Hey, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you are like me, you have an affinity for people like seth godin, someone that can teach us so much about branding and positioning and winning the hearts and minds of consumers in a modern way, which is exactly why i'm bringing him to the podcast. And it's even more so the reason why i'm bringing him to the success summit. If you have not made your reservation, i strongly recommend you go to tomferry.com.

You click on the summit and you use the promo code summit, seth, that's summit and then s-e-t-h. So you get everything he's sharing with us here and there to really move your business to the next level, go to tomferry.com, forward, slash summit and then check out that promo code summit seth and enjoy the podcast hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited.

I've been prepping this for this podcast for quite some time, and the the note that i wrote down that hit me at four o'clock in the morning. Just a few days ago, was seth godin, the most generous man in the world. Now that might be as as i'm looking him now on video and he's giggling, but but seth. Here's what i wrote down: 20 plus books on marketing and strategy and positioning and branding and so much more from what i can tell whether it's 95 or 96.

When you started your your blog, that then became the email that i've obsessed about. For i don't know a decade: 9 400-ish, well-thought-out purposeful, thoughtful blog posts, founder of multiple businesses, that impact the lives of of young entrepreneurs and old and - and i would just say one could also argue - the undisputed heavyweight champ of modern marketing. So seth. It just means the world to me that you're on the show uh so, first of all, how are you and welcome? Well what what a pleasure and uh i don't know what to do with that intro, i'm just going to avoid it and i'm doing okay.

This has been a traumatic time for a lot of people and it's a vlog and my heart goes out to everybody who's trying to find their footing, but i think we are going to be in a rebuilding stage and forward is the way to go. I agree. 100 and uh - i was you know with with clients recently, and we were talking about just you know, talking about hard times like how so many of us yourself included continued to to do our practice, continue to deliver uh in in any way, shape or form. We could to keep people moving forward so as a reader of your blog.

I i thank you for doing that. So a lot of my listeners, as you know, are real estate professionals or people inside housing, which you know. If you look back over the last 18 months, there was a lot of. There was a lot of tragedy.

No doubt there was also some triumph and housing seems to be one of those triumphant segments of the market and there's a million reasons. Why? But the thing that i wrote down is, i really want to have people understand the way you think about marketing, as they start to navigate, whether it's the more of the same or as we come out of parts of cove depending upon where you are in the World, i really want them to get your insights, but before we do that for maybe for the brand new real estate professional - that's you know just stumbled across my you know my youtube channel or my podcast and they're like who is this seth godin guy? I know a lot of the veterans would be like. Of course, we know we've read all the books. Could you just give just a little backstory in context on who you are and and why it's so cool that i've got you on my show? Well again, thank you.

Real estate professional is different than real estate hack and we're going to talk about that a bunch as you and i go back and forth if you're a real estate professional. It means that you're committed to seeing the mechanics of how the thing actually works, understanding what your customers really want and getting your arms around the fact that we're humans, not rational computers and i have been a marketer since 1986 - i've written 20 bestsellers about how to Make a difference how culture changes, treating people with dignity, possibility shipping creative work and i pioneered the idea of email marketing before i did email marketing with one of the first internet companies ever started. Didn't it wasn't a thing? It was called spam right and i have been arguing for a long time that it is a precious resource that is wasted uh all the time and to that uh real estate hack, who sent me an email yesterday listing seven places in hilton head south carolina a Place, i've never been and never will go just because you have my email address doesn't mean it belongs to you. My attention belongs to me and if you steal it, you have burned trust.

We could probably just stop right there and say: okay, yeah tristan. My videographer is like damn so you're speaking my my marketing love language and, what's so great is i say mind, but i am i am a student of yours and so many of my mentors that have helped shape the message that i'm sharing with so many professionals. Um, so let's go to just a basic but tough question, not for you to answer, maybe for my listeners to really absorb. How do you believe that marketing has evolved? Where is it maybe still the same, and and then how does a real estate professional begin to adopt your methodologies into their work? Okay, so for 75 years, marketing and advertising were the same thing.

Advertising agencies with buildings, where people sort of did marketing and the reason that advertising was the dominant force is because ads were a screaming bargain. If you bought enough tv ads, you were going to make enough money to buy more tv ads that the mechanics of the industrial marketing economy were so powerful for so long they changed the world and then right around the time the internet showed up. It all fell apart because the cable, because of streaming because of a million channels on youtube and not a billion channels on youtube, because advertising isn't marketing anymore marketing, is telling a true story to the right people in the way they want to hear that changes their Mind about something marketing is how we show up in the world to cause change to happen and to the real estate professional. I will point out the following: until 10 years ago, there was a huge shortage of useful information about where i should live and which house i should buy, and now, thanks to zillow and things like zillow, the person looking for a house may very well know more Than you do, and you cannot afford information anymore and every other industry that the internet has bumped into, has figured this out.

Usually the hard way the internet is a connection machine and the internet is an information repository and if all you know is something that i can already look up online, i don't need you and i'm not going to pay you extra, because that's not the game. This isn't the game that it used to be. I passed a guy on the street and i started taking a picture, but it would have been awkward. Knowing that i was coming on to talk to you just just two days ago and said, i'm a real estate broker ask for my card and i couldn't figure out if it was a joke or not, because it's just such a perfect t-shirt for the way.

So many real estate hacks think, which is if you can just get the word out there and hand out enough cards with your little picture on them. You'll do fine, yes, not so much yeah! You know again i've already. I've already said it once but tristan. We could probably just stop right there and say: okay, so now you all know see, but but i do want to talk.

You mentioned zillow and and zillow was a partner of mine for many many many years and, and i know lots of people that are still there and two of my dear friends, the ceo and president, have subsequently left and and done other. You know beautiful things and i was an early advocate for zillow and for other company other companies as a way to say they're putting up this data. You can then essentially arbitrage their traffic and and get clients because of it right because they like zillow. They see your face, i like your glasses.

Okay, let's go the challenge, though today seth is the real estate industry that let's call it just in the u.s, the 90 billion dollars in commissions paid out not to the 1.55 million agents, because the numbers, as you can probably imagine it's, the top 50 percent - do 91 percent in the bottom do 9, which is just a fun fact for everybody. Listening what i'm telling my clients is. The industry is under attack because these big companies have realized that most agents aren't marketing, aren't positioning themselves, aren't being the thought leader being the educator and what's happening now is the whole industry is shifting towards we generated the client we'll give it to you, but we Want a third of your commission dollar and i'm saying to my clients who and many of them listening right now: they're, you know they each you up. They get it they're doing a lot of the right things, but i want to stress for the person listening.

These companies have more money, they have more data, they have more research, more engineers, more marketing people that are trying to figure it all out. So my question is seth: if someone that you loved was in the business and they came to you and said all these companies, i feel like they're coming after my customer base. What do i do? What advice would you share? Well i'll start with this, because we need to deal with the indignant uh umbrage that people feel when this happens. Yeah.

When was the last time you bought a book from amazon um. My guess is that every single person watching this bought a book from amazon. More recently, when they bought a book from the local, hardworking independent, struggling bookstore, why did you do that? Well, the answer is because you're not an idiot, because you knew which book you wanted amazon. Has it it'll come tomorrow, it'll be cheaper, faster, more convenient.

So if the local bookstore is not adding any value, you don't feel bad one click. I got it so if your thinking was like that for the independent bookstore, why do you think the person who's shopping for a house owes you anything? They don't, and the way that professionals are going to thrive is not by viewing what zillow does as a taking. But viewing what they're doing as a resource and that only works if you have a specific, focused expertise around the smallest viable audience. If your motto is need a house, i got houses or your motto.

Is you can pick any realtor register trademark? I'm a realtor. That's not going to work, but if you are the mayor of 10706, if you are the person who between you and your dad, has been inside and sold every single house in this village of 2 200 people. If you build the weekly newsletter for people who are starting the six month journey to understand what it is to move to this town, if you are the coach of the baseball team and your office is where the boy scouts meets, you got no problems with zillow. It's a gift right because sooner or later, someone's going to say how am i going to tell my spouse.

I didn't work with the one and only right and it's that question that gets you a loyal customer. Not oh. This person has all the listings because everyone has on the list right right. So so, first of all i love the answer and then the question then becomes so much of what you're going to do at the summit.

This year is on branding positioning and the practice. Maybe let's just give a little sneak peek if you were again you're sitting across from a friend and they're like but seth. I work at you you're in you know new york, i'm i'm with douglas element corcoran to this company that community. I know all the companies and all the players and they're all dear friends.

I would always give people the example of how does one select something that they only select once every 10 years, since i'm only moving once every 10 years. On average, i say if you didn't ever go to a grocery store outside of the u.s and you suddenly were living in the u.s and someone said: honey go, buy, a bag of potato chips and you walked down the potato chip island. You saw hundreds of product skews in different colors and flavors. How would you select - and i say that's the challenge - that agents have they all just look like another bag of chips with a different color, a different variation.

So i mean it's: how does one stand out? What advice would you have for someone to truly stand out and become that mayor? Okay, so the the first thing i'd say is you you gave a great stat about uh real estate brokers, i'll share two more one from the national association of realtors. They told me this, i don't know 15 years ago, yeah 88 of the real estate brokers, who get a listing, get the listing because they call back first right right. So much for all the stuff, you think is important. 88.

Someone just calls a whole bunch of brokers, person who calls back first gets listed yeah, and i think that that you know you should write that on the wall. And the second thing is: when real estate values go up, more people will become real estate brokers and when real estate values go down, that bottom 50 drops out. So the average keeps staying about the same, because this is an easy in easy out business for people who are hustling for people who are hacking their way through it. But it's a really challenging business to decide to become a professional in yeah that the firms you're talking about the elements etc.

Some of those people outperform others by a ten to one ratio. Why is that? Well, one of the reasons is they get the listing. Why do they get the listings? It's not just because they're good at calling people back. They get the listings, because someone told someone who told someone that this person is worth offering the listing to investing in that requires you to have a focus so new york's, a big place.

Someone might live in syracuse. You shouldn't get those listings, someone might live in buffalo, you don't want those listings. Maybe you don't even want every listing in manhattan. I know one real estate broker, who only does one building in new york city if you're living in that building and you're about to sell your house.

Why wouldn't you give this person the listing right? You have to defend any other choice except that one, so it or i knew another. A real estate broker, who specialized in doing outreach to newly married gay couples because they were facing a series of challenges and questions that weren't standard and she had lived that experience and she was in a position to answer them. Well. Do you think that someone who just got married has a bunch of friends they're talking to, of course they are, and if they're talking about the fact that you're have a focus - and this is your smallest, viable audience they're going to talk about you, so i guess What i'm proposing is the conventional wisdom of you need to drive a late model audi mercedes cadillac.

You need to have a picture on your business card. You need to sell everything to everyone, blah blah blah blah. Do the opposite of everything find out what you want to stand for, because if none of your colleagues are making fun of you, then you're doing it wrong. I love that.

I love it so much of what we talk about. So we have 165 business coaches in six or seven countries around the world and we're helping all these men and women navigate these. You know these rougher times not just the covet times, but the the times of change and marketing and how consumers are relating to people and we always go back to the same thing. Can you just be a neighborhood expert and whether that neighborhood is 500 homes or one building or you know, five blocks of town, but but that means you know it inside and out and you're willing to share that in some way, so people can find it.

So i've been an advocate of youtube and video since 2007, when a friend of mine, uh told me all about it and said, hey, i'm a part of this company called google, you should look into it, so here we are, and you mentioned it earlier. You know two billion accounts if you will on youtube i'll get tristan over here who bought his home because he started publishing video about a really cool electric bike called super 73 in his side hustle because he was passionate about it and now he owns a house Because of how much money he's made cause, he just talked about his niche, his neighborhood, which was a bike called super 73 and yet seth. I know people today that they know it. They understand it.

They know that more people watch youtube every day than all cable television combined, and they still don't do video now before you say well, then maybe they should write or maybe they should do photo. Let me just say: they're just doing the stuff that they've always done more direct mail and maybe hoping and praying that somebody calls what advice do you have for that person? Were you always naturally gifted on video, or did you also have to practice? I'd like to go upstream a little bit because i think there are six questions before we have that please, because built into that is a thinking that says i'm already doing fine. I just need to get the word out right and too often people come to you and say tom. How do i get the word out? So you think that's the question.

That's not the question yeah right, so you know in my case i've had a really fortunate career, but i've done 20 bestsellers in a row and the only getting the word out i have done is whispering to people who wanted to hear from me right. I once bought some ads on top of taxis in new york city. It got me a good table of balcony, but that was it but other than that yeah. I don't talk about my books, my readers talk about my books right and so i'll start with.

Why do you even need to get the word out? Why aren't the people you've touched in the past getting the word out right and the reason is because you're a pretty good real estate broker? Why would i talk about you to help you right? You know the people we talk about are the ones who are off the charts for some reason and if you're not prepared to do that, i can't help you get good on video and give you a strategy on how to buy ads and things to get. The word out about your pretty good real estate in a pretty good town. That's not the answer. You're asking the wrong question.

The question is, what would it mean to go outside of the standard real estate box to become a meaningful specific, as he would say, not a wandering generality right? How do i decide to be a professional you know. So, let's pick an example where we know they're professionals, right, uh, surgeons, plastic, surgeons, regular surgeons, heart surgeons, if you need heart surgery and you live in cleveland or you live in topeka. How are you going to pick from the ads on youtube? I don't think so, and i think that we could all agree if i gave you 10 choices. Most people would pick the same doc yeah.

How do you become that doctor? How do you become that person who isn't chasing ambulances, which is what i think most youtube ads are, but instead stands for something so that well i'll give you um another example, i'm jumping all over here yesterday i love it. I was my office near my house. My entire world is from my office to my house. I don't get any airplanes anymore, um! Sorry, that's my friends in the local fire department um! So i was walking to my house and i passed a homeowner who i didn't know on my block.

She was standing in her front yard talking to a guy who does basement waterproofing systems for leaky basement, and i know that because he had the logo on the side of the car yeah. It was the same company that had done my basement 20 years ago, and i came within an inch of just walking over to two strangers and insisting she hired this guy yeah, because not only do these people continue to do exactly the same thing. Exactly the same way, never cutting a corner, they wrote a book about it and they published the book and if you ask them for a copy of the book, they give it to you and it gives away every secret every single secret of their entire industry. Could you do that? What would it be like if you wrote that book about your specialty yeah? Would anyone want to read it because, in my experience and i've talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of real estate brokers, most of them are hard-working well-meaning people who are interchangeable with one another and if you're interchangeable, i'm not going to talk about what you do.

So again, this goes back to that first conversation. So you said six questions by the way you gave me three, i think so. Why do i have to get the word out right like? How do you actually get the people that love you to talk about it? A thousand true fans uh kevin kelly's work, which i'm a huge fan of, and and and believe so much in, and then what would it mean for you to get outside of the box and actually become whether it's polarizing, or at least interesting, at least worthy of Discussion, what are the other questions we should be asking? Well i mean my friend simon would say. The first question is: why are you a real estate broker in the first place right, right and um? I think we should acknowledge it's, not your hobby.

So one reason you're a real estate broker is because you want to make money. Okay, are you paid a percentage of what you sell, because if you are, then you should either sell more expensive things or you should sell lots and lots of less expensive things right and then i would say, questions like what systems do you have in place so That you're not just a struggling freelancer, who only has their own time what digital systems or people systems do you have in place right so that you have more leverage than the other people that are around you in the old days the biggest leverage was the rent. You were paying on your office located in the strategic place yep. You can all agree that that's probably not worth what it used to be worth correct.

What would happen if you had six virtual assistants located in some place where incomes are lower than here? Who called everyone back within nine seconds? What would happen if you had people doing uh data, visualization and mapping? What would happen if you had a drone pilot on staff? All of these things are easy investments to make they don't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now that start to establish that you're, a professional, not just someone who has a job without a boss yeah, so you, you went down just a whole bunch of great questions and i'm gon na i'm gon na go back to you walking out of your home and Seeing you know seeing this person, you know not not plumber, but you know that type of business and saying i want to just reach across and say to them. You need to hire this guy like they're incredible. They worked on my place 20 years ago.

I uh. I am been the biggest advocate for what one of my buddies wrote a book on called the review economy, and he basically says you shouldn't be selling anything. Your clients can sell you far more effectively than you. So if i go back 11 years ago, zillow sitting down with them, they said: hey we're gon na we're gon na allow consumers to review real estate agents.

What do you think and i'm like what do i think, that's the greatest move on the planet, because i'm thinking to myself i'm gon na, let every one of my clients know right. The gig is up if you suck everyone's going to know and if you're great a percentage of people are going to start telling people and 100 000 or 100 million, or you know now, 200 million people go to this website and there's a pretty good chance. You're gon na get the validation you need right, but now seth everybody, not everybody. The vast majority of agents have figured it out and now i'm reminding people and as an author, you being you, know, multiple i've written four books.

What i'm? What i'm cognizant of is the vast majority of people? Don't read anymore that everybody is, we might be watching a youtube video with text, which i was watching one of yours this morning, right like with text right, because i didn't want to wake my wife up and i was laying there in bed way too early in The morning um and i'm telling people now, maybe just maybe it's about get going to the next level of reviews where it's a client talking about the problem they had and why they chose you and the things that you did and the ins and outs. And it doesn't matter about good lighting or bad lighting. Just just have people talk about their experience with you. What are your thoughts on just the review economy, and you know how would you activate it? What are your thoughts on on video as perhaps a median to take it to the next level? Well, one of the problems with the review economy is as soon as something can be easily measured.

It will be gained and this has been gained as badly as anything, and we have trained people not to believe the reviews and that's problem number one problem number two is most people aren't going to take the time to watch a video review. Why would they? It's non-linear, i mean it is linear, can't jump ahead, and it's just not on the agenda. I was talking with zillow cmo a couple weeks ago, and one of the things i said is one of the things that's missing from zillow is comments and rankings of the listings themselves yeah. I would think that that would be an unbelievable addiction that people would have you know just all chiming in in the chat about what they like and don't like about the place, but instead, if i was in real estate, what i would do is, i would start Making videos that were of use - so i would say here - are the three biggest mistakes everyone makes in a kitchen when they're getting their house ready for sale.

Yes - and i would make my own channel and i would become a celebrity - and i would be the generous expert on these six areas over and over and over again teaching people holding nothing back everything that i know with proof about how to do a thing, because What we know about the way our celebrity culture works is: if people recognize you, they trust you and if you have acted in ways that make it more likely that they trust you, they will trust you even more right, and that is totally different than saying. Please watch these videos of other people who you don't know who i may or may not have paid money to who are saying nice things about me. Yes, so i should have predicated that my clients have been doing the the second part that you mentioned for a long time and when i say that in fairness, we have you know hundreds of thousands of people that that receive our information and that you know watch Our stuff - and so when i say clients i mean the the you know the men and women. That said: hey i'm going to raise your hands and i really want to be a part of the inner circle tribe.

You can go onto their youtube channels and you can see one of my clients. I was with a couple days ago. Three years of a three minute show every week, here's how the market is - and you know in outside of where he is in portland and it's boring - is all getup right. It's just market news, hey in the last week this many homes sold.

This minute came on the market, here's the new price right, and he never says and by the way, if you're thinking about selling you know give me a call, he just says: here's what's going on here's the market news. Hope you found this valuable see you next week for three straight years and he's sitting with me. He says 11 people called me last month and said come list my house. I had no idea who they were they're, not in my database they're, not they're, not people that went to one of my open houses who registered because they wanted information on how they just they watched myself on youtube, and they called me and said list my house Now for the person listening, i'm not saying if you just shoot one of those videos, 11 people will call you.

You miss the first part for three years. Every single week he's been doing that and five things you can do to improve your home before you sell or seven things you can do to improve your value after you bought a home. So in so many variations up, so i should have started there to give you context for what we believe is. Is that and we're seeing people watching this because they're going to their website or they're going to their google my business page right as an example and saying here's seth's website, a lot of people are saying good things right, but if all of a sudden one person That kind of looks like me, who bought a home as a first time, buyer versus a move up: buyer versus an out of state, oh that pers, okay, i can relate to that and not long videos, one minute, two minutes three minutes, but i i totally get Your context, yeah and then, let's add the permission element, because this goes back to the listings.

It's one thing to say: i have a email list of eight thousand people, because i've scraped together, they're new, it's another thing to say there are a hundred people who have made it clear that they're about to move to this neighborhood and what i've offered those people Is an exclusive tour of all the new listings in town every week by video, and then i can go to people who are hoping to listen and say and if you're on the listing broker you're one of the first ones in the video. And if i'm not you're one of the last ones in the video, but if the person's listing house knows that 200 people who are ready to buy a house are going to see the video tomorrow, it's a lot more compelling to pick this person to list because They're, a publisher now right they have the audience, it doesn't make sense to send money to the cleveland plain dealer for an ad anymore, when you can be the cleveland plain dealer right right, so so we're talking about. You know what works and we started this conversation. But it's like you know, you have so much, you know so much depth and so much experience and - and you talked to so many people - let's go a different direction.

What do you think doesn't work anymore? Well, i think the biggest thing that doesn't work is non-intentional. Culling of the list, what happens is thanks to zillow and other things, there's more incoming in people looking around, but not really, people who are sort of interested, but not right, and if you can't do a good job of dividing them into who are the people i'm Going to overwhelm with attention and care and who are the people i'm going to give a phone number of my competitor who i like, but i want to go away. That moment is really important because essential to the smallest bible audience is you got to pick who you're not going to be serving? Who you're not going to be paying attention to, and one of the problems that people who view real estate as a job have is, if you have a job without a boss, and you get off the phone now you've just freed up a half an hour of Your time, whereas if you waste a half an hour with somebody, you feel bad, you wasted a half an hour, you can't get back. So how do you determine who's inside and who's? Not how do you qualify and i think it's different in different markets and sometimes it's a deliberate question other times it's.

I could imagine a real estate broker, who only works by referral. You could have an unlisted phone number. You can't contact them unless someone on the inside tells you to call it if you're, that good you'll stay busy, but it takes a lot of guts to say i have an unlisted phone number yeah. So really we go back to specialist expert professionals right.

It's it! You know hyper local is is so much has been. You know talked about because the bigger companies, the trulias, the realtor.coms, the zillows, have a hard time penetrating that hyper local marketplace right. But agents can so so one of the things i wrote down is um. So much of, if you look at the data seth, what happens is buyers or sellers are moving every.

You know, 10 to 12 years and certainly we're going to look to see what happens from 2020 because there was a lot of movement around the country. But you know the norm. Is you know 10, 12 years everybody wants more referrals from the people that already know them like them and trust them. The challenge, though, is they don't know what to do with their database? They don't know what to send to their database.

They don't know how to communicate to them. So what happens is two things really three. They do nothing, that's bad right, the stuff that they send right is bad right or worse. The stuff they send is bad and they send it sporadically.

So people don't know that. I can wake up and say: where's email, right, where's, tom's tom ferry, show on tuesday right like they don't get that certainty in rhythm. So if you were, if you were thinking about the you know, call it the 700 000 agents that are or i would deem professional the way you would say it. What would you recommend to them, knowing that 80 percent of the consumers from surveys actually like to hear from their agent and the number one thing they do want to know, and maybe it's a current moment in time is they definitely want to know the value of Their home, they also want to know when they should refinance their home, and they also want to know things like.

What can i do to improve my home and yet agent send just sold cards. Look look. I did it again. Why me right - and i make fun of them, so i'm not if you're listening right now, you've heard me in a loving way: carefront you that maybe just maybe your message isn't landing.

So what would you recommend um, okay, so first, i also recently received those postcards. If i was going to send those postcards, i would adopt the status role of chuck norris. I basically would establish a reputation that borders on arrogance and i would regularly and persistently and consistently with no holds barred, just remind people that i'm the boss, if you're, not prepared to go that far, don't do it at all. So leaving that part aside in the first two months after someone moves to a house, two things happen: one.

They spend a lot of money, they spend a lot of money because they want to fit in. They spend a lot of money because there are problems to be solved and number two. They are feeling deeply alone unseen and insecure, and i am still amazed that real estate brokers haven't figured out how to solve those problems at the same time. Why isn't it that, as soon as someone moves into a home, the real estate broker, who sold that home brokers, meetings between the homeowner and three plumbers, who are all auditioning, two electricians, blah blah blah? If you want to be on arthur's list, you better behave because if one homeowner complains you're off arthur's list and i'm not going to bring you any more right, like so many things that you can do on the money, spending side, yeah and then on the other Side, why isn't that person having a really nice cocktail party every month for all the new people who just moved into town and all the people who had previously moved to town to welcome folks with no upside other than that's what i did? I didn't sell you a house.

I brought you a home yeah because that establishes three years from now, when you send me an email about what my home is worth, i'm gon na open it because you sent me 150 emails before that, one that computer-wise easy to do, but i'm opening them because It's about me, it's not about you! Yes, seth. I hope for the person. That's listening on audio. You actually watch my response because i'm like i'm i'm dying over here, tristan you you've seen me speak 300 times, there's a number and i don't want to misquote it.

But you can get this from my buddies over a thousand watt big shout out to mark and brian and those guys uh in in one of their research pieces talking about loyalty of consumers with you know, with real estate agents, except they literally say uh 49 of Consumers didn't call their agent because they wasn't sure if it was appropriate to ask about a plumber. What's the best dry cleaning service who's, the best gardener for my house, you know what like they just didn't ask, and yet you and i both know the sale like it occurred, but the real relationship begins. The other interesting part about the party. So i recently moved to dallas texas and i moved into a high rise and the agent that the two agents that live in the building dominate the building and i was like okay, my wife and i are moving together.

We're empty nesters. We've left our home in newport beach. We have all of our friends all of our social life. We now live in texas.

Yes, our son goes to smu, so we're close to our son. Outside of that. We know no one right. Now, i'm a pretty social guy.

She's, like don't worry, there's a thursday night cocktail party, i'm gon na, take you and introduce you to everyone. That was it like when you said that i'm like that is, and we've talked about parties in celebration and welcome to the neighborhood and here's some other past clients and - and you know, good connectors say people like us know, people like this and let me make that Happen for you, how do you? How would you imagine doing that at scale, though, because some of my clients listening they're saying i know i should do that but but seth would it shock you to hear one of my clients? He and his team will sell 5. 500 homes this year and others are now these. These super brokers, selling hundreds of homes and they they're all beautiful people and the people that are helping them are pros, but it's become a little manufactured.

If you will, how do we? How do we keep the humanness at scale and not lose that? Because we see other companies that do it? I can't help these people. These people have a totally different problem. That is not what we have been discussing this whole time. Yeah.

If you are selling 5 500 homes a year, you better have an economy of scale that permits you to do things that an individual or small firm. Can't, if you don't have that then you're just i don't know how you got the 5500. If you do have it spend the money open your wallet blow out the dust and spend the money, because don't pretend that you actually know these people you're selling, you know every week. What is that 100 houses a week? You don't know these people don't act that way and to the small firm, don't ask for a referral, don't ask for the listing and don't ask for the order you invited me to a party if it's a party make it a party right.

So i've known arthur now for since he sold us our house 25 years ago. I see him every saturday at the farmers market. I see him walking down the street when he has a question. He calls me up in it.

He has never once talked to me about increasing the value of my house. Never once asked me if we're thinking of of moving because then he wouldn't be him. He knows that i know who he is, but i'm going to refer people to him and i've referred people around the world to him. He says no to because he's here and i do it because i see a human, not because i see someone who's running a factory, so yeah there's room for scale.

Starbucks has scale, but howard schultz doesn't pretend he knows what kind of coffee tom ferry is because he doesn't no not a chance and by the way, do you think that i'm just curious? Do you think there's something to you know some would argue you're a polarizing figure. You you right you've written all these books, so yeah you got the purple shirt today versus the purple tie that's in our branding right for the summit, and it was great because they found a photo of me with a purple time like i only have one and I've only won that maybe one time thanks for getting the photo. Do you think that arthur is just intimidated to say, hey seth, have you had any thoughts of selling? No okay? No, this is, i mean, first of all, thank you for believing a lot of people know who i am a lot of people don't know who i am 99.8 of people in the world have never read a word. I've written sure - and until i mentioned him in the book - purple cow - he had never heard of me and i don't think he read the book for months afterwards.

So no that's not what's going on here! Yeah! What's going on here, is you have a choice to make? If you want to open a restaurant, you can be ray kroc or you can be uh gina at nana's good eats in queens. There are two different ways to be in the world ray kroc said: every mcdonald's is going to be the same. That's why you should go yeah and gina says: there's going to be fresh herbs in this salad, even though i don't have to do that. Yeah yeah and it's just the choice and by the way, both those are professionals, so people that are listening, there's no right or wrong, though we are, you know we're clearly seeing the trifurcation in the industry of these.

What i would call these just industrialized teams that are serving people at scale and getting you know 4.7 and five star reviews all day long from their customers. So we're not for my friends out there, my clients that are going wait, a minute, no, no you're you're doing great, but i loved your point seth that take it one step further, spend a few more shekels really make the experience magical right. Have that dopamine rush moment have that experience right? So i love that all right, a couple things that are going through my head. First uh, i want to say maybe three or four weeks ago you wrote something that um.

It was all about the paradox of coaching and i'm a coach. This is not self-serving it actually, it was. You know, i'm reminding myself of it, because i was like that felt like a different blog for you did anybody else say that to you? Okay, so for me, when i read it, because i'm so used to um a seth style of writing and what it what it got me thinking was a what was the what was the inspiration for it. But then the bigger question, really, the question that i want all my audience to hear is: with 9 400 of these blog posts.

How do you source information? How do you keep it fresh, you know. Is it just an insatiable appetite of curiosity, or are you going to like conversion.ai and just typing in seth, new ideas and seeing you know what the ai pops out like? How do you do it well? The second question is super easy to answer um. I have no magical talent. My high school english teacher wrote in my yearbook.

You are the bane of my existence and you will never amount to anything and um. So this is not about talent. What i decided a very long time ago, aided by my add, which was not easy to work with in high school, but you know i did what i could and i had great parents to support me if i can't figure out a phenomenon in the world. I want to know why i want to know why does it work that way? Why would people vote for this person? Why would someone buy this more expensive item? Why doesn't why don't more people have a coach? If i see something in the world, i just i have a lot of trouble walking by and saying oh magic right like how.

How does a refrigerator work? I know how a refrigerator works. I don't understand how you cannot care how a refrigerator works. So that's all you got to do all you got to do is say what is it in my world that i don't understand, then you either find out or make a guess and you write it down and every day i write three or four blog posts about Things i'm noticing in the world and one of them ends up on my blog and it's i'm not a great writer. I just write like i talk and i practice talking well yeah, um and so the coaching one was.

I know people who would benefit from having a coach. Why don't they have a coach? They can afford one right, no coaches, what's the problem? Well, there must be a problem because they're not idiots, and so i made some assertions and i heard from dozens and dozens of coaches around the world. They said yup, you're, right right, right and again i want to for my you know. I have so many clients that i i don't have a client attraction problem, it's just it just it hit me because, of course i was like wait a minute.

This is the first time he's ever mentioned. My you know my little world. So this is interesting right. What was it, what was the curiosity behind it um, but i love there is a process right, there's a method.

It is your curiosity. It is the question of. Why is this like? Why does a refrigerator work or you know? What do you do if this happens right and that's to me, there's so much magic in that um for a lot of people that are listening uh, you know your new book, the practice. Can you just? Can you shed some likes? I know you'll talk about this and others, but just you know for my for my friends.

If you haven't bought the book, you should buy the book at the audiobook. However, you can, however, you uh, you know, consume content. You should get it um, but give us just a little insight. What was your intent behind the book? Well, if you think that talent is a real thing, if you think that other people have magic creativity, if you think that you have to slog through your work, because you didn't get that gift from the muse.

This is the book that i wrote for you because i don't believe any of those things yeah and i basically describe that the creatives i've known and worked with whether we're talking about uh, the fabled, steve jobs or musicians or playwrights or authors or real estate brokers. The successful ones have a practice and when you decide to have a practice of shipping creative work, you will and too often, people who are sort of naturally charismatic, who have a little bit of hustle in them, decide that their path forward is to be a real Estate broker, but they forget that they should have a practice. You can't wing it that, having a practice, a method, a step-by-step way of becoming the one, and only that is what matters, not authenticity, not finding your purpose or your meaning and a lot of the other stuff that i disagree with others about. It is simply showing up chopping the wood carrying the water and doing your work, and you can learn how to do it.

Anyone who wants to can learn how to do it right. No tristan is over there going like this mic drop right. I need to know you need to say the name of tristan's bike again because as soon as we get off, i'm going online super 73 super 73 and use your promo code, tristan helping him get that next house um seth. It has been on my my like list of you know bucket list people to have on my show for a long time, and i'm just i'm so.

First of all, just thank you right because just who you are is just i i said it i do. I do truly believe you are one of the more generous people on the planet that, just you know, will answer an email or you know put out all this amazing content, and i know you have a business behind it and but i don't you know like i, Don't read your blog and see the j i want to interrupt, i don't have any employees, i write every word myself and i don't have a business behind it. I really don't i'm thinking of, like you know the alt mbas and not yeah, but it's not mine. It's a it's a b corp, i don't own it, i don't want it got it! Okay, that's that! Thank you for because i didn't know that.

So thank you for clarifying, but i've referred a lot of people to the you know: alt mba. So i'm like you know, hey all right. You didn't go to college, but you think you should go go. Do this class right go! Go to this one or go to go to jack welch's, you know other one you know like but find something right lean into someone um.

So thank you for that for clarifying, but i just want to say thank you and i know for all my listeners. Uh. Everybody, you know you can follow them. You know on just go to his website and just sign up for the newsletter.

Just do that and and then talk to me in five years about what you learned, because it's gon na be a lot. So i'm gon na see you uh, you know virtually in dallas coming up in a couple weeks. I'm super grateful to have you there, i'm just any any closing thoughts for the people that you know, someone that maybe has listened to you for a long time and and they're just they're moved by your work. You know to that group.

What would you say i? It's a line from my friend celine and she says: there's no doubt you're going to succeed. You've already succeeded. That's why you're on this call, the question is: will you choose to matter and it's always going to be a choice, so yeah i'll, be there on zoom we'll talk some more about this. I'm looking forward to it, but i like to say, go make a ruckus, which means go, do something that people would miss.

If you didn't do it, i love it. I love it. Thank you. So much and i'll look forward to seeing you in a couple weeks and for all my friends drop a comment or two, but absolutely if you don't do anything, just follow seth go to his website sign up for his newsletter.

Alright, we'll see you guys next week. Thanks so much hey, so there you have it. Thank you so much for listening this podcast absolutely. Would love comments and more and listen.

I said it in the very beginning, i'm super pumped about having seth at the summit. I want to give you that experience. You've got 48 hours, go to tomferry.com forward. Slash summit, use the promo code summit seth and get a hundred bucks off your ticket.

I look forward to seeing you in dallas at the summit, see you soon. You.