Hey guys welcome to the podcast super excited to have long time, friend, long time, client, byron, lazine in the house uh. I would describe him as a real estate renaissance man, meaning you know, he's just not myopic. He's he's running a team in two states he's an entrepreneur he's got multiple businesses, he's a podcaster, he's a content, creating machine and he's a masterminder with all kinds of great agents. So he sees the world differently.

So byron. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me back. I believe it's the second time.

Second time really appreciative of the opportunity, absolutely man absolutely so i thought you know thinking about our audience and who's. Listening to this, i actually just wrote down lessons from the trenches. I want to talk about team scaling. I want to talk about podcasts and content creation.

I want to talk about working in two states right. You know sort of you know here we are as we're filming this. We are almost at one year since the lockdown, so i think you're, not the only person, that's done the two-state thing, so i want to get into that. I want to talk about tech stack.

I want to talk about marketing that works, and then i want to get into the future of real estate, because you and i uh - have some similar opinions and thoughts around what's going to happen in the future. So for the people that don't know you maybe just take a minute and just give them a little context for who you are what you do, what you're all about yeah like from the beginning or just right now, where we are at right now, yeah, let's go From right now, okay yeah right now running a team which has been accelerating in our growth, in terms of who we're bringing on who we can help in their career path. You know lisa chanati, who has been on your podcast and she really kicked my butt into gear. Last year i mean we're having a great year, which should have byron it's time for you to stop being so vulnerable to low numbers, meaning low numbers of agents on the team yeah, and i agreed with her - not just uh for me personally, but for their business As well, our ability to grow depends on adding great people around them continuing to feed our new agent program so that the experience agents have the benefit of us going out and getting more channel accounts of us taking more market share of us putting billboards up like We did for the first time in quarter, uh, actually starting this this month in march, so uh of this year so yeah, my my number.

One goal is operating and recruiting to a specific number. This year, the the connecticut team and and continuing to help people grow there. I also have a media company which we produce all of our own content, as well as other teams and a builders builder association in connecticut, and then my uh brokerage, william ravis. We've got some pretty cool products coming very soon there as well, and then i'm in the infancy here, i'm sitting in naples florida of what i'm going to be starting down here, nice man.

So again, as i as i said in the beginning, you got a lot going on. So so, let's, let's go back to you and big, shout out to lisa chanati and the conversation around hey man, it's time to scale it's time to stop playing small like there's. Probably somebody listening to this right now that that byron, like they've, been hearing me. You know stomp speech, scale team since, like 2015 right like when i really came out and said hey, these are the big seven things we got to pay attention to.

Teams are going to dominate the world, and eventually teams are going to start selling, which we certainly know they have the last five years. What do you say to that person that is like in in their heart of hearts? They know they should but they're just resistant. Maybe, as you were as lisa called you out yeah and it's not even that i was, i guess resistant. I don't think i was ready because i didn't take the actions necessary to scale the team and i was kind of stuck in the middle and and i i'm going to say something that's going to be controversial.

I think the middle in real estate is absolutely dead. That incu includes solo solo agents that aren't building a staff around them. I want to be very clear on that. I think the person that advertises themselves as an individual agent that gets awards as an individual agent is here to stay for a long time, but that individual is going to have a staff around them.

So you can call that a team or you can. You know some of these mega teams that, like what we're doing growing and scaling our numbers, everything in the middle, the collection of two or three agents - that don't have systems and operations down and staffing - is dead. The totally single agent just relying on themselves and the 15 hats that you have to wear in this industry is dead. Zillow's kind of cutting that middle of the industry out you've got to be really good and scaled on the team side or you've got to be what you used to call the seal team right.

I think the seal team is now the individual agent with employees yeah. Those are the two ends of the spectrum that you've got to kind of start leaning into so there's a lot to unpack there and and you and i are aligned in in so many ways. I i think, a lot about the amazon versus say shopify right so so you've got these amazonian-esque businesses in our space, and you could look at that and say that could be zillow that could be realtor.com. That could also be real edgy.

That could be berkshire hathaway like these behemoth companies. I i agree with you that you know the end of the single agent if they don't have people around them. I just don't know if i just don't know if it's going to play out as quickly as we think i think that could be seven to ten years from now, because the heart and soul of real estate right now is still that hyper local person. You know it's susie, it's billy, it's jose! It's it's! You know martha selling, a house someplace with the support of their brokerage yeah on the on the flip side.

Of that you see open doors, saying we want seamless, online transactions and zillow's saying the same thing. These are all buzzwords because to your point, these seamless end-to-end online transactions have not happened without the help of great agents exactly, but i would argue you know that you know if you're going to think about it before before. You argue think about think about how shopify has has been the counter move for people selling shirts on instagram people selling their whatever on instagram facebook, etc. So so you know when everybody was like.

Was it walmart that outsourced all of their online shopping at first to amazon and then quickly went that's a bad idea and then created their own strategy? I think shop. I think there's going to be room for a shopify esque company in real estate that comes in and totally empowers the individual agent and whether that is the ultimate tech stack on our phone. That does it all right. 24, 7 with ai and with a virtual assistant or alexa, as my virtual assistant, that's been downloaded to do everything for me.

I i'm i'm super bullish still on the individual and yet i'm the biggest advocate for teams, it's kind of, and i'm with you on that right, because one of the reasons i'm with william ravis, which is you know, one of the largest independent owned brokerages in the Country is because they're doing just that right, they're they're, enabling the single agent to still be successful. When you look at the vast majority of single agents right now in this country, they don't have the kind of support that really operates like a team that you're talking about yeah and and just because you know, i'm always - and this is my fault here too, because The way i frame that up, probably a bunch of people looking in probably didn't um you know, did not want to to hear what i had to say. They probably uh were like what the heck is wrong with this guy right. What is he talking about? Uh? Here's the thing what i'm thinking about it from the entrepreneur mindset of being really successful in this business being indestructible to any disruptor, that's the mindset you have to have.

I think you've got to go extreme to one end or the other. If you're thinking about this 10, 20 30 years to your point, because yeah in 2022 is much going to be different than 21 likely, no, no, no, but your you and i are aligned 100 on there's! No doubt if you, if you actually, if you're listening this right now and you're, like oh, my god, he's talking about like maybe the end of me as an agent. No, it's it's not that what you're missing is it's the consumer experience all of this, at least for me, is centered in give the customer what they want like i, i had some fun the other day. I was on the golf course with a couple friends and i said when's the last time you bought a house and all of them had bought a home in the last like two or three years, and i said okay tell me about the experience and they all Said absolutely horrible hated every minute of it and then i said: wait a minute.

What about the agent? Oh? No! No! No! No! Love! My agent! My agent was the godsend of the whole thing like if it wasn't for the agent, like the agent, comes to my ass for dinner, we're pals. Now it was everything else in the real estate experience that i hated thoughts on that yeah i mean you see company. You know compass had to disclose their acquisitions recently right and you saw that they purchased in the i believe, the last six months, two different closing services, two different companies that handle closings right, that i mean that whole side of the thing is really messy for a Lot of consumers, just the communication from agent to lender to title company or attorney whatever you use. It's really, and that puts the stress on the consumer because there's not a really good flow of how the all the information is being communicated.

There's a lot of areas to clean up, so i i agree that there's the good agents, even the good solo agents and the good teams they're, providing a tremendous amount of value to their clients and the really good ones are keeping that relationship going so that they're Getting referrals directly from their network as opposed to receiving all of their leads from zillow or realtor or whoever yeah, but there are still a lot of frustrating stressful parts of every transaction because there's so many elements to it. So there's there's room for for cleaning up everywhere in this industry. I i concur a thousand percent you know for for me in my 31 years i can remember very early on saying: why aren't there standards like you know you not, everybody should be able to play. You know what i mean like in the world of sports.

Like hey, you got to be a gamer. If you want to play - and i remember saying that to uh to a mentor of mine - and he said well - you're - forgetting that nar and state associations are all predicated on dues, so um - i was looking at some numbers recently. So for my friends out there listening. Don't don't quote me exactly on this because i got it from a reliable source, but we all know data can always it's kind of the old line.

If you, if you attack the data long enough, it's going to tell you what you want to hear the piece. I was looking at i thought was interesting, was about 60 of the 1.5 million agents in the u.s had done transactions, which means that 40 had. So here we are in the single hottest real estate market, i've seen in 31 years, single hottest market ever one could argue, and 40 of people haven't done a transaction right. What's interesting, is i bifurcate the other two in the ones that are doing deals like to stuck or scaling stuck or scaling the stuck people, they're selling houses, barn, but they've, run out of time right time is the resource that they haven't figured out how to multiply Where people like yourself and so many others that we know have scaled to to work towards the highest and best use of their time, they're still in the weeds they're still in the trenches, they're still doing things that maybe they shouldn't or they know they have to Do or maybe their ego holds on to only i can do this with the client, but at least they're scaling give me some insight on the people that are stuck the good agents right, some hey by the way, some of them have an assistant.

Some of them have a marketing director. Some of them have two showing agents, but they're still stuck they're out of time. What do you say to that group? That's an easy one that that's staying within your own little bubble way too often the amount i mean you brought up the mastermind that i'm in earlier not only just having a mastermind, because that's just one layer of accountability having a weekly or a daily accountability partner. Having an accountability group within your office, our team has been doing accountability groups every single friday for on these six-week sessions over and over and over and over again having a coach is a really good idea.

Even you know, i shot an instagram reel recently and i said if you can afford it this is you know what you should be doing, leading up if you're in real estate school right now, if you're in school, you don't even have your license. If you can afford it, while you're in school get the coach before you even have the license right right, so i've got all i've built all these layers around my business of people continuing to push me forward every single day and i've been with you know. I've been with tf coaching, for i don't know how many years right and it continues going on like eight yeah yeah, i think so. It continues to introduce me to more layers of accountability, and i think you've got to look inward on okay.

How accountable am i really being to other people, my wife's, an accountability partner, our vision, boards, accountability partner? I've got over 10 layers of accountability in my business every single day, so when you're stuck, you need something to push you out of the mud right right. So there's a lot to unpack there too, but i want to. I want to ask the question that someone is asking right now in their head. What is that week, accountability thing you're doing with your team like? How do you hold independent contractors accountable like what does that look like kind of break down the mechanics of it, because someone right now is going.

You know what he's right, it's no different! If i want to lose weight, you sign up and you're in a group right, you go to fat camp, you sign up for jenny, craig, you know whatever. Whatever it is, everybody performs better when they've got some accountability around them, so unpack four sort of tactically. What does that team accountability? Look like listen our top producers. You know, we've got agents doing over 15 million a year and those top producers are in the accountability sessions every single group.

So we keep putting these six-week groups out there completely optional yeah your free will to join them and you're getting an accountability partner every single week, you're declaring exactly what your commitments are going to be for that week and some people have hey. I've got a six-week commitment, uh some people have, you know just a week-to-week commitment, health, personal mental. I mean people have caught up on taxes in this group. People have, like you know, quit doing.

You know bad really, bad personal health habits lost weight. I mean there's been some real needle movers for people's personal lives, not just their business right and so the way you do that if you're i mean, if you're talking about that stuck agent, that's maybe a solo agent, and maybe they only have you know two people Working with them, uh an admin or whatever the case may be start to you know, put this together on zoom right, like everything is on zoom through the people that you know, if you're in a coaching, you know if you're in tom ferry ecosystem, you know, i'm Certain you could grab 10 to 12 people, that's kind of what we found it's. You know 10 or 12 people's kind of a good number for these we're doing them all still on zoom. You know we're not doing them in the office and they go.

You know. Half hour on friday, 11 30 to 12. Sometimes we go a little bit over if we're going going really deep, but if you're also somebody that's just realizing that maybe you're not in the right environment every single day and your business, it's like when we talk to a seller right that once it wants to List with redfin for one and a half percent, how much more money can you net being in the right organization being on the right team to you to the bottom line? What's what's your 1099 say for you at the end of the year, so don't use pride if you're not willing to kind of go out and build this whole business. If there's people that already have uh this layer of accountability for you and that culture is something you need, and you know you need it i'd go out and find it yeah.

I was uh having a conversation with jason mitchell, who is now in 18 states his his team 5500 transactions last year, and we were talking about just you know, values and just business super. You know super great guy and uh, and you know one was like look. You know we just have to create. I use the phrase guardrails right.

You've heard me talk about that before kind of like for the person listening right now, if you've ever taken your kids to like to a bowling alley, remember we used to actually go to bowling alleys, and if you had it, it was fun like they could put Up these little guard rails, so the ball never went in the gutter and everybody was able to knock down a few pins right and - and he and i were basically just in that dialogue like it's so important - just to have a culture of accountability that we actually Hold people to their word and to your point, it's hey. You want to be a part of it or not, and what you see is the best always gravitate towards it. So so let's go back i want to. I want to go back into the team thing by the way: 5500 transactions.

This is what i love about this ecosystem right. I feel really small right now, you know, and so and like we had, we had number one transactions for our entire brokerage. Last year. We did over 100 million, we had a great year, but if we just keep resting on those laurels and not really look what's ahead to the people, the amazing people in this ecosystem right, i'm not getting better right.

I love hearing that 5500 transactions right and he's you know the fun part is uh. You know he is him, george, some of the people that i i'm blessed to talk to all the time. You know 3 100 transactions for george and his team he's got like 200 sales people on his team. He's not a broker.

He's like you, he's inside of a brokerage and just said: hey, let's go for it and he's got a broker. That's like hey! I trust you, let's go right, so that's a big thing: if you're building a team having a broker that supports you big time, big time you are blessed, i mean bill. Ravis has been a friend for a long time. You know shout out to chris and ryan and bill like they get it.

They understood a long time ago. Teams are the way. So, let's, let's, let's move away from teams for a second, let's talk about like podcasting and content creation right you were, you know you were, i would say, on the earlier side of a lot of my you know, besties that really picked up on hey. This.

Is this is going to be something so so give us maybe tell the audience like? When did you start and what did you start with? First before you got to the podcast and then let's talk about the podcast, i started within my first year of real estate. Right and so i had uh started in a market on the connecticut shoreline that was really dominated by you, know a few individuals like almost any market when, when you're coming in as a new agent - and i knew i couldn't blend in with what they were doing, Which was literally at that time, just continuing to post listings in the newspaper, which is as crazy as that sounds because it wasn't very long ago. Thinking back, and so i started a show on facebook every single week. Actually, i was hanging out with some film guys in the area really uh.

You know a production company really forward thinking guys they actually turned me on to gary vee yeah, and it was a keynote that he did at re max before he like took off and became garyvee. He and i were we shared the stage. I remember, i know the exact talk you're referring to yes and i was like whoa. This is really not just the way that it's going to be.

This is the way that it is right now. I think the next week i started uh, you know putting my podcast out there, but i committed to it every single week if something's worth doing yeah today, it's worth doing every single day. So so i'm thinking back to that because i was in the green room when he was like he went, i went and then we hung out like it was. It was something the effect of and clarify this.

It was like. You just need to be the digital mayor of your town. You need to understand you're all in the media business it used to be print, it used to be direct mail. It used to be billboards now: it's facebook, now it's twitter and whatever else is next, it's all the same.

These are just tools and i'm watching you know, because you know i got the camera angle in the green room of the audience's reaction and i see a whole bunch of my peeps going yeah yeah. We got this from in 2009 with garyvee like yeah. We got it. What did you hear that day that maybe the person that's listening right now needs to hear what i heard was i'm going to be irrelevant? If i don't take this step, i'm going to go backwards and you go see my call on my uh.

My talk on on the tom x stage, 100 years ago at the summit, what i would go back to i was coming out of bankruptcy right. I was coming out of having my back against the wall, so if i want to fail in this business and have to go back to my wife and say like i don't know what to do now, because i quit a six-figure job just to get into real Estate when unemployment was at its all-time high and people thought it was absolutely crazy to do that. Yep. That was the alternative, yeah right and you, you argue all the time you say what is your alternative to not producing video you're going to be relevant, but what i really got out of those you have to do it consistently yeah.

So how does you know so? First of all, i want to just validate uh carrie mcgee. My vp of marketing slid me something a couple days ago when i was on stage and it was um we'll get. The exact quote we'll put it up on the website, but it was basically 81 percent of consumers are now making their decision on a product or service based on the video that they watch. Let me say that to you again for the people that are listening.

81 of consumers are now making decisions based upon a product or a service that they're going to hire or buy based upon the video they watch, and i remember 10 years ago saying people if i go to youtube and i and you don't show up, you don't Exist, if i go to your website today, as an investor in you know tens of companies. The first thing i look at is: okay. Send me your website, okay, cool, there's, no video pass. I literally pass on the investment just because there's no video on the website.

It makes and you invest in a lot of companies, so there's a lot of people missing out if they're not putting video up so so, how does somebody you know? Look at you've got a production company, so i want you to dummy it down and say: okay, like you didn't start out with a production company or may or maybe you you know right so so there's someone listening right now! That's like yeah! I know, but do i need all this stuff, or can i just use my iphone? No, you can definitely use your iphone and you should you should focus on lighting and audio quality. Well, before you get any camera because really the camera stuff is it's not important at all? Look at what zachary loft is doing. I call him loft, but it's faust uh. He always has loft on the back end of his uh tick, tock and yeah laughter is down in delaware, shout out to zachary, but zack's doing most of his content on his phone and he really blew up on tick, tock, 1.6 million on tick tac.

I believe the most followed real estate agent on on tick tock so, and i would i i leaned into podcast heavily because i, like long form conversation i like clipping out short little clips, putting those on instagram. That's my style. It makes me feel very comfortable yeah. I'm now starting to put on instagram reels, though tom i'm watching and my ig.

All my content is getting much better engagement because i'm playing to the algorithm and because i'm actually just taking my phone and i'm doing the all the editing and everything in the app like the way they want it broke agent. Talk eric talks about this. All the time like, if you want to really get good on instagram right now get into the reels and edit inside the app. So i would start with whatever you're comfortable with whether that's long form podcast, whether that's five minute educational videos, q.

A take the 52 questions, the last 52 that you were asked in your email start a q, a show, there's 52 weeks of content right there for you or, if you like, zach and you're, really good at these short little 15 30. Second, bursts on tick, tock or unreals start there, but do something consistently every single day and if you're, really good at reels and tick. Tock then start doing the podcast later once you've really gotten that down and you're doing it every single day or vice versa, but definitely start on the phone uh and and light i mean i walk around like this office. Doing my reels there's plenty of good light here with the florida sun.

So it's pretty easy. Wherever you are too there's gon na be somewhere, you can get yeah or or the ring light. That's sitting in front of me here or the little mini ring light that i put on my laptop when i'm you know somewhere some. I have a ring at my house also, but you know sometimes i just want to chill in the living room.

Do a quick, zoom call put on a little ring light bam in the game. I agree lighting and sound um. You, you rattled off a couple, really good points, and i want to just i want to unpack a few of these for the people that are listening. Um, i remember sitting with my buddy kurt kessel right, huge shout out to kirk and lit so i don't know what just happened there we'll do a little little edit, because also he vanished all right.

So so shout out to my buddy kirk and his partner dwayne. They were like well, we don't even know what content to create - and i said okay guys between the two of you. How long have you guys been in the real estate, business and they're like 62 years? I said: okay great, could you guys sit down and think about 62 lessons, you've learned in selling houses in a combined 60 and like literally buying them like this, got it right? They now had 62 weeks of content, they sat down together and just mapped out, and it was everything. What are the disclosures? How does that work? What is title insurance? Why do we need it like everything you can imagine, but then getting into some very detailed stuff, because you look at 62 years of investing fixing and flipping.

They got through all that stuff and the interesting part like because kirk's one of my closest friends on the planet, he said to me it we still compete at times on listing presentations he's like, but the vast majority of people are just like come list. My house, like i've, seen everything you guys have answered every freaking question i've ever had you clearly know exactly what you're talking about list my house right? Have you experienced some of that? Do you do you find it? Does it grease the grease the wheels or whatever the phrase is absolutely and my my first youtube show which was crappy? I was editing it myself. I was doing it on windows. I don't even know uh what the i got.

The software laughing, i'm definitely laughing. I mean a guy like tristan, would just be he's embarrassed for me um because he's nodding yes, but listen. I was getting absolutely no views, no traction on youtube, but i was, i was emailing it out. I was you know i was putting it out there on facebook.

I was doing whatever i could to organically get. I wasn't running ads or anything like that. The very first development i ever picked up was off of that youtube show and these these sisters uh they sent the video to their brother, who is a developer, who had the same agent, his dad hired their agent wow, and they had the same agent for over 20 years and in fact, that agent sold 67 of the 76 homes in the development, there was nine left, but he hadn't sold one in over 12 or 15 months. So they were looking for a change even after 20 years, even if, after that relationship, because there was no creative marketing, there wasn't any - they didn't feel like they were getting the buyer of today, and so that got me a meeting on my first development that video And it was, you know, it was a one meeting deal and i ended a 20-year relationship for the other agent.

It can happen very quickly. You don't have to worry about followers or any of that stuff. You've got to worry about getting the message out there. So you actually have a chance to have a conversation and then, if you're, working on your your conversion, skills with your coach or with your team, then you're going to have a chance to actually win the appointment yeah i would uh.

I would ask everybody to think about um sort of post our january elite. I asked one of our clients, sarah down in miami to to just share like in in eight or nine minutes like what's really working for you on instagram, and you remember she said i did this thing called 30 questions in 30 days and you know sarah's got A big personality shout out to sarah if you're listening right, so i have now seen i just just in people that are tagging me. I would say north of a thousand agents that have now taken on answering 30 questions in 30 days, just by grabbing their phone going on instagram and saying hey guys, one of the questions i get all the time is, you know why are there so many offers Right now on a house: that's under 500 000.. Well, let me explain, and people are like freaking out how much how many views they're getting because they're actually for everyone listening right now, if you're in canada, 48 of the gdp of canada is housing, we say that to you again guys almost 50 percent of all The revenue in canada is housing, it's bonkers, if you're in the u.s, it's 17 or 18 percent and everybody has an opinion and a thought and an emotion about housing.

It may not be the right moment for them today, but if you're answering these questions and you're being relevant to that person like it's like you're gon na you're gon na get into their dms you're gon na get into their mind, share you're going to be on The consideration set, so i challenge all of you to do it, but what else would you before we switch gears because we got a lot of stuff to cover? We've only done two i want to play. I want to just tie off that real quick here and, as you do, this you've got to do it consistently as you do it. Every single day, week month, you're now going to be able to point your content in the direction that your business is headed. If you go on my instagram right now, you're going to see over the last two months, all of my content is pointed towards new agents.

How do you be successful in this business right because we're in a massive recruiting push with our team? So i'm talking about helping your business uh what you should be doing once you get your license in your first year in the business, your first two years in the business, and what do you know tom recruiting, has become a lot more easier over the last two Months because i'm talking about it consistently and they see that on instagram and linkedin and all these different places and and for everybody listening, you might say: well, i'm not recruiting well great, then what you need to be talking about is how to sell your home and Only move once how to get the highest possible price and if you're, talking to an agent that doesn't have six different ways to keep you in your house, get you all your cash and get you into the next house in one move, then we should talk like That kind of content right now is - and i want to stress everybody and byron. You know give me your thoughts on this. You said it earlier. It doesn't matter how many views you're getting and i would say, 1.

000. Yes, because remember everyone, that's listening! If you, if you get 300 views on a video on instagram, ask yourself: how long would it take you to call 300 people? How many, how long would it take you to knock on the doors of 300 people to actually be able to say hi? My name is byron and i sell real estate and even if they hang up, how long would that take you versus the 60 seconds you went, live or the you know, the one minute, video that you shot so don't be attached, think about it as purely a Way to scale your brand every one yeah, every long form, video we're doing should be a. There should be a 15 second version, not now, i always just say, clip it out and post it on instagram. No, no take that long form video and do a 15 30.

Second version of the bullet points on reels and then you're going to feel really good about the views on reels, because maybe it gets 15 views on youtube. And what do you know? It'll get you 1500 on instagram reels. If you position it correctly, so you can feel good there and you can reach more people. Every single piece of content, like the 62 lessons that you're talking about with kurt yep, i'm turning all 60 of those 62 of those into reels big time.

Big time, everybody just needs to pay attention um. You know this goes back to you know when uh. So some pals at facebook were like look dude, we're gon na. Send you this little app and i forget the name of the app, but it was like it was pre-dating going facebook live right, so it was the creators app gary got it.

I got it and i'm like wait a minute. You mean if i hit this button, i can go live and talk to like 80 000 people, i'm like first of all, i actually was honestly very intimidated. Like oh man, i can't screw this up. You know what i mean and then i was like screw.

It bam hit the live button and i'm like holy, you kind of do that for a living say again. I said you kind of do that for a living, i'm just being very transparent with you know, the audience like even i was freaked out in the beginning and now like if i don't go, live on facebook or instagram or youtube or something like a couple times. A week i feel, like i'm missing some of my closest friends, i'm not able to like. I see so many the same people that are just like whoa.

What's up fairy how's it going like it's, it's listen, seth godin says your vibe attracts your tribe. You go, live you attract your tribe, yeah and listen. Your people would look. I don't know how many iq followers you have, but it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers and some people just want to get to a certain number.

So they can mail it in. No you're still doing the hard work on social which is going live consistently so that you can actually get in everybody's speed organically right, you kind of rejerk the algorithm every time you do that or every time you post a reel because there's a lot of organic Push behind that you've got it there's so there's way too many and listen. We've got a media company and we're trying to help people. You know outsource some of their problems, but there's way too many team leaders not willing to do this themselves.

I post, i have a media company and i post one hundred percent of my instagram content, a hundred percent of it yep. There's too many of leaders and i'm you know, listen sometimes i think i'm too busy too, and i'm really not. There's too many of us saying i i need to help certain. I don't have time for this right.

You know you have to make time for this yeah yeah, i say everybody's got time. You know in your car on the way to an appointment after you close your laptop after a zoom session. You know like it's just an excuse all right. Let's, let's move away from that.

Let's talk about marketing that works, so so you have gone through quite an evolution of how you're marketing yourself how you're attracting clients um. If i said to you like high level, how many lead sources do you have that produce more than 10 transactions today? Could you could you just kind of like from memory walk us through, like i do you know, obviously my past clients in sphere, obviously zillow. It's definitely double digits. Yeah we're.

I mean we're a zillow growth partnership. We have our google ads we're running. We've got the google service uh, you know the local service leads, so those are two different lead sources. There uh.

Why? Lopo? With with facebook retargeting happening our own internal facebook leads uh. Obviously, sphere sphere is still a huge part of our business because it because the amount of - and i argue that content really infuses - that um open houses we're still doing open houses right now safely. You know in connecticut pretty consistently our new development brings us a ton of leads uh, so yeah we're uh over 10 for sure. If i run down the oh right so so, if you were listening to somebody else, i'm gon na go back to the the stuck scaling conversation right.

So any anybody in either one of those groups what they all want is more listings right. Everybody wants more listings. Everyone in their right mind, should always want more listings as long as they're in this business. Now you and i both know with zillow growth or realtor, vip or home light, or you know, quicken loans rocket like like there's so many channels now that are providing explosive growth for agents beyond that stuff.

Talk to us about what's working right now to win like i've, got an easy missing point to get the listing appointment. Yeah i've got a really easy one. Everybody should be circle prospecting right now, everybody's got so many buyers and hold on hold on mr technology. Mr media company said circle prospecting, that's like 1962..

I love it, but we know what works yeah. It's setting the most listing appointments for us right now from new agents to experienced agents yeah we had. We had an agent the other day on the dialer shout out to emily. She had four listing appointments on one session on the dialer, just with a really simple script: hey.

This is emily over with money company at william ravis, i'm working with dozens of buyers. Right now, in fact, a couple of them made offers in your neighborhood. I don't know if you know about 123 main street, that was on the market. Now it isn't just curious if you know of any of your neighbors who are thinking about selling their home in the coming weeks, where i could introduce them to my buyers right, just a simple script and what is she doing? She's uncovering the people are saying.

Well, that's me, i'm actually thinking about she's she's, finding the needles in the haystack, because she's calling the entire neighborhood over and over and over again now. What is she also doing, she's providing huge value to her buyers, which is really tough to do in this market? With no inventory she's out there working doing the hard work for the buyers and she's adding value to her community because she's providing information to the sellers, she's untapping inventory, you know sooner in the process they're thinking summer and spring, which is historically, you know like in Kinetic issues in connecticut historically, when you should be putting your property on the market, no, you should be doing it right now. I think we're at the tip of the iceberg in that market, but that's a whole different conversation, so circle prospecting i'd. Take it the next level, though i would go ahead and go live from that neighborhood, and i would - and i would not start with this - is byron.

I'm gon na go live. I would start with i'm working with mr and mrs jones they've made three offers in this two mile radius they've lost all the offers. Because of this then i'd say: i'm byron, lazine, then i'd get into their story. Here's the three problems they're having here's the three solutions: we've come up with share this video with somebody who can help them share this video with somebody in a similar experience, and i love that and i'm assuming you would.

You would literally be like i'm sitting here in irvine terrace in caronde del mar right, you're gon na name like the community, the city, so people are like, oh, that guy's down the street from me he's talking to me directly and and by the way, if you Guys didn't pick up on that little insight about, say what you're doing before you introduce yourself is key, because they may only get three seconds and at least in the three seconds that you're going to be in that person's news, feed they're actually going to know what It is that you're doing versus who you are there's always a place, though, for who you are hey. It's byron with one and company, william ravis, there's always room for that, but in this specific hack that was brilliant, so circle dialing going live in this specific community. What else is getting listings uh? What else is getting listings? So all the channel accounts that everybody has. You know people that do have channel accounts.

If you're asking about my channel accounts, i know you're referring to if someone's going to be like channel, if you're a zillow growth partner or if you're, getting leads from realtor or or if you're getting leads from home light or any of these places a lot of Them are coming in on well home light's, going to come in on the sell side, so that was a bad example, but the ones that are buyer heavy yeah. They have questions about properties, but oftentimes. They have another property. Whether that's out of your location, you can pick up a referral fee right or it's something right in the market that you service.

If you're asking the right questions and getting in front of them and showcasing the value, there's there's opportunities there for sure. Uh, google, getting google screened, isn't obvious at this point. Getting your getting your google reviews up, and that was another thing. Lisa really kicked my butt on uh.

Last year, tom in december, my team, yeah december 1st of 2020. We had zero google reviews. What, but you have hundreds and hundreds on on zillow yeah, yeah yeah, hundreds of hundreds and hundreds on zone, so i'm i've been harping this for a while. Please please tell people why beyond lisa just kicking your ass, why did you switch and start getting more and more reviews, even though you're a channel partner with zillow? Why are you now pumping google as hard, because my zillow business got way too high? It made me very uncomfortable how high it got.

It went up to 28 of our business in 2020 for closed transactions, sphere was still pretty close to 50 percent yeah and you know that wraps into content and all of that but boy and i listen - i i really am happy with my zillow growth partnership, but I'm not happy with it being over a quarter of my business okay, so that was a clear indicator to me that okay zillow built their business on google google's the number one search engine in any market that you're sitting in whoever's. Listening to this right now, google's the number one search engine youtube by the way is number two. I need to have a stronger presence there, and so now we have over a hundred reviews. We got our butts into gear in december, made it a priority to come out of that month with over 100 reviews in our market, we've got more than any broker more than any team more than any individual agent, and we clean that up in 30 days or Less so for everyone listening out there, the one thing i'd ask you so, first of all, i've been i've been harping on this.

I went live on uh on facebook or instagram, and literally one of the guys from zillow called me, like hey man. What do you mean? I'm, like hey, listen, dude! I love you guys, but let's be very clear. An agent today that doesn't have a google business page, isn't in business right like you're. Just it's it's free! Just if you don't know how type into google.

How do i build a google business page and a link will pop up and you'll add a photo and you're in the game? The second thing i said on that live was you got to go hard on google reviews, because if everything is on one site, like everything else, if you put all your eggs in one basket, you're putting your business at risk, you've got to dig that deeper moat. Around your castle with multiple sharks and multiple alligators that can fight off these. You know these people coming after you and google reviews are obvious, and you know one of the things that that i've learned about myself, especially in the last 12 months, is you're. You've been talking about this for a long time.

I never took action on it. I'll sit there at events and i'll and i'll and i'll hear all i'll hear all the different things that i should be doing in my business. It wasn't until what i said earlier on the podcast. It wasn't till.

I really got serious about how many layers of accountability i'm gon na put on top of the information that i'm getting from you, mostly throughout the ecosystem that you've created, so that when the next time i go to an event. My speed to getting the stuff done. That i hear at you know, team plus or whatever the next event. I think team plus will be the next one.

Finally, hopefully i'm counting on us being able to do something here. I promise there we go, i'm going to be able to take action. A whole lot quicker so same thing when we're talking about getting stuck on on social right. What's your accountability in my accountability group for me to post my stuff on instagram and linkedin, because i'm posting it personally, i have a deadline of seven posts before 8 30 a.m - east coast time and i've got to text the group, the screenshots of that it has To get done, yeah you've got to get this stuff done.

You can't it can't sit in your in your tf notebook for years and years and years untapped and so that's been participating, we're doing shameless self-promotion on the tom ferry level. 10. No, apologies journal. I love it so we talked about.

We talked about marketing, we talked about teams, we talked about a little bit on the future of real estate kind of where we think it's going. We certainly talked about podcast and content creation. Um talk to us just kind of high level. If, if someone's listening to this today and they're like okay, i want to scale, i want to get better.

What's the tech stack that you recommend? I mean you know you know so many in our community uh our ecosystem, like you, guys, are testing and tweaking and trying everything and we know most of the founders so, like you guys got better access to. You know kind of get this stuff hacked and working for you. What's working today on transaction management on project management on crm on uh, you know, google retargeting. We talked kind of through why lopo sms email like give us just some insight on on the tech you use yes, uh, one which i know you're you were an investor in is slack yep yeah, i mean our culture on slack.

I think is incredible. It it. You know i still don't have with where i'm sitting today i have sales trainer, i'm an operations manager. I still don't have like a true manager.

That is doing a lot of the deal doctoring. A lot of deal doctoring and a lot of stuff can still kind of float up to me if it if it gets sticky. Obviously, but a lot of deal doctoring is happening right in slack we're active on slack every single day. It's a great resource, so uh, certainly internal messaging slack, would be my go-to there, but slack remember like for everybody.

Listening slack has over a thousand different applications. You can add to it so so my team slack is slack, is it hasn't replaced email, which was my intention, but it's getting really close for everybody listening to that, it hasn't replaced email, and that is my intention, but it's getting real close and it, i think, If it replaces 40 of your email in the first six months, you're using it, that's a realistic goal, and i think that can you know you can build from there uh we're using follow-up boss for our crm. Why i like follow-up boss is because - and i i love all my people at some of the different crm, so i want to make that clear. Um know a lot of you know.

We know a lot of the same people. Obviously what i like about follow up. Boss is they're not trying to be a website and a crm yeah they're the sales force of real estate. In my opinion right, so you can.

You can still keep other crms because you like the website and you can just keep stacking these on top of follow-up boss and you can have competing websites in your marketplace because you're not just stuck to one and if one website isn't working for you or isn't Innovating anymore, you can just get rid of it and not feel like you've got to retrain yourself and your agents, because you're trained on follow boss and all of the leads are flowing into there. We had a we had a we have a mega monthly meeting. We just had ours the first week of of this month, and i said we need our follow-up boss. We need to be as accountable to that as we are to our zillow crm.

Yeah follow-up boss needs to become our zillow crm, eternal internally yeah, and we need to be debted to it like hardcore yeah yeah. That's that's. The future of our business is really getting sophisticated in all of the you know in how we are accounting for we've. We've hired va's to kind of help the agents, because there's so much tracking that they're required to do and they're getting so many leads yeah uh.

So i really like follow-up boss, uh email. We love bom bom. You know all of all of our agents that have a bomb bomb account um. Well, i would say the ones that are living up to the standard of 30 bomb bombs, a month with which is a really low standard, had their bomb bomb turned on uh we're even running a lot of you know, sign up forms through bomb bombs.

There's other things you can do through bomb besides, just the video messaging we're doing newsletters and uh stuff like that through through bomb bomb um. What else do we? We've got a whole bunch of stuff. Sisu ceases: where we're traveling for right yeah, you know uh, that's been a game changer for me because yeah for like for me, i like looking at the numbers and being able to refresh it every single day as opposed to digging through you know what we were On google sheets before google sheets is still, you know, don't go out and just start spending money. If google sheets is working for you right now and it's not an investment, you have to make it go ahead and keep doing that google sheets excel spreadsheet.

Just not just not yellow notepad when we're talking about the level of analytics that we want to be able to look at in our business. You know the leading lagging indicators. What's our future revenue, how are we doing per lead source? I mean it's yeah brian who's. A is a pal like the ceo, the founder of that company, like they're spot on, but they're very for everyone.

Listening they're very team focused right. They don't really. They don't really apply to a solo agent um. Unless you you have like my client shawna, you have five assistants and you're doing 80 transactions and you've got multiple pillars of lead generation.

Then it applies, but the solo agent listening, don't look at sisu, no, no, probably stay in sheets or ctr is cheap. You could go there, but right uh. What about project man? What about project management? How do you guys? I mean you've, got you're an idea, machine right, but we know it's all about. You know like the old school method that i taught you guys 100 years ago.

Do doing and done, which is what walt disney and mike vance and all those guys used, what what project management? If anything, are you guys using now re3 media is using monday.com, they love it and i just kind of see reports on it. You know twice a week and then we have sprout social over there for for social management, yep project management. On the operation side, i mean honestly i'll go back to slack really sure, because everything is communicated through there on the upside of the real estate business um. There's probably something i'm forgetting and carolina.

My ops manager would be like. How did you forget that? But i'm sure there is something else yeah and lee cowan's, a big one that i'm in all the time because for our recruiting fund, we have three separate.