I actually had my former boss in market research who let me use this facility for free, and he made Pulled pork. And my pastor made more pulled pork I put together. I'm not joking, Jason. I was $2,000 in credit card debt when I was doing this. When I went to my local Kroger and bought an Amazon gift card and something else to try to give away at this event to try to get people to sign up. And then I just told everyone I was doing it, and then I told them again, and then I put it on social media, and then I told them again. And then I made a video and then I told them again. And it was like, okay, this is my one event. I'm really going to hype it up. And 175 people showed up. Before I had a real estate license. I was marketing this event, like, starting the day I got it. And this was like a month or two into having a license. 175 people showed up.
- [23:48]
A
Were you surprised?
- [23:50]
B
Mind blown. At that point, I had not been married and hadn't had a kid. I'm just telling you right now, that was the best day of my life to that point. Like, it was like, think about it. They weren't there for pulled pork, dude. They were there for me. And at that same time, I had made a video and put it online. So here's the media portion working in conjunction. And it was like, hey, two minute video. I'm Danny. I'm a realtor. Here's what makes me different. I had filmed that video before I had a real estate license. Like, there was nothing different about me. That video I had shared on Facebook. And I said, if you share this video to your page, I'll enter you to win. Guess what? A giveaway. Over a hundred people shared it. But I'm not joking. I think I cried more than once reading what they wrote when they shared it. I had thought, they'll share it because they want to win something. What happened was a paragraph about why people should trust me and what I had done in their life. And I'm like, I didn't ask for that, like, that level of. So here's what I know. Everyone is different. There are introverts that every word I've had I've said so far, Jason. They just want to jump off a cliff. They're like, I don't want to do what this guy's talking about. This is terrible. And there's people that want to go, door, knock. I actually don't want to door knock. I don't want to send. I don't want to do that stuff. This for me was. I just had the best day of my life. I had this launch party. My number one regret since getting in the business is, and here's a tip for all of your events moving forward. I didn't have a videographer there. I had a photographer. So I have all these photos from this event with these 175 people, but I did not have a videographer. So I've never made that mistake again. And here's what I'll say. Of those hundred people, it's now about seven years removed from that party. Of those 175 people, over a hundred are now past clients or active referral partners that have sent me someone to work with. I just closed on a sale of a. An investment property from my composition teacher in my ninth grade co op. She was at the event that day, and I remember, like, what are you doing here? Now she's a past client. I mean, like, when your world comes together in real estate, there's no separating those two things. So the question, as you can imagine at the end of that party, Jason, was, how do I do that again? Because that was the best day of my life, Right? So what do you do? The answer was, maybe I throw a birthday party for myself. And I thought about that for two seconds. It's like, that's not going to work. Like, you can't just continue to do this. It felt kind of like the March Madness thing about week five. It's like, okay, this is getting old. How do I do something else? And a man who was most recently on your program, Michael Mayer, came into my life with the book the Seven Levels of Communication and a podcast where he said, hey, guess what? If you throw these events, you'll never have to bug anybody ever again. You can add value instead. So he really changed my life. I actually had the honor of bringing Michael to our Cincinnati Reds game this year, which is our 3,000 person event that we do. And he threw out the first pitch for me.
- [26:20]
A
If you're out there and you haven't listened to Michael Mayer's episode of this show, do yourself a favor and go listen. Because the man made a science of running events. And the play, Danny, that you run to run the events is a lot of Michael's play.
- [26:33]
B
It is, it is. And you know what? I remember reading or listening to his podcast on this and thinking, the events he's talking about, like, those aren't really my shtick. Like, I think he did something for Arbor Day where people come pick up a tree. And I was like, but I like trampoline parks and I like the Cincinnati Reds and I like going to fall festivals and I really like comedy and I like. So you start to think of these things and like, what is it that I would want to do? And during COVID guess what? A drive in movie theater was still open. So we actually threw an awesome drive in movie theater event.
- [27:02]
A
So, well, you had 2000 people come to a comedy event. You had 1500 people at the Cincinnati Red games. So these are just. They just defy the way most people think about an event. So let's break this into phases. In the first phase, you have the pre event and the invite phase. Walk me through what's most important there.
- [27:20]
B
We really love social media, Jason. So we always, for our bigger events will do some sort of video, whether it's just informative or funny or now a combination that we have multiple media guys. One of my favorite things we do, we have everyone take a photo in a Cincinnati Reds jersey or hat or shirt and all 21 of us change our profile picture to be a Reds photo with an eventbrite link to our event. So if people don't know what's going on, they click on that and there's all the details. So as this has grown to massive levels beyond what I could ever imagine, kind of pre Covid, my first Reds game by myself was 225 people and that blew my mind. RSVP's this past year was 3,250 people to our Cincinnati Reds game. That has officially blown my mind.
- [28:03]
A
You're going to go all out on social media videos about the event, changing the profile, pictures about the event. All of this drives to an eventbrite link. I'm assuming there's text messages in a TCPA friendly compliant way and emails, is that right?
- [28:16]
B
Absolutely. So you've got social media. We're sending that link which now actually funnels through our website, which we just revamped so we're sending that link to our website or eventbrite. It was before four straight to text messages so people can sign up. And the phrase that we're telling everybody and this is a bit of a shift and this is where Michael really opened my eyes. It's not a client event. This is an event that's open to anybody. This is for us, I would use a word internally, Jason, the prospecting event. This is you're invited to come whether you've worked with us or you've never met us in your life and your friend invited you. And I try to put in there on every social media text Phone call, anything that we make. Hey, make sure to tell your friends. Bring your friends. Like, it's totally free for them, too. And that little piece right there is such a massive difference from what we confine ourselves to as realtors. Where? Well, I mean, if they bought a house for me, they can come. We've now sat at listing appointments, Jason. Where we sit across the table and someone says, hey, we've actually been to your Reds game twice and your comedy night, and we're going to buy and sell, and we're only interviewing you. So, I mean, that aspect right there of relationship building is just everything that I love boiling down to. It really does affect the business. We're not just throwing parties for no reason. It's building a brand, and it's changing completely everything about the way we run our operation.
- [29:26]
A
Okay, so in phase one, you have the pre invite and the invite, which we just went through.
- [29:30]
B
Yep.
- [29:30]
A
And it sounds like what's important about that is running a media company that literally is focused only on getting people to sign up. Once you get past that, you now have the event itself. What are the key things to pull.
- [29:41]
B
That off when you're by yourself, you just have to be reasonable. Early on, I knew that I had to focus on all those details and that things might not go perfectly. We just ran our fourth annual golf outing this past Saturday. I don't think I lifted a finger. I answered a couple questions for my team, but they've done it four times now.
- [29:56]
A
Not letting you get away with any of that. Danny, you gotta actually help us throw the event. What are the keys that make it.
- [30:02]
B
Matter when people show up? They care exactly what they run into right away. So for us, if that's having sandwich boards or whatever you need to do the money you need to put in to make someone feel welcome. And there has to be a game plan. I think golf outings are awkward without music. So I hire in a guy to bring in some speakers and have music playing. No matter what the event is, whether it's my first brisket party, which is my launch party, a Cincinnati Reds game. Out front, we have five tables lined up with a line of people where they first scan the eventbrite code. They're then handed a bag. Then they pick a T shirt of their size. Then they get their sunflower seeds, then their free water bottle. Then they come across. Thank you, Nick Waldner. A QR code at the end of our entire setup where it says, will you leave us a review? If you've worked with us in the past I mean, the systematic thought behind let's take advantage of all these people that are coming to this thing and they're getting absolutely all of it for free. What can we do that then will allow us to help us long term?
- [30:55]
A
Dude, this is a big aha for me. In this book, the Power of Moments, Dan Heath makes the argument that people remember the beginning, the end, and the highest and lowest point in the middle. And it sounds like you're planting your flag on the first impression.
- [31:09]
B
Yeah, for sure. And I think something like a Reds game or like a fall festival party, people are going to have fun. Once they walk in the door, you get them at the beginning. My job at the Reds game, Jason, is to wander in the seats for seven innings and just talk to as many humans as I possibly can. We rent out entire sections of the stadium now. It's practically speaking it's like a tenth of the stadium that we have up in one section or a twelfth. And I know that we have sections 510 through 5 18. So anyone up there, I lock eye contact and I know them and they've worked with us or if I know who they are, I'm sitting down and talking to them. We've got seven innings to go and make contact. That is now the job for our agents. Our operations team is everything I said at the beginning of making sure it runs smoothly. Our agents are talk to your people and make them feel special.
- [31:53]
A
Genius. All right, then the event ends. What's the follow up campaign look like?
- [31:56]
B
Yeah, so something like the Reds game. We have an email that goes out that night that's like thank you for coming. And once again, an event like a review for our team, a QR code or a link that just goes to. Hey, if you don't mind filling this out if you enjoyed your time, obviously long term, if you're looking to buy or sell a house, we'd love to work with you, but thank you for coming. It's just another touch point through Eventbrite. And then comes the fun part. We had our photographer and videographer there for four hours or at the trampoline park for two hours or at the drive in movie for a couple hours. And we are then releasing content after that almost in like a drip campaign of like an initial 10 photos, then another 20 and then they get an email with a full Google Drive or Pixie set link of all of the media. What do people want to know when they send out that media link? Am I in any of these? Like am I in any of the pictures? Do they get any family photos of us, the video, if it's a three minute recap video, am I in it? Are my kids in it? Like, I saw that camera guy pointing at me in the fifth inning. Did that make the final edit? So people love to relive those. We then put that stuff on our website and we can repurpose it there in our event section, which is great. But actually what happens is I go through, I download the photos. I just did this with the golf outing. I'm texting the guys their group photo and any cool photos of them swinging or drinking coffee in the morning or whatever it is, and then they'll post it on social media. And what do they do? They tag you because you gave them the photo and through the event, they are doing the marketing for you at that point.
- [33:13]
A
It's so good, man. How does it actually all turn into referrals though? Because, like, I look up and I'm like, okay, it must feel awesome to get 2,000 people to hang out at Comedy Night at a megachurch or 3,000 at a baseball game. When do the calls start coming in and are you purposeful about asking for referrals?
- [33:29]
B
Yeah, great question. I had a lender for the first ever trampoline park event that we did that said, okay, so what point do I stand up and present? I just looked at him and said, hey, that kind of party, like, you're not presenting anything. What we are expecting of our vendors. And I should have said this with our giveaways. Jason, of course, in a legal and compliant way, when you're giving something away, that doesn't mean you spent a cent. So we could go into the details of that forever, but I'll leave that for another day. Use your partners and vendors to sponsor these events that you're doing. And at the end of the day, if you are actually throwing an awesome event and you're getting the touch points and we're getting them into our network, I don't want to bog down that moment and ask for a referral. I believe that Michael Mayer may differ with me on that. And there are going to be people that have different opinions. That's great. Our team went from I'd never sold a house in 2018 to now there are 21 of us selling approximately 225 homes this year. We have never bought a lead.
- [34:21]
A
I understand that Michael is going to say, you ask at the event in an interesting way and he's got an 11 point model. It's awesome. How do you all do it? Or Are you just doing all these things and then the referrals are coming back into you organically?
- [34:35]
B
That's exactly right. And if I look at it and say, if I'm not spending marketing money anywhere else, and we've gotten to 200 houses, obviously they're coming back. And when we track where they're coming from, we do get a lot of referrals from past clients. But oftentimes these are like friends and family of mine that are coming to these events, that I've never been their realtor because they haven't bought or sold a house in the last seven years. But I know that when they do, they will not forget that this guy is a realtor and that he has a team that can crush it for them. And I actually said this at our golf outing the other day. Hey, if you liked the way that this went today and you enjoyed the people that set this up, those are the same people working on your real estate transactions. Their attention to detail is unbelievable. And they're so good at what they do. When I get the microphone at those events, I'll throw something like that in there. Jason, we're asking for reviews, obviously, but I really want it to just be, man, the Baron Group brings value. They don't bug us. And here's my goal, and I'll really simplify this for you. I don't like being annoying when I call someone, you know, dude, you've gotten those calls over the years and you see the name and you're like, I don't want to buy AdvoCare today, or, I don't want to do the essential oils thing. Right. You name it. There's all the stuff over the years, and you go, I love that guy. I liked playing basketball with him in high school, but why is he calling me right now? I want people to smile when Danny Baron calls. I don't want it to be this, what's he going to ask me for now? I want it to be, what is he about to offer? And as we've gotten into more micro events, I've invited only my top 150 to sit on the field at our local MLS soccer game. All you can eat behind the goal. We do this golf outing. We do these fun events with massive groups, but also, as we gotten into smaller stuff, there is this special like, oh, I'm on Danny's preferred list that comes to exist. And with our team now, I'll throw this out there for the team leaders. We have a budget that our folks get and shout out to Jeff Glover for just being a brilliant mastermind of all things real estate, but working with teams, specifically in structures. He's brilliant. But with our team budgets, our individual team members, we encourage them to throw their own events for their own people. So we're now adding value to the agents on our team by saying, we'll put our money where our mouth is, use our photographers, use our money. And we just had somebody throw a scavenger hunt citywide. We just had a pickleball party. And we just had our newest team member had a hundred people to her launch party in Dayton. So we're putting our money where our mouth is. Not just with, hey, team, wide stuff, but also it works for me individually. I want you to live this out and allow your people to feel that same way, because it does come back and the business does grow.
- [36:50]
A
Brother, I love it. I got one more question. At the beginning of this thing, you said the MREA book changed your life. Friends, if you're new to the program, that's the namesake for our show. It's a book that Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, and may he rest in peace, Dave Jenks wrote. Why did it change your life, Danny?
- [37:05]
B
I believed in market research when I got into real estate, and I don't think I had heard a lot of people talk that language. So when I see people that are doing something at the highest level, Danny Barron's brain says, how do I take what that person's doing and do it better with my spin on it? The millionaire real estate agent lays out every systematic approach, business wise, but also lead generation wise, also leverage wise. That is the book that told me, when I get to a certain level, I need to bring in someone along my side to actually create systems around it. And now Mitch Kenny is on our team as a true business partner for me and has created the systems to this guy's brain that just went and went. He took the time to slow down and write it down. And now all of our team members get the benefit of having true systems. And I'm telling you what, every step in that book, if you follow the models of what's actually in there with your spin and with your own ability to have fun. I said it before, but that's the beauty of real estate. You don't need to do things you hate, you won't be able to consistently do them because you won't enjoy it. So for me, it's taking the models that are in there and saying, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it my way, that's fun. And then the ability to grow it. As the book said, what happened has just blown my mind.
- [38:10]
A
Amen, brother. I can't even add to that. Well said. Danny, I love what you're doing, man. Congratulations. Congratulations on all the success. Keep it up.
- [38:17]
B
Thank you, sir.
- [38:20]
A
That man is a force of nature. He's just like energy incarnate. He's bottled up into a giant real estate entrepreneur. But I gotta tell you, I think Danny would be running this exact same model in any business he is in. See, he understands something very, very clearly that in order to have a brand, you're going to have to market it. And sure, he looks up and says 10 cents of every dollar on it. But friends, there's nothing stopping any of us from doing that. The fact of the matter is, is that Danny takes that money and puts it into three buckets. Number one, I have to be where the people are. So I'm going to have a social media presence that's going to be a long form. Video every week on YouTube and they are going to do 20 minutes of full content that is going to be highly produced. Number two, we sell houses. Let's let the world know about it. This is having your own recording person going out and making these homes look better than they would ever look on their own and make. And then the giveaways. Now if you're watching this on the YouTube, you saw it. When he starts talking about giveaways, he sits up straighter, his face gets more vibrant, he smiles. That's because this is somebody who loves giving. Let's never forget that givers always gain. It's all a question of what is he giving away. I think it's genius that he gives people a choice of what they can win. I think it's genius that he's asking them to interact and share the posts in order to broaden his reach. I think it's genius that he picks the one time of the year, March, by the way, which happens before his busy season, that he's gonna own every single week in and week out doing giveaways. And all of this is anchored by client events. But it's interesting cause he doesn't say, well, it's a client event. So who's in the database? Friends? This is a networking event for anybody that lives in the area. Sure, it's great if you're in the database, but if you're not, come here, hang out and join it. 3000 people to a baseball game and it's so smart what he says, you Win the minute somebody gets there. When you show up, you have all this anxiety. I want you to think about it for a second. When you know that you're going and doing something that you haven't done before, maybe you're being invited, maybe it's just something that you have to do in life that's new, like prom. But tell me that the first 10 minutes are not the nerve wracking ones. It's as soon as you get there and you see a few friendly face and you're ushered and you know that there's a system when he lays it out that the first person says hello, they give you your ticket, then you go and you get the sunflower seeds, then you get the water bottle, then you get the QR code for the review. I mean, heck, the truth is, Danny has won the entire event before the first pitch is even thrown. And then, and we know this, we hear it time and time again, film the events, because after words, this is the time to put it out on social media and create the FOMO for everybody else. Whether he's hiring a comedian to do a set or whether he's going to a baseball game or whether he's inviting people to a drive in theater, Danny is clear on one thing. You know what I think it is? I think Danny is clear on the fact that he absolutely loves people. And he wakes up in the morning and he asks a very simple question. How do I become the best part of somebody's week? How do I become the best part of somebody's month? How do I become the single best part of somebody's year? Friends, if you answer that question at scale, my premise, you'll never have to look for a real estate deal. The question are you the best part of anybody's anything? And if not, that's the opportunity. Go forth and do likewise. There it is. That wraps another episode. Friends, I don't know what you're taking out of this. I really don't. I'll tell you what I want you to be taking out of it, which is these are the people that are having tremendously big lives. And the reason it's happening is because they're setting up the models and systems to do just that. Gary Keller told me that leadership is teaching people how to think so that they do the things they need to do when they need to do them, so that ultimately they get the things they want when they want to have them. And that's what I want for you. You're all leaders, but it begins with leading ourselves. Hey, gang. If you're enjoying this as much as we are, I want you to subscribe. Hit the button right now. Do it on YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We also send out a newsletter at the conclusion of every show to make sure that you get the the highest points in the models and systems that were discussed. So if you want to sign up, I need your name and your email address. Head over to themillionaire agent podcast.com millionaire agent podcast.com enter your name and your email address and every week that newsletter will be in your box. Friends, you just went on a journey. I hope that what happens between now and the next time we meet is absolutely wonderful for you. Thanks for listening. I'll see you next week.
- [43:12]
B
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not Keller Williams Realty, LLC and its affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its action, accuracy, completeness, timeliness or results from using the information. Warning. You must comply with the TCPA and any other federal, state or local laws, including for B2B calls and texts, Never call or text a number on any do not call list and do not use an autodialer or artificial voice or pre recorded messages without proper consent. Contact your attorney to ensure your compliance.